The Huddle - Episode 13 - Leveling Up; Taking Your Business to the Next Level
This week on The Huddle Paul, Daniel and Jose discuss how and when to realize it's time to take your business to the next level in order to properly grow and create success.
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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 guys welcome to the huddle we
come with you every week to discuss
maintaining forward progress in your
flooring career
join me
today as usual is daniel and jose
jose is on the road so you get
maybe some some window shots of the
beautiful michigan countryside it looks
like
and we got daniel at the home office up
there in michigan what's going on fellas
how's it going brother
well um
this week we um are going to discuss
the same topic as we were going to have
last week and unfortunately
got pulled in multiple different
directions and we were not able to um
uh be on the podcast last week and and
um we apologize for that but at the end
of the day you guys if you're in this
audience know that uh sometimes things
come up in the flooring business and you
got to take care of that so
we definitely tried to get on but we
were on a job site uh going through some
training with the guys and some
equipment and
it just wasn't in the stars me and just
it just couldn't couldn't make
everything work
yeah
i was on a job site as well in beautiful
colorado springs and i simply could not
pull away i was actually installing a
little bit of bowl on last week
with some cushion quiet cushion
underlayment and uh
my knees and knuckles hurt for a few
days uh back to normal now though
uh normally
yeah normal-ish i gotta check myself i
get out on job sites and sometimes i
just can't stand still and we have a
room that needed done and i was like i
can do that room so i put my skills back
to test
um
it was fun i got i got it done it looks
good but uh not without its challenges
so
this week we're going to talk about
leveling up your business and flooring
now i'm going to touch on in employees
and we can kind of talk about that a
little bit
but really this is uh geared to
uh the end of the independent installer
who may work directly with homeowners
may work through a flooring company
through a dealer
or you could be a full-service flooring
provider yourself and be the store
either way just kind of want to discuss
some of these steps i've been through
many of them
uh in fact all of those
um so i know daniel and jose both
started as installers as well so
uh guys you want to just give like the
10 second version of uh well maybe a
little more than 10 seconds but yeah go
ahead daniel short version of
starting flooring to where you're at now
and i know we've talked about it in the
past but
yeah so
i started a long time ago when i was 12
years old and i'm 35 now so
been in it for a minute um
and
for for a long time it was just you know
a job and then
it wasn't until uh
you know he approached me and was like
hey i kind of want to do our own thing
when we were working for a company it
was like all right and then
since then
uh
was still almost treating it like a job
and then something had to click to where
it's like man something's got to change
or else we're going to keep on doing the
same things over and over again
so you know you we worked for a long
time just me and him and then finally
got to a point to where uh we started
hiring some people and
uh
like we were talking about before we got
on here we hired too many people at one
point and
that that's where i kind of want to say
you know sometimes leveling up is is
scaling back because we we did we
essentially cut the workforce in half to
be able to have those profit margins
where they need to be
in order to sustain everything
and we were just running into a bunch of
punch lists and and everything and
that's kind of uh
a little bit after that is kind of when
i started looking at things like
what kind of training can
be provided or can we provide to so that
way people can
get to these steps faster um because
it was uh
actually a meeting with someone that we
did a lot of work for
they said
you only have so many miles on your
knees and i never really looked at it
that way before
and now that i'm you know 20 something
years into the game
my hips and my knees have have
taken a beating so you kind of got to
look at the
the long-term picture of things like no
one
is going to want to be on their knees
forever so what are the steps that
you're going to take in order to
progress to that next level and for us
that was uh
getting into sales
um here at preferred flooring
and that only this is like year number
four i think so we've been pretty pretty
slow going for a few years and
it's finally starting to pick up
um
we we both say that we're not salesmen
you probably say the same thing about
yourself but anyone who owns a business
is a salesman every single day
i've embraced it the last few years i i
used to be like i'm no salesman you know
like that was a scummy side i think it's
because if you get around enough
installers talking about salesmen
they're gonna they're gonna have a bad
uh taste in their mouth a bit but
you're right i mean you're if you're in
if you own your own company you're a
salesman you're a salesman of yourself
of your service of your employees
i mean it's even if you're not selling a
piece of flooring at that moment you're
selling your your reputation and your
your ability killing yourself right it's
yeah
it's uh
we and we relate a lot to sports teams
and that's what they say in sports teams
you know you're not just representing
yourself anymore you're representing
your organization and you have to kind
of play the part anytime you're in the
eye of anyone really so
um
being professional dressing the part
knowing what you can say to some people
and what you can't say to other people
that's huge and
anyone's growth
definitely takes practice i can tell you
that
yeah i mean so you guys daniel when you
started were you an employee
early on yep
and then you you guys transitioned to
sub and then full service it sounds like
sales of warranty
i think
the other way around we started out as
uh 1099 and then we transitioned to
employees well still it was still
employed 1099 employed right yeah yeah
you guys got caught up in that mix a bit
i remember you saying previously yeah
we did we
took our lumps
yeah
i i
i have a similar
uh background i i started when i was 19
right out of right back when i got back
from the army and then um
in school by the hour i was a helper i
went through all the hazing and
everything that's
you know kind of prominent and flooring
for some reason
you know not like military hazing but
you know go get me the tile stretcher
kind of thing
and
um
a few years later i started sub
contracting and and doing some sub work
um on the side
uh got my insurance and things and then
about three or four years later
after
starting um me and another guy went and
started our own flooring company and we
took a bunch of lumps um so i just
the purpose of this is we both have a
lot of experience running through the
the cycles so i thought we'd maybe try
to save somebody who's gonna
who has aspirations of doing something
similar some of the pain
so to start with you got employees
uh and unemployed if you're an employee
you can always
you know
always increasing your skill whether
your company provides that training or
not look around
find the trainings
you can go to go carrera's website and
find trainings in your you know all the
trainings for any of the disciplines
but
um
you know invest in yourself we say that
a lot because we believe in it i think
all three of us believe in that greatly
so
you you can you can be an employee and
move into say a crew leader or a
installation manager or maybe even be a
trainer for your for your company
what we're really talking about leveling
up is your business so this is really
geared towards the business owner
and if you're an installer
and you're you're 1099
or you're working direct with the
builder or something you're a company
and uh you got to treat yourself as such
so
some of the pitfalls and i'll have you
guys chime in as well here but i got it
written up on my board so i'ma look up
here a few times but
uh as a sub
you maybe
start with smaller projects and want to
move to bigger projects or a bigger crew
and managing uh there's a lot of uh
installers who have started very large
in installation houses
any of those are
ways that you can level up but i would
throw a couple of cautionary points in a
bigger projects do not mean bigger
profits
and
b
bigger crews do not equal bigger profits
now sometimes
and i i'd love your guys's opinion on
this but
sometimes you have to lose profit to get
off your knees when i first started
hiring people we did our profits
definitely hurt but it was the only way
for me to start to get off of my knees
and start to get it still took three to
f
took four or five years for that to
happen
um so what i mean what's your guys
i think that's what we kind of touched
on that right the whole uh the 70 thing
when uh
you're never gonna find anyone to
replace yourself right so you have to
find someone that can do it at least 70
percent of what you do
yeah you know that 70 and then you find
another person so now you're actually at
140
but
you know that's the only way you're
gonna be able to to
level up so to speak right that's what
we're talking about and uh yeah
and you do you see a hit on the profits
and
you know how long that lasts is
ultimately how much work you're you're
going to put in right
um
so what was the uh so it was uh sorry
about that bump there guys but
they a few years ago we got involved
with our local chamber and the gentleman
said it best
um and it mixes in with a lot of other
conversations where
at some point you got to stop working in
your business and start working on your
business right because as long as you're
working in your business you own a job
you don't have a career
so that's uh that right there kind of
resonated hit home
well you may have a career but you're
you're not a business owner you you own
your job you don't own a business at
that point you own your job you own your
business right you're right about the
career yeah but yeah you own a job not a
business and that was like
man i just never really thought about it
like that and why haven't i why hasn't
that crossed my mind
yeah and and sometimes um when you're
talking about bigger projects
uh
or bigger crews
i shouldn't say sometimes this always
really boils down to hiring
and
having good hiring practices
a lot of times when you're hiring new
employees to maybe do some of the stuff
that you did you're looking for them to
do exactly
the way you did it
so a good training process uh you spoke
of that earlier daniel you know what can
you provide in training that can get
somebody up to speed i love your guys's
take i hadn't thought about that about
you know someone's 100 percentage or 70
that seems pretty true because at the
end of the day
um i'll give you an example we have a
guy that's worked for us for 15 years
um
as a project manager who has moved on
and
he was bought in as j as much as anybody
could be to a company but
you know now that he's
elsewhere like
he he doesn't have the stress and
everything that goes along with it like
you can always find another job so
employees always have a way out if you
are a business owner a lot of times
you've kind of pushed all your chips
into the middle and playing all your
cards and so you don't have the
opportunity to just quit
you're you have to keep having that
persistence and driving forward so
before you go start your company i would
say the number one trait you need to
make sure you have
is persistence and a high level of
uh
tolerance to stress from financial
situations it's gonna happen and so you
might as well be prepared for it that's
one thing that i i know that i was not
prepared for whatsoever was
uh
not being paid or or not or and we've
had other podcasts about how to get paid
and we we've given in my opinion really
good advice there but
it's still part of my past and still
part of that financial stress was just
not getting paid and i don't know do you
guys have
any comments on that it it's it's a
piece of
prepared for because what what people
think is that the the money just
just keeps on piling up right but you're
doing this the entire time yeah it's
like when it when it starts getting down
there you're like man what is what is
going on here
yeah
daniel daniel um has approached me
numerous times to where we've had to
adjust our personal pay right like like
we we're at a salary um and we're very
modest salary right because
we don't need anything more than what we
have and uh
he's like hey dude
in order for us to get here in the next
six months we're gonna have to cut our
own pay so that way we can afford this
equipment so that way we can afford this
van or these tools or so we can afford
to do this for the cruise and you know
it it sucks
it sucks
nice you better be willing to sacrifice
itself sacrifice 100 man
um you know when when we decided to do
our first level up and start preferred
flooring
man we barely had food or money for food
for the house we barely had gas money
for the jobs but we
we didn't we had enough to pay our rent
we had enough to pay our utilities and
we also had a great support group and a
phone like hey hey sis what are you guys
doing oh what are you cooking today you
know some people over there and we go
over there and have dinner or they'd
come over and cook for us or something
like they
they seen what we were trying to do
before we knew what we were trying to do
but that was our first steps of leveling
up and the first experience of sacrifice
you find out what you
don't need
um
to move forward well that brings up
another i mean
if you were to redo it or
i was to redo it i would be
looking at do i have the cash
or the access to capital to where
i can cover my bills and and still have
the access to to grow the company
um you know i start when i started i
started with a a salary and i stuck with
that 600 a week salary for five years
before i ever gave myself a raise
and the purpose of that was to build up
as much cash as possible
and
then be able to go to the bank and get a
line of credit
that didn't work
no it didn't work for us either i had
some cash i thought we were ready
we had gotten some bigger projects that
we needed capital to to roll with and we
ended up factoring our invoices
i mean we um
i i didn't have another way to get
capital
we uh we had to give we had to show two
years of history before we could even
apply for our first credit card but i
think daniel
i think we did we did get a break from
one of the local uh financial
establishments close to the two-year
mark because we were not sitting in a
good spot right like we needed to buy
equipment we needed to buy stuff and uh
same thing that salary but what daniel
doesn't tell you is that
our first
year our first
full year of uh preferred flooring is i
think we both had less than seven days
off of work that year
um and some of it daniel's days off were
because he had his first his first kid
his oldest
and
they do took like two days off maybe two
days off and came right back to work
but
again sacrifice
huge man
yeah and i have
when you're gonna do
what you guys did which is go to full
service and start selling the materials
and the labor and providing the whole
experience for
your client when you start doing that it
becomes
overhead heavy
uh reliance on software and technology
and equipment
which all cost money
and
i think that even if you embrace those
things which we do and you got i know
you guys do you buy equipment you are
technology
uh forward and software forward so
you guys have that dna but it costs a
lot of money to do all that um so you
have overhead now you have a building
and you got light bills and utility
bills and a building to pay for so when
you have all that
before you take that step anybody in the
audience you got to think about this and
i know it seems elementary but it's it
it's
it's really um mind-blowing how often
people don't forecast
out
at least one year and make sure that
you're making a good decision from the
long term um i did not
i jumped in i thought i'll i'll just
figure it out that's just kind of my
personality and um
i did but not without the sacrifice
and the headaches that went along with
it
yeah i think uh
so so uh
you know
if you haven't noticed like i i'm the
visionary portion of the daniel uh and
jose team right like
i always see all the positives that
could happen right i don't necessarily
take into consideration
um
the the financial implications sometimes
that could happen but that's where
daniel comes in daniel's a real black
and white real
by the book you know he's going to read
some numbers and crunch remember it's
going to make sense uh a lot of what
we've built
has been on
chance which sucks to say but i
there are some things that you cannot do
if if you don't start to level up and
see that
if you don't have certain
amount of vehicles a certain type of
vehicle certain equipment
if you don't invest in the right things
then you cannot be prepared for that
next level um you're not doing
yourselves any favors but
you don't want to jump to the next four
you're you're not this that's too much
that's the key like i mean you you can't
you can't do it without risk um right
and and
you know if you're there enough you're
gonna get lucky or at least it's gonna
seem like it's lucky to other people but
really it's just where your hard work
meets opportunity seems like luck
but it's not luck it's the fact that
you've been working
long enough that then when the
opportunity comes you meet them right at
the right spot and that's more synergy
in my opinion than luck it appears like
luck because all of a sudden you're
getting good work and you're starting
things are starting to roll
um that happened year seven
eight for us where it really started our
machine started clicking and then we
have improved over the years from that
but
um
you know i i think that
the risk
that you are going to take uh when you
provide materials and labor so when
you're full service
it seems like a rosy
you know garden but in reality there's a
lot of thorns in there and you just have
to be aware of it i'm not discouraging
anybody from doing it by all means if
you understand it jump in uh you can
build a good business in florian by
doing so but you just gotta know that
there's gonna be some hard knocks and
you know i mean at the end of the day
you got two companies sitting here
telling you that
our processes weren't perfect early on
and some of the stuff that you can do
to take away at least some of the lumps
you won't
there's no perfect solution here but is
to be prepared i mean having access to
capital having either cash or access to
capital um
is key when you start doing work with
uh say general contractors or
uh you know property managers where it's
going to take you 60 days to get paid i
mean you still got to pay your bills uh
your vendors still want paid in 30 days
if i'm
i'm guessing
you know
everybody does and the installers too
it's like a
as hard it's hard to leave people
hanging when you know you've been in
that position before and
yeah labor pace
in a lot of places and we just know too
many other you know
guys out there that will
have people come work for him and then
just not pay him and we we made it a
point to not be like
that too that's like yeah the industry
needs to get rid of those guys yeah like
somehow
uh i they're such a low barrier of entry
to be a flooring contractor or flooring
company
um
somehow the the
the people who
do not honor the guys that are actually
doing the work
that's gotta that's gotta quit i know as
go carrera going around talking to a
bunch of other flooring companies uh
we've we've gotten this
uh
feeling that you know some of them
almost believe they own their subs and
or
their even their employees they don't
treat that well i i really
uh believe that the people who treat
their subs and their installers uh
in-house installers or employee
installers
correctly in this you know looming
downturn maybe it won't come i don't
know but uh it appears that it's gonna
come
those are the companies that are gonna
continue to do well even through the the
downturn in 2008 that
cycle we grew
the next two years 20
the first year 30 the next year so
that was i felt a testament that we
didn't lose any of our talent uh we were
able to get the work and we had built a
reputation to be able to perform by that
time and so
we were selected a lot of times when
other companies were really faltering at
that point so
you know preparing yourself right and
having a good reputation like you guys
do
but that really boils down to
in my opinion kind of
setting yourself up for success so what
are your guys's key points if somebody's
wanting to
do what you guys have done what are the
key points of setting yourself up for
success start building your credit score
early on
because yeah it matters um
and might i add uh watch your company
credit scores uh that's what i was going
to say too you know the
d and b number and make sure you're
getting all this stuff set up so that
way by the time you actually need
something you have history in there
already even if you haven't gotten loans
and stuff through the business but at
least you're in the system and they can
look you up and be like oh they've been
in business for you know three years
already
yeah and it makes me way easier and if
nestle leaders uh that's a great point
daniel if if you have vendors get them
to report
your your good pay
early on and
hopefully by the time you get to the
point where you need capital you've
built up a good credit reputation
so
it was it was amazing about the the
credit score thing like we figured after
x amount of years we could use the
business but the business had no credit
so they had to go off of our personal
you know because uh we were owners so
they used the personal until
the business started rolling in their
own its own credit and and now
that's another different
difference another great point be
prepared to personally guarantee a lot
of stuff which means you're putting your
own personal assets like your home and
things like that at risk
a lot of times when you sign early on to
credits
lines of credit with your vendors
um or a bank they want certainly your
bank's going to want a personal
guarantee anyway
but
vendors sometimes do we had contractors
that made me sign personal guarantees
early on uh to personally guarantee
their project would be
completed and that you know my personal
assets would be at risk
um in completing that project
so yeah that's another you guys coming
up with some good stuff yeah nobody
nobody looks at it like that but those
are the the behind the scenes
uh sacrifices that have to be made
um you know and
you when when your brother puts
something on the line that's his that
will affect his family oh yeah you're
you're not putting yourself in a
position to fail you're going to do
anything you can to make sure that
you are successful to make sure that
that debt is paid and satisfied and
it's a rough it's a rough reality but it
is a reality until you have that uh that
cash flow to to do as as you wish if you
could do everything out of pocket and
more power to you but starting out
um
starting out with nothing and no
investors and all by yourself yeah
you're definitely uh
gonna
most of us don't start out with a pile
of cash
or a bunch of investors in flooring
i mean you know we're we're
usually installers taking over a boss's
business or we're going out and starting
our own that's that's most of the
the
you know generation
you know or your generational i should
say um meaning you're taking over your
dad's company or something like that but
yeah that's some good point so we have
credit score which i didn't bring up
which is obviously very important you
got the fact that
you're personally guaranteeing uh a lot
of the work and your credit lines
what else do you guys got
taxes
yeah
don't don't slip on your taxes we talk
about that every single episode i think
yes well it's because it's i would
almost
bet that that's i mean if i if we were
placing bets i think we'd all three bet
that one of the biggest plagues for
your average
installer the guy that subcontracts out
of shops
their biggest dependent their one of
their biggest shortfalls is paying their
taxes on time
you know well
we'll add this to the to the
conversation is uh man we didn't start
out this way right away but
you know we started as a dba but if at
all possible and you're just starting
out you're whatever three days six
months a year in or you're still a dba
after six years
do yourself a favor and at least go
become an llc to
to do that there you know it seems like
a little bit of a headache but man the
re
the reward
of doing that and classifying yourself
differently will will pay for itself man
it's just just don't don't wait too long
to do that do that earlier um and sooner
than later for sure well and to build on
that just a little bit um
you know
you're in a in effect personally
guaranteeing everything when you're a
dba anyway
so yeah you want to give yourself some
level of a corporate veil to protect
your com protect your personal assets
from your company's activities
um
so
i believe greatly in
starting a company starting a s corp uh
the most
common is an s corp or an llc get with
your tax
attorney and your attorney i'm not a
professional attorney so i don't want to
give you advice there but those are the
two most common entities and
uh
there there's a lot of tax advantages to
that as well as the protection it
provides but even after that say you
started a corporation an s corp and
you're a business
a lot of times that's they still want
you to you know your your credit
providers still want you to personally
guarantee because your corporation
doesn't have the back yet
to
to to back all that that capital so
you just got to be prepared for that or
have investors or have some money uh set
aside to be able to cash flow for a
while until you build up your credit but
those are some pitfalls
and then one thing too is um
the your your history right so you can
put out your your charts for the
previous year so that way
people can see your growth and they can
see your your ups and your downs daniel
started doing that a while ago and
um you know i didn't understand what he
was doing until people started asking
for it
uh you know we need to have two years of
history show us where you're at where
your growth was and it's nice to see um
in a snapshot your ups and your downs
and see
you can create your own rhythms there
you'll know when you're slow you'll know
when you're busy you'll know how to
prepare for
uh the next year you're creating uh you
know when you have to when you have to
make your money and save it because that
dip is coming and it's
yeah i want to say it's almost like
clockwork but you know they surprise you
sometimes
yeah and that's a piece where
again
it goes into having the software or
some technology to help you out there um
a lot of accounting software's can do
that month by month graphing ours does
which will show you your
revenues versus cost over month over
month and compare years and all that
stuff uh but you got to be prepared for
that what i would say is don't wait
until your year five or six like i did
to start
keeping track
stuff in line
i
it would have helped the pun i i i
didn't have anything like this when i
first started i wish i did
uh but
that's why we're here is try to help
somebody uh if it helps one person avoid
a few of the problems and become more
successful we've accomplished our goal
right yeah software is huge you you
don't really think about it because you
think i'm just gonna
collect the
shoe box or receipts but that gives you
no information on how you're actually
doing
yeah it doesn't track any spending any
labor any material
uh you know
there's there's a lot of different
things you'll get the more deeper you go
the more information you'll gather and
it gets easier and easier i'm not the
technology guy that's daniel but
daniel pretty much locked me in a room
with a computer and said learn and yeah
i didn't have a choice
well i mean one
pretty simple way is keeping track of
your monthly sales and expenses if you
keep track of those putting them in a
excel spreadsheet and you can run some
pretty simple formulas to
to
even be able to look at it like that
that's really low level easy
uh way to do it but if if you start
there that's still better than doing
nothing we didn't know if we frankly we
didn't know until the end of the year if
we were making money or not
for a long time and and had no idea if
we would make money in a given year um
that's
complicated as it is but if you're not
tracking anything
it becomes even more you know
complicated and there's just no way for
you to know so tracking your your
revenue and expenses and having a a
percentage there that you're comfortable
with and that changes by company and by
by your cost of your building and
everything else
but yeah it's it's one of those things
that i uh i certainly did not do
would have helped a lot
and and a lot of guys you know that that
i talk to they say you know i need to
learn how to use it and then they just
never do and the biggest thing with
everything that we're talking about
right now with the software and you know
um the equipment and everything it's you
got to stop telling yourself that you
can't afford to do it right i'm too busy
to do this i'm too busy to do that and
it's i can't afford not to do it because
if i don't start doing this stuff
if you don't start doing this stuff
you're just going to stay where you're
at the entire time there's
you know there's no paper trail to keep
track of everything that's coming in and
going out so
real like you said you know at the end
of the year you're like i wonder what i
made now
this is my technology ability here look
a couple weeks ago i didn't even know
how to do that you got it in space
well to
polish it off i would um
i would say that
take as
much effort and concern
that you
probably have with creating your logo
and place some of that
effort
and concern into setting your business
up correctly
um and giving yourself the best shot
talk to some people call any of us
send us an email
um
if you have questions on that stuff that
we can help out with but hiring
practices it's important to have a good
interview process and make sure you're
hiring good people that match your
company's core values
then
you know even then like you guys said
you might only get 70 of yourself but
the point is is are you trying to grow a
company
and some people want to own their jobs
and there's nothing wrong with that you
can make a hell of a good living doing
that
but just what are your goals identify
that first when we talk about leveling
up
and then
maybe take some of the advice that
you've heard on this uh podcast here at
the huddle and
apply some of it
plywood is applicable to your goals
but
i i think the two pieces you can't get
away from is the credit score and the
personal guarantee i think those two you
guys brought up is
super
uh important for everybody to be aware
of
that and uh the way that they do
commercial loans is way different than
the way that they do uh the loans that
you've been used to so if you haven't
gone through that process yet just know
that uh
the payback is not over years sometimes
they want that money back as soon as
they can get it
yeah you're not getting a 30-year loan
on your your money
like you would on the house
now they want their money
well gentlemen thanks again for joining
this week uh i
a lot of good stuff came up i wasn't
even anticipating so thanks for your
input i hope it helped anybody do we
have any questions that have come across
um before we shut this down let me
look here so i do know that danny
sherman is saying hi dirk o'brien is
saying hi
what's up fellas uh aaron
is one of my brother's friends saying
that he's a good looking man so
is that what you will
jorge
from san antonio is saying hi and
that credit scores are very important
um
randall
meyering is actually uh one of the
construction companies that we work for
over here it's a great guy
he says he's loving the podcast and as a
construction manager he loves hearing
you know the business discussion on how
other people are kind of going through
the same same things that he
it's not just specific to the flooring
industry right this is business so it's
it's kind of all over the board
yeah it's a big veil it covers a lot of
business
with a tweak towards flooring but for
sure
and uh jorge did say that there's apps
for independent installers like pro
books so that's something that you can
uh
[Music]
start with if you if you don't have
anything and i mean look at some of the
free stuff that they have out right now
just to kind of familiarize yourself
with it before you actually start doing
anything that way
one you're not paying for anything and
two when you do have to upgrade to
something at least you know what you're
doing
yeah
yeah the better idea of what you're
doing
it's a good point use the software
that'll let you use it for
and get some experience with it and uh
so a question looks like came in uh i
get leads from the lead service provider
and work direct with homeowners
but spend a lot of time chasing leads
not pan out making it hard to level up
in any way
uh i would say
i would
assume this is like using homeadvisor or
angie or something like that
and
chasing a lot of leads which means
you're you're competing with a lot of
people that
may or may not have the same
qualifications you do
you know we used some of that early on
we didn't find it valuable for our
company so we ceased using it
the main reason was
i've invested a lot of money and time in
providing a high service and
to get under cut by somebody that just
is not providing the same stuff is uh
and it's hard to convince a homeowner
uh that that that i'm the right person
and we don't do uh much residential
anymore but we used to
um and trying to convince a homeowner
that i'm the better bet at two thousand
dollars higher uh and this is why
usually fell on deaf ears because the
other guy would say well
you know i'm cheaper because i have less
overhead or whatever the situation we
just didn't find it valuable so what i
would say to you
um is
if you can and this is just an idea if
you can
document what type of leads are panning
out for you and what type or not from an
aspect of
what the homeowner is asking for if you
can graft that or if there's a way to
look at uh for example if you're really
successful on bathroom remodels but
you're not so successful on a
and maybe you just do flooring or you do
multiple other things but
if it
let's assume it's just flooring
um if you're not so competitive on
one given type
but you're you seem to be more
competitive in hardwood then kind of
double down on the part that you're
being successful on and leave the others
for the other guys um you guys have any
input on that
what we started doing was uh
pre-qualifying right so you have a
series of questions that you you kind of
ask
and then you kind of give a roundabout
budget number and then it's going to go
one of two ways oh
that's never mind like
why are you so high or that sounds fine
when can you get here
so
great advice it just sucks for the guys
that are paying for those leads anyways
because they're paying for them
whether or not
it's great for the company it's right
the home advisor and angie or whoever i
and i don't know what specific lead
service they're talking about but it's
great for them because they're getting
paid from multiple crews for the same
lead multiple times so it's great
business model for them to make money
yeah but i i don't
from my experience they don't qualify
the leads very well
so that's great advice daniel you're
gonna
that's probably the best advice qualify
the lead come up with um
you know a list of questions and maybe
daniel uh we can we can put that in a
blog post or something and and see what
you what kind of questions you guys have
asked that really uh starts to qualify
that lead
but you said you know kind of a
budgetary price asking some questions
maybe timelines that kind of thing and
pre-qualify that lead before you drive
out waste your gas and time i think one
of the biggest questions that i i don't
know if
jose's been asking it lately but it's
you know who else
are you guys getting numbers from and we
know that
that's that's a big question they say
you know one of five companies
i'm not even gonna bother with this you
know i don't i don't if you're gonna
you're gonna see that number and you're
gonna be like all right we're gonna go
with them but we know what you're gonna
get so
just kindly hey we're we can't handle
that right now or i don't i don't even
know what he says that is that is that
is one of the questions that i have
listed is
what other companies are you um asking
to to estimate this project or to bid
this project
um you know when and
that's mostly geared towards like the
residential aspect right because
consumers are a lot smarter now than
they were 10 years ago they're going to
shop around they're going to
do a lot of their own research and
they're going to ask multiple companies
to come in um they want you to can't
fight for their business and
you know i'm willing to earn someone's
business
to an extent but not at the cost of my
time because my time is very valuable as
well i have 20 other things that i can
be working on that are for sure things
so what do you say to a business what do
you say to somebody who says oh you're
you're not willing to
you know have competition is that the
thing what do you say to that
no it's not that i'm not willing to have
competition it's just that i know that
the the name
list that we'll be going against is i
offer more value and a more personal
experience than what they offer um and
what what i do is
believe it or not this is i'm not i say
this and i mean it
wholeheartedly is
i'm not a salesman
my job is to find what's going to
perform best for you and your family and
your home long term
because i don't want to come back in two
years and redo something i don't want to
come back in three months and fix
something i want to make sure that i'm
giving you
the best product and install for your
dollar that you can possibly have for
the use um i'm not trying to upsell them
i'm not trying to
this is i make the best margin on this
material right here you know i'm not
doing that this is the hot item this
month no i is it's a custom
it's a custom order from from start to
finish from our end um and you know it's
so amazing
you tell them straight out they look the
the difference is
we're going to look at your use case and
make sure you have the right product for
your house or for your home or
your business commercial you know a ti
finish thing with the dentist or
something what's going to work best for
your facility
yeah
we wanted we wanted to perform
you know they have expectations
and
so do we and we like to deliver
well this question has a a lot of
different ways you could go with it so i
hope we kind of
uh addressed it but i'd say your your
guys's uh input on pre-qualifying that
lead
before you go out and start measuring
and spending a bunch of time and effort
and producing a quote just to find out
you really had no chance anyway so i
guess
the whole purpose of pre-qualifying is
to
confirm that you at least have a chance
in being successful on that job right
yeah
all right guys well
that's kind of our thing one more thing
before we go
uh definitely like we're it's leveling
up right so it's about that time to or
whenever whenever you get there
make sure you get a website it doesn't
even need to be a super fancy one like
ours isn't super fancy or anything it's
just
a way that way everyone is on their
phones right be part of that social
media presence have a website link
everything together so that way when you
know someone searches for something
your name pops up yeah and they want to
see proof they want to see
things you've done
good good insight too for sure i i
started with a website
i don't know
if i did it right but i almost started
out of the gate with the website um back
when they were not uh easy to build but
i i scraped enough money together to
have somebody build one for me
way back when we first started um
the i i think that's very valuable
because the world is more digital than
ever and people don't go to your
storefront what's more important than
you know
not to check you out right to see what
kind of company you are or whatever they
are searching you online to find out so
that's great advice too
yeah and they don't cost they don't cost
much either i mean you can get a website
for a couple hundred dollars a year yeah
and they don't you can you can build it
yourself these days there's plenty of
different ways to do it or
you know a website used to cost ten
thousand you can get a website done
somebody can put it together for you for
a thousand bucks um and then if you know
you can go up from there obviously but
um yeah that's that's great advice guys
you you brought this uh whole huddle um
i appreciate all that
insights
and we're trying to learn from you and
listen from you
and learn from you and it didn't work
out did it no well it's great i learned
some stuff and i hope our audience did
too and uh just want to say thank you
guys we truly appreciate i'm sure i i
speak for daniel and jose as well that
we we appreciate you guys coming on and
and participating in the in the huddle
here our podcast
and um
we encourage you to join every week uh
we have about a 90
95 hit rate as far as being on here
every tuesday
um
out of 14 or whatever it's been 12 to
14. we've only missed a couple so uh
hopefully you guys keep coming um
post your comments i mean get involved
we'd love to get this out we know that
some industry people are watching and uh
we've had uh conversations with uh some
people in the industry so we can create
change if we band together so we
encourage you guys to join us uh and
let's have some good discussions we do
have some uh guests coming up we've
invited some people um and i know that
you guys just mentioned that
you're one of your clients would be
great to join as well so we'll bring
them on as and and let's have some good
conversation and we will see you guys
next week until next time all right
thanks guys