The Huddle - Episode 1 - Introduction
The HUDDLE is where the flooring industry can get together and talk about everything! Lead by Paul Stuart from Go Carerra who is joined by Daniel and Jose Gonzalez from Preferred Flooring.
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The HUDDLE is where the flooring industry can get together and talk about everything! Lead by Paul Stuart from Go Carerra who is joined by Daniel and Jose Gonzalez from Preferred Flooring.
what's up daniel what's up jose
how's it going what's going on brother
i'm here
sorry if it's a little loud i'm almost
to the office so i'll be there in about
two minutes
okay what's up daniel what are you doing
setting up this camera and stuff
[Laughter]
i guess welcome to this week's uh huddle
first official huddle so
a little bit about what we're doing here
is um
huddle's intended to bring just like a
huddle in in football it's intended to
bring
uh
people from the industry together
and
whether it's
you know company owners
industry leaders
installers
professionals for
uh you know that can assist
installers in taxes to legal issues uh
just industry overall
conversation
uh you know this is gonna morph into
any specialty construction uh person
whether they're a drywaller or whatever
but we're flooring guys so uh that's
where we're starting i'd like to hear a
little bit about daniel and jose so
daniel won't kick us off tell us a
little bit about you
and uh preferred flooring and what you
just you know uh you're kind of flooring
famous
at this point and snoring famous
so now that'll get started and and a
little bit about your background
okay my name is daniel gonzalez with
preferred flooring in grand rapids
michigan
been doing this for uh
23 23 years now
i started out when i was 12 years old in
high school
and as soon as i graduated i pretty much
graduated and then that following week i
started full time and been doing it ever
since
uh jose is my brother and business
partner we've been doing this it's
actually 12 years as of like a week ago
congrats
thanks uh it's been
like any other thing you know it's been
a struggle
but that's what business is all about
right it's all about the struggle and
getting out of that struggle
um
we were labor only for a number of years
up until probably three or four years
ago we started uh
trying to do the whole full service
thing and it isn't until uh recently
really that we really
kind of
started to catch traction with that and
uh
now we have a whole another set of
headaches because that's what happens
sure
well you got to track materials now
track everything you got to deal with uh
all the shipping and
freight and fuel surcharges and
material price increases all that kind
of good stuff
jose looks like he's walking into the
office we'll give him a second
i'll uh tell you
maybe introduce myself i'm paul stewart
i've been in flooring similar to daniel
i didn't quite start at 12
but
pretty much right out of high school
after graduation
maybe a year later or so i got into
flooring
i remember the date
it was february of 95
and
heck i did it just did not have dirty
hands i was busting down tires at the
time and
and uh i did it to
you know try to
i don't know make a living without being
so filthy that was my thought um so
i started started uh at a company as an
hourly employee
like i said in 95 um
a few years later that company was
getting ready to get bought out for like
the third or fourth time and so
i decided me and this other guy that
worked there decided we could do this on
our own so we started
uh a flooring company at the time which
was really a labor-only shop and
uh i installed for
about
another 10 or so years 12 years
and through that transition we did the
same thing you guys are doing daniel is
we started selling materials and
and uh wanted to take care of our
clients
material needs as well as labor you know
we found that there was a
shortage in
in
what i'd call good customer service at
the time particularly centered around
materials so
yeah so
that's kind of history you know a few
years later i bought my partner out and
started stewart associates and we're now
one of the largest flooring contractors
in the midwest
and
you know my real passion is really to
figure out how we can
you know
up the installers quality of life that's
probably the easiest way i can see it
that's my real passion is how do we do
that because i feel like if the
installer succeeds and is successful and
has a good quality of life that at the
end of the day that equates into the
flooring companies that use that
labor
or hire that labor out
makes us successful so
that's a little bit about
me and how we started go carrera
did that in 2017 launched our first
version in 2018
and our current version
is um
live since
20
uh i'd say september
2020 or so
so
it's a complete platform
built around empowering
the flooring installer
giving them the
kind of construction accounting tools at
their fingertips and allows them to work
with companies like stuart and
associates for flooring anybody anywhere
and kind of puts power in their hands so
that's my story dan daniel uh already
kind of went how about you jose you want
to tell us a little bit yeah
hey first of all thanks for bearing with
me miles in the truck and making a
transition here
um so same thing uh
do you remember your first date i
remember my first date was january 7th
1998.
i had a herman miller
furniture company here in michigan
um
started out as a two-week temporary
two weeks turned into two months two
months turned into two years
um i happened to bring my brother into
it you know during the summers and like
you said when he was 12 when he was
younger
um
on and off with uh
a couple different companies in the
beginning
um
had a couple go-arounds
starting my own business uh previously
um
so two other businesses before preferred
flooring um
then uh
it didn't really work out the recession
hit back in 2008 2009 is when i got it
with it pretty hard uh and
brought everybody with me to another
company to work uh
as employed by the hour for with other
companies that i had experience with
um from there we kind of stayed put for
a while until uh
until we felt it was necessary for us to
leave until we thought we reached the
camp um and
uh we we take pride in what we do and
like you said is uh
the idea was definitely installer base
the idea of preferred flooring was for
us to create
something for
the flooring installer to be to be great
at one thing to focus on the
installation and the education
um it wasn't as broad as it is now it
was more focused on just us and our
abilities but
um that's what we came up with the name
is everyone preferred daniel or myself
to be on their job sites so it just only
seemed fit to go preferred flooring
um
and yeah 12 years later now we've kind
of
adopted the sales a few years ago and
we're learning and you know
i don't like anybody else who's starting
out man we don't have uh there's no book
to tell us what we gotta do we're still
learning as we go you know we ask advice
from everyone that we meet
where are you guys located
grand rapids michigan
awesome so um technically we're grand
rapids we're in a suburb of grand rapids
is where our physical location is at
um so walker grand rapids
sweet
well a little bit about why the huddle
ever came to be
there's plenty of flooring podcasts out
there we're not really trying to you
know
just have guests on in flooring
overall
and
you know only talk about the appropriate
way to install sheet vinyl although
that's important and we'll definitely
get into some of that stuff but
um you know as an industry we struggle
to
bring on new talent we've struggled
uh with the labor shortage like many and
many of the specialty
construction companies uh or
construction industries do
but we kind of struggle even more than
some of those due to not having in my
opinion
uh really
i guess the best way to put it is
standardized training
so the training is real fragmented
there's good training out there but it's
real fragmented so
uh knowing which trainings are good and
which ones are not
and i i you know i think that you know
having discussions
like this uh
that you know
what is a good training what's a good
training you guys have been to
uh what's a good training that you know
some of our guys have been to what we've
been to or i've been to myself even
um so a lot of that stuff you know come
out through this
through these uh huddles i want to have
fun this is our first one so it's
obviously always starts off a little bit
choppy and
and uh getting our footing but uh
you know the the real purpose of the
huddle here is for us to come together
like football teams
and even though an offense and the
defense have two separate agendas
they're still part of the same team so
when the industry
or manufacturers come on and join us
you know
we got to remember we we're all part of
the same team we just have different
objectives so
i use a lot of football analogies i love
football and i love the what that sport
means to life and what it does
from a perspective of preparedness
proper training
all that stuff that kind of goes into
that heck if you're a great football
player and you you uh
apply some of those
those uh principles to flooring you're
gonna be a hell of a flooring guy too
so
what's
tell me
like over the last year
what is your guys's um personal
challenges uh what does that look like
uh starting to sell materials and and
deal with uh gcs i ha i happen to
believe one of our
one of our core issues is this idea that
in construction
that
you know flooring guys or any specialty
contractor but it seems like flooring
guys in particular are almost
treated as less than um
you know
maybe less than other trades but
certainly a lot of times uh you know
not as a professional so
what's your guys's uh journey been like
because you guys are to me i've gotten
to spend time with you some of the most
professional guys that i've gotten the
pleasure to get to know
our yeah thanks um our journey's been
like i said it's it's business so it's
been
a little rough uh we did realize early
on that
that is how
the flooring industry was
perceived
and we kind of wanted to to break away
from that because
when you show up on a job you know at 8
a.m and everyone else has been there
since 6 that's
still technically early for a flooring
guy which is crazy to me
they're like oh my god you're here
already we didn't know we thought you
guys would be here at like 10 and you
know you hear stories of guys getting
there at 10 and leaving at 2 and it's
like
we didn't we didn't want to have
we don't want people to look at us like
being just another
guy that's like that we wanted to to be
a legit business and
to
be looked at as professionals because um
i think early on in
in my flooring career you know they ask
a lot of people ask you know what do you
do in this
flooring installer and it's like oh i
didn't know there was professional
flooring installers out there
but yeah i mean really that that's what
it is right it's you're you're going in
there and you're
being professional and installing a
floor so
to be looked at as a professional we
wanted to
to actually look professional so we you
know
our logo actually our cousin did our
logo and it came from
you know just asking him and paying him
25
25 and it's like now it's everywhere
yeah
but we we didn't want to be looked at
like you said like we're less than so we
we strive to be
better than anyone around and that's
really
our footprint in the industry um not
even just over here but like you said
you've talked to us and people can see
that everywhere and we just want to let
people know that you know you do start
technically we're still real small i
mean we've got only 11 people in the
company
so
it's small but you you still have to
look big time in order to
to have people take you seriously
sometimes well you got to land work and
you got to have some some
stability there
but from the flooring it's interesting
to me
how
a lot of uh you know the companies that
are out there were started by flooring
installers so the thought that we're not
professional um
is a little comical to me
um
you know many of the companies that are
in
say fuse alliance or or star net a lot
of those companies were started by
you know old flooring guys so
they've ran uh multiple millions of
dollars uh a year and in business we got
a billion dollar flooring contractor
here in america you know i mean it's
it's uh it's not small time it's a
bigger industry than most people really
realize um
well it's not glorified
it's not glorified and i think that
that's the issue is that you know um
nothing against anybody else but when
they're pushing uh
trade school as plumbing electrical
and then you know hvac is falling in
there when they're pushing all of that
um
and then you start looking at
the lower spectrum where framing and
groupers
and concrete guys you know they push all
that before they push flooring
um you know i
i asked a question in a group of
100 people
um
about flooring no um who does the flying
the framework the finished carpenter
nobody really had an answer for that and
it was like yeah you gotta you gotta
bring
bring awareness that there is a niche
right it's not even really addiction
it's just an industry all its own just
like all the other ones
well the the
why do you think that is i mean do you
think it's because
the the training side of it i mean you
can teach framing and roofing and things
but flooring
there's really four
now even you know five or six distinct
disciplines in flooring you know you got
carpet
resilient
um
hardwood tile
and say polished concrete and epoxy so
because of that
like one technique doesn't flow over you
seem carpet completely different than
you seem
uh you know sheet vinyl i mean you're
not stretching sheet vinyl to match a
pattern necessarily i mean you know
there there's a lot of different
techniques so i wonder if it's not a bit
of that i mean you could be go
you know
how do i say this you go to like high
school shop class they can teach you how
to build a lamp or something that was my
that's what i've built right a lamp but
uh
they may not be able to teach you how to
be
how to actually install
uh all these multiple floorings now i
think they got some stuff out there the
fcef is doing some stuff at some of the
community colleges on a 10-week course
uh kind of introductory level but you
know
there's so many
in my opinion just to answer my own
question and then
get your opinion on this but
so many of the flooring guys in in our
industry learned from a relative
or something like that and they have no
way to prove or
um kind of i don't even want to say
proof but like
um
display or tout their abilities because
i mean how do you say like i learned
from my uncle you
know so without a person
yeah a lot a lot of guys take pride in
actually getting
learning from their uncle or their
father their grandfather
and it's hard for them to
sort of go to a class i think and
realize that they've been doing
something wrong their entire careers
and people just you need to stop looking
at it
like that and you have to start looking
at it like well if i'm doing something
wrong i want to learn how to make it
right and the only way to do that is to
actually
learn from
someone else
that knows the technique
and
kind of translate that into your
everyday but a lot of people
are are closed-minded like um
the last cfi class we we took you know
um we asked some guys to go and one of
them said why would i want to go and
have them tell me stuff that i already
know
but but they don't realize that all it
takes is that one trick man to save you
so much time
doing something so if you learn one
thing
in any any class you go to in a seminar
you know it doesn't matter it doesn't
have to be an actual certification but
um
continued education is paramount because
you learn one thing and
it just it changes your day-to-day and
makes things so much easier
yeah so how do you change the hearts and
minds of the installation community i
mean you guys are
you guys
are installers
high-quality installers i installed i've
got some people on this call that
installed
uh
how do you change your heart and minds
of
the installation community to realize
that
you may have been trained and maybe even
trained well from a from a relative
um
or or you know
a good friend but
you know
understanding that a standardized way of
doing a job
um
and being able to
kind of
have proof of that that that's what i'm
trying to get to here is like you know
you go to a doctor's office they got
their their dog on diplomas and their
their all their stuff on the walls or
any profession not that we're done
but they have their stuff on they're
proud of what they've accomplished in
training in learning not
they don't put their operations on the
wall they put their their certifications
and their diplomas and their
their achievements on the walls so
why why do we not have that type of
pride in going and learning our trade
i think there's a trickle effect you
know
and i'm i'm only you know obviously this
is my opinion and i'm going to go back
to when when i started doing flying is
everybody had a perception that the
flooring guys were the bottom of the
barrel right like they couldn't make it
in another industry so they ended up on
the floor um
and
we didn't
when i started and people i worked we
didn't do anything to make us look any
better either we weren't
the most uh presentable um face-to-face
we weren't the most articulate when it
came to
sitting in a progress meeting or holding
a conversation
um but you know that's individualized
right typically the one in charge
was the one sitting in all those
meetings but
from the top down there was never any
type of um
uh form
that we had to stick to we didn't have
any structure from the top down there
was no
you know electrician's got to be
licensed to do specific work the
plumber's got to be licensed they have
to pass inspection
there's a lot of different
things that they have to abide by and
books that they have to follow 100
in order for them to become successful
and move on to the next step they have
hours of apprenticeship hours of
training under certain levels to keep
moving up
and that right there that process just
the process alone gains respect visually
um and
for installs we don't have that we we
it might have said on an on a commercial
project it might have said uh must be
installed by a certified installer in a
particular material right
that didn't always get followed because
certified installers were very slim and
honestly they're still kind of slim
because
somebody who's been installing for 20
years
does feel like they don't
need to go get that certification right
um at one point you know daniel was like
hey
hey you got to go go get it you know
it's our talk go get a certification
then he came down uh to me and i'm like
you know what
i just kind of want to get a
certification and justify what i've been
doing for years like it's not even for
anybody else out there i bet you learned
something though you know we sent some
guys to cfi
and there's multiple other organizations
by the way but it just happens uh
we we sent some guys to cfi that had
been just that they learned from their
uncle literally and they were good
installers they did a good job and when
they got back they they literally were
like dude i was
i was going because you were kind of on
me about going but i actually learned
some stuff
and they'd been doing it for 10 or 15
years by that point and learned from
their uncle the thing is is it's kind of
it seems to me it's kind of like
the uh you know when using school and
they had to get in a circle and you tell
somebody something and by the time it
got back around to you is completely
different i think that some of the
trainings are the same way maybe
you know their uncle got certified or
somebody down the line was properly
trained and then as it gets it gets a
little bit diluted and that's why i
think the certifications are so
important and trainings in general
certifications
you know workshops that kind of stuff i
think they're important because it
re-ups what you know
uh it can reaffirm
uh what you've been taught but also
you're gonna probably pick up some some
key pieces there
and you know frankly
you can make a good living in flooring
and
um
so i'm i'm hopeful
that over time as this webinar podcast
whatever we decide to call it uh you
know as as we
come together and huddle every week and
bring in some
some uh some of the
manufacturers uh possibly some of the
training entities
uh whoever we can get to join us
that
we can start to kind of uh shift the
paradigm a bit
and open people's mind to the fact that
the installer in particular that
proper training
if you build a good foundation and then
you learn from somebody else it's always
better in my opinion so hopefully we can
kind of uh change change that
atmosphere i i don't know how else to
say it but i know the entire industry is
trying to solve this problem
but nobody else is getting together with
you know
all facets from installers i
i would love the day when the huddle has
you know five or 10 15 20 100 i don't
care installers and then the ceo of
e of uh you know shaw or somebody like
that where we're all together coming up
understanding what the big problem is in
our industry and we know what it is
labor we're not even
appropriately using all the labor we
have let alone um bringing in new new
blood so
some of those things are starting to
happen
um but
it's without input
i think that
i think without input from the
installation community
you got a lot of
ceos out there
with different training organizations
and uh industry organizations just kind
of making the call as best as they know
so maybe we could be a voice for the
installation community and
and um
i'd say the service side of the business
in general not just uh the main not the
manufacturing of the products we'll get
those guys on but the service side
and uh
so
we're gonna keep these things short each
week we'll see how they go but somewhere
around 30 minutes and um
so
each week we'll also
take some um we're in the
in the process of kind of formatting a
few things
uh that we did not have ready this week
but each week we'd like to take some uh
questions from the
uh you know from the audience
maybe answer them or just discuss them
i'm not saying i have all the answers
i'm not saying you guys have all the
answers but we can sure as hell discuss
this stuff and see what we come up with
what comes out of a good discussion is
sometimes
you know better than one guy trying to
answer every single question so yeah 100
and it's always it's always good to hear
someone else's opinion and voice
um you know if
regional uh
struggles might be different you know in
your area than my area but it's always
nice
to hear what's going on to see what's
going on and to learn because
you guys might be you know two years in
the future from where we're at or vice
versa and if if there's some scenarios
from other installers that are out there
or they've already hit some scenarios
hey
this is the place to bring it all out
let's talk about it let's let's help one
another it's about
bringing our industry to the forefront
for one another
yeah
there's too many installers that think
that every other installer is their
competition and what they don't realize
is that we're all in this together and
if we don't
start acting like that and kind of
bridging the gap with just the
installation community
we'll never do that with the retailers
and the stores and stuff like that it's
it's it's got to start somewhere and us
as installers have to realize that man
we gotta start talking to each other
not as competition but as equals and
uh
and learn from each other um that's
that's a big thing right we were talking
about classes and all this stuff and
just talking to some people i i can
learn
i have learned a lot from you know just
talking to installers
like we're talking now
and it's it's crazy the amount of
information that one person has that you
don't and then you just get feed it
right back to them on something that
they don't
know and we just have to start feeding
off each other and
start trusting each other really because
as a community we're kind of broken up
and it's it's time to come together
well how do we you know
that's a great point i mean at the end
of the day
quality of life for an installer
specifically the independent installer
right because he's not under the care of
a company he is a
independent
installation company himself or herself
with that being said like
the only way to change the industry is
for the installation community to band
together you know come together
discuss things
have some uh you know that's the only
way you're gonna get price enough if you
ask any flooring company at all the
conventions i've been at most of them
want to pay more but the reason they
don't pay more is because their
competitor down the street's not going
to pay the same and they're going to
lose out on work if they up their labor
rates well if the install community came
together under one
kind of uh roof
and made some some decisions there
where it doesn't matter which company
they're working for that their their
rates are going to start bumping up well
eventually the entire
industry
rates start going up right if i'm if i'm
paying the same
uh as the guy down the street or or the
the installers in our community are
charging the same for me as they are
down the street
then
when it bumps up a little bit and we use
you know we use go carrera a little plug
for go carreras
it keeps all of the
um
the power in the installer's hands to
negotiate their pricing and charge what
they
uh what they feel is uh appropriate for
their skill level
that being said
if they if it's if it's that way
throughout the entire install community
then you can start to bump up rates
installers can start to get paid more
companies can charge more and you don't
get this throat cutting scenario where
we if you're
you're doing you know contract work now
um so you guys know
like if you pay way more than your your
competitor down the street in in labor
i mean
as good as you guys are as good as we
are at the end of the day we're not
getting every job
uh we're not we're not you guys aren't
getting every job you bid
we've lost work because our competitor
pays
you know
i won't even name the rate but really
cheap for certain items and we just
can't compete with them we refuse to go
down that low
and uh to beat up the installers
yeah well i just think that if we come
together
um and there's a lot of companies that i
think sit in the same chair as we do and
a lot of installers out there want
want their quality of life to be um that
they don't have to work 90 hours to make
a living and um i think that as a entire
industry we have to address that and if
we can address that appropriately
and give a mechanism that allows
installers to
um you know
have the power
um
i think dealers and and retailers and
con you know flooring companies foreign
contractors
will start to uh bump up i know it's
worked for us we use go carrera
everybody's gonna be able to benefit
from it it brings uh it brings
visibility to the installers and brings
visibility to a skill set right you
don't want
you don't want a
joke or guy to
go and install
x material for you when his experience
is limited you want that to be a success
for you for the installer for the end
user
um and that's what what this is about
it's about bringing visibility to
strengths right you don't have to
exploit anybody's weakness but if you
bring their strength out in front of say
hey this is what i'm strong at there is
no question there is no no doubt um and
i think that that's why
this platform is going to be great for
for anybody it's going to benefit the
the flooring store the manufacturer the
installer
uh the commercial um property owner the
business owner the homeowner is gonna i
mean
it's
it's a great great tool
well getting the right guy on the right
on the project is is 90 of it and right
now because we don't have this
standardized
way of being able to
assess what an installer can do so
you know there's only a few trainings
out there that that
perk my eyebrows and make me say oh that
guy has to be good if he has that
certification
um
outside that there's there's
not a college there's no degree to get
and so
we had to build something that allows
you know
the the people who sell the labor
to be able to hire the labor
based on the skills and ability of that
that uh labor provider
and um i feel like
if we continue down this path it will
ultimately result in better installers
better uh industry and hopefully better
flooring companies too because we can
all get better so
with that you guys got any closing words
i'm going to close this off here and uh
sign us out
never stop learning i was once one of
those guys that like i i mentioned
earlier and when he was like well am i
going to go there so they can tell me
something that i already know
and once you do your your first
certification class you you realize that
i mean like i said
i was doing things wrong and
uh you you translate that into your
everyday and realize that you're you're
not a know-it-all and once you realize
that and figure out that
you can learn something new every day
you take that with you in in every
aspect of your life and
it'll help you out everywhere not just
the flooring industry
yeah
i agree i would say i would add to that
um or to this is that
if this is uh your career this is what
you're choosing then um you know
invest in yourself
invest in yourself you know even if it
isn't investing in a certification or
anything like that investing yourself
whether it's family time personal time
or you know you want to invest in your
business
do you want to work 90 hours a week i
understand i was there the only one who
worked 40 hours a week i understand
what's there you only want to work 20.
that's okay too but invest in your crap
because this is your career invest in
yourself
education cooling whatever just
put yourself
forward put yourself in the forefront of
your own life
yeah so put your put your knowledge in
your your uh career
uh you know at the top of your
at the top of your uh list of things
that you need to do and and your goals
right so
awesome well thanks for joining us this
week guys got off to a bit of a rocky
start but we're gonna get this thing
rolling uh we'll be in some
some good conversations down the road so
thanks for joining us and appreciate
everybody coming and we will uh we'll
chat with you guys next week