Eric Schell - How Customer Pain Points Can Reveal Your Next Big Opportunity

Eric Schell is the Co-founder and CEO of OneTap, a technology company that streamlines maintenance and repair requests for restaurants and other businesses. With more than a decade of experience in construction, real estate, and hands-on fieldwork, he focuses on making service faster, simpler, and more cost-effective for owners and technicians. Eric previously owned Nashville Maintenance Pros and The Nashville Flipper, a home flipping and maintenance company. In this episode… Some of the strongest business ideas begin with repeatedly seeing the same problem from the front lines. When an inefficient process becomes so familiar that everyone accepts it as normal, what does it take to recognize the opportunity hiding inside it? Construction and maintenance entrepreneur Eric Schell spent more than a decade working in the trades, renovating properties, and building a service business before noticing how difficult commercial maintenance had become for customers. What started with firsthand experience fixing problems grew into a deeper understanding of the delays, communication gaps, and unnecessary friction businesses faced when requesting repairs. Along the way, Eric learned to build confidence, hire when capacity became a constraint, and use peer feedback to make bigger decisions. He advises entrepreneurs to understand the problem firsthand, listen closely to customers, and commit once the opportunity has been validated. In this episode of The Decision, Robert Hartline sits down with Eric Schell, Co-founder and CEO of OneTap, to discuss turning firsthand industry problems into a scalable business. Eric talks about identifying gaps in commercial maintenance, how Catalyst influenced a major business decision, and using customer data and technology to improve adoption.