The Huddle - Episode 4 - Increasing Your Prices
This week Paul talks with Jose and Daniel Gonzalez from Preferred Flooring about the ways to go about raising your prices, when to do it, and how to understand your value in order to do so.
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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
where we discuss maintaining forward
progress in your flooring career
i'm paul stewart and joining with me
today is jose
and
jose's with preferred flooring in
michigan
um
we appreciate everybody joining us and
uh
just a quick housekeeping a couple
things got any questions click the q a
button and chat your questions and we'll
address those as we go
so
today's episode 4 and we're going to be
discussing understanding your value and
how to increase your prices
um
jose welcome how's it been going brother
hey another week in the life of jose so
it's uh it's been going pretty good uh
we're
busy
busy busy busy right now you know
everybody's uh
a little bit behind
of course is uh you know
the whole shipping issues are putting
everyone in a bad spot and then yeah
lack of uh
lack of trained
um
help is is also putting everyone in a
bad spot but we're pushing through man
well discussing that i mean one of the
things um
you know
when you're trying to increase prices or
um you know i think the first step is
understanding your value and having the
confidence to increase your prices
well where does confidence come from
you know it comes from training
and it comes from
uh certifications and it comes from
experience
right 100
airline pilots the more time they spend
in a simulator the better they perform
as a pilot
so their training
makes them better and more confident
pilots right it's a repetition
that's right so
training and certifications i've heard a
lot of guys say well i don't make any
more money because of that well
if you'll if you'll consider the amount
of confidence that it breeds
because you are properly trained
and you add that with some experience
and now you have a good recipe for
confidence where you have the ability
to you know ask for more
and negotiate you know i took down
i mean i took a few uh
wrote down a few points here that you
know negotiating your prices whether
you're within goku or not
um in the go career network or or you're
not the key here is that you have the
confidence so what are you bringing to
the table that other installers are not
right that's where that's where that
confidence would come from so what's
your take on some of those things
um well the take is that you know
regardless of if you're going to get
certifications or not if you are well
versed in a specific material for the
insult
you you get better right your systems
your operations you get more efficient
faster you you have the tendency to not
accidentally skip steps or intentionally
skip steps because you know the outcome
um so it it leads to a more successful
install
um
everything is very systematic in what we
do and
the
the more you do it the more repetition
you get the more efficient which means
the more valuable you are not to only
um the client and either the flooring
house or your own company but to
yourself
what you're doing is you're putting
yourself in a position
to be aware of the material limitations
uh expectations
um and also
give time back to both uh the client to
yourself you know something that used to
take five days
takes four days now
now should you
you can charge the same amount but
you're done a day early you should
charge the same amount in fact it's more
valuable to most companies
if you're able to do the same amount of
flooring
in a shorter period of time than
somebody else now i know there's
you know there's been times where i've
had clients say
and i'm sure you have two where it's
like well it only took you five hours to
do this we expected it to take two days
uh can i get a discount my my
exact answer is no you're not paying me
for
and this may sound cliche but this is
the truth you're not paying me just to
do the job you're paying me for the 25
years of experience to get this job done
in five hours and not two days yeah and
i've been able to i in because of that
i'm able to turn over your project
quicker with higher quality
and uh better guarantees so
you know
those are ways
if you if you can lower your time frame
and increase your prices that's
compounding that's like compounding
interest so now you spent five hours
instead of 14
you got paid five dollars a foot instead
of four
and you've compounded your your your uh
pay your your total um
i guess you'd call it like your hourly
rate if you wanted to bring it down into
an hourly rate you're you're increasing
that so
i'm sorry
you mentioned
you know knowing the product and whether
you're trained or certified but that
knowing the product
um
and having experience as being a key
piece would you say that training and
certifications though are a shortcut to
that um
you know what nothing is more of a
shortcut than actually getting your
hands
dirty right like diving in and getting
elbow deep
however
certifications and additional training
can only
speed up the process you know what it
does is it it brings
to light certain scenarios that you
might not have known about
or if
say you've been working with the
material for you know five years six
years and then all of a sudden you
decide to go take a certification class
you might have a aha moment and and you
know it's not you might you will have an
aha moment there are going to be about a
dozen projects in your head that pop in
and you say if i would have known that
prior to this day right here i could
have avoided these issues i could have
saved this much time i i would have had
that in my toolbox that mental tool box
is very important
when it comes to creating any efficient
systems
of insulation whether it's yourself or
with a crew it's super important to have
that
yeah
well what i found um in my experience is
those aha moments like you said always
happen
uh we've sent guys to certifications
that have been doing it for 15 20 years
and they're like
i didn't think i was going to learn
anything i was checking a box and
i learned a ton i learned
two or three you know things that equal
a ton meaning there are very important
pieces
that they learned in that training or
that certification that can save them
ample time and and effort and make them
more money so
um
you know you never know what nugget
you're gonna pick up that could save you
um you know a lot of time a lot of
effort get better quality
all
with uh moving for the effort i mean
everybody in flooring would like to make
more money so at the end of the day
if that's
like one of the goals is how do we get
paid our values worth
then how do we get there and in in my
experience
having the training the certification
mixed with the experience is
that's like the secret recipe now i know
that you know there's a lot of guys that
have a lot of experience but they just
don't know what they don't know when
they argue that they don't need a
training so anyway i've beat that up
enough i mean i just believe in being
trained per industry standards not to
mention if something goes wrong
and you have a failure
and it's not
a and we'll get into this in another
episode but working with uh you know
inspectors and such oh yeah you know
i'll tell you what
being certified and trained certainly
helps you
if um
if you get into one of those scenarios
and you will get into one of those
scenarios
do you understand acclimation and why
do you understand proper adhesive trials
and flashing times and all that and why
do you understand thermoplastic
materials and lvts and dimensional
stability and all of that stuff that
that's the kind of thing you learn in
trainings that you don't learn you might
learn how to lay something out and put
things together to where when it's done
it looks good but what are we talking
about we're talking about getting
giving a product that's going to last
the consumer
and in our case it's commercial in your
case commercial um
end user
for the the length of time that they
expect which is 10 to 15 years right not
not
when you walk away it looked good so a
lot of these things
that i just spoke of are the things you
learn in the certifications and
trainings that you just will not learn
from your uncle you may learn the proper
technique on how to trial
how to
square up lines how to lay out
those things you might learn but you
probably will not learn how the products
manufactured what makes one lvt
just to pick on lvt because there's a
thousand of them yeah
what makes one lvt better than another
what is it they look the same
in school instructions
why does one give you a different
performance than the other
you know and the key is understanding
those met those things so
i'll give you a quick example i we had a
claim
on about 700 foot of lvt and it was
blamed on
uh
improper adhesive transfer
right
well
the transfer was
well documented in the in many many
pictures and so we were able to um deal
with that but because the lou
uh who produces the commercial floor
report
uh one of the things that came out was
look lvt ought to lay there by itself
with no adhesive without gapping
or curling it should be dimensionally
stable you learn those kinds of things
through these reports and as well you
learn those if you go and get certified
in different uh you know flooring
products so
that's my take on um
you know having the confidence to go and
ask uh or negotiate your pricing another
thing is um
you know
believing
that and i wrote this down is believing
enough to be clear on the front side
that look i'm probably not the cheapest
person so if you're coming to me
to be the cheapest installer i'm
probably not your guy
and being okay losing some of that type
of work i know you guys have taken that
tact before we take that attack yep
i just did minutes before we got on the
phone you know
it's just it's what you have to do and
it's
you know it's a confidence thing too
right we when you know what you bring to
the table it's kind of hard to try to
match what everyone else is doing right
you don't
it's it's different
the value
that you the value you see yourself is
always going to be different from what
everyone else sees
no matter what but if you can back it up
and you have a track record of backing
it up then then why not exercise that
muscle why not implement um a program
like that because
it's it's for you you know well it's
your job it's your job to then
convey that information and convey why
you're worth more
so i had written down you know
marketing to these efforts
look you're paying me just like i said
earlier you're paying me for 25 years of
experience and training
you're not paying me for the five hours
of doing your job like you are but
really what you're purchasing is all
this experience training and
certifications that are installers or
back in the day i was certified um you
know
you're that's what you're purchasing so
i
i feel like there's been a
a big uptick in that i know that um
as you know i i created go carrera back
in 2018 and
one of the things we're working on right
now is working with architects to set
minimum hammer ratings well
for those you don't know a hammer rating
is a skill score you you get that's
simply a mix between your years of
experience your certifications and your
trainings
and when you got each one of those
there's a complicated algorithm that
that
that
makes or creates the hammer rating based
on those things but here's my point
architects want some some way to
understand that the installer is
minimally
viable to do their job and so we're
helping helping with that well where
does all that drive from the drives from
your certification trainings and
education
and your experience but it also derives
from your ability to market to those
things so when somebody says
that
look you're too high say i understand
not not as many people and i've used
this before um i get it look
the other company uh or other people
they don't value the the proper training
that the way that steward associates
does so
um
you know proceed at your own risk i
appreciate the opportunity and we'll get
you on the next one maybe but
just as a note we're very rarely going
to be the cheapest person in the room
now
sometimes we are because of purchasing
power um but outside that like i really
want to be hired because our systems and
our our quality is higher than other
people
that's why i want people to see the
value you want to see the overall value
you know the upper cost
it's hard to market yourself when a lot
of people nowadays are looking at
cost and it's not just nowadays it's
been for for ever
um and if you can market yourself with
confidence and
and have them see the value that you
offer
that is not in the numbers up front that
is in the long term value um a lot of
people
actually don't even think twice about
that that's
not even really an issue
well that's an interesting point
and the reason i say that is
you installed back when bct was probably
king of the vinyl world as well right
like i mean i've installed myself
hundreds of thousands of feet of ect
vct is the most affordable product up
front
oh yeah yeah
what the lvt industry and the low
maintenance flooring industry
uh sheet vinyls and such have been able
to do
is life cycle cost so the life cycle
cost of keeping a vct looking good
through waxing
stripping and waxing every year that
kind of thing
and the fact that there's so much filler
in vct that it shrinks and doesn't look
great
they have been able to sell on my cycle
cost
why can't an installer do the same thing
like
you know if we could come up with a
metric of life cycle costs for a
certified installer versus non-certified
or you know highly trained install
installer versus a non-highly trained
like how how quickly do products fail or
yeah how long do your products last i
mean i've never done a study like that
but it'd be interesting i guarantee that
would be almost guarantee you that
the highly trained person's
life cycle cost is lower you're not
replacing that floor because it looks
like
crap
uh in two years or three years and we've
done that we've walked we've went in and
replaced floors behind people just a
couple years old it's supposed to be a
15-year floor but it wasn't installed
properly
bonding issues
wasn't rolled
things like this that caused the product
to fail
and the other company or the other
installer
you know
nowhere to be found and um that leads me
to my third point
stay around
don't change your phone number yeah mark
it to yourself to your phone number to
your
to your brand if it's
jose flooring and not preferred flooring
you're you're an installer and it's jose
gonzalez professional floor
installations
that's awesome but
it
the way you can the only way you market
to something is if something's
consistent so keep yourself consistent
with the naming consistent with your
phone don't change your phone number
every six weeks
keep your phone number same
be consistent and reliable and that goes
a long way with
you know uh being able to raise your
prices as well
right and then um you know i like to add
to that too is uh
um hold yourself accountable right if
you are you know everybody has a
learning curve right everybody goes
through that phase they're still
learning about a product they're really
interested they are putting in the time
and the effort
and things go wrong
hold yourself accountable to that learn
from that it's only a failure if you
don't learn
um you know hopefully it's something
small hopefully you're not
you're your first time getting your feet
wet with a product you're not jumping
into a 25 000 square foot
uh you know lvt job and you know nothing
about it because all you've done is you
know commercial lbt all you've done is
stretch carpet your whole life um but
learn from it take the information that
you gather little bits and pieces and
use it if something goes wrong
go tear it apart while you're removing
it and replacing it
yeah it sucks to have to bite the bullet
and
figuring out why right yeah but but
you're reverse engineering it you're
trying to find out why and what it does
is it it sparks your interests right if
you're like me you want to know you want
to learn so you start reading you start
doing more on the back end when you
should have been on the front end but
then it's those aha moments um you know
and you do it for yourself
um and most of the time
the replacement of it is
you'll gain that back
um either from the client uh
giving you future work or from the store
giving you future work because
you just owned it right hey you know
what i did mess that up i'm sorry uh
we'll make it right let's do what we can
to make it right if it costs you a
couple bucks it does
you know in the past we've had stores
give me the product that they pay for
the product i provide the labor
um you know and i was learning and you
know or something else went wrong
and it's okay it's okay to not be
perfect because you're gonna learn
um
but those are the stores that trust
me a lot now because i was
very honest and said you know what yep
whether it was my fault or not when they
first came up to me and said it i would
just say i am so sorry
let's go check it out and see what we
can do to fix it
that's it i didn't blame anybody else
yeah be there for your client being
there in their hard times when their
floors uh fail i mean they need you
right they don't know what to do they
need you so don't run don't get too
defensive over the deal
yeah i agree with you kind of have that
learner
um kind of mentality let's see what
happened
investigate and then defend yourself if
you're in the right and if you're if
you're not fess up and fix it and learn
yeah
and just so everybody knows man science
doesn't lie so
they will call somebody and they they
will take a very uh neutral approach and
and use science
to to figure out what happened yeah and
by all means use
use uh don't be scared and we'll get
into this another podcast i don't want
to get off into it but you know don't be
scared to hire your own
uh in
inspector uh in fact i think every
installer ought to go through inspection
course
i think that
we're gonna start pushing that at go
carrera we're gonna try to get every
installer to go through an inspection
course
and learn what they're learning so that
you know what to do uh in the cases that
you're you're you know
um having to deal with one so my final
point
uh and
you probably have some too but expand
you know as far as uh being paid more
making yourself more values expand your
offering you know if you're uh if you're
a carpet guy
learn cheap on them or if you're a tile
guy learn large panel you know gauge
porcelain panels
um there's a lot of good training out
there you can reach out to go carrera
support at go carrera and ask
where
to go and and get a certain training
we're in the middle of
developing that full feature where
you'll be able to
at a click of a button right out of the
app go to local trainings in your area
but i would say expanding your offering
we'll
go a long way and doing it in the um
in the
flooring products that are not so
typical we all love big lvt jobs or big
carpetil jobs but i'll tell you what
some of the guys make the best money are
the guys who
really dug down into patterned goods
woven uh wools and sisals and
sea grass and really went and got all
those
certifications and trainings to be able
to like do the theaters and the the
casinos and the
the you know
different really high-end
hospitality work
in sheet vinyl it's one of the highest
demand products with healthcare and
probably has the the biggest demand from
a
from a needs standpoint but the lowest
uh
in supply from installers like high high
quality
flash sheet vinyl guys are hard to come
by
so it's very intimidating
yeah which is very intimidating that's
always well you mess up a piece of vct
you're messing up a nine by thirty six
or six by three whatever its size is you
mess up a piece of
200 yard woven wool carpet you're you're
you could destroy a whole drop so i
understand but that's also because of
that risk is why you're paid a little
bit more uh or a lot a bit more in many
cases so i would say expand your
offering it'll help you stay busy
utilizing those hours that you have um
you know maybe you don't have maybe you
are a sheet vinyl expert
be
learn learn some some tile or learn some
carpet
anything
you can fill your schedule up thus
utilizing your your workable time
uh and you know
fill in work um one of the benefits of
maps in go carrera is if a job cancels
on you or something get on maps and hunt
maybe you know get on there and hunt
around for work
in your area or other areas maybe you
can find a job a couple hours away to
fill your schedule but the key here is
maximize your time
and
and you get there by expanding your
offering
maximize your your experience
um through trainings i mean you can't
buy more years of experience but what
you can do is buy
you can kind of shortcut it with
training and certification so yeah
we're big on that i believe in the the
cfis and the the manufacturers
uh the ntca you know manufacturers put
on a lot of their own trainings like
nora protect all forbo
these companies they have high
high quality trainings
cfi has good trainings they're expanding
their offerings
the ntca and the ntca university
even online you can learn some tricks um
but there's hands-on at cti which is
ctef to be uh cti certified um
i mean there's there's multiple training
entities out there so there's a lot get
getting trained and then getting on go
career to get your trainings aggregated
so you get a good hammer reading and
then get awarded work based on your
hammer rating we've proven one thing in
three years we've been in business
uh and really
you know
just a couple of years with the new
version
is higher hammer rating and higher kudos
equals higher pay it's been proven uh we
have millions of dollars that have been
paid out through the app to date and
with that
date comes data and that data shows that
if you're higher trained you're getting
paid better on that
on in the go career network for sure and
i believe that if you market yourself
even if you're not on the go career
network and that's fine
but
if you're not
market you got to market yourself that's
what goku does is market that that
your hammer rating for you to the
flooring contractors that have
subscribed to our to our platform so if
you're outside
you still need to learn how to market
like these preferred flooring
daniel and jose have done a wonderful
job marketing themselves you have to do
that if you're going to be outside go
carrera and if you if you can get both
like daniel and jose i think the future
is very very bright for you but
um you know what's some other keys to
increasing your pay we got about uh five
minutes or so here left so
um
i think we touched based on some of that
last week with as far as the image and
all that you know
you want to increase your pay you have
to
do what
you can to attract the right demographic
um you know if
it was a dress for the part you want
yeah right so so you gotta kind of do
that and that's not
saying anything
bad about what you're wearing i'm just
you know using that very loosely in just
the term um
that's one dress for success i mean it
doesn't it doesn't mean you wear a suit
to go install floors but i did see
um
sorry to interrupt you but no go ahead
gentlemen at the ntca showed a picture
one time of old installers back in like
the 30s or 40s
and they wore
like suspenders and a dress kind of a
dressier shirt and a tie and they tucked
it into their shirt i mean they were
like
and they were revered on job sites
it's funny when you talk to some people
that's how we want to be treated when we
get on the job sites the only way we can
do it is band together
have a
like you just said image
image right and skill set so
um consistency you know
you're not going to hit the top of a
page in a year or two years of
experience
um you know if
if you stay
if you stay in the industry long enough
you're going to create a
a following so to speak once you create
a following and you know instead of five
companies or five people knowing who you
are five
contractors you know now you have 20 and
then on top of 20 then you have 30. the
more people that know you and what
you're capable of doing
the more people that want you to come
and do their work and when they want you
to come and do their work you have a
little bit of a negotiating power there
right because it's like
you can kind of pick and choose am i
going left or am i going right today you
know or for this month you know
the most profitable project 100
like if you
have to choose at least you can pick the
most profitable one for
the best of your ability
and most profitable isn't always the
largest project it isn't always the
biggest one the most profitable one is
the one that where you can maximize
your
your time and effort
um and
when i say time and efforts maximize
your time on site how much time are you
getting back with your family your free
time as well what is that worth to you
you know value comes in all shapes and
forms and i think that uh
[Music]
that's one to consider as well depending
on if you're an individual installer
versus a company versus someone who's
trying to get
to a specific milestone with employees
or whatnot like
know which which one you're after and
which one you want to go for so so that
way you understand
what direction you should be
concentrating on going
yeah
well i
you know we will get into more like
planning your business and and and doing
some of that stuff
um
but certainly the things that are easy
enough to do that are in your power to
do
is
get trained
um
you know you are in control of what you
put on in the mornings and what you buy
to wear
and
you know
once you're trained you you can utilize
a lot of tactics to increase your your
pay
um be courageous in negotiating your
your your amounts with your stores
and they may or may not be able to do it
we all work on budgets i own a
flooring company and it's not always
that i can
you know afford to pay out a negotiated
amount however
if not
and i can't work with that guy
immediately
sometimes it it it puts a
you know
a little kick in the rear for for our
estimators or our project managers to
kind of look at the numbers and see if
we can squeeze a little bit more
on the next bid to be able to afford to
pay some more so
i want to work with the flooring
industry overall but you know the
installers
of the
the installation community in general
um from a store standpoint from a
flooring contractor you know a
full-fledged or full-service flooring
provider
how do we do this together guys and you
know i create a go career to help the
installers band together in one spot
tout their trainings and their
certifications and
and get hammer rated and and move that
into more money um i'm i'm open ears
when you guys uh have questions please
participate ask questions
jose daniel's uh not wasn't able to join
us today but uh you know he's usually on
and
one of us can at least uh take a stab at
your question
and uh hopefully get you some answers
help you be more successful in your
flooring career so that's our goal
that's our goal with the huddle um
forward progress man like
moving your your career forward and
that's my goal with
go carrera that's my goal with with my
flooring company is just how do we how
do we maintain a long-term
uh
high quality career well to me
what what's good for the installer is
good for the industry and we got to
figure that piece out um and you know
you still got to win bids and you still
got to beat other flooring companies
that don't care about this stuff and i
you know it's something that i know
preferred beats their head up against
the wall doing and sometimes we do too
we do it a lot is fighting
uh companies that don't value the
installation community as as we do
and um so we do our very best
and uh we're open for suggestions and
we're definitely open for any questions
if we can help so jose again thanks for
joining me today dude thanks for your
input yeah any closing thoughts thanks
for having us
um
a couple closing things actually i just
want to kind of piggyback off of what
you said and you had uh mentioned uh get
trained so
thinking outside the box maybe maybe
it's more get educated right just
educate yourself you don't have to
get trained i mean that kind of puts
like a label over you but for the guys
that don't like to be told what to do
because i'll admit that i was one of
them a very long time ago you know very
stubborn
but
um
i didn't necessarily want to get trained
on anything but
if somebody would have came to me you
know 18 years ago and say it and said
get educated
that probably would have changed my
mindset a little bit and just get
educated man uh um educate yourself uh
you know
try to hold a presence
right whether it's
with uh your appearance uh how you
articulate yourself hold that presence
and then confidence will fall into place
once the confidence falls into place
everything else will just start making a
lot more sense
yeah
i i must say
that when you
if you look back on your career though
when when you started to embrace
trainings and certifications it appears
to me from our previous conversations
that that's kind of when it started to
turn though because you got yourself
around people that thought differently
yeah there's there's a lot to that too
just being around people who
think differently than than
you know just the bare minimum sometimes
yeah
you are that's just my two thoughts my
two cents um i believe i i agree with
you getting educated but i i don't think
like we go to school and we go get
every other trade goes and has
trainings and continued education and
those things to to help you
become better i'm not saying it's
required to be a flooring contractor or
a flooring installer i'm just saying it
can help a two-year guy kind of has an
idea what he's doing if he goes and gets
a few trainings and certifications under
his belt and then goes out and applies
more
experience to that
it just seems to me and through our
experience with uh working with hundreds
and hundreds of installers
that that's a pretty good
not recipe
not like 100
every i'm not saying every certified guy
is better than every uncertified guy
that's not true
i'm just
in general if we took a population
versus population
our experience going nationwide doing
flooring projects all over
when we've dealt with certified guys
especially sight unseen like not knowing
them
they we just had a better experience
it's a different thought process and
like you said you um that curve right
like that that tipping point is
um the the old saying you you're a
product of your environment
so
you surround yourself by
uh or with people who are like-minded
it starts to resonate a little bit more
um you know the
through
networking and certifications it did
open
up other doors for us um as a company as
individuals and i'm very grateful for
that but had we
had we never stepped outside of our
comfort zone and thought outside of the
box that was kind of uh
i want to say was built by what everyone
around us was already saying and what
they believed in um we we might not be
having this conversation today so
it's just one of those things like
there's a lot more out there put
yourself in a position to learn from
somebody else who
is certified who is factory trained who
has been around
um
don't discount the information that they
have
because you feel like you know
everything it could put you in a
position for
much better and much faster success
yeah be a learner
well
i'm going to close this thing out thanks
for joining us and
episode 4 here and um you know to your
guys's continued success everybody on
the on the webinar here and jose and
preferred flooring
uh much success to you guys and we'll
see you next week
you