The guys will be starting a 3-part series on the key things you need to address when you are starting your commercial flooring company. Starting with part one, where they will discuss all things contracts, common pitfalls, and how to avoid or solve them.

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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

family welcome to the huddle

with me as always Daniel and uh Jose Gonzalez from preferred flooring up in

Michigan Grand Rapids to be specific so kids we're here every Tuesday 3 P.M

Central to discuss maintaining forward progress in your flooring career we are starting today off uh a

three-part series built around uh commercial construction contracts as

it applies to the flooring contractor um so the title is so you want to be a

flooring contractor I've had some some people reach out to me on Facebook about helping them in this regard like uh

bidding practices and and uh you know how to read contracts all this kind of

thing we just had someone in here what was that yesterday yesterday uh the guys

we partnered with epoxy and they're you know there's like how do we even start

something like this like where do you even start so I would recommend that anybody with that question start with

going through the Huddle and reading our watching the estimating practices and

bidding practices uh huddles those were incredibly good we had some special

guests on that that uh for quantify uh we've had

some uh we had a lot of deep very detailed information in those in those

podcasts so I would recommend that and then watch this three-part series and you'll be well ahead you'll get a lot of

information that'll help you um you know become

a material and labor provider should you choose to do so and

um I'll caution on a few things it's it's very it's it's a difficult business

because of cash flow uh typically a lot of the contracts only

um you're only allowed to Bill once a month and I'll get into some of that but uh

without further Ado gentlemen um you know how'd the week go after you

know since the last podcast we hadn't hadn't talked in between so it's just

because everybody's busy right now busy we're I'm actually had a meeting today with the church

trying to finalize the contract and everything and it's hard when you get the volunteer

designers involved that everyone has an opinion and no one can

make a decision you have church boards um school boards anybody that was the

other one I am also dealing with the school right now the principal approved everything got the superintendent to

sign off and then he quit

start today off with some common contract pitfalls so you bid the job

you've watched previous huddle episodes and you learned how to properly estimate projects you've learned how to send in a

good bid now you have a contract what's it all mean

so um if you guys don't mind kind of uh

maybe hitting on one thing that I didn't have on my list which is how do how do

your guys well let me clarify one thing you have contracts that you generate and

you give to somebody so for example I think preferred it was just referencing you probably are giving a contract to

the church correct correct yep and then you have contracts that come to you from

General Contractors so you have work that you may do direct with some businesses that you're going to generate

a contract and that'll be in a a future episode

but this is in particular in regards to when you receive a contract from a GC to

do uh the flooring portion of their construction project uh

in your guys's experience what is the um standard paid time that you guys have

experienced like just historically you're you're looking at 60 days ish so

pretty standard like you said you can only bail once a month right so typically people are there they're like

your bills have to be turned in by the 25th on an AIA which we talked about

last time so those episodes I'm telling you if you have questions We have basically told

you guys how to build a company in 55 you know probably eight out of the 55

episodes is specifically about how to build a commercial flooring company or a

residential flooring company for that matter if you choose so the they wanted the bills by the 25th

for that to go in the building and then hopefully get paid by the next 25th if

everything goes well but typically I I always do two months out you can't

Bank yeah it is well we we consider like a good payer 45

days you know you get 60s you got 90s we got

120s I mean this is not a business for the faint of heart I want to be clear

about that so that's why I'm kind of starting it off this way just so you understand you you have to have some

either either have cash and I've talked about this in previous episodes either have to have a good amount of cash or

you need to have a good banking relationship that you can tap into a line of credit when you need to because

if you have to build like Daniel was just talking on the 25th well then

they don't turn their bill in they have seven days to assemble their bill to the owner and so then seven days

later they turn in their bill so now you're at like the fifth or so of the next month

depending on what month uh how many days during that month but let's say it goes to the owner on the fifth then the owner

has 30 days to pay them so that puts it on the fifth of the next month if the owner pays on time this is assuming

everybody pays on time so then the owner pays them on the fifth of the next month and then they have seven days and I know

that this statute is different by state but in Kansas they have seven legally they have to pay you within seven days

of receiving payment from the owner so another seven days means it's a 12th

maybe the 15th will you build the 25th that's 45 days if everything works great

so um just keep that in mind as we get into some of this but uh okay so you've got a

contract there's some common pitfalls and contracts are very complicated so I

would very much encourage you to get an attorney to look at your contracts until your very first at doing them yourself

this is for educational purposes but not Financial advice or telling you exactly

how to deal with your contracts we're giving you some pitfalls and some known uh experiences but this is not in

replacement of you getting legal advice so talk to your attorney find a good

contract attorney not not just any family law attorney or something or your

uncle that practices traffic loans get a construction attorney that is very

aversed in construction contracts okay so some of the common pitfalls

um that you'll run across is and one of the early early paragraphs in those

contracts is default so default is when you don't uphold your

side of the bargain and the contractor has you know some tools at his disposal or

at their disposal rather um and it's usually listed in the contract with their tools are but 90 of

them the tools are they can put you on notice and when they put you on notice you have a certain

period of time to uh resolve the situation that got you put on notice in

the first place maybe your materials didn't show up or your your short labor whatever the problem

you have a certain period of time now that period of time used to be like

seven to ten days it's now on most construction contracts that I've read two to three days uh-oh we got the

expert in the house [Music] so what do you guys

um what are you guys seeing on default from a day's perspective as far as the response you know it's kind of hard

because we haven't really put ourselves in that position yet so yeah it's hard to say how they would act

and how other specific contractors would react um were

usually pretty people in the in the contracts it's typically seven days still for us okay

and then depending on the relationship you have with that that contractor it's like uh

hey man I'm not gonna get there within the seven days but I'll be there on this day and they're like totally fine as

long as you're in here there it's yeah so build those relationships and watch those huddles about building

relationships because it'll get you out of some trouble right we're getting close to being put on notices

yeah what helps with that is is when the first one comes up and there is an issue and you can do it within the first one

or two days then the next time they're like oh you're not going to be here until day eight no problem yeah just get

here we haven't we haven't been hit with that with that strong pimp hand yet uh of

utilizing some of the legalities they have at their favor based off their contract so but a lot of the times we're

punching out our own stuff as we go anyways we just did uh our local chamber and the only thing on the flooring punch

list was a piece of Base that the door guys messed up

when you walk away with the low punch list congratulations the crew did it the

crew did all that so a lot of the times in this you know three to seven day period they're

expecting you to give them a plan on how to get back on track in writing

um so one of the things is you can negotiate that if it says two to three days

you know try to get that to seven days so you have a little bit more time so it's a

pitfall at two days it's hard to turn things around in two days sometimes on a big construction project and

again it still boils down to good relationships

um we've gotten probably a handful of letters over the last 20 years where we were not performing the way the

contractor wanted us to and that could be I won't get into it sometimes it's like lack of

understanding on how much can be done in a given day and they didn't have their

durations right uh you know expecting 2 000 feet of ceramic tile to be installed

in a day or something uh yeah to the fact that you know sometimes we have not

been able to perform to the uh perfect level um I own that when that happens but we

turn them around the key here is from a contract perspective trying to

negotiate you know five days or something um so that's a default uh quick other uh

termination of the contract is a a possibility they can supplement you and

charge you whatever the cost is for bringing in another flooring company to supplement you

he's gonna jump on on his phone he's gotta take off you know I just realized I had a time uh overlap so I got to go

fair enough we'll catch you on the mobile uh but

so terminate they can they can supplement you and then charge you the different the whatever the other

flooring company charges now that is most GCS do not want to do that that's a

lot of extra paperwork if you'll remember one thing make their life easy like easier the better the

experience for your your contractor you keep it as simple as possible and as

easy as possible they don't like problems so they don't want to be hunting down another flooring company to

come supplement you your best bet is to you know make the uh proper adjustments

and do the best you can in getting their project back up to uh what they feel is

a a good State um the other thing they can do is just

determinate your contract and hire somebody else and then you're on the hook for whatever they pay so if you got

a fifty thousand dollar contract and you've done you've got all the materials and you've done 10 of the labor well

you've incurred probably 70 75 of the cost and then they're going to hire somebody

in to come and do the Labor uh you know your competitor is not going to do you

any favors and they're in charge of whatever they want yep they'll charge whatever they want now

quick pro quo make sure that your GC knows uh that you expect to have daily reports

on the hours the time the cost of that that supplementation or that uh you know

termination and then what they're going to be charging you but best bet don't get in that position

so and then they have termination uh for convenience in a lot of contracts and

that's just maybe the owner just changes his mind mid Midway and shuts the

project down legally they got to pay you cost to that date but they don't owe you any of the profit under those

circumstances so if you have 50 000 in cost they're legally on the hook for that 50 000 but not your profit you're

going to lose that more than likely most courts have upheld that as well so we

haven't gotten in that position but uh these these this is just knowledge over 20 years we've been supplemented one

time in 20 21 22 years or whatever it's been so [Music]

um those are the termination those are the scary things a lot of this is uh

kind of maybe a little bit scary but it's just the fact so that's what the

purpose of this podcast is kind of give you some information and education like you said you've been through it one time

in 20 some years but that information just knowing that it could happen like hey I remember they said something about

this let me give Paul a call and see what I should do real quick yep

um and and playing off of the payment that we've just talked about when Daniel was talking about paying on the 25th and

we went through the time frame there uh another key metric and I've talked about

this in previous podcasts as well but one thing you want to remember is if you cannot build till the 25th and your net

30 with all your vendors try not to have your materials come in on the first

because you're going to hold that receivable now it's going to be almost due before you can even bill for it

so try to have your materials land at your Warehouse or be billed

close to the time that you're going to be able to build that way you're not out that cash for as long a time just a

little nugget or you can get insurance and send pictures and Bill for all the material while it's sitting in your

Warehouse too well you can do that but if you're not able to build until the 25th still that's true and your

materials come in on the fifth you're holding that receivable for 20 days so

you only have 10 days left to pay when you when you just bill it so it's a cash

flow thing try to get your materials come in most contracts will allow you to bill for stored materials as long as you

have the proper insurance and like Daniel just said you can provide pictures

uh okay another thing on my list was um liquidated damages I don't know if I

mentioned that but those are just verify that your contractor is

going to incur liquidated damages liquidative damages by definition is a

dollar figure predetermined dollar figure meant to give back to the owner for lost

um lost profit for not being able to be in business so if you're doing a law firm and they're not able to move in on

the data that they're supposed to and they figure they're gonna lose you know five thousand dollars a day in profit

they uh will predetermine what the per day liquidated damage is these are not

meant to be penalties for non-performance most contracts will

like if you read the AIA contract the standard contract uh that all other

contracts basically derive from uh they're not meant to punish you

so make sure they're your GC is incurring those damages if they're in

your contract because otherwise the GC can charge you for them but he's not paying them so it's more of a penalty so

just a quick pro quo there right typically with flooring we're the last ones in there so

we're on the hook for that almost every time if you're not trying to stay ahead of it that is one hell of a good point

sir the fact is is because we're supposed to be last uh we're not always but we're pretty near the end of the

project and the time crunch on Florian contractors and painting The Finnish

people is waiting for stressful than being a concrete contractor at the

beginning of the project or uh uh you know earthwork company or a still erector or something of that nature uh

it's so early on the project the pressure is not as crazy as us finish

guys so that that's uh there's good and bad about both sides of

that right because that they'll steal most times everyone that starts in the

beginning their warranty doesn't start until everything is completed at least we're out in the end of that so that way

our warranty starts almost as soon as we finish the job yeah that's a good point too uh so your one year warranty that

Daniel just spoke about most contracts I think pretty nearly every contract's

gonna say one year workmanship warranty if you that starts on substantial

completion the contractor and the owner agree on the substantial completion date

so it's usually like Daniel said one of the benefits of being near the end is your one-year warranty starts pretty

close to when you finish the job compared to say somebody who was early on in the project

their one-year warranty still is not going to start until substantial completion which could be four five six

months after they're done and off the job yeah we have one at a hospital right now

where they're still not done and we've done you know multiple different phases and

it's been over I think it's been almost a year since we've actually even been in there

yeah I've got some Hospital work like that too where uh we did the last phase

is not even near a year old but the first phase is two and a half years old and we still have to go back and fix

stuff on warranty there if it comes up now luckily we did a really good job I

haven't had to do that more than maybe a couple of times and it's a large project so it's been it's been pretty

good I wonder if there's a way to to put in literature uh to protect against that if

it is phased out you can ask uh

yeah we did ask uh on a contract that per phase per major phase if you have major

phases uh I think you can maybe get it through I asked and it goes from phase

one two three just like it just flows across the building um and they rejected that request

so um don't know if you don't ask but yeah ask a lot of this stuff is just exactly

that trying to get the best deal for your company a contract before you sign it is just a negotiation

so negotiated um you know and obviously working with good

companies that you've got a good relationship with is is Paramount but a

lot of times when you start out you get you guys may not have those strong relationships yet and you have to

live by the letter of the law which is your contract

um we talked about the the payment dates and everything and that goes to pay when paid most contracts uh are paying when

paid meaning the contractor is not actually on the hook to pay you it's the

owner that's on the hook and the contractor is there to uh pass through

the money as they receive it and they get a fee on that money so most uh most

contracts are pay when paid some areas of the country are paid if paid I would

encourage you to fight that better that totally takes hold risk off of the

DC to pay you and um so I would there there get with your

attorney on that but um I've heard that and we're going to start fighting the pay of pay or pay

when paid thing and start to put some more terms in or try to get some money

down I've been when we were labor only we got caught in one of those where one

of the biggest construction companies over here went bankrupt and it was their

one of their last projects on a building downtown and there was extensive prep

work and everyone's like yeah here we're signing this we're signing that you know additional stuff and then once it came

down to it uh even the people that we were doing work for the flooring store was like oh

yeah we didn't get paid for this so we're not going to pay you and it's like that's not my contract that's your contract

yeah we take care of our labor still we're the ones that are on the hook and really

that's how you got to be as a good flooring contractor in my opinion uh most of your

subs are not in the position to be in this pay of paid pay when paid kind of

world you sign the contract you agreed to the terms unless you're letting all your subs read

the contract and sign a contract that is identical to yours you can't you know I

think it'd be kind of shitty for lack of a better word to then try to hold them to a contract that you agreed

to that they may not have right um that is correct I mean uh man like

how many lay it from a labor only perspective I wonder how many people actually

understand that there is a master contractor which uh someone has to abide by and how many of the original Master

contracts do uh the contractors let us really see

this before they edit and make it their own um well the AI contract is the kind of the

one that most other contracts came from so getting

that and that's public and all I mean you can get an AIA contract by from Google right a lot of your DCS will

still use the AIA contracts and there's some stuff in there that's not great for the subs uh for the subcontractor like

the flooring company uh but read through that that'll kind of give you a baseline understanding of how most contracts read

um okay so that's pay when paid payoff paid stuff accepting uh okay so the retainage do

you guys ever negotiate your retainage amount so a lot of the times no

well a lot of the guys that he deals with we actually don't pay any retainage so that's great the guys that I deal

with um are the same people that I see in like chamber meetings and stuff like that so

I'm constantly in those meetings they're like what can we do to get the smaller guys you know a better chance it's one

Breakout the bids more right and then number two is work on retainage and then

uh it was crazy because the first couple jobs that we did for some of the bigger guys uh they had retainage in there at

10 and before I even asked they were like you guys are locked in at five

that's awesome that's because Daniel went in there with donuts helped them out brought him

breakfast and lunch so so bribe them with food it's not

bribing not brownies yeah yeah yeah

um the point is is that most contracts come across at 10 and you can negotiate it

down we've been successful in getting a lot of those negotiated down to five percent

so a lot of it has to do with your past work performance so you may have to be

Crow for a little bit and accept 10 but it still never hurts to ask it to be

lowered to five but once you get a good reputation with the GC most of the time they'll lower it to five if you ask them

and some of them have just done it yeah and one of the contracts that um

and one of the projects we just finished they actually had it so it's 10 up until you hit 50 of the project and then you

can ask to be lower to five yeah and I've also Progressive yeah I've also seen it where when you're

50 they pay you 50 of your your retainage I don't know if that math works out the same but

um point is is retaining just somewhat negotiable if you just ask and that's something that you have to

realize too like as a Commercial contractor it's yeah you're sending out

all these bills but sometimes this retainage takes a while like you're looking for a huge chunk of

money for longer than you would like and in some cases that could be some of some of your

your profit margin too right or the majority of it because you had to go so tight just to be

relevant on that that bitter that big Market um and it does take a while and it

don't I'm pretty sure that at some point Daniel doesn't look at each other like man do we really want to do this is this

something like we have to build something up we have to be comfortable we find a way to be comfortable um

just meet people like like Paul who help you out and give you advice or they're

like we didn't have we didn't have the Huddle um obviously when when we were starting so there was no information and nobody

talking about it and it was one of those things where you ask but nobody wanted to share information

because everybody wanted to keep it to themselves uh so it's just I do like that Daniel I

do hear him on the phone um talking about the job and negotiating some of the contract well hey this says

this this is this well I could do this but what about this like if we can trade this off that that would help us out too

and it's never any argument I don't ever hear any argument from that guy um from the other side of the line

anyway otherwise Daniel would go I don't want to talk to you anymore but uh

well no yeah be willing to negotiate and a quick uh

comment on retainage our 45 and 60 day comments does not apply to retainage

that I've had that run a year and it gets ridiculous

so just be prepared that your retainage can be held for a long time

um and sometimes not even because of you um we've had jobs where our retained

interests held under no fault of our own for a longer period of time because maybe the electrician put the wall wrong

wall sconces in and the The Replacements aren't coming for three months and

the owners holding all the retainage uh until those are done so it doesn't

always reflect on you but you're still being held as part of the contract team

the overall construction team um so that's a retainage

the last thing I have which I think is important is sometimes you'll get a contract that doesn't have any scope to

it it doesn't say what the contract amount is for um if you're bidding what we call hard

bid jobs I'm not sure what you guys call it but this jobs that are on the street that you're going to compete with it's

open bid it's the open bid Market where Indy flooring company can throw a number

at it we still bid a fair amount of that work we like to negotiated more

obviously but those open jobs uh we still do bid

and a lot of those contracts will come across and say you know scope of work

per uh zero nine six eight oh carpeting specification and they'll list out the

specs and the drawings and that's it I still would ask for a scope and

um if you're doing a job with a a more of a negotiated job then you definitely

want a scope you know furnish and install carpet tile transitions you know

and accessories and like because what they try to do is

and this is what the key is you need to have a scope because your

respect may say something about protection of floors for example but we exclude protection of floors on our on

our bids because we can't be the sheriffs of the project and I explained

that to the GDC I'm like if anybody has the power to keep people off of our floor or be careful on the floor too

because if you put me in charge of protection then I have to replace any damage that

happens um well then I don't want any output protection down but I don't you're not

going to have ladders you're not going to have lifts you're not going to have this that the other like and they don't want me being the sheriff

of their job so we just exclude protection if they just list your spec

and the like the drawings or the the bid documents on without a full scope well

you're agreeing to that if you sign and you don't have your exclusions listed so

I always ask for a scope uh exhibit that says what they want me to provide and

recognize my exclusions leveling you know skim coding unless otherwise listed

on the bid we exclude skin coding additional floor prep leveling filling

all that kind of stuff you don't know what you may or may not have to do until you get to the job and review the slab

and it could be a brand new piece of concrete I got into a long discussion with a good friend of mine a friend of

mine in that's also the president of a pretty good size construction firm any

he got a seven thousand dollar change order from us now we haven't we hadn't done the work there's another uh

nugget for you don't do that you get a change order guys uh but we submitted a

change order request or PCO as we call them potential change order he calls me says there's no way

it's that bad this is brand new concrete this is bad this is the other and I'm like have you been to the site

no will you go look at it and then then call me right right he calls me back

he's like oh my God I can't believe that got by uh

you know that they let their their concrete contractor get away with what they got away with and you know we

obviously ended up getting that change order performing the work and taking care of the client giving them a great

floor but if if I just sign a document that has all the floor prep uh needed to

perform the the material that's in the spec you know specs read very vaguely

that way well I'm agreeing to to all this floor prep that may be there

um so and there's other there's protections within the spec that's in your favor but I'm just saying the key

here is to understand that if you have a full scope that you can Mark out say protection of floors you know uh we've

had it like stripping and waxing at the end I'm like that's uh some spinal cleaning we exclude final cleaning well

you know those kinds of things yeah we do the same thing and when I

do come across someone that's like nope we still want you to include floor protection and it's like all right well

I'm gonna break it out then because I'm not going to include it in my main bed I know no one else is going to yeah yeah

if you're if we're asked to provide for protection we break it out and

we just we're just not cheap with it because we're going to use good quality uh protection materials

because really when you are in charge of protecting the floor you're also accepting the risk of having to replace

because somebody damages it so somebody stole their water on the red rosin paper

that someone else covered it with and it stains your your flooring and

yeah we learned that one through someone else not through us but yeah like Ram

board's great for scratches and stuff but you know it's not going to displace weight so if

they're gonna drive a 5 000 pound lift on your tile floor seven days after it's installed

without putting half inch plywood down uh you know what I mean so we just try

to stay away from protecting the floors and only doing it when we absolutely are

required to do it but that's some of the uh broad overview

broad Strokes of likes and pitfalls that these construction contracts that will

be given to you uh may have in them thought you guys uh have any others that

come to mind uh that you've seen over over the course of time here for you

I think we've actually been pretty lucky so far to where some of the companies either just use what we send them and

sign it and send it back or um I've seen like even some of the bigger companies

over here they'll actually do their contract and then right at the very end they'll have all of our stuff in there

too so that way there's no question this is included in there yeah I like it when they had my fear

there's an exhibit right yeah I love it when they do that it doesn't happen with the really big companies around here

anyway they don't do that but some of your mid-sized gc's that 50 to 80

million dollar contractor they'll just add your your bid as an exhibit I love

that because it's like this is now part of the contract right there's no question it's in there like

it's written in stone yeah yeah I I'm glad you brought that up I

when that does happen you know brings up a question I haven't asked for

that to happen very uh to be honest it just either happens or it doesn't I I hadn't asked for that to be added as an

exhibit just just gotta I'll I'll report back and let you know how that goes I'm

gonna start asking uh for our bid to be added as an exhibit to the contract

you know what that's actually a good idea that we've never I don't think we've ever actually just been there

we're like oh that's pretty cool now there is no there is no um they cannot argue that there is a hidden

agenda or the information was left out because especially when our group we're pretty specific but Connecticut

um pretty specific as to what and going back to the scope too right

because on one of the projects they were that we were on and I think I brought it up before it's in the scope it said

spec new carpet throughout what does that mean that means I'm specking a new

carpet and then they came back with I don't understand and how would you you would interpret it like that I said read

it out loud this is he's not conversating with the

architect you guys like this guy's like you guys won the proposal

and then he just said when Daniel said that I was in the office and I was like

covered nothing like what was their uh intent because he said why would you why

would you expect a new carpet I said because it says right in there to spec new carpet

because they want at first they were just gonna do an expansion and just do new flooring in the expansion and then

one of the alternates was spec new carpet for replacement throughout the entire building so I was like I can save

him a bunch of money if I just packed this new carpet

they went with the other manufacturer anyways and ended up being like

twenty thousand dollars more so I tried but he he did I think after I

told him read it out loud and tell me how you don't understand how why I did that and after I said that he was like

I'll call you back gentlemen

yeah sorry about that I do got to tempted my son though he was my warehouse guy today did some some

inventory for me so I appreciate that but now I gotta get him ready to rock awesome

good luck brother thank you friends we got someone better anyways there we go way better

so what I'm still curious what was the architect's intent in that sentence

they never said anything they just came back with uh okay just give us a price for the other

carpet all right that's that's crazy yeah so when you are biddy and again go

back to the bidding and and uh estimating that's the big thing is read

and understand what is going on right because if you're not reading that spec if I wouldn't have read that and I would

have just if I would have just did the that same carpet I probably would have

lost a bid right off the bat anyways because I know a lot of other people read it the same exact way I did

yeah yeah reading those your specs and reading through your construction

documents we did a whole thing on estimating and and bidding practices two

separate episodes so I won't get into it now go back and read those

um or watch those episodes but once you get a contract the whole purpose is then

whatever you sent them into a bid so they sent you a bid or you sent them a

bid for um you know carpeting at a hundred thousand bucks

if you're reading the the

if you're if your proposal States a certain carpet for example and then

later in the contract they have a different carpet than what was on your bid form it's funny how they get the

dollar a figure right right some of the other uh particulars on how you came to

that dollar figure on your bid wasn't included in the contract so and not only that look at all the figures too because

I've had some contracts come back where it's like these numbers do not add up so

yep I've had plenty of contracts come across that did not have the right dollar figure on

and oh we forgot this uh one of the most common is they'll act they'll say an

alternates accepted but they won't even have they didn't have the alternate dollar figure on there

um we've had that happen it's a simple phone call but you must read your contracts and understand what

you're you're signing on the line for and there's legal ramifications so again

get a construction attorney to review your contracts I would encourage you to

review them with them uh so that you can learn because once you have the

knowledge you can read the contracts on your own right and give yourself a few hundred bucks

and don't be shy to give people a call and ask questions and stuff like that because I know like Millennials and

younger we were like text me right or email why are you calling me but a lot

of it can be done a lot faster when it's over the phone follow-up email just

saying what you just talked about because you can email back and forth for days and no one understands what the

hell is going on yeah yeah so pick up that phone and make a make a you know

make a phone make a better contract for yourself I mean you can work through a lot of those issues

that that uh may come up the bottom line is this you bid the job under a certain

understanding you portray that on your bid form as best as you can

possibly do and then you need to make sure your contract matches that

all the assumptions and all the work that you put into putting that beta

um you don't want to be signing the contract that that has stuff in it that you did not figure and you also you know

some of these pitfalls we talked about in this is like you know if you can negotiate better terms you should try

um that that's the overlying thing and I think what you can see here from what

Daniel and Hosea both said as well as myself in this podcast is that you can a lot of times it works

sometimes it doesn't but you will never know if you don't ask and then there are some things that you just can't agree to

I mean how are you going to protect a hundred thousand for the flooring for free right and make any money you're going to be out of business in no time

so uh you know if you didn't figure floor protection Redline that on the contract send it

back to them initialed uh next to your red line and they a lot of times will

agree to your markups or your changes so don't be scared to another time saving

uh mechanism is say you get a DocuSign contract print that sucker off make your

markups email it to the PM that sent it to you and say Here's my markups can you please uh consider these as uh and and

rewrite the contract and most of the time it happens as long as it's not something ridiculous or a big contention

piece so that that's my

47 minute uh 47 minute uh contract uh

um Pitfall explanation and deep dive yeah and a lot of it it's it's easy to

hear us talking about it but until you're like in the thick of it you won't know until you have that

contract in front of you and you're reading over you know 15 pages and making sure that everything is is

aligning with what you submitted yeah yeah and and so if you're watching

this on YouTube or or one of the social networks like it comment you know subscribe to

our YouTube channel um I say that to also say if you have a if you get into a contract

situation or you you get a contract you don't know refer back to this podcast watch it

see if if we addressed it otherwise reach out to us uh we can give you some

surface level advice but again I don't want to replace an attorney or act like I'm an attorney I know neither does

Daniel or Jose so we're not giving you legal advice we're just giving you our experience and clearly telling you to

get a construction attorney to look at your contracts until you feel comfortable reading them on your own

right Eduardo uh did say that he had a question about go Carrera but I think he

might have jumped off already oh gotcha happy to answer let me see if

he texted me because I texted him no he might he might have got busy well

tell him to email me and I will give him a call

all right well any closing thoughts there Mr Daniel

it is scary when you start getting into all this stuff but like I said you're not gonna know until you start doing it

so a lot of uh being an entrepreneur is pretty much

taking the dive and and hope you land good right

take the risks um I would say a lot of this is sold by a good performance

so making sure you are you know taking care to have the best installers on your

team you know I will plug gokara get into go career and you know

preferred is to go for our company uh I will say we're getting ready to start building uh as gopher building the

network out around them um you know once the company is is live on go career we come to your area and

build the installer Network around you and give you the metrics through the hammer rating and

um and uh past performance and things like that so you know who you're dealing with

right and the the guys the guys that we have signed up um one of them is really technology illiterate

so I've been had to you know walk his hand you know hold his hand through this situation and sign up and everything but

once he got that through his his first project he was like this is actually kind of nice man

yeah and then the next time I just threw a job on there and he accepted it right away it's like yeah this is what can

happen when when you build something like this it's it's not me calling hey what's going on it's me throwing it up

there you telling me when you can do it and then I'll schedule it yeah I will uh I'm gonna read you

um I got a testimonial just the other day sent to me

and this is a flooring installer out of Kansas City

it says finally someone who brought the flooring installation industry out of the Stone Age

like you know exclamation point uh points thank you go Carrera go Carrera

is frankly the easiest and best way I've ever used to find flooring jobs no matter where in the country I might be

there's a chance that I can pop open the app and find a project

now he works mainly in the Midwest and we're really strong here so he has a really good experience in doing that

um negotiate I can find jobs bid jobs negotiate the money or the schedule the

change orders are easy it's organized communication between the installer

the uh the installer provider and the customer and the flooring company all on

one app and then I mentioned getting paid as fast this is the only flooring app I will use again thank you thank all

of you at go career for dragging this side of the of my industry out of the Pony Express era so you know sometimes

it's hard to get going because look we're asking for a lot of data we're trying to really verify uh that the

installer is who he says he is and that can take time and it can be a little bit

difficult we need to have documentation on on file for the companies who are

going to hire you to uh you know know your company know you're covered on insurance

um those kinds of things but once you get to using it it is very intuitive and

easy and um we're adding companies uh we're adding installers at a very good

rate it depends on the metropolitan area we're targeting but even in small metros

we're getting five to eight new installers on a daily basis and those

turn into full profile probably two out of those uh you know I'd say probably

five or eight in a whole week uh so maybe 10 of those turn into 10 15

percent of those turn into full profiles on the application so um yeah anyway that's a quick go career

plug but the point there is know who you're dealing with try to try to do good quality work communicate

well with your installer subs and your employee installers and then communicate

with your GDC well all those things will help a lot and all these things are

really all these contract things we talked about are really just if something goes wrong

then this is their recourse your job is to try to keep it from going wrong so

address the things that will um put you in a bad position

negotiate it but also your performance is your number one defense so

and doing work with good companies check out the GC firm too

um make sure that you check other call other subs well it doesn't matter you

call electrical subs and drywallers and Painters and ask them uh if they've

worked for that that GC firm before and make sure that they're a good company right so doing doing work with good

companies and then uh performing well take away most of your headaches right and one more uh plug before we take off

from here is uh you guys are still giving away the the yeti tumbler right yes we still have

Yeti tumblers to get away on uh anybody who reaches a thousand dollars on Direct

invoicing so you can invoice anybody through that um through that uh part of the

application just go to invoicing and toggle over to direct invoices and you

can build and and gain for uh redoing the carpet in our basement from that to

to you know if you're doing a little side construction project and doing a little remodel or whatever uh you can

get paid right through the uh app and you can accept credit cards and it's it's helped a lot of Crews that

had to turn down work because the customer wanted to pay by credit card and they wanted to get paid Checker cash

uh because they didn't have a way to accept credit cards all you got to do is be a GoPro uh member credit cards right

and that's the other thing too is I hear a lot of people complaining it's like I don't want to accept credit card because

they charge me you know this much percentage while you just build that into your price and that's all you got

like how do you think why do you think we accept credit cards because if if I'm pricing everything like I am

accepting a credit card then when someone does pay with a credit card it's already covered and if they do pay by

check it's just that extra percentage that goes in my pocket in case anything happens later yeah you should figure as

uh kicker just like you said that you're gonna accept credit card figure the four

percent fee and just have it as part of your build uh it most

time is not going to kick you out of winning the project especially if you're good at what you do but it just gives

you another way uh and separate you from other installers that simply cannot accept credit cards I mean getting a

merchant account outside go career is not the easiest thing in the world uh it is easy to get if you're a GoPro member

though a good career uh you know Network installer so all right last plug is fcicas and uh CFI

conventions coming up very quickly it's in the end of September what is it 27th through the

31st or something like that uh I hope you guys can join us there uh it's gonna

be a blast and uh well I I don't know if we're going to be there during a Tuesday

but if we are we'll be shooting the podcast live on location again we've done that a few times but um make sure

to get to that one if you can get to any conference I've been to the fcica's I

don't know for five years and same with CFI and they've always been separated

and I think they'll continue to have some of their own conventions but this one is a joint convention between the

two entities and I I can't imagine it not being fantastic so

get to Orlando it's an awesome hotel right right yeah it is it's beautiful

beautiful hotel and they have some really good drinks at the pool bar when

uh closes down there you go good drinks and

then I will give you a cautionary note I've seen an alligator once when I was going for a run that's why I don't run see

safety man all right my brother well thanks for joining that's going to end our episode

of uh the Huddle and uh next week we'll be talking more contract

um you know uh particular so join us next Tuesday at three o'clock and until

then we're out all right see you guys later