This week is a dive into how to price at a competitive level, without short selling yourself and still taking home a profit.

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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 got me in a drink there what's

up Lauren fam welcome to the Huddle we're here every Tuesday We Gather here every Tuesday

to discuss maintaining forward progress in our flooring careers with me as always Mr Daniel and Jose Gonzalez from

preferred flooring up in Grand Rapids Michigan your go-to flooring Pros uh

they're in the north central part of the United States

we got uh Daniel in the office and Jose in a truck which should not surprise

anybody sorry guys I pretty much live in here

have extra clothes I really do have extra clothes

well today we're going to be discussing how to price competitively while

maintaining your profitability excuse me

um this is you know kind of standard Concepts uh that can apply to both

installers and uh flooring companies but the the best method to ensure your

profitability is Cost Plus make sure that you gather all your costs and then you add a

markup to that that covers your overhead and profit uh that's pretty standard for foreign companies from an installer

standpoint I think this first step you guys can tell me your thoughts here

but first step is know what your costs are like so many installers I think we

talked about this in a previous um episode as well like so many guys

don't know what their true costs are would you guys agree is that yeah run into it all the time where you

talk to the guys and they're like uh I made enough money for today and then you

you start talking about the the numbers and it's like you really didn't make anything today

um yeah so what are some things Dan what are some things that the installer

should consider when they're like trying to figure out what their per because what I did was try to figure out what my

per day cost was and there's always a variable in there from how far I have to drive to the job site or whatever but

standard variable this is how much it cost me to go to a job regardless of what I'm doing there

to go to a job for an eight-hour day that's how I looked at it when I was subbing what do you guys think yeah that

thing is a pretty good way to look at it yeah yeah but I think there there's so much

loss in Translation there especially when they they don't know how to keep track of things and all they do is throw

all the receipts in a box and then wait till someone asks for it it's uh you

know a lot of stuff goes into it because you got your fuel your vehicle costs

and then I I don't think so many people have taken into consideration that you

know especially the smaller outfits when it's just you know one or two people it's

100 of your time they're like um and we fell into it too when we were

first starting out it's charging for the time spent on the project only like the

Project's 45 minutes away and that's when we start when in reality we should have started our clock as soon as we

start the day because that that counts towards our time towards that project

yes yeah when you're figuring your and and that's when you guys were

subbing you you just kind of in your head calculating the cost for the day

started it when you were on the job site is that what you're saying yeah when we when we first started

and then you start realizing that there's all these little bits of time

that don't get accounted for and you have to make sure that

you know everyone profit is something that you need in a

business you're not there to hang out and break even every day you're there to

you're out there and so that way you can you can grow right

so you need to realize all this time adds up so you know 15 minutes in the morning and then you gotta go spend a

half hour 45 minutes going to the store or something everything adds up and you got to start charging accordingly

like that you can't just not everything is

just included in the the installation price itself because a lot of guys you

know are charged by the square foot or square yard stuff like that which is fine but when you're looking at

an opportunity and you let's just say lvt if you're

going to do a thousand feet of lvt uh at a dollar a foot

and um you have a it's you and one guy

you want to look at the project at least at the drawings or something and kind of understand the layout and how difficult

the the install may be so those things impact your production and then you have

your regular costs what your help gonna cost for for a day with burden and and

burden being insurance and taxes and stuff um and then what's it costs just per

mile for you to start your vehicle or if you what I'd always do is just look at it like anywhere in Wichita I can go be

at the job and and work for eight hours and I need to make a minimum of 400

bucks or whatever it was then I had a helper I need to make 600 for that day or whatever

um so some of the costs that you need to be considering as an installer and I know this seems Elementary but you get

if you're watching this thinking it's Elementary you'd be surprised at how many people do not even think think it

through this far they just start doing work and hope at the end of the day that they're

they're making money until they figure out they're not and so it's one of those one of those

things where what are you using throughout the day as well right like the consumables was the

one thing that was overlooked on our part for a long time where we would go and buy supplies that would

last us a week two weeks a month and you know we spend a couple thousand

dollars on supplies very minimal supplies like not even equipment just supplies to like

accessories for our equipment a few thousand dollars so you're talking like just to be super clear you're

talking like blade sphere carpet knives blades for utility knives blades for your scrapers that kind of uh consumers

yeah yeah it's a big thing right now yeah notches

um you know what made us start realizing the amount of money that we weren't accounting for is once we started

getting more into grinding everything during uh before we prep

um the segments for Grinders and and the heads and the wheels and accessories all

that stuff is pretty expensive I mean diamonds are expensive guys yeah

ask your why or your girlfriend that well they don't know you buy for

them anyways oh they picked it out [Laughter] they knew what they wanted okay yeah so

that's the stuff that I would you know what I what I would just as an

idea and what I did my hard costs what I just took for Paul Stewart to jump in his van and drive to

a job pretty much anywhere in Wichita and spend eight hours there I had that figure

that I knew now you gotta forgive me it's been 25 years ago but 20 22 23 years ago

maybe something like that but uh the the daily figure then you had your

production costs or your costs that are associated with the production of the work and if it's trials and and those

types of deals I'd figure you know an additional cost and I figured 10 bucks a trial back then I honestly don't even

know what a good trial cost uh at this moment but I figured ten bucks a trial or a blade and you know any other

specific things I needed and if you have a big piece of equipment whether it's a

demo machine or a heat welder or those things you got to be thinking about the maintenance on that even and so

if you take on a job and the money and the money is good enough on a per square

foot basis to cover everything that's fine I'm not telling you have to change the way you price your services I'm

saying consider the cost and look at if you do a thousand feet and in the example I was given at a at a dollar a

foot you're seeing the thousand bucks like you should automatically just deduct the 300 the 200 for this the 100

for that the fifty dollars for this sundry and and scraper blades and then

boom now you're at a more realistic like profit margin uh so to speak

right right ideally you want to pay yourself pay your installer your helper or your

partner or whoever's working with you pay your hard costs and still have some

money left over like that's called profit you don't take you know so many

guys just look at like how much am I paying my guy and then the rest is my profit that's not profit no right

someone's got to go be paid to install it whether it's you paying yourself to go install it or you pay another

installer to go install it you have cost so almost look at it like what would it

cost me as an installer to have Daniel Gonzalez go do my job

and if that's gonna cost me you know XYZ then

and Daniel gets paid and you you just figure in your head okay if I paid Daniel 40 bucks an hour to go do this

job how much is it going to cost me if I can get it done in eight hours and these are all real you know uh hypotheticals

but the point here is regardless of whether you yourself are installing or someone else uh if you take on a project

you want to understand that true profit is after you've paid

yourself something you're paid your help paid your bills your taxes insurance

that kind of thing you should know that rate on a daily basis so if you pay a

thousand bucks a year do the math on how much that costs you a day right it's about three bucks a day or so that it

costs you to be insured and so kind of have those figures in your head and

um anything after those things are paid

that's profit and if your labor only you may not have a ton of profit but you'll

still have you still should aim for some level of profit always aiming for profit 100 percent

and you'll um what's the what's the name of that book that that Kyle already

profit first uh was it profit first yes

um I mean that's that's a good it's a good listener good read um what's the premise there other than

what the title is very clear about yeah so that the it's setting up different

bank accounts for you know like operating costs uh and

like four or five different bank accounts but it's factoring in how much profit you're making at the beginning of

the project and taking that out right off the top put in its own account that way you're only left to pay yourself

with what you were supposed to be saying out anyways

so essentially budgeting project budgeting just by but just using uh bank

accounts to to make it right I think I think it was written when bank accounts

were free and you can have like 10 bank accounts and not have to pay a bunch of stuff

and the title itself is it helps you track and understand we're going wrong

it's look at things a little bit closer all right Jose we're gonna have to

have to keep going because you got a smiley face and a crackly voice

and it's frozen that way so as the this week's topic when we're talking about

the the elephant in the room is you still have to be competitive you still have to win the work

now I would personally love it if we would change

the entire way we bid work in America and just make it the closest to the

average I think I brought this up before but I talked to a GC that was um from Europe it's been several years

ago and the way that he described it over there

was they get all the bids in they uh assemble them come up with the

average and then whichever uh closest to the average wins the job not

the low guy whoever's closest to the average buy a percentage basis and he said that you

could be closest on the high side and still win the job from the guy then the second closest that's on the low side

wouldn't that be freaking awesome then you're bidding jobs to do them right and then the installers are it would change

the whole dynamic I I we can't get our capitalist uh um you know the way we look at money

here in in America like cheap uh to go that direction I don't think but you

know it would be great that being said here we have to win the job by being

either Superior Service where they want to work with you regardless of you being

higher and that's the best place to be or you're the low number

um I would encourage everybody and this is what the point I'm driving at provide

the level of installation quality and service to the to the companies you work with to the highest degree possible

because if you don't have if they don't have to expend management money to be on the job site

watching over you or constantly chasing you down on a Friday afternoon or

whatever if you're just a really good installer and you're an independent you're going to be able to if your

quality is there you're going to be able to charge more I know for a fact we have guys that you

know in a way have you over a barrel as a company because they're so damn good that you know they make a little bit

more money than anybody else because you don't have to worry about them so get to that point where you're not a uh you're

not being used by a flooring company because they have to fill a body on a

job site but you're being used because you were chosen if you can get to that point you're going to make more money

yeah and that's that's kind of how how we built up as well was that level of

service they they knew that as soon as pretty much they handed us the paperwork

it was a hands-off approach and any issues that came up Not only would we

let them know but we had a solution and provided that solution right away it's like hey this is what's going on this is

what needs to be done and that way they have all the information already

how to do that to the customer so how did you come up with Solutions

uh constantly uh learning about our craft it's

a lot of it has had to deal with because we've seen like when we were

doing a bunch of dorm rooms and stuff on Crete and then you see a bunch of guys going in there and they don't know

that you have to Prime the drip creep before you start patching with the cement based patch so it's like

simple stuff like that and or just um

you know the whole moisture thing it moisture is everywhere in the it moisture issues everywhere right so it's

knowing the signs for the moisture before you proceed with anything so that way

you're like look this is moisture we can test and whatever but I guarantee

this is what's what's happening this is how we can fix it that way

they they have the problem and the solution before they

even have they don't even have to come set put back on the job site everybody likes

Solutions when they hear about a problem right we've read a lot of personal development books between

the three of us and a lot of them will either tell you that

outright or there's a feel of that right like don't just come say all this floors

messed up that's it like

why and what's this what solution do you in the field think is the best you and

and that's how you're able to grow into a company like what you guys have done is because you become a Solutions

provider and it only comes from I mean watch every episode of the Huddle and I'll

almost guarantee you you won't find very many that we're not telling you to get

educated and be trained and learn the products and know what you're installing

like it's not the company's job to make sure you understand all that actually it

is the company's job but it's just as much your job as it is the company's job to make sure that you understand how

it's supposed to be installed and then if you step in the first position meaning you become a flooring company

like you guys well now it is you're you're in first spot it's darn sure not the owner's job

to know this it's your job so being educated I again it goes back to embrace

education Embrace training embrace the workshops and the the product demos and

things like that that are available to everybody um go to that stuff it does seem like a

lot of the different training entity um events if you look at them on social

there's more and more people um that's very encouraging I love seeing

that I hope that that everybody learns to become a professional themselves so

that when you do have a problem on a job site you're able to provide that solution that puts you in a position where

companies want to use you instead of somebody else even if you're more expensive right now you guys

experienced that didn't you we did we did can you guys hear me better now that it turned off my video

yeah you know we did experience that and we constantly experience it and it

and I wanted to add but I just didn't know if you guys could hear me but I wanted to add what Daniel was saying too and it was it was coming behind

um other installers or or other installers are failed um

installations that helped us uh come up with solutions that it wasn't we

didn't always have certifications in a bunch of formal training it was just a lot of scenarios that we've hit

um but gaining that knowledge and the additional training and education classes help us have four sites and that

is what I feel it brings value to the table

even from the Labor uh only standpoint is through the foresight to be

preventative ask the right questions when you're sitting down and at people with everyone trying to figure

out how to move forward how to price it so the key is like

the first as a as it applies to this topic the first suggestion I have is

make yourself more valuable yeah find the ways to make yourself more

valuable so that you don't have to be low all the time right and I watched the video it was not about you know the

flooring industry it was about I think it was more geared towards I.T they were talking to like some kids that wanted to

be in I.T in high school and then or something like that and then the the

difference it and the amount of money you can make if you go to college versus if you don't

and how companies look at just you know

your degrees and you're automatically worth that much more and it's it's kind

of like that in the flooring industry too I mean not as far as you know titles and stuff but your education in general

because the more educated you are the more solutions you have

to the problems that are popping up as they come up instead of having to do

trial and error and just ignoring it thinking that it's never going to come back to bite you

yeah and you know for the for the trades or the

um jobs out there that require college like an I.T thing or things that you can

learn in college that and shortcut your experience I know there's a big assault

on education in America I don't agree with it I don't think that you shouldn't send your kids to college I think if

they're going to go into a field where going to college helps them shortcut their years of experience and they can

go in making more money then that's a valuable thing I think what we need to

do is quit don't don't send your kids to uh you know

video a Psychology major and then they get into some other trade or something

or or uh they take a liberal arts degree that that provides no value to them

later but outside that education is essential in most of this like Jose you

just said that you know a lot of this you learned from experience but had you

taken Education First some of those pitfalls could have been avoided I know that's it's certainly

true for me because I started same way that I'm preaching against which is you know just going and trying to do stuff

that I had no business doing um but it it caused a lot of pain to my

clients and myself because I didn't have any right doing it I wasn't trained properly did I learn over time yeah and

then I did go get my certifications and my my trainings but the point here is

like if you can make yourself more valuable to the marketplace like uh Daniel was just talking about uh in it

it's the same thing it's just a different way of getting that education and then you can prove that you are that

Solutions provider so making yourself more valuable is kind of step one to winning jobs in a

competitive market um you know I I also

know that part of being more valuable is being able to be dependent upon and so

you know being a man or a woman of your word if you say you're going to be there on that

day be in there on that day or high level of communication all these things

can help you be better than other and look I'm not

saying anything bad about installers but the bar is not that high like if you communicate well

you show up when you say you're going to show up and if you can't you give the the company or whoever you're working

with plenty of notice that you're not going to be able to start on that day but maybe you start the next morning

getting that call you know three days ahead of time is much better than getting that call the morning of and

yeah 100 it's those kinds of things that make you more valuable so

know your cost make yourself more valuable and then you know at the end of

the day if we are in a real competitive head-to-head bidding uh scenario do you

guys have some um what's your guys's advice in in that case so you're head to head with another

another company or another installer that is let's say equal or apparently equal how

do you how do you look at uh the projects

I think I think everybody's gonna have a lot of Daniel's been doing a lot of uh being

against uh some of the the local companies uh and

he's doing pretty good go ahead so what what I do is

you just talk to him right and it's not really so in the last pre-bit I did we I went

in there and for the first you know 15 minutes we were just strictly talking about baseball you know building that

that rapport with them and then once it gets down to it you know they start

asking questions you know you're competitive um what are some of the issues that we

could run into and I got I just get really really in-depth on the technical side of things

as far as um things that they may not know you know this is what I'm seeing on job

sites these are the solutions this is why this number is you know could be

this and you may not see other people doing that um [Music]

and a lot of it is communication before we even get to that point to where it's like

this they want moisture mitigation included in the number but I'm going to

put it on a separate line item so that way they can see that this is going to be the cost for the moisture remediation

broken out so that way if we don't need it it's there's no question that is gone

can I add to that yeah and also ensures that if your

competitors if your mitigation price we literally want a job over this but if

your mitigation price is fifty thousand dollars and your competitors Low by 60.

or 55 or 45 or something that

it might just bring up hey maybe I should you know whoever you're bidding the job to uh they made the you know it

maybe ought to call this other company and make sure they have this mitigation price too right so it can it can save

you there and I deal with a lot of the same things

um try to try to make everything more personalized like there's there's I get

a lot of negotiated stuff across my point just which is pretty awesome right um and some of the the clients that that

I work with uh pretty easy going pretty easy to talk to Easy to deal with uh

they kind of already know what they want what they need and it's just a matter of explaining

the pitfalls versus the the wins on what they want and

uh like Daniel said they're just giving them information finding finding common ground outside of the

scope of work outside of their project is actually really huge uh so if you're

able to talk to someone personal level that that's super huge and it comes Supernatural to me because

I don't ever really think about like how to go and try to find out what school they went to and what team they like it

just like you just pick up on on things and during conversation you ask questions they give you answers and you

know and then it's about them and it's not really about you or then and then boom now you have solutions for them so

you build a really I mean yeah you know what I'm saying people do business with

people that they like so sometimes the how you get them to like you is you

relate to them on a personal level well at the very least you gotta have a

conversation to see if you're gonna like if they're gonna like you or not so you know building relationships and I would

venture on to say go back and watch our estimating uh podcast uh our huddle

there I it was probably 10 episodes or so ago but we mentioned this then

building relationships is both with the client but when you start getting in the world of supply and materials and I

don't care if you're just supplying grout sponges or something like having a good relationship with your vendor where

you can buy at a better rate will help you a ton if your rep likes working with

you or the store the distributor likes you they're more apt to give you a

better price and all you got to do is ask for it half the time if you built a good relationship with them if you're

not the guy that's always bitching at them always bringing them product back to restock and pay for and you know all

that kind of stuff if you're if you're a good customer to them and you've built a relationship then that's a way for you

to lower your cost below what your competitors cost may be and when that

work I would also say make sure you have it from an installer standpoint make

sure you have an installation vehicle I know a guy that ran across a little bit of money

went and bought a Mercedes doesn't even has an old beat up truck and went and bought a Mercedes and I love the guy but

I was like man you could have got such a nice fan he's driving a really nice car though he

is no doubt about it um but yeah so building those relationships

is what I got out of that right building relationships built with your vendor uh but because I have another client uh a

project I was quoting uh a local church and you know

he just he's seen us doing the school next door um we did a couple classrooms for him then he approached one of the guys we

got his information and you know at first we're the only ones in there and then they they have the meetings and they're

like well we need at least one more number so they bring someone else in and then that's where the relationship with your rep comes in because as soon as

that happened they went we don't have the same rep as the other company

but they still see it in the system so our rep called me right away and he's

like hey this is what's going on uh there's another company involved

you're the one that specked this material this is your new pricing yeah

getting protection is great that phenomenal

yeah and that's that's like um you know specifying work you know

specifying product um I think it comes invaluable to build

relationships because like your day in day out stuff that you buy from your

local distributor if they like dealing with you you you can ask for a better price and

you'll likely get it you know even if it's a dollar off a roller 50 cents off a roll of seam tape in your residential

carpet installer that adds up over the year and if you're constantly buying

things and and you're loyal to a given distributor and you built that

relationship and you go to them they're going to be very um encouraged to keep your business and

they like it so um yeah the competitive bit World you'd think like okay just cut your margin cut

your margin and I wanted to have discussion outside of just cutting your margin cutting your profit margin

the only time I would suggest doing that is if it's one of those jobs that are either

um kind of a resume job you know like I did this project and it

it comes with a lot of clout for doing it um or the project is so easy that the the it

makes sense that you can make the same type same amount of money in in the time frame

uh because it's such a simple project so meaning if the job if it using the earlier example of a

thousand square foot if it's all cut up and it takes you three days versus it's not cut up and it takes you one day

right right then those jobs you might be able to lower margin a little bit

because you're going to still get you're still going to make a close amount of money but only in one day and you

eliminate a lot of cost of uh management and such as well as if you're an installer you you can do another project

right you got two more days now so so John steyer says that uh making your

company seem a little selective and picky on projects gives you a leg up

potential clients you know let them know that they had to schedule with you because he's looking at like doctors and

other professionals sometimes you know it takes months in order to get in there to get an appointment so it's

make them want you more that's a good point and that does add on to like the

the creating a relationship right because the same way that uh a client uh don't want to work with you because

maybe they just don't like you um maybe you don't like your appearance your attitude the way you are the your

approach maybe they don't like you but you have the choice to not like a client as well and and sometimes

sometimes it's better that way if um if you don't like the client and it'd be if you don't like the crying

if something goes wrong on that project chances are you guys are not going to see eye to eye and there's going to be uh some kind of dispute right unless it

goes perfect so if you're getting bad vibes just just hey you know what I'm sorry I don't

think this project is for me um and there's nothing wrong with that either um and maybe they'll ask you why

we've had a couple clients that didn't like us at first or we didn't like them and we just found out that we didn't

like each other because we were we were pretty much the same person just uh different sides of the coin and oh

something's on fire um different sides of the coin

will we push through and we ended up being repeats on both sides the clients

uh and and uh they were hiring us and then they it would end up being good relationships still good relationships

yeah I think it's building it speaks to building relationships but I took it as like being exclusive which

to me kind of also um goes into the final point which is

building some type of a brand for yourself so many uh

installers look I I'm not huge on social media either but building some type of a

reputation or a brand about yourself even if it's outside of social media I

mean I do a ton of uh Consulting with Architects even uh General Contractors

about what the right flooring to put in a particular facility under a particular

use cases because I've got I've gotten the reputation of being a researcher and

having a ton of uh experience on flooring that performs well in different

aspects you know um I I've told the story and this is

probably the project this is really the project that led me to to understand the importance of this is we did a natural

stone a limestone in a class A office building with a ton of people in it uh

in the main lobby and the tile started to crack in different spots and

it's like the softest Stone you could put down in the main lobby of a really

busy busy building and it didn't crack all over but it just you know cracks

would come here and there and then it had some natural veining and different things going along with it the point being is really we should have

put porcelain tile that looked like that in the lobby and then they would have never had a problem and

um so just making sure you're putting the right product in the right spot but that came from a reputation that I had

built uh through the years of experience and as an installer you can get the reputation

of being like like we have guys that are just known for being very particular about how

things get done and they just won't vary from it and they typically have the the

best quality and so there's always a trade-off

uh they can kind of be um more demanding that that type of installer but I would

rather that than a guy that's easier to work with and doesn't have the level of quality

and execution we've we've been called crybabies a few times but

it's okay I'm with you yeah it's um it's okay but some people say crybabies I

like what you said is particular right and it's just um you know we've been down the road of failure

um doing it the way others have priced it out or wanted us to do it because they just have a lack of

lack of knowledge on certain things and and we didn't and we exercise that

muscle quite a bit and I know that they don't like to hear it from anybody right like sometimes we have to swallow that

that hard pill but I've heard it a hundred times like you guys and I'm like

you guys are you talking about flooring guys you guys always oh I'm

sorry we need Windows in a HVAC system running yeah [Laughter]

to be a certain temperature who thought

you know our best uh we've always had the client's best interest uh uh on the

Forefront of anything that we were doing and and not only that is right after the client's best interest is our

workmanship how long is this going to last is this there is this going to be a good investment for them how can I make

this a better investment for them and you know and and and maybe that's just the way we grew up you know growing up

with uh growing up trying to make you know toys from the dollar store last uh because

you you knew you couldn't go back and do it again uh makes you too well just care I mean

it's just caring about your client which goes all into this whole conversation

which is how do you win bids competitively and still stay profitable

well I'll tell you you're gonna take some jobs that are maybe less margin as

a installer or as a company but at the end of the day that cannot be your go-to

way of getting work it cannot always be we have to be the low bid if you have to

be low bid all the time you are just other the the market

like your competitors are setting your pricing that's how I look at it like yes

I'm not doing a very good job of building my reputation as a company or

building our brand out or uh making sure our quality is good if I always always

have to be low if that's the market if that's where you're at then you need to start looking

at some of these soft skills on how to improve your ability to ask for more

money and building relationships so you can ask your vendors to give less money and

and open up that gap between cost and and Revenue and in between there's your profit so

last I think it was last week I was at um an event uh at a local construction

company that the chamber put on and I'm a guy from a construction company we've never worked before and he actually

called me earlier today and that's kind of one of the conversations we had and he's like um

you know what are our strengths stuff like that and he was like what about multi-family I said man multi-family has

you know historically been a race to the bottom and he was like okay well you know what

where do you think that you know your pricing would be and I said I can't really say where my pricing would be because

on on something like that trying to win a bid because my price is my price regardless of where I'm in where I'm

going to be installing it so that pretty much puts me out of contention right away so I'm not going to lower my price

to try and win a project knowing that it's going to take just as much work as all these other ones and then he kind of

shifted the conversation and we started talking about health care and how

um I we know I started talking about resilience and the Flash moving stuff that we do and he's like so you guys are

in a pretty niche market then and so it was you know building it up to that

point to where we pretty much we know what we're worth

and we're not going to Veer away from that just to try and win a project with someone especially

with someone that we've never done business before yeah well I mean

the multi-family stuff um you know when installers will quit

installing lvt from I've heard prices from 45 cents to 55 cents for

multi-family stuff that's why we very rarely do it when we do it it's probably because I talked to the architect early

on and I specified the product if we get a multi-family build job other than that it's really or it's so

big in our area that it's only me and one other company that can actually pull

it off and so it's just me versus them but man I'll tell you what that

multi-family I I wish installers would just quit you know or start to help

companies raise the price on those things because they're so cheap I hate to see installers working their tail off

for 45 cents a foot when we were when we were subbing still that we'd get calls

all the time hey we got 10 000 square feet of LBT will you guys do it for this

much well send us the prints so we can look at them oh no we just want to know if you'll do this square footage for

this moment criteria or

or freaking you know right what's your problem can you send me your price sheet these

are the products yeah price sheets are another thing price sheets are another thing you know plug and go career here I

hope GoPro totally gets rid of like price sheets are are too standardized and they're it's

it's all I mean it works a little bit in residential but in commercial there's like it's if you if you'll install uh

something the same that's a eight foot by 200 foot Corridor has the price of a

kitchenette in a in a hotel that to me is insane

like I agree there should be different that's a different type of project and a

different cost model and if you understand your cost models and you put them together before you go to jobs you

know what you need to make you're just not going to make it on the kitchen mats you know not at the same price so

yeah that's that's funny just could you do ten thousand feet for a dollar a foot

yeah if it's one room and the slab's in great shape maybe you know or two bucks a foot

whatever the market calls for but well I don't want to um you know drag it on longer than it

needs to be because we have other episodes that deal with the specifics of estimating and bidding and kind of some

of this stuff but I just I think it's important to understand that you it's not a race to the bottom on your profit

margin you can still be competitively low and and make money but you better be

bringing in some of that work that Jose was talking about which is that negotiated work

um and then from an installer standpoint that's that looks like working with the

same company or with the same shop that treats you well pays you well and you

know you can keep working with them but then occasionally you got to go work maybe a little less rate elsewhere to

keep your days full the one thing that you know we didn't really talk about but that is worth mentioning is the fact

that you know you're not making anything sitting on your ass petting your dog so there's a there's a number that you got

that you're willing to do it for and um the key is to not always be in the

position to have to do it at that number right and that's kind of what John was

saying you know being able to to pick and choose which projects you actually want to do right especially if

you're subcontracting and they're like like I said hey will you do this for this much and

you don't always have to say yes you know yeah sometimes it's you'll make

more money not doing that job that's why I go that's one of the core

pieces of why go career exists you look at it you got the drawings you got the

costs everything or the pricings everything's there simply decline it if you don't want to

do it or negotiate the job and at the end of the day just doing it

like you said being a little bit more or like John said being a little more exclusive and a little more picky about

doing jobs that best suit and I would always encourage like pick the ones that best suit your skill set because then

You're Gonna Shine almost naturally

all right gentlemen well we have creeped up on an hour already um I will close this out with any final

Thoughts From You Mr Daniel kind of what we were saying man like I

always I always end like the post bids or anytime I go to talk to someone it's

always regardless of what happens information is you know always free if

you ever have any questions definitely feel free to give us a call and we've gotten you know some people that

actually really do call back and you just have to be that resource for them

um and they could come back in the future you know for future projects yeah relationships out loud projects

you might get another you know that project's gonna come and go but that relationship if you build it you're

going to have other opportunities that's great yes 100 how about you Jose final

thoughts sir um you know final thoughts and I'm going to go back to my roots uh this is

a shout out to Daddy's who to write on a labor-only basis

um do yourselves a favor uh take this the next 30 days to take one month uh it

doesn't have to be your busiest month and just start writing down the amount of money on stuff that that you're

buying and what you're using on a job um you know even if it's only a week whatever just just take a month break it

down per week find out what you what it costs you per week uh start looking at your rates and see how much money

um you're actually getting away or leaving on the table um because you don't have that calculated

um just do yourself a favor and this is a really simple thing to do just do yourself a favor get that number look at

your rates and and you'll start to see your breakdown um on profitability on the labor side

um that's just the best thing you can do with your labor only right now

agreed I I will add to that with my final thoughts of look at it as profit per effort

not always profit like on the on the other side I've had plenty

of guys give up awesome projects where they had made you know

because we know him we know what you know they've done work for before and the price per foot wasn't there but

the job layout and the material just the everything all the other intangibles were so perfect that they would have

made a real killing on it so look at the job uh compare your skills and look at

the profit per effort in a eight hour day or all bills paid can you make a lot

more money on a job that pays a little bit less on a from a square foot price

that's possible at the same time do the same when you're looking at the job this

goes both ways don't get yourself in your tit in a ringer by doing a bunch of little you know having some

pricing sheet that locks you into a price and then you're doing a bunch of 80 square foot kitchen that's in a hotel

for the same price that you did you know what I mean so look at it as profit per effort and at the end of the day kind of

like what Jose was uh aiming at there and I think he said it very well but

just to add to it is at the end of the day how much profit did you make like can you can you look

at that over the course 30 days and I think that'd be a great exercise and see

what you're actually profiting versus your true cost so yeah yeah

all right gentlemen as always I appreciate the the uh time you guys

spend here it's always enjoyable yeah I give a shout out to Dwayne I'm wearing my second favorite PF uh

Pruitt flooring I'm not sure that Kansas is right the last time I seen he was

over in Colorado installing some some stuff everywhere ain't nothing yeah nothing to

it but to prove it he should have put that on it he's gonna steal that from you or did

you is that his already no no I've been telling him back but I don't know when I came up with that probably we were at a

CFI event or something like that that's hilarious all right guys well

thank you guys so much and we will chat with you a little bit later all right take it easy next week bye everyone bye