In this video, I share part 3 of a conversation I had with Jeff Novotny of Field Nation. He is their Director of Marketplace Provider Operations. Jeff and I discuss how to build relationships between techs and buyers, how to earn repeat business, and the freedom working on Field Nation gives you.
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🎥 Video Transcript:
Hello, this is Michael with Field Tech Academy.
Today is part three of a conversation that I had with Jeff Novotny of Field Nation.
Jeff is the director of marketplace provider operations.
He wanted to reach out to Field Tech Academy because he’s seeing the work that we’re doing and the impact that we’re having on the industry.
And he really wanted to share how Field Nation is working to try to help technicians to succeed.
Be sure to check out videos one and two.
But let’s get into the final video of this conversation,
video three,
with Jeff Novotny.
But then we also talked about
why it’s important to build a customer base. So providers want relationships with buyers. But I think it’s important to know
the buyers just as much
want relationships with providers.
For that exact same thing that you talk about is,
I need a problem solver that I can trust,
and I need somebody that is willing to learn technology as it evolves with me as a buyer, so that I can continue to service my end clients.
And that relationship goes both ways.
Establishing trust
buyer to provider and provider to buyer,
which I think is,
is a huge opportunity.
If, once techs get past the initial steps of getting themselves established,
marketed,
and foot in the door,
what are some of the big opportunities that you see techs when they have those relationships?
How does a marketplace like Field Nation benefit them in the long run?
I think that there’s a lot of benefits because there’s, especially for for an established technician, there is a lot of repeat business.
There are a number of buyers that will call me on the phone
before they ever put a ticket
publicly on Field Nation.
They will call me and they’ll say, hey, we’ve got a job coming up next week where we need to have a router installed or AP swapped out or whatever.
Are you available sometime next week to do this?
And they will just directly route the ticket to me. So the platform as a whole, like a new technician, would never see that.
And that’s
a challenge of being a new tech. But the benefit of being an established tech is those relationships bring you work on a consistent basis.
They’re going to come to me first,
and the overall platform is never going to see those tickets.
I love that
feedback. And you just basically put the exclamation point on the relationship.
When you when you have that kind of direct contact
and running it through the platform.
I think another thing that I’ve seen and in talking to some providers, is some of the benefits of that independent contractor on the platform is
not only those relationships,
but the lifestyle.
The freedom to choose,
the freedom to choose the work that you do.
When you do the work,
how you solve the problem, not just solving the problem, but how you solve the problem.
Just the creativity in solving the problem of of whatever work you’re working on.
You can choose the buyers you work with.
The partners, even laterally, the
providers you partner with.
As you establish yourself, you can choose which jobs you take based on pay.
You can choose which jobs you take based on location.
Basically, you’re choosing your own path to grow your business. And I think,
again, foot in the door,
building the relationships,
and then owning your path
as an independent contractor, is a lot of the value that I see.
I’m curious, do you ever see feedback like that from techs that
have long say, even in your own experience, have you felt that
freedom?
You know, Jeff, I think
that freedom is a huge deal to most technicians and to myself.
That’s one of the main reasons I am self-employed, and I am an independent contractor.
I wanted to be an entrepreneur since I even knew what an entrepreneur was.
I tried different endeavors over the years to become self-employed.
You know, I made mistakes along the way.
I’m now at a point where I feel very confident in my ability to make a living as a self-employed person.
What I’m trying to do at this point is to teach those coming up behind me, those that are just getting started. I want them to be able to learn from my experience, to avoid some of the mistakes that I made so they can become successful faster.
I have my own small business. I do service tickets for Field Nation buyers.
I work with other platforms and even direct clients.
All of these things combined give me diversification.
That diversification allows me to have the freedom of setting my own schedule, and the freedom of setting my own rates.
With Field Nation buyers, you have the freedom to set your own rates.
If a ticket is being offered at $25 an hour,
and if that’s not something you want to do, you don’t have to do it. But if you’re a new tech, then you may want to do that to get your foot in the door, to get your experience up.
You know, one thing, Jeff, that I love about Field Nation is that you can always make counter offers. Now there is a break point. I mean, obviously for jobs being offered at $25 or $35 an hour,
the buyer is not going to accept a counter offer of $60 or $70 an hour.
If you have a buyer that’s offering tickets, maybe in the $50 to $60 range,
and you’re an experienced tech, and you’ve got an established reputation on Field Nation,
you’re going to have a much higher likelihood of getting a buyer to accept a counter offer of maybe $65 an hour or $75 an hour,
or whatever your particular price point is.
You also have freedom of scheduling.
It’s your call whether you take a call or don’t take a call, whether you schedule time off or not.
Yesterday I had a funeral with a family member.
I knew about it ahead of time, so I was able to simply not bid on tickets for that time frame
and take that time to spend with my family and do what I needed to do in my personal life.
So as we wrap this up, we’ve kind of come full circle.
What advice would you give individuals who are maybe considering a career in IT service
for field work?
You know, the question is whether you want to be independent or whether you want to get a job.
Working on platforms like Field Nation as an independent contractor can give you that independence.
to
help you to earn money while maybe if… you may even be trying to build your own business, you know, your own brick and mortar, your own service business.
With flexibility to work around what you’re doing in your life.
You know, we talked about earlier how
the problem solver, the person that can figure things out, that mentality helps really well in the IT industry.
So I would say if you don’t really have that ability,
this is going to be a more challenging industry for you.
The question is, how do you get the skill sets that you need to succeed on Field Nation and these other platforms?
You know, trade schools are awesome. Like, I don’t think in today’s world that I would do a four year degree
if I was trying to do this kind of work.
I would focus on getting going to trade school and getting specific skills.
You’re going to thrive if you have specific skills like being able to run cable, being able to understand network equipment. Because we don’t even have
to program the equipment most of the time for the tickets that we receive. It’s it’s really physical hardware, physical cabling.
So you’ve got these guys that go out and get a CCNA or all these high level things. They’re good and they can help you in a job marketplace.
But honestly, in this marketplace, so much of what we do is physical
and it’s nice to know the software, but that’s not going to necessarily help you succeed any more than than recognizing the equipment.
So as a new tech, I would say, you know, if you if you can do the trade school route and get knowledge, that’s awesome.
Second thing would be to watch for those helper tickets and those assistant tickets.
To me, those are amazing things because you can go to trade school and learn
the ABCs,
but until you physically went out there and done a job,
it’s a totally different world.
And so if you can watch as a new tech for all those assistant and helper jobs,
you can go out with an experienced tech,
watch them work, see how the platform works. You know, see how the paperwork works, see how the the interaction with the client works, and see the actual physical work being done. And you’re going to learn so much with that.
That will help you in the future to be able to take those jobs yourself.
I love it. So I think in summary, I think we’re talking about building a base skill set some way. With through a trade school, through
helper tech
assistants to get into the industry. Then enhance your skills, perhaps. If you needed to get those certifications, you could choose to do so. Again,
you have that freedom to do so.
Making sure you’re aligning with licenses were appropriately.
And then don’t bite off too much early. Right. So fail safely.
You know, get the experience to grow your knowledge, grow in the IT industry. And then over time, that snowball effect will take place. You’ll build your relationships with your clients and you’ll have repeat customers.
I think you said repeat customers several times throughout this, this discussion. And I think that’s so critical when we’re talking about how we build relationships and what our objective of building those relationships are, is
to have those repeat customers and build the trust.
Great conversation, Michael, I really appreciate you
taking the time out to to have this with me.
I’ve been it’s been very educational for me for sure.
Well, good. I really appreciate getting to know you as well.
It’s been a pleasure and I hope that this information will help technicians
it’s so funny. I have my tagline in my videos, but I always want people to be able to get out there in the field and make money.
We do too. We want them to get out there in the field and we want them to make money.
The goal of Field Nation is to help buyers
find work, to do the job
and help providers
find work
to grow their business and to make money.
Hey, Michael. Great talking to your brother.
Good talking to you.
I appreciate you taking the time to watch this video with Jeff Novotny and I.
If you’re interested in signing up with Field Nation,
visit their website at
fieldnation.com.
if you got value today, please smash that like button
and subscribe to the channel.
Be sure to visit my website at fieldtechacademy.com.
I have some digital downloads that can help strengthen your Field Nation profile.
I also offer one on one coaching.
I can assist you with getting started on Field Nation or having better results.
As always, let’s get you out in the field making money. I’ll see you in the next video.