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.

https://www.preferredflooringmi.com

https://www.stuartandassociates.com

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