Let's face it: Apartment deliveries can be a nightmare. Just FINDING an apartment, especially in a large complex, can take forever.
In this week's podcast, we talk with Eddie Valdez and Akash Agarwal about their Beans app, a fantastic new tool that can help increase your profitability. Simply put, it's a database that maps out apartment complexes and apartment locations There are two ways you can earn more using the Beans app:
- The mapping feature will help you find the buildings and entrances much more quickly
- You can earn money by helping them get maps to complexes not yet in their database.
How the Beans app works
It's pretty simple. You type in the address, and if the complex is in their database, you will get a list of the apartments. You select the apartment number, and it will populate a map of the complex with the building highlighted and a symbol over the part of the building where the apartment is located. This is a live map that uses the Google satellite view as a default. This means that as you approach the complex, you can see your location in relationship to the map. This makes it incredibly easy to find the apartment and to find the right entrance for the apartment.
As you start typing in the address, the app is pretty intuitive. It will find the closest match of apartments in their database. If the complex is in their database, the address will show a Beans logo next to it. If it isn't, it will show a Google logo. The app will still bring up the map if the complex hasn't been mapped yet, but it will present the Google information and may not be able to show you specific buildings based on building or apartment numbers.
Not all complexes are mapped. Some markets have a higher percentage of complexes mapped than others. In the interview, Eddie and Akash note that they have focused more heavily to start on 11 markets, with their greatest concentration of complexes being in California, Arizona and Texas. They are looking for people to help them map their other apartments, so that can offer some income opportunities between deliveries.
Learn more about Beans in the podcast episode. You can listen on the player, or the transcript is printed below.
Getting the Beans app and Following Beans
The Beans app is available in the App Store and the Play Store. You can learn more about the Beans app at the following links:
Beans.Launchaco.com
Get it at the Apple App Store
Get it at the Google Play Store
Eddie gave his email address at about 29:12 in the episode, however I don't like to publish peoples' addresses in the notes because of spammers. However, if you click on the contact link at the Beans.Launcaco.com site, that will send an email directly to Eddie. I have found so far that staff there is awesome at responding so far to feedback and inquiries.
Beans on Twitter
Beans on Facebook
Beans on Instagram
Beans on LinkedIn
Episode Transcript:
EntreCourier: 00:00 Hello Courier Nation. Welcome to the Deliver On Your Business Podcast, where you are the boss. Each week we talk about how to make the most of your business as an independent contractor, as a courier, delivering for gig economy apps like Grubhub, DoorDash, Postmates, UberEATS, and so many others.
EntreCourier: 00:28 Well, welcome back to another episode, Courier Nation! Now, I don't know about you or maybe I do know about you? You might be a lot like I am on this one, but I've got to tell the bane of my existence sometimes is a poorly numbered apartment complex. Okay. Is there any other kind? I mean, seriously, is there such a thing as a well numbered intuitive layout for an apartment complex? Because I haven't found very many, if there are. Now within a couple of days of starting out my very first deliveries, one of my very first ones was kind of one of those make or break it type of moments where I was about ready to just throw in the towel on this whole delivery thing because it was so frustrating.
EntreCourier: 01:04 I had this delivery to an apartment complex and it was this area where there's several complexes that are kind of all woven together and it's not like there's just, okay, here's a section over here and another section over there. But it's like these complexes are interwoven and inter-tangled, and there's no rhyme or reason to how this was laid out. I don't think the GPS knew what to do with that layout really, and it wasn't helping me find the place.
EntreCourier: 01:28 It was hard to see everything. I think it might've been snowing at the time. Now, if you're from the Denver area, probably all I have to say is East Girard, and you probably know where I'm talking about. It's just kind of one of those areas that every time I see an address to there it puts a shiver up my spine. And now it's been awhile. I've gotten to know that area a little bit better, but there's still times, I can waste so much time looking for a place. And I had this one delivery, the very first delivery I had there though that I get there and it's impossible to tell where I'm at. So I finally call the customer because i figure, okay, maybe the customer can tell me how to get there. And she says, “Oh yeah, it's in building 10” and I said, yeah, I see that, it's in your address here, but I'm trying to figure out where building 10 is.
EntreCourier: 02:14 “Oh well it's right next to building nine.” Gee, thanks for that. Okay. The reality is I shouldn't have been so sarcastic about that one because after you do this for a little while, you start to understand there are no guarantees that building 10 is actually next to building 9, you know? And the customer says, “just find building 9 and turn right and 10 is the next building down.” And I'm saying where is building 9? Oh well you can get there off of the road. Okay. Which road? “I don't know. I just moved in, really, so I'm not 100% sure.” And I'm thinking, well, you're a lot of help here, aren't you? And I look up and, and I see a building 9, but it says building 9B. And the customer says, “well, there's no B on my building, that's kind of weird. All right, well, just turn right from there. It should be the next building anyway.” And I turn right and the next building, I can't find a building number for the longest time. And I finally see one and it's something like 4B. And she says, “are you sure that you took a right turn? And I said, I am very sure.” I know my right from my left. But then I'm wondering, does she know her right from her left? So I went back and I decided to go to the left instead, but there's no building 10. Okay, there may have been maybe the building behind the one I'm looking at, I don't know. But she goes, “it's right there.Look, tell you what, I'm right by the swimming pool. Find the swimming pool and you should be able to find me.” And I said, there's no swimming pool here, but as I look around, I see a couple of different signs for a couple of different complexes just far enough off that I'm like, ummm, which apartment complex are you in? And she says, “I don't know.” I mean, what do you mean you don't know? “Well, I just moved in, I don't remember the name. Okay, look, I'll tell you what,” she says, “the leasing office is close by. I'll go to the leasing office and I'll meet you.” I said, okay, thank you. And I see a leasing office sign and I head towards that and the customer says, “okay, I'm right at the sign.” And I'm parked in front of the sign and I don't see anyone. She says, “no, you're not at the sign.” I said, I am at a leasing office sign this point. I'm really getting frustrated because she's worse than the GPS and now she's calling me a liar.
EntreCourier: 04:27 I said, I am definitely at a leasing office sign. This is for The Marks. And she goes, “Oh, well this is for Kimberly Woods apartments.” I said, well, that would have been nice to know five minutes ago when you got there right? And I said, okay, thank you. I didn't say that first part there. I try and remain professional, you know, but I said thank you and uh, let me look that up and I'll tell you what, I'm going to have to hang up so I can look it up. So I'll be there in just a moment. And now, unfortunately I've got Sprint, and the problem with Sprint as your phone carrier is you can't look stuff up on your phone while you're talking on the phone. So I've got to hang up so I can Google that complex. That was a mistake. I found the leasing office for that particular complex. I found it pinpointed on Google maps.
EntreCourier: 05:07 So I go right over there. It's like half a block, I think, something like that. But I get there and there's nobody there. So I call her and I said, Hey, I'm there, but you're not there. And she goes, “Oh yeah, I went back inside the apartment, just come find me.” I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. Uh, okay. So where are you from the leasing office? At least we've got a point of reference. She goes, “Hey, I'm right next to the swimming pool.” Great. Here we go again. And then I look around and you know what? There are four, three, four, five buildings next to the swimming pool. Which one is it? Yours? And she said “it's the brick building.” And at this point I'm really about ready to walk on this whole delivery. You know what, for $3.25 cents it's not worth it.
EntreCourier: 05:49 And I said, lady, they're all brick. But then I finally see building 9, I see a building 9 on one of the buildings. The “9” barely stands out from behind a tree. And I'm thankful that it's winter and there's no leaves to totally block out that nine. But I, remembered she said it's next to building 9. So I check out the building next to it, that's not, oh, you know what she said to the right. And if, I turn around the other direction, if I were to turn right, there should be 10 and that's it. So paydirt! And so I'm noticing it's like a second floor apartment and I dart up the steps and it's not there. And I walk around the building and there are several different entrances and each entrance has its own set of apartments and it's like the last possible entrance I could've gotten to.
EntreCourier: 06:34 And I'm kind of at that point, like, lady, you could've at least told me that your entrance was in the back of the building. That would have helped me. There's all sorts of things that would've helped me and it's bad enough the apartment was bad, but her instructions were worse. And man,I'm fed up by this point. And of course she's ticked because her cheesesteaks are cold, right? And I'm mad because she's worse than the GPS. And I got like, you know, three bucks, three and a half bucks for that whole thing. And of course there's no tip because she's not happy and I'm just ready to hang it up on this whole delivery thing. The whole thing just isn't worth it, you know?
EntreCourier: 07:09 Now, folks, you've probably all got similar stories and, and in fact, I'd love to hear about them, you know, so, look up the Entrecourier on Twitter or on Facebook and tell me your story of your worst apartment complex nightmare. And you can email me from the contact page from our website.
EntreCourier: 07:29 And here's the crazy thing though, there's just no consistency from one apartment complex to the next on how they number their buildings, you know what I mean? And in one complex, the numbers are clockwise. And then in the next one they're counterclockwise and then the buildings are opposite of how the building building numbers are, the apartments are opposite. And then sometimes, the apartment numbers go in a clockwise numbering and in others it's kind of like they skip front to back, back to front, and there's no consistency. And it just, I don't know how much time I have lost trying to find apartments. And so I've got to tell you how happy I was to find the Beans app: B-E-A-N-S and we'll have links to this here. But it is an app that actually gives you an apartment building and apartment locations inside of apartment complexes. It is amazing. It is a time saver. It is a Godsend. And I'm really excited because I have a couple of folks here from the Beans app who have agreed to come on today and talk about their app. We've got Eddie Valdez who is a product manager, and we've got one of the co-founders, Akash Agarwal. I really hope I've pronounced your name right. I'm just glad to have them come on and if you hang tight here for a moment we've got the interview with the folks from Beans.
EntreCourier: 08:59 Well folks, I am really happy to introduce our guests today. I have Eddy and Akash from Beans. That's a software app that I think is something that can be really good at helping us with that issue, having to do with finding apartments. And, I want to thank you guys for coming in. Now I'm leading into this episode with a little bit of a story about one of my nightmares finding an apartment right after I started doing delivery. I find that, you know, Beans looks like it is a real good solution to that kind of an issue. Trying to find things because as couriers, like as my audiences, our Courier Nation that I call them, you know, a lot of us work for apps like Grubhub or Doordash, Postmates, UberEats and there's a whole bunch of others like that. And for most of us in most situations, we get paid by the delivery. And late deliveries can cost us a lot of money because it just means, you know, on one side, with some of the apps it can mean you get less of a tip or no tip at all. But it can also cost us money because we can't get as many deliveries done in the same amount of time. And when we're paid by the delivery, that can hurt. At the same time, we can't change our delivery fees. And you can kind of guarantee that these companies are never going to start raising fees for us. But we can increase our fees by being more efficient. And I use something that I call a 40 cent rule. What I do is I say, you know what my goal is, I'm shooting for about $24, $25 an hour. That breaks down to 40 cents a minute. And so what that means is that every minute that I lose trying to find my way around apartment is just like, it's costing me 40 cents. And when you get into some of these larger, really poorly numbered, poorly identified complexes, you know, some of them, I think the guys were smoking something when they numbered these places, you know? Those little 40 cent increments add up real quickly. So I was just really excited when I first found your app and then I started finding that there were apartments in my area that are actually listed on your app and it's already made a huge difference. But I'm gonna turn that over to you guys. And, if you guys can tell me a little bit about the Beans app and what do you see as far as how that can help our drivers, especially on demand delivery, with becoming more efficient?
Eddie: 11:20 Yeah. Yeah. So basically the Beans Map for Apartments app, it's basically a mapping app built by and for drivers. So we started with drivers, you know, the needs that they have out on a delivery. And we pretty much went backwards from there to try to solve that. And you know, the app really, as it is now and with the new upgrades coming up, is built from the driver perspective. Not from an engineering or a tech perspective, but mainly from, you know, what do the drivers really need to make their job faster and easier?. So that pretty much encompasses what our mission is with the app.
EntreCourier: 12:02 Okay. And I'm going to have, if you're listening on the podcast, I've got like I always put up a companion page, up on the website at Entrecourier.com, and on that companion page I'll put up a couple of screenshots of what I've had that show exactly what Eddie is talking about here. Because what you can do is you can enter in the address for the apartment, it'll then ask you for the apartment number and you can kind of, you get a little click down or drop down menu that has all the different apartments. You select that and it will show you not only which building it is, but in a lot of cases it's gonna also show you what part of the building is. And that can be huge. And I can tell you it's already helped me tremendously in some of the different apartment complexes around here. And, so how, what are the options as far as the app and where people can get that app and where they can download it? Is it on both iPhone and Android?
Eddie: 12:59 Yeah. Yes, it's in both platforms, from the App Store and Play Store. But we also have a landing page you can go to as well. It's beans.launchaco.com. But at the App Store and Play Store, they can go there and typing in “beans maps for apartments” and they'll find us on both platforms. There are some really great updates coming in several weeks that are gonna make a real big difference on the user experience.
EntreCourier: 13:31 Okay. Maybe if you want to tell me a little bit about some of those updates as you're doing cause right now and just to kind of give an idea of where it is right now, like I mentioned, I'll have some screenshots and I'll give some links too. But generally what I get is kinda like, when I put in the address, it will show me the satellite picture or kind of like a satellite view. You can switch to, I think, just a map view, if I understand correctly, but it'll give you the satellite view and then it'll have that building highlighted and it'll have a little icon over the top of that. And then it will show you also a, a map dot of where you are. So that helps you get to that. And there's also a comment section on, I noticed on that where you can kind of leave a little comment on the building or something like that. So if you wanna make a note for yourself, and that can be very helpful. The way I could see it being really helpful, it was like if you get a door code or something like that, but, tell me a little bit about it. You know, are there any features that I'm missing on the current app that really stand out to you? And then tell me about some of the new ones that you have coming up?
Eddie: 14:33 Yeah, yeah. So, pretty much the… right now, one of the big things that's coming up is the user experience. A lot of the current app that we have now just has everything, you know, in your face, all the relevant information that you need for the whole journey. It has it right there on one page, static page anyway, But what this new app is going to do, it's going to give the driver relevant information at the appropriate time of the journey. Some of the things that we're going to have on there that's going to be new are some gate codes are going to be available and at the right part of the journey for the driver when it's necessary when they're secure locations. But for the most part, there's some other features that are, I'll let that be a surprise, but it's going to be very intuitive, very fast.
Eddie: 15:23 A lot of things with apps that we, well, we wanted to achieve with this app was that drivers are in a hurry. They want to deliver and they don't have time to read or look around or you know, go through the app, where's this, where's that? So we're trying to create an experience where the driver can just look at it and within less than a second they have all the relevant information they need for that moment in the journey. Um, so it's gonna be an amazing experience. It's really cool now it's gonna be even better with the upgrades.
Akash: 15:51 Yeah. We're building partnerships with several different types of companies, including partnership with our logistic friends, like apartment complex owners, can basically make it a lot more seamless for the drivers who go in and out of apartments without them having to wait for the right access instructions.
EntreCourier: 16:12 Yeah, I know for us, you know, in the food delivery there are two big, I guess you would call it kind of like a pig in a Python when it comes to that delivery process. And the one side is the restaurant experience. When we get in there, we've got to wait forever for the restaurant. And then the other side is finding the customer. Now when we're delivering to a house that's not so bad. But when it comes to the apartment, that's huge. That kind of stuff that you're doing is just really helpful. You are kind of in the early stages right now. Is this, would you say the app right now as it really is like in a beta stage right now? Or are you where would you say you are, I guess in that process and you've got a new version coming out. So where would you say you are in that process, I guess, and when did you get started?
Eddie: 16:56 You said that just correctly. It's in beta form right now in the app store and play stores and the launch of this app in the next few weeks we'll give users even a more valuable experience. The data we're going to have on there, that UX to go along with it. I actually can't wait to use it, so I'm pretty excited about it myself.
EntreCourier: 17:17 Yeah, I think having that intuitive interface will be huge.That is probably one of the big things that I find with it right now is it's great, but it's like I get the address and as soon as I can tell, you know I see an apartment number and so I pull up the Beans app and I type it in first to see if you guys have it in the database there. And I've been impressed with one thing about it is that, I mean like you said, I think one thing you've got you've really got your thumb on is how important that time is. And especially when you're driving and taking time to put in lot of information can really be hard. But I have found that, you know, I enter the first, usually about the first three numbers, I'm an address and if it's in the database, boy that's popped up right away, up at the top of the list. It gives you a whole list of everything that matches and each number you put in, it kinda narrows it down. But then there's a little symbol next to it that will tell me whether or not it is on Beans. It's got the little Beans icon next to it. If it's got that and if it doesn't, it's got like a Google icon to say, okay, yeah, we can, we can point it to you, but we don't have the information ourselves. Does that sound correct?
Akash: 18:24 No, that's absolutely correct. And we have a feature, like we have a co founder, Nathan, who was at Google earlier and he was at Google search, so he has that experience of building the right search platform to make it very easy and quick for a user to be able to find what they're looking for. The content has to be relevant and it has to be quick.
EntreCourier: 18:50 And it really, that, that is something that impressed me for, you know, having to type in. The ideal would be is if I could just tap on the address from the app and it pulls that up immediately. But I think that's probably a little more challenging because some of that stuff's pretty proprietary as far as the interface with the different delivery apps. But then you mentioned, I guess that you're looking at something that'll be a little more intuitive so that it kinda changes as you get closer to the drop off. That's what I'm understanding then.
Eddie: 19:19 Correct. You got that exactly right. Now that's a lot of, that's driven from actually all of this is driven from user discovery. Just talking to drivers, doing ride alongs, delivering ourselvesand making sure that this app, this product was gonna solve any pain points for drivers. It's built by and for drivers. So we wanna make sure that we stay true to that mission.
EntreCourier: 19:45 Have you got a launch date for, I guess, kind of that next new version or the, I guess the official version of it?
Eddie: 19:53 It's, it's going to be around two to three weeks, because you want to make sure we want, we want to hit that target, but we want to make sure that it's done right. And so yeah, that's about around the target, two to three weeks.
EntreCourier: 20:06 Okay. If any of you have ever driven Doordash before and have experienced some of their app failures, I think that's kind of an example of maybe not checking your software real well. So I'm glad you're being careful about that. That's the one company that we have the worst trouble with, I think with apps and crashes and different things like that. But now, this is currently a free download. Now will that be continue to be a free download as that version one rolls out or are there plans to make a paid version of that also?
Eddie: 20:42 Yeah, so you're right, it's a free app and in the future as new features come in, there might be some pay associated with that. But the valuable features of the app will be free. And so drivers, we use it today and use it when we have the upgrades in a few weeks. It's gonna be very valuable as it is, and that that part will be free. But you know, we're all, we're always in user discovery mode even when this launches and after because new things come up, new problems come up. And with that maybe new features and those could have some pay associated with it. But for the most part the drivers who use it as is, will be very happy with it.
EntreCourier: 21:23 Okay. Alright. And in the show notes I'm going to have links to, I'll get as many links together as I can for everything, including the, what did you say that was? Beans dot…
Eddie: 21:35 Yeah, just beans, Beans.Launchaco.com
EntreCourier: 21:42 Dot com. Okay. So we'll put links to that as well as if I can get links to the app stores and things like that so that people, you know, I really recommend folks that you want to try this thing out. Tell me, I guess about the markets. You're in, I know that you're in Denver, you're in a lot of markets. There's probably some markets you haven't really started out yet, or tell me a little bit about how you're spreading out nationwide and some of those things.
Eddie: 22:10 So I'll give you the first answer then Akash probably give you a deeper answer, but just I guess briefly, we're very, very strong in California. We have strong coverage in California, Texas, Arizona. Every state has some maps, but those are the three strongest markets. I'll let you give you the deeper answer.
Akash: 22:30 Yeah. So like Ed said, the three of our biggest States are California, Texas and Arizona. I would like to add Florida as well. That's another state we've mapping alot. In general. We have presence across 40 States in the U S already. We have mapped over 900 cities and we have deep coverage, in about 11 of the States. When I say deep coverage, which means we've mapped over 80% of the apartments in the 11 States, California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Florida, Colorado,, Michigan, and a few others. And now we're going deep in the next 11 States, based on where the gig economy is at the moment. So we try to follow the idea of where these companies are making their hires, like the Doordash, Instacarts, Grubhub and UberEATS of the world. We try to follow along and make sure that we make deliveries consumers across where these places are expanding.
EntreCourier: 23:30 Okay. And one thing you can do right away, Courier Nation, is you can download the app and generally you can start pulling up especially some of the more common and complex complexes is that you know of. And generally you're going to be able to tell quickly whether or not you know, they're mapped in your area. You start to get a feel for it. I think I've noticed probably it seems like maybe about, I couldn't give you a real specific number, but just by experience seems like about a 60-40 mix of the complexes that I've tried pulling up anyway in the Denver area, which I think is really good. And you mentioned there's some places you're looking, do I understand correctly? Could this be like an income opportunity sometimes for some drivers? How are you doing? Maybe you can tell me a little bit about how you're doing that mapping. Are you partnering with people? Are there any opportunities that people might be able to find to help identify those maps or anything like that?
Akash: 24:27 Absolutely. So we are looking for people to help us collect information of site maps, property maps, et cetera, or apartment complexes across the U S and we sort of want toincentivize them, because they spend time in collecting that information for us. So we would love for anyone who's making a delivery on a trip to an apartment complex out there, and if they realize that we don't have data for that apartment complex or a map for that apartment complex, they could either download our Beans mapper app or just email us the map that they can click a picture of, if it's outside the complex, or they can just walk up to the leasing office and take a copy of the map and shared it with us. And we can then put it in our pipeline and annotate it for the rest of the community. And our incentives vary by state. They typically vary between $4 and $8 per map depending also on the quality of the map submitted.
EntreCourier: 25:31 Sure. And that could be probably a great opportunity for somebody when you get a delivery to somewhere that doesn't have the map that it's kind of like, okay, you don't have any deliveries coming up. Maybe you're in a little bit slower area or slower time and you're like, Oh, maybe I could just go ahead and do a map of this while I'm here. Make a few extra dollars before you head off to your next delivery. So, tell me a little bit about your experience. I think so far in doing the mapping, have you found, have you found the apartment complexes are cooperative? Do you find sometimes that they're a little more protective and don't want that information out, is it kind of a range of all of that? What's that been like trying to get that information from those apartments?
Akash: 26:14 So mostly they have been very cooperative, like 90% of the times, they have been very cooperative. It's a problem that even they face, the leasing managers, the property managers waste hours every week trying to navigate delivery drivers to the right address. And a lot of times these people, even the package delivery drivers will drop packages at the leasing office because it becomes too hard to find apartments. Right when you're driving at night or when the community's just too big or the apartment has a bunch of deliveries going to several different apartments and you are not likely to finish all of your deliveries in a day and so on and so forth. So property managers understand this pain and the moment we tell them that, Hey, we have a company trying to solve your pain and solve the driver's pain and so we make it very easy for the end consumer to get their product at their doorstep on time seamlessly. They're very happy and they're more than happy to share their maps with us. In fact, a lot of them have also started creating beans gate codes so that our community can start using beans gate codes to access their property.
EntreCourier: 27:23 Okay. Have any of them expressed concerns maybe about that, that security around the gate codes and different things like that? Is that something that they're usually a little more protective when it comes to that?
Akash: 27:35 Absolutely. There are cases where they are pretty protective about the maps, gate codes and everything, because think about it: they own the real estate. They're spending millions and millions of dollars in building that community and they want them to give their residents the best experience. And each community has a different set of residents, right? Some communities might have residents who who really don't want it and some communities might be other ways. So we have received pushback at times when we receive pushback, we just take a step back. We don't want to force anyone to give their data. We just want to work very in a friendly manner with everyone. So we collect what they would welcome and our hope is that in the next couple of years we will be able to prove to the industry, especially the real estate industry, the value of what you're doing and automatically create an inbound flux of properties for us.
EntreCourier: 28:29 Oh, sure, sure. I could see that being very helpful for just people in all sorts of different areas between package delivery, food delivery, possibly even first responders I suppose too. One thing like you mentioned that, one of the things you rely on is sometimes the feedback and, and different things from the driver community or from the people using that. So how would people contact you to let you know, either feedback about the app, what they like about it or even ideas that they might have or anything like that? What's the best way to point them your direction as far as that kind of feedback?
Eddie: 29:12 Yeah, so, so right now, the best way is just to email me. The new release of the app is going to have a feedback loop option. So that probably the best way once that comes out, but for now they can just email me directly.
EntreCourier: 29:30 Okay, great. And when it comes to maybe inquiries about being able to see if there are opportunities in somebody's market for the mapping, would that be the best place also is to contact you through that or is there a difference?
Eddie: 29:44 They can, yeah, they can contact actually Mark at Beans. Probably the best way to do it, just to go on the app store or play store and look up Beans Mapper, and they'll find the app there, and the way they do it: They download the app, they submit their info and, and once they're vetted, the mapper app will open up to them. And the way it works is once you're in an area, they go on map mode and then they can see the map surrounding areas and they'll see apartments that are lit up that need maps. And it's pretty intuitive. They just select and go and download and it's pretty straight forward once they do that.
EntreCourier: 30:25 Okay, Great. And now I noticed probably just for a bit of information and you can kind of tell a little bit about this: I noticed that the app company name, I guess that is shown with the app is 100 Feet. Is that correct? Is it the corporate name?
Eddie: 30:41 Yes, that's a corporate name. And then, Beans is handling the actual apps for delivery and for the mappers.
EntreCourier: 30:49 Okay. Is there any other kind of contact information that you would want me to put out for you about the app? Any kind of websites, social media, anything like that that you'd like me to…
Eddie: 31:02 Yeah, so, the launch page that I gave you, the Beans.Launchaco.Com, on there has the links to our social media platforms. So they can just click on there and go on our LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. So we're on there.
EntreCourier: 31:19 Okay. Awesome. All right. Any other things that you guys can think of that you want to kind of throw out there to the community or anything
Akash: 31:26 Right, we would love to get more feedback on the app. We would love for people to use the app let us know other features they want to use, the problems with the app and help us solve this complex issue. Like this thing never existed five years back because there was no known national way, so suddenly this whole new gig economy has come up and we found this niche problem to solve, based on our own experiences and we found fellow passionate people who also believe in our model who believed in the mission and the vision of the company and we're marching full steam ahead. We've already spent one and a half years on this company and we're going keep building it and we want to grow, not only in the U.S, even in few other markets to continue solving this problem that we have. We're always welcoming the drivers, always welcoming the data that we can collect in all kinds of feedback. And if you are in Palo Alto, you free to stop by our office. We always have some pizza and beer for our fellow drivers.
Eddie: 32:27 That's Right. And pool!
EntreCourier: 32:30 And Pool. All right. And folks, I think you know, that'd be something I'd really encourage all of you to spread the word on this. If you know other drivers, tell them about the Beans app because this is huge. It really is. And it is, like I said, you're going to find some places that don't have it yet, but the ones that you do, my gosh, I couldn't tell you how much time it saves. And like I told the story at the beginning, one of my very first deliveries and it was almost an hour trying to find somebody when, when you get it coupled with, it's amazing how many times the customer doesn't even know how to tell you to get there. And that was part of this story that I told right at right at the beginning before starting the interview is you get somebody that they don't know for sure how to get there. They just moved in themselves. They don't know how to tell you where to go. And, you can spend so much time sometimes in that and when you can get a real picture of exactly what building where you're at, that can make so much difference for you and your delivery work. And so I really encourage you to let people know about this, spread the word as much as you can, Facebook, anybody that you know that does delivery and let people know about this app because I think it's just fantastic. Well, Eddie and Akash, thank you so much for taking the time with me today and for telling us a little bit more about your app and everything like that. I'm really excited about to see what that's going to look like as it goes down as it develops and, and it's already huge. And to me, anything that's an improvement on top of something that's really good is is a great thing. So thank you.
Eddie: 34:06 Awesome. Thanks Ron. Appreciate it.
Akash: 34:07 Thanks, Ron.
EntreCourier: 34:09 Okay, what do you think there, Courier Nation? You've got to go check out the Beans app, okay?. And, if you check out the Beans driver app or the beans mapping app, depending on how you find it. And, I'll have links in the show notes so that you can find all of that. But folks, this, this could be a great opportunity for you whether they are mapped in your market or not. Because here's what I mean is if the Beans app, if they have got a lot of complexes in your market, it's going to make money for you and the way it's going to make money is, it's going to get you in and out of those apartment complex is so much faster and that means you make more money because you get more deliveries done, right? But here's the other side of it is if you're in a market that doesn't have a whole lot of the complexes mapped out yet, that could be an opportunity to go out and maybe between deliveries or something you can go in and do some of the mapping for them and make a few extra dollars that way. So definitely check out the app. Now I understand it is in beta and so there may be some glitches or anything like that. I haven't really run into any problems with it yet, so I've, I've been very happy with it for what it is. I'm excited to see some of the new stuff coming out.
EntreCourier: 35:21 Courier Nation. Let me ask you a question. Is any of the information that I'm providing for you helpful to you at all? Does it help you run youre business, does it helps you feel better about what you're doing as a courier with Grubhub, DoorDash, Postmates or Uber Eats or any of these other companies. If so, could spread the word please. Could you help us get found? Could you leave a review for the podcast? Any of that kind of stuff helps other people find this, and if other people can find this that means more people that we can help to take control of their business. In the meantime, Courier Nation, go ahead and check us out at Entrecourier.com. Shoot me a note anytime from the contact page from there, I'd love to hear from you. You can actually leave a voicemail message from there, but I would love to hear from you, get your thoughts, any ideas, anything you want to hear about and in the meantime, Courier Nation. One thing I asked you to never forget, ever, ever, ever is to go out there and be the boss!
