This week the guys dove into what the installer side of Go Carrera looks like, what features they love, what things they’d like to see added to the app, etc. This is a great episode for Installers who don’t know about Go Carrera and want to learn more. Sign up for your free installer profile today and start using the features we know and love!

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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 what's up what's up welcome to the huddle we come at you every Tuesday

three o'clock Central or almost in today's case 304 Central to discuss maintaining forward progress

in your flooring career with me as always my cohorts my partner's in crime

Daniel and Jose out of Grand Rapids Michigan preferred flooring up there go

see him hire him if you're a Contractor on here

um okay so this week we're talking um continuing our go career conversation

which is kind of uh an exciting thing to to share we're always talking about it

offline and hinting around during the huddles last week we discussed about

um the company side this week we're going to discuss install our side

so I wanted to start off with

you know a lot we've got probably eight new installers on this

week and I I get every installer wants to have work to do because it's a job it's a Marketplace platform

what I would encourage every installer to look at this as

your digital resume this is the the fact is is you can be on

go career 100 for free build your profile claim go to trainings

that we talk about go to our training page build your Hammer rating be third

party verified and start to um

build your digital resume this is being something that you can share regardless

of whether you're doing work over the go Carrera uh platform or not it's a

third-party verification of your skills and abilities so if we start with that

and the fact is is that you can set yourself apart with that homeowners uh

for example and even General Contractors you say I'm CFI certified I'm sorry I've asked probably 50 people

this week that are just in the general construction world and not in our flooring bubble

they don't know what the hell it is correct I'm sorry I mean no offense to

CFI or anybody who's who's worked really hard I love CFI and they do it but outside of just our bubble

people don't know and the ones that did they didn't know the difference between

R1 R2 C1 C2 Master the only one that made sense to them was Master they

figured that must be pretty impressive that's the top level right yeah but outside that they didn't is there

three they here's a question I was asked well how many levels does it go if your

R1 and R2 is there an R3 R4 or five or six or seven

they don't know so they don't know where that falls on the uh completion kind of

schedule or you know what I mean like if I if if if

um if it was if there's a hundred certifications in your R2 it's less valuable than if it's

two certifications in the residential world and there's two levels well then

you're at the top level of the residential certification outside of being a Master Certified right

so people we would have to try to get and then you have other training

entities on top of that right so it's not just CFI I mean you get certified in

our decks through or self-leveling through the nafct

what what does that certification mean and part of this is because our industry

will name things certification that is not a certification I know there's

plenty of things that are I got a call the other day here um and the the lady was like hello

um and this is because I answer the phone this is Daniel with preferred she was like Daniel are you CFI I was like

yeah we'll see if I started to find she was like no I'm looking for the company CFI because there's a local company here

that named themselves certified flooring installers to kind of give that illusion

that everyone is certified there and the crazy thing is that no one in there is even CFI certified yeah we might yeah

and I'll build on that even as an additional problem so

I have sent guys to get certified Nora

um or if you look at some of the other certification it lists the company and not the actual installer

like that certification I didn't do anything as the president of the company

certification right I know but that's in the but I didn't earn it I paid for them

to go and I'm not saying I shouldn't be listed as a secondary or something but I'm just saying the the way it's all

portrayed what go Carrera does is take all this confusion and turn it into

a understandable metric one to five metric

that anybody can reasonably understand you know the hammer rating zero to five

you're a two and a half hammer right now there's still education that

needs to be done around that and frankly you could be certified but need

some you know a little bit more training to really become proficient

um I know that you know the harder certifications that we know

of you have to be proficient to even take but I'm talking about what outside

of our bubble of knowledge that that we encompasses the flooring companies in

the flooring you know industry outside of that the people who are hiring us a

lot of times may not understand that stuff so that's the the if we look at as

a digital resume that you can build you can you could take a a CFI training and

mat and our uh and then have an naft it doesn't lock you into one entity either

you can take all these different trainings from different places you could do a training with Mapei direct

with their MTI and then a training at

say uh nafct and then a training at CFI and all those come together and it

Aggregates to your hammer rating going up well your CFI when you're just in one entity

and because we don't have like a national college for flooring right if somebody would start that that solve all

of our problems but like and what I mean is not just started but there's a full

certification apprenticeship like Technical College

that that is you know the standard before you can get into flooring or

something um now obviously the F uh fcef is doing some really great stuff and getting a

10-week course into the uh community colleges and that's a great start uh and

though that's even recognized within the hammer rating for brand new people

um but brand new installers uh that are that come onto the application but think

of it as like your digital resume first off and then when it comes to some

of the great benefits so just a few notes a there are some good deals

on there you can go to your Dal Tile and get 10 off of all your tools and spacers

and sponges and stuff like that the code comes on your completed profile you'll

you get the uh you can go to partner deals there and see how to be able to

redeem that do not be offended if at first they do not if you're in we did do

this uh one of our guys went to a Daltile in Memphis and they were like we

don't know nothing about this deal and he goes just please type this code into your computer this discount code and

they did it and they got it and and um but not every single Dell tile manager

uh knows about it but it's at the corporate level of Daltile just so you

know um but there's also tools for flooring the tool Locker there so there's some

good tool discounts that doesn't that doesn't hurt you could take advantage of that for free you

don't have to do a work order or pay any money to take uh take advantage of those

discounts secondly as our member companies you can connect with new

companies through the application and maybe start working with new companies

that you've never thought of here's the thing though it what it really does is from an installer standpoint it puts the

power in the installer's hands so if you get an offer from a store

whether it's a commercial dealer or let's just say a retailer if a if a work

order is published and you see it whether you get on the maps and you search maps and I'm going to show some

of that here in a minute when I share my screen um but

you can um find it there or maybe you're matched if

you're in the area and a work order comes through and you have the hammer rating desired

then it will match you with that work order and let the company know that

you're a match now you have the ability to accept that work order as is or

decline the work order or negotiated so let's say a sheet vinyl job came up in

your area and you're a three Hammer sheet final guy

and it's a two Hammer job only the two hammer and above guys get matched right

because it's matched on that now you're in a you're maybe you're one of three

guys that have uh shown interest or accepted that bid or that that work

order now it's in the company's hands to look you can chat with the company right

there uh pre-award and make your case as to why you're the the the correct you

know installer for the job but here's the key let's say you negotiate it and you're it's it's a work order for a

hundred yards of sheet vinyl at 15 bucks a yard plus your welding plus your uh

Cove and all this but just for simplicity's sake let's say it's a 15 yard uh install price for uh the the

sheet bottle maybe you're a three Hammer guy and you're like you know what I I eat these

kinds of projects for breakfast but I want 18 a yard well you just simply

click the negotiate button type in 18 and submit your negotiation now it's up

to the company whether or not they award it to you but you can also send them a chat and say

um hey Mr uh you know Mr Jose uh here's

the deal I'm I've I've been doing this forever I

promise you here's the here's the real key I'll take care and make sure your job is done on time or whatever they're

they're differentiator is so there's just a lot of power in the

installer's hands that they they can use and the more installers that are on the

app the higher that you're banding together digitally and

and because of that we can increase rates but sporadic installation installers

trying to raise their rates that's why they've had such a hard time is because it's not a unified voice what happens is

uh this installer starts trying to charge more and he's kind of a lone wolf

while he tries and tries and tries particularly if you're working with you

know commercial D or retail dealers um if it's just you you're probably not

going to be successful in getting that raised over across the entire you might get

that one job with that one guy that has known you for 20 years and you can keep your rates but as far as working with

new companies is what I'm getting at because you want to have the option to work with whoever you want and keep your

schedule full what makes and you know any of I don't care what business you're

in doing it at capacity is where you make money right you if you work 20

hours a week in in uh installing it's going to be tough to make a

full-time living so 100 so having the option to jump on a map

and look at work orders and um and kind of browse uh

you know at scale that works really well and we got to have the installers help to do all this to join the network and

be patient for us to bring companies into those areas and we're not just

bringing on you know we're trying to bring on and we have a pre-qualification process for companies just FYI to bring

on companies who align with our values which are the biggest value I think that

go career has is the fact that we want to improve the standard of living for

our installation community yeah and then you think about it going

on there you can kind of just poking around right on the map you could say oh in this area they're getting around this

much and then in this area they're getting around this much I'd I'd rather work over in this area but then you can

also negotiate you know in that other area saying hey there's quite a separation here let's uh

let's try and Bridge this Gap a little bit

when you were mentioning the the the two Hammer rating and the three Hammer rating and hey this is what I want to

yarn um and you're right like if you've proven yourself to someone then you can stick to your guns and have your your

pricing that that you've earned but um you know in order to increase your network sometimes uh sometimes it's okay

to to take a project and maybe not get what you feel your matches your value but they'll never know that unless you

do some work for them they'll never know your your ability and your skill sets so

um and we we understand that um that's part of business um all together you got to show them

sometimes John steyer says it to him it sounds like it's geared more towards commercial tough sell for residential

but that all depends on the work orders that are on there if there's a bunch of residential work orders on there

I mean yeah I mean there's plenty of dealers that want to be able to just go

through the process of I mean it literally takes about depending on the size of the job but let's say it takes

20 minutes to create a really detailed work order with drawings even if it's

drawings of a house or the kitchen or whatever that that the residential

project has create that shoot it out to the network

and get the responses back all this happened digitally as opposed to call in

installers hey are you free next week like the once they're once an installer

is in a company's Network they can actually look at your schedule and see

where your openings are and shoot work orders directly to you so it

really it doesn't matter uh residential or commercial really it's

who's generating the work now we have future ideas about how to work with

homeowners so he would be correct if a homeowner wanted to work with somebody in our Network it wouldn't work right

they don't they don't it this is B to B at this point it's not a B to C or a c

to B meaning a homeowner cannot at this point download the Go career app and

schedule an installer now we have some thoughts on how that might work in the future and I'd love to run that by uh

everybody on here and and get your feedback but we do have a really kind of

cool approach to how that could work to be working directly with the

homeowners through go Carrera and how that would also benefit you know are the

installers and and particularly kind of some of the uh installers who are aging

out giving them a path forward uh that that is off their knees so I'll share

that here in a bit but so I I think

um let me do a couple of I'm going to move my laptop around a little bit so bear with

me

you know just some screen sharing going speaking of that yeah I'm gonna do a little screen sharing here sorry I'm

looking at my phone here guys but like like who's the OG go Carrera for us my

mom is my insurance guy he has rental units he needs floors here's his car here I

told him you're the best I am the best

at this okay

hey thanks John for commenting you so that way we you know we get some clarification if people don't ask

questions we don't know what's answered amen yeah and I need to call you John

it's been a minute it's been a couple weeks need that fix

Ed well let's see here

okay so what I'll share is just kind of I went through this last week and

there's there's um a little bit of dummy data in here just

uh for obvious reasons but let me

John says Paul congratulations on the 20 years you're old bro [Laughter]

no no whatever whatever John thanks John

let's talk about a busy guy that guy man these long King

he's an officer he's a floor guy owns a business that needs to get a lot on his plate too

there's uh Jim says what if I don't know any good installers in that area

can this get me in contact with proven trusted installers and I think that's really the big ticket item here

yeah the the huge the biggest part is being able to say publish a work order

to any place and you know you can kind of see this is a

map and it shows what we've published out

and obviously there's a lot of work in our core areas with you can see some

different uh work orders but the key is if you go to

um like let's go to pin in job you know if you shoot a work order out

you will get this back as the company and you can look and

see like their verification of what their Hammer rating may be in that

discipline a little bit about the the installer you

know we have to uh constantly stay on top of guys to create their

um to to keep their insurance up to date but this is a big metric this particular

gentleman has done 331 work orders across the network and 152 times he's

been given Kudos so even when you're working with

um a if you have a a person who responds to your work order that does not match

your Hammer rating they may be worth looking at if you consider how many work orders they've

done across the network and how many times they've been given Kudos so that's about a 50 Kudo rating right there

another cool thing is like just to kind of touch on the map this on the installer side now I'm

logged in as a company but this on the installer side would show the ones that are available and matched to that

installer so it just say matched above it and you can go in and

view the details of the project now obviously some of these are in different

states but I mean States as far as status within the application

um but the important thing for an installer is that say your job gets pushed three or four

days they can jump on and be like hey here's a two thousand dollar work order let me look at this oh it's uh it's you

know 335 yards of carpet you know 720 feet of Base I can do that in three days

and my job has pushed but I can knock this one out and then go back to the job that I've been uh working on my other

people on there with with a zero dollar amount would that be like a t m type thing you can put one for zero dollars

saying that is just tnm it may be a change order in this case

uh so that was that that is one

um that he had to go back and do some work that was a punch list item

and since he had already been paid for the uh work uh we just wanted to

give them the details of the punch list that's what it looks like but as the network grows you can see

that this kind of scenario in each major Metro is the goal is to have large

amounts of work orders in Dallas and Oklahoma City and all of the major

metros the the difficulty

uh I was going to show you we had one on I noticed over in Virginia somewhere

where was that

oh it may have been picked up or something I thought I'd seen one in Virginia the other day but the

difficulty is that you either have to build out the installer side or the company side as I've said before

um stop sharing and and just kind of talk through this as we build out

the installer Network in a given area we're trying to provide as much value as

possible to allow a installer to use go career outside of

half and you know actually getting work until we then sign

up the companies in that area that can produce work right that can be you gotta start with one or the other right it's

either get a bunch of installers and then have the companies be like all right now it's worth it or get a bunch of companies and then for the installers

be like all right it's worth it but the thing is you got to start somewhere and that's what we're trying to do right now

yeah well that's that's why I I kind of think you know starting with the

installer from the aspect that installers can still utilize it as like

I said a digital resume showing that hey I'm third party verified here here's my

uh profile you know they can click on the QR code they can the whoever you're

showing it to see your public profile and know your Hammer rating in each one

of the multiple disciplines we're going to continue to make that more robust and make it like a I want it to be like a

sales page for the installer to sell himself on himself or herself on well we

talked about in uh or Arizona right is that where we talked about it when the

ideas that you have that's like that's like next level stuff that hasn't installed from from the installer

perspective I never would have ever imagined that any company would ever want to do that to help out that's

that's amazing I mean there's a lot of good things coming up just got to get the traction um to justify it all and yeah so what

Jose is speaking of is we are kind of trying to gauge and not love if

anybody's on here that wants to respond to this but gay Jay uh the idea of

turning your profile that's in go Carrera into a public website and giving you a free website that would be you

know a two to three page website that talks I mean with your gallery and your

Hammer rating and if you have done work a Costco career what's your Kudos and

work order uh completion ratios but then

also have it more robust than just a profile and have it actually be a sales

page for an installer and you just the two-man crew a good a well-trained

two-man crew you could put your a website on your card and when somebody

checks you out they're going to be looking at like completed projects and this kind of stuff it's like really kind

of cool um idea to be able to allow an installer to

truly promote themselves and set themselves apart there's there's very few installers if I I've done a a few

surveys that have a website right it's your larger labor shops or it's somebody

like you guys who are kind of Bridging the Gap between part flooring company part installation

house and going more towards obviously building your flooring company full

service for inside so it's it's just something great to have

and when we talked about I just looked at you like are you serious how come nobody's ever thought of that so Eduardo

says that it's like a social media for skilled trades and we've talked about that as too right like how can it be

more like a social media thing where it's not on an actual social media site

but it is its own thing and it's only the guys that are on there well I tell you what Eduardo that would

be a fairly easy thing to implement for us uh is

creating the uh installer uh forum

so to speak that uh would be just almost exactly like any social media feed that

you uh are and it would be that you're used to but it wouldn't be Facebook or

Instagram or any of that it would just only be wrapped within go career within go career installers and companies like

and really it could be just the installers on one side and companies on other and they

both could talk or mash them all together but that would be fairly easy to do uh

it's a matter of what do you guys think do you think having a kind of a a social media aspect

within go Carrera uh I think I think it'd be easier for people to grasp when they're like all right I'm gonna get on

here and talk to the the people the other people that are on there that are you know like-minded like

me because he also said you know adding uh classes and training civil Carrera

he's talking about ship having the flooring distributors do the marketing

but that's all on the flooring distributors I'd like that's that's up

to you personally I think because like us we have um like the the stickers that we have

that I made up for the huddle with the QR codes that we have those in the Distributors for people to scan

yeah there's um there's a there's a fine line on there right like you can't have

any any one distributor um advocating for one person or a team or

one thing like that they can't they can't do that they have to uh be very uh political about the way they

approach a lot of things they can't just uh show favorites um although

um they can buy me tacos though I will I will have some lunch if they wanted to do it

but as far as like the that one I would say one page website right

because there's plenty of people on there it's like what do they call them a landing page

right that's essentially all you'd be creating hey this is a landing page I'm verified by gold Carrera these are my

stats here are a few pictures of the work that I've done that's really all you need it doesn't even have to get too in depth

and then at the bottom you know this is how you contact me or something right yes it's really looked

at like a kind of like a sales page and then what we thought was page two would

mimic your calendar that's in go career so oh so that people who see you can see

your availability he said is there a leaderboard

hey we've talked about some of those things uh I I am going to tell you about a game uh the game piece that we we have

partially developed is a uh trivia game uh the trivia game would basically be

something about flooring so you'd pick your discipline let's say it's resilient and then you'd go through some questions

and if you get the questions right you earn moves on this board and the board

is basically a matching board they call it Mahjong but it's really popular game you're talking like a hundred and

something million downloads on the App Store so as you match these tiles and

you complete the games you earn you earn the moves by answering the questions so

you're getting educated about the flooring installation side of things the

tile site's been built out more like question and answers because I know one of the questions is uh and I think I've

said this here before is you know when is it appropriate when is it um now it's States like this

uh urethane adhesive matches uh ANC 118.3 epoxy specs except for what

conditions or something like that and the answer is in extreme heat so

therefore not good for commercial kitchens and things like that that's where epoxy should be used or shower

floors like that's the two spots that they do not recommend using the urethane versus in place of an epoxy right it's a

pretty simple question and answer but there's a lot of those you answer that question correctly you get five moves on

the board and as you complete these these puzzles it's going to display an

image on the back side and that's typically going to be um maybe a sponsor of some sort of the you

know whether it's you know sure knocks or uh shown ox or or Mapei or somebody

sponsoring that portion but the idea is that as you complete get the game you

actually earn points that can be redeemed at a uh Florida core or a Lowe's or a Home

Depot and so you play to earn and it's within flooring the puzzles are just matching

puzzles things um I could give you you know show you some details of that but not only that

if you're someone who is already knowledgeable you're gonna might fly through and get some extra points but if

you're an individual who is still in the process of learning just imagine the interest that is going to spark right

like well they're going to go and find out information and Google is going to be blowing up

yeah look who got that well let's see if I can show

just a mock-up of the

let me show you something kind of that gives you an idea of what the

there we go well Paul I got a quick question for you

to fill some of this air yeah let's do it how long do you think will it take on

average to sign up one individual one person to for their own uh go Carrera um

account typically the um so I went through the installer flow

this morning uh myself actually and the it took me probably

20 minutes to get through signing up and then it's going to take a few days or weeks even for

um verification the verification process to happen so a safer experience and say we go we

get five individuals who want to sign up all at the same time go do do a podcast do a live so that way people can go back

and look at it will we be able to uh simultaneously sign them up as long as we're in an open conversation Forum just

like this yeah would five be a decent number to shoot

for would it be less would it be more as far as as far efficiency for time well I

think um being able to get them signed up is you

know we can have other people on the call that could be just be like blazing on the backside like if an installer

wanted to get signed up they can literally get the concierge kind of sign up and just if they're scared of

um uh technology in a way like the sign up process can happen

right there alongside a good career member so I mean Ben does this all the

time who's you know one of our uh you know he's our

client uh director of client success and acquisition so he's talking to

installers constantly and helping them through some of the uh tough sides of of

getting um signed on typically where we've seen

the problem is when we're wanting experience documentation and sellers don't quite know what to to

load and we're just asking for anything that proves the years of experience I know them boys or you know a few

references or something that we don't even care how good you were back in 2000 we just care that you were actually

installing in 2000 you know proof of your certifications and that

stuff will help shorten the time frame of getting you approved and verified otherwise what we have to do is

look on the website see if you're on there but we don't stop there because unfortunately a lot of the training

entities don't keep their websites up to date yeah no

and so we get on there and you're not on there and then we're like okay well

that's not ideal um how can we uh you know so we then call

them and ask them straight up hey you know do

you have uh Jose or Daniel did they finish this

this course and you know try to get a verbal

verification so it's really dealing with the I'm sorry about being distracted I

was trying to find the the game mock-up and uh in the sir on the server here but

the the real complicated part of it is that we do verify everything so if you

say your CFI certified r1r2 C1 C2 and master well we're actually going to find

out if you are uh same with journeyman installers uh on the union we actually

had a work order um down in southeast I better not say exactly where but just from protection

of this guy's uh I don't know that that would cause it cause anybody to know but basically one

of the installers claimed that they were a 10-year journeyman installer out of out of uh I believe Wisconsin or

something or maybe it was Minnesota um named the local and we called the local

and they'd never heard of him

so then come to find out he worked with the journeyman installer who was there

and was verified and he worked with that journeyman installer for 10 years so he

figured he could claim that he was do you get what I'm saying yeah yeah so

he wasn't an actual journeyman in Stellar himself right he was trying to have the the

pasta or the gentleman's experience passed through him as his own okay

um he probably didn't even have to lie about that all he had to do was say hey I got this many years experience this is

the gentleman I worked with and this is who trained me like yeah and and it may not you know because

there's no way for us to verify how good the guy was that trained you unless that

guy's already on good career right and it's also hard to tell um

from just because you work with a great installer doesn't mean that great

installer is a great trainer I think we've all probably been with a mechanic uh or a journeyman installer that didn't

teach us uh very much because it was always just like at least that was my

first experience you know what I think everybody's guilty of that at some point right like

you might be good at training you're not going to be great at it all the time Eduardo says it's good to get dishonesty

vetted out he said that he's got 47 years of experience

how old are you Eduardo like 30 27 something like that he's like 20

something uh I mean he looks a lot older than he is that's hilarious

yeah I mean the idea is obviously to try

and like clean up the

um the option like I just

I think for all of us it's just about oh check this out so here's a here's an

idea now uh full disclosure this is kind of like a prototype type type stuff yeah

but this is can you see this yep so we've called it different things but

we propose this to a few manufacturers to see if they wanted to uh kind of

support the gaming and we've had some hits and don't pay attention to I am not

we are not partnered with anybody at this moment these are just um people we presented to but here's the

idea is that you can kind of see you know [Music] um

the question an answer and then it most of the tile

stuff would be brought to you by the ntca and then um

the installer's correct answers earns moves on the game board so then you're

you know matching these two tile Snappers here and then

um The Game Board review reveals products and or promotions or discounts to the

installer and then at the end of the day um you know sponsorship opportunities

and and trying to help uh get the knowledge passed down in a fun and kind

of Novel way that's that's our gaming idea I

I probably need to run a survey and uh but it'd be interesting if anybody's

watching this on YouTube or whatever I mean comment and tell me would you like

to have a game that you earn not only points on that can be redeemable at a

retailer I will make that happen if we have if we have the traction I guarantee I can uh you know go to just about any

retailer and say hey our network of several thousand installers would like to start redeeming some points at your

place that's kind of an easy easy ask on that side but would you enjoy

um learning in that way and then also you like you get the points but you also

can earn Hammer rating with a certain amount of points it'll bump your Hammer rating up now it's not going to be like

you went to a certified class and used your hands but you know just bump it up a little bit you're putting in some

words it's a continuing education unit right yeah everyone has to do them yeah whatever except for the flooring guys we

don't have to do it well this could this could fulfill that kind of continued education side a lot of the

manufacturers who have shown interest are really interested in like okay this

is how we can launch new products and get the installer base very quickly and the entire installer

base not just the few that come to Tice or you know the hundred or so they or

200 that go to CFI but how much more efficient is it for them

to get you trained on how to utilize their products because we can embed videos and stuff like that as well so it

was kind of a cool idea we haven't taken it all the way to finishing we've mocked it up and we've gotten the framework

done but we don't have what's needed which is I don't want to play it already

an anchor an anchor uh sponsor which would be like a mohawk or something like

that to Anchor the at that application because it's very expensive to build that game out but um what's your guys's

thoughts would you actually play that thing so yeah I would play that and you know what's what's I was looking at the

mock-up there and I almost wonder like uh it looked I couldn't really see it because it's small on the screen but uh

I wonder if you could almost uh use instead of just the one big picture maybe the tiles are separated into uh

section A and section B for tools for specific disciplines too right um it'll help people learn the tools a

little bit more and um yeah so the the tiles are typically going to be

tools or something of that nature that fit the discipline that you've signed in as so what you'll get to pick which

discipline you're playing so if you're a tile guy you're going to play the tile kind of thing because it's hard to

expect a carpet guy to know what the what's the proper grout joint size right

but at the same time if you're wanting to learn that you have the option right yes absolutely there's no you don't have

to have a hammer rating in that discipline you can go through and play the game and get pretty freaking

proficient from a mind standpoint right how to install tile and Eduardo says

what kind of music plays and is there a psychology behind the reward sounds you are using

use the the sonic coin when he gets the coin

so that was soothing it's a soothing sound with a Bing

just like I I was thinking Mario here's showing me showing my age instead of

Sonic I was thinking like Mario Brothers right two weeks ago the movie's awesome but uh

Edward was right like sounds um a new kind of program you right like you hear a certain sound every time and

then you get a reward you know make you happy every time you hear it so that's not a bad angle there

yeah I I would imagine that it you know it coming with some

um You Know audio visual uh rewards right I mean that's just how we are as

humans you know like a congratulations that kind of stuff that happens on whatever your candy crushes of the world

so anyway what we're trying to do is at the end of the day to bring kind of

I know this wasn't um what I'm trying to get across is a concept I know you guys are the same way

like the idea is that we band together as installers we create our profiles and

you have it costs you absolutely nothing to start a profile take advantage of the

the discounts and then if we did add the social media part in even communicating

now I do have a question if it was a social media side to it anybody gets in

but then how long um you could see you've been part of forums

before especially on Facebook you know how toxic they can become very quickly but once you've got an indigo career

there's a real Community there I think that any installer and go Carrera that does any you know the beliefs in it can

have a great conversation with another guy but you get somebody coming in if that was a funnel to get them you know

like anybody could join you didn't have to be a good career member or a go career installer to to be on the social

side um would you think there's a time frame that they either sign up or or get get

off I would say I would be worried about as too many uh just people trying to

start you know how it happens you're not a go clear remember I can see that you have access to login but you

you might be ghosted you don't have access to comment on anything or to like anything you can just just read through

what's going on right in order to comment you must sign up yeah I mean you got become a member so I mean that's a

pretty awesome idea right there guys

because then all the go career members could share best practices on you know

with any software there's tricks and and ways to to use it if more efficiently

than you know if you've ever used QuickBooks you know there's little ways around things or or any any even your

social media sites there's little tricks to promote yourself better and all this stuff

um you know go career remember sharing best practices with one another on how to

um actually take the your career forward and not have it a you know a whole

crybaby session which I've seen or you know a dogging session I've seen guys

just test out how the other people on the on a particular group would react

and they post some crappy install and and then get attacked and they're like I

knew this would happen that's not even my work I was just seeing what you guys would say yeah

then you'll say the funniest one to me was he's taking a picture of the backside of uh and all and said hey can

I use this to stretch in the room because it looks like that thing yeah that was the funniest one to me but

um for stuff like that right like if you get bored and you're you're doing that you're just you're bored maybe maybe you

need a site like go career to find some additional work to keep your mind occupied maybe a game maybe a game that

can teach you something yeah and then as far as like you were talking about betting and stuff when we're talking about social media

um was there a spot on there because we signed up a while ago I don't remember to put your actual like business social medias and stuff in there

uh no that's kind of the idea with the website is that you'd be able to link all your social media sites off of that

so you'd have all the information that's in good career about you and you'd have a website that mimics that but plus you

can add your social media you can add some videos about yourself and you you can make it more robust

I can tell you one thing we don't do much at go career that's not like top of

the line from a technology standpoint the the websites would be freaking

awesome and I was just talking about you were talking about you know verifying and stuff like that what if they had

um a business page that's been out for 10 years yes yes that works by the I'm

sorry I misunderstood your question absolutely if they have a social platform that that

is you know obviously they're time stamped and we can go back and and see that they have business activity back

when they claim to be installing that that does work for your 55 60 year old

guy it doesn't always work because social media has not been around long enough to to grasp all their uh years of

experience but we've had guys just send in literally old invoices they they or

that that um paid invoices we've had guys uh uh give

reference to stores like actual stores that they worked for back in the day

that we've called and verified yeah he worked here back in 1992 you know just

that's it like we don't care if it's we're not trying to check and see how good you were back then either that's

kind of a misconception the whole idea is just to try to qualify the years that

you said you've worked because we all know the guys that say they've been doing it for 20 years and the truth is

they haven't uh okay that transparency is where we can have more trust

across the the the interaction that's what I'm trying to

think of more trust across the interaction equals to better paying situations

um more transparency allows for a two Hammer guy to be doing a two Hammer job and not competing with somebody who's

been doing it for six months right those are the tricks that go career brings in like

one of the I mean I'd love to hear from the network but like one of the things that I've

heard why guys don't get um certified is the first one was they don't know about it like they don't

know where to go get the training I don't think our industry does a great job at promoting themselves from a

training aspect um because when you do it on social media you're typically followed by other

flooring guys so we think everybody sees these things that are on your Facebook feed but it's because we interact with

everything that is flooring that we see all that stuff you know that's that's

the truth like they're not attracting new people who need the training because

those people they're not meeting them where they're at but

um so a lot of this is you know using everything we have to try

to get the uh installer vetted on the network and then banding together to

increase pay by separating yourself from other Hammer rated people

it becomes a competition like a professional sport

you know the Giants no matter how terrible they are are not going to go play a high school football team

right right or or the Jaguars when they were you know 2 and 14 there was talk

about them playing uh the the the Alabama at the that year was undefeated

and they were like who would win you know but that will never happen like you're only competing with you know

other NFL guys so to speak and that's that's what go Carrera creates is you're

competing with other quality like quality guys because the

ham the work orders are generated with a hammer rating filter so so it keeps the

installers within their their comfort zone their parameters their skill set and it also helps uh the flooring stores

or anyone else who is putting the work out there with getting the right guy for

the the installation I mean that's what are down here you want to elevate

up there like you know this is where I want to be right like how much work do you have will you get paid oh really you

know how do I get to that point and and that's where these training entities don't do a very good job of promoting it

right they're promoting what they what they have to offer the installer they're not promoting um what information the installer will

have to offer their clients after they're done yeah there's no throughput to to using that training to Market

yourself or separate yourself okay we've seen it firsthand where you know guys call us hey what do you charge

for this and then we're we tell them what we charge do they get that I don't know because you know

that a lot of everyone the question is should they get that right yeah and then

you see some of these jobs that they produce and they're like I hope they're not getting that because if they're getting the same thing that I'm charging

and this is what's going on that's that's not cool either right and some people get they charge a lot more than

what we do too with a lot less training or or I would say uh credentials not

training I would say they probably have a lot of experience but it's because they've they've earned it you know they've been around long enough and they

have they've been with the right group of people to to earn that and make kudos

to them but not everybody is that fortunate well I always tell guys like

um we had a guy up in Kansas city is like I'm I'm not I don't

I have one old certification but other than that I'm self-taught and I worked

with my uncle and I will admit he's a very good cheap bottle installer I mean he is I've seen his work we've worked in

why why would I want to be on here I you know there there's no reason I was like

well okay well you you're the are you as good as you say you are and he's like well

yeah I was like well no one else knows I mean just you it's like you in that one store but what if that guy what if that

store goes under what if that store decides to close down which is going to be a pandemic here in the next 10 years

there's a lot of older store owners that are simply don't have exit plans or

secession plans so what if the store you're working for the Commercial contractor you're working for sells or

the company or the area gets unionized and now it's only Union installers

employee that's fine too but you as a sub working for that place I'm just

saying don't put all your eggs in one basket I mean that's a common Biz that's a a business 101 teaching go career

allows you to not put all your eggs in one basket it allows you to work with any company that's on the network and

we're we're gonna grow that very quickly that this year um we've already got three companies on

the backlog and it's just a matter of kind of finishing up with those guys

um but what do companies want to see they want to see some installer density in the areas they're working so we're we're

kind of always teeter-tottering back and forth um and you know what you said that you

wanted to make a trip up here to Michigan to come and hang out and I think that uh um once the weather actually warms up

because it was snowing this morning let me tell you how upset I was this morning um once the weather breaks and they do make

that trip maybe we should plan ahead and try to get some traction and get some installers and get a group together

let's have a party up there I mean I'll throw a party and let's just talk about it and I don't mean like you know but

I'm just mean like getting together some food maybe some drink and have a have a

conversation with as many installers as possible and and what I really like the

most is when is installers to conversate with me and tell me what why it sucks in

their head because they'll have this image in their head that this is stupid I've literally been told that by

installers I've never had industry people or professional companies or any good installer ever tell me that but I

have had the guys that are fearful to have their real to to be transparent

about their skills and transparent about their years of experience that's that they're I certainly understand why some

installers are so reluctant to it but I I encourage conversation I encourage

like tell me what you think could be better what could make it even better

for installers look at it this way here's another thing look at it as a digital uh resume and

then think of it like you you own go Carrera and you have a uh

a development team that is willing to to do some things to make it more valuable

to you you just have to voice what that is what do you think would make it more uh worthwhile and valuable to you share

that with us what would make your life easier and that's really what is yeah tell us what your challenges are like I

know that when we first started building go career one of the big challenges one of the big hard things is a lot of

companies and this has changed a little bit but a lot of companies

as included at the time you had to come to our office sign a lien release

then you get a check and then you go to your bank and deposit the check or go to my bank and cash a check and then you

pay your guys and you had to take off early because we paid on Mondays at that

point uh a side note we had to do that because if we paid on Fridays we'd have too many people not show up over the weekend on

weekend work so we had to start paying on Mondays but anyway we we pay on

Mondays means you're gonna have to leave the job site at three o'clock come to our office suddenly release Gates check

get to the bank before five that's all done seamlessly

approved approved paid I was like you just paid him that quick yep done it's

like yeah I've done it on airplanes like literally paid for the Wi-Fi

to be able to pay while I'm 30 000 feet in the air

so it allows companies to also go and and installers to have good interaction

like uh one of the things we've really started doing at the flooring company is going when we go out to job sites taking

pictures of the things that we need fixed throwing them in the chat which is

attached to that work order and then letting the installer know hey finish

these items and you can Bill me complete you know and then we've also the

installers have used it a lot to take video and throw that in the chat or

um which a little grainy honestly but pictures come out perfect and taking

pictures of hey this substrate I'm gonna need 20 bags of floor prep they throw

that in the chat shows all the job site conditions and then send us a change order for you know doing the 20 bags of

self leveler that's approved thank you so it really

just is a real uh job site communication right yeah too because it's

so you got something to show whoever you're working for too whoever you have the contract with this is what was done

this is proof because there's like we've dealt with it where they say that a lot

of people don't document stuff so it's like we were guilty of that early on but like

once you get burnt a couple times you start you start tracking everything and and this platform right here

it's the requirement right yeah track projects so I'm going to tell you about

I'm going to tell you about the uh we're out of time but I'm gonna do it anyway uh so we're we're gonna be

we're on the final stages of starting this a video conferencing within go

Carrera it's going to be called link I believe and so say for example I shot

you guys at work order and you're in Michigan you're doing an Auto Zone up there for me just example you run into a

problem you click the link button and it automatically launches to my phone and

we we are on a video conference similar to what we're doing right here yeah

except uh the camera always starts facing out

on the installer side and so you can show your your

project manager whoever you're working for the job site condition the cool part

comes is we can make notations on the

um right there on the screen and each other see them so say you're like pointing at something and you take an

air you draw an arrow on the screen I see that

so as you show me something I might be like hey look at this right here and I Circle it and you see it on your screen

on the video it's super cool I can't even explain to you how how cool it is and then is that recorded and then saved

so here's the awesome side the chat is going to be embedded in there as well so I you can also chat between us so you

can be like did you so you cannot so for example you're

showing me something that that um a wall is completely out of whack or whatever

and you're gonna have to fix it um you're showing me you put it on the

screen and you you just write with your finger you're you're like half inch low on the substrate right and then that

picture gets saved and each time everything is documented our chat around

that is documented and it comes at the end of that call that video call a

report is generated and put in the file that's attached to that work order and

man if I showed you this you would be like literally it would explode right now

you'd be blown away at how crisp and clean

um it you just the the the report is so good it it logs

it records all the video every picture you took every chat say for example

you're on a job site we need the the superintendent to join you just boom and

he doesn't even have to be a member of go career and he can join that same video call and you'll be like hey James

the substrate is completely messed up I know you're on lunch and you're an hour

away or whatever but can you give us approval to self-level this or whatever uh the scenario is obviously a lot of

superintendents can't can't do that but a lot can and have the power to you know give you the approval to move forward

but there's a so many uh times that I've ran

out to job sites because what my installer is trying to explain to me over the phone I cannot understand

like they speak English and I do too but I can't understand what they're trying

to tell me Well the terminology there's sometimes there's just some disconnect right uh like if you came on one of our

jobs we we wouldn't say trash can we wouldn't say tank but somebody gave it that name a long time ago and we thought

it was hilarious and it just stuck we've said it so many times we'll be making fun of them and it stuck but that's

that's what you're talking about too now um is there a way to have an internet app

like that to where there's like a translate version or like if someone is not bilingual say

we have someone who's predominantly uh speaks Spanish and they're more comfortable explaining it in Spanish is there a way for that or am I throwing a

curveball into this conversation no we are we are uh we're working on Native

translation so the idea with Native translation is you could type in English

but it come across to them in Spanish if that's what they've selected and then when they they can type in

Spanish and it comes across to you in English

yeah well it's on the backlog I mean you know a lot of our uh Hispanic Crews have

requested it it's a it's a it's a bit difficult more difficult than you would

think it's not just like taking Google taking a English word and throwing it in Google and getting a response it's like

trying to make it more native and real time translation so you don't get it in

English and then have to translate it into Spanish it just comes over

in Spanish even if you typed it in English so yeah we're working on that I think

we'll have that done here I mean we'll definitely have it done this year but

well guys I have kept you uh nearly 15 minutes over once again we get going on

this stuff and close it out with uh Eduardo says hammerating leaderboard

with monthly drawings I I like it

yeah he's got some ideas um I like the Hammer Hammer rating

leaderboard I think that's what made me start thinking that the game is we were going to have a Leaderboard on the game like how many points you've earned and

and published that all the time like have it real time so uh as guys are

earning more points and then put their Hammer rating right next to it or something but a hammer

writing leaderboard would be um it'd be fun if it was in region

otherwise the leaderboard is going to be like this this but uh by region and what

do you say with Rewards or something yeah with monthly drawings or yeah

monthly drawings for the top 50 installers something like a mixer that way like if you get if you're one of the

top 50 you can join in a mixer monthly and then uh

I don't know maybe there's some things where you can have a credit towards a training in uh

and your discipline credit towards uh some tools you know that's I mean this

there's a lot of people taking notes on this because I this is the truth of it guys as I listen and I try to I like the

leaderboard with the drawing a monthly drawing and then have uh the social attachment

that idea right there can evolve into so much more than just that as well right it can push

um individuals uh further than they thought that they could ever be pushed by their peers um and that's really what

it's about is is helping each other build on top of the foundation we

already have well you know when it's a lot closer than you think it really could uh put a cool Dynamic together if

you think about it where if you're Hammer rating for each one of your disciplines was part of your profile on

the social site right your picture and your Hammer ratings right next to you the the the the lower Hammer rated guys

would know exactly who to go to to be like dude how'd you get four and a half hammers like I've never seen somebody

that high he's over here putting stuff together already I love Eduardo man you couldn't even put

me first what you didn't hurt it bro oh man if you got

if it's if people are not joining this thing you are missing out on some fun I'm telling you what Eduardo coming in

like that hey hold on hold on hold on no but he's got number one is one like come

on bro number one number one that was intentional okay I got some

work to do I'm gonna report back I gotta get out of here too I got my son's got baseball practice in 15 10 minutes I'm

gonna report back to you on what we can do on uh leaderboard and the social side we already did have a a social aspect

that that uh but not quite in this idea and the idea of having the members able

to comment and work back and forth but non-members you can you can read up and

talk and or read up it's just can't comment can't you know you can't come in and you

know add poison to the to the great conversation right and it's only like a

trial thing too right you only got seven days you can go on there and see because then that way that people are that are

just trying to spy on there like if there's a give it some of the stars or something or keep on going on there they're gonna

have to create something every few days or something that that'll just stop them from doing it yeah and the cool thing is

because it would be driven by go career everybody on there is who they say they are it's not some somebody you know like

on these other social sites you cannot be who you say you are you're gonna be who you say you are on this right right

and there's accountability to talking yeah yeah you know what I mean like on

Facebook and then go talk crap on your Facebook too there you go the people who log on as guests have to use one of

their other social medias as their temporary ID so that way they can be traced and tracked

that way yeah just a lot of those other socials um are fake they're not who they really

say they are on there either especially your Instagrams and twitters but

Facebook's more authentic but uh just super thought yeah I'm uh

I'm I'm logging that all right gentlemen hey thanks for hanging with me uh a little extra here it was a fun time and

uh yeah we'll keep we'll keep talking we've still only scratched the surface though I know it's hard to get through

everything all right guys well we will see you guys next week same bat Time same bat place

thank you so much and Eduardo thanks for I guess I don't know man I didn't get any I didn't even see my name on the

leaderboard but thank you for that great idea all right all right see you guys