The Small Business Safari
Have you ever sat there and wondered "What am I doing here stuck in the concrete zoo of the corporate world?" Are you itching to get out? Chris Lalomia and his co-host Alan Wyatt traverse the jungle of entrepreneurship. Together they share their stories and help you explore the wild world of SCALING your business. With many years of owning their own small businesses, they love to give insight to the aspiring entrepreneur. So, are you ready to make the jump?
The Small Business Safari
Building Systems that Actually Work in Construction | Eric Fortenberry
In this episode, Eric Fortenberry takes us through his unique journey—from software entrepreneur, to running a construction company, to discovering firsthand the operational flaws that hold businesses back. What started as troubleshooting for his own company turned into the creation of JobTread, a platform designed to solve the biggest pain points in the construction industry.
Gold Nuggets from Eric’s journey:
- Working on Estimating First to get the profit built into the Job Upfront
- Building documentation systems that clearly define project scopes and make change orders simple and enforceable
- Fixing the “shopping and shit” TIME WASTER by moving crews from hourly pay to fixed-price work
- Driving a business turnaround from $5M to $8M in revenue with a 43% jump in gross profit in just one year
- Scaling JobTread from 200 customers in 2021 to more than 7,500 today (adding 500+ new accounts monthly)
- Structured onboarding, training programs to ensure customer success
Eric shares powerful insights that every business owner can use to tighten operations, boost profits, and scale with confidence.
Visit jobtread.com to learn more or schedule a demo. Eric is also active in the JobTread Pros Facebook group with over 7,000 members and can be reached directly at eric@jobtread.com.
https://www.youtube.com/JobTread
https://www.facebook.com/JobTread/
https://www.instagram.com/jobtread
https://www.linkedin.com/company/jobtread/
https://x.com/JobTread
So, like I kid you, not like my favorite store here? So have you all seen Undercover Boss? Yeah, yeah. So I'm like all right, I'm going to play Undercover Boss here and I start showing up at the job sites, you know, trying to just see like what is going on, right, like so I show up at this one job site. I'm there at like 8 am and I expect the guys to already be there. Be there right at. You know they don't show up to around nine, you know.
Speaker 2:so, yeah, hang on so, uh, this is software boy trying to get into construction world, chris in the construction world. So you already just heard. Yeah, I got there at eight. Well, hi, you're in texas, it gets, it's like 125 degrees with 3 000 humidity in the sun, and you guys don't get started till. What was that number?
Speaker 1:eight nine, well, you didn't get there from nine, that's even better. We typically started at 6 am. That's why I was surprised to find that the crews weren't already there. I was sort of expecting to roll up secretly but nobody's there.
Speaker 2:You mean, they just don't show up when they're supposed to. Oh shit, my God, how did that happen?
Speaker 3:Did you create a program to fix that we? How did that happen? Did you create a program to fix that we did Really.
Speaker 1:So what I found out, though, is they went to Home Depot to go shop for all the materials. So I'm going to own this one, Actually.
Speaker 2:I call that the shopping shit trip. They shop and take a shit and grab a coffee. Then they show up. Do they have the coffee first, though no, actually the way it rolls. Then they show up. Do they have the coffee first, though no, actually the way it rolls. They walk in. And if you try to go to a depot here in Atlanta in the morning and try to go into the 8th stall bathroom, there's a line, son, there's a line I had no idea you try to go to the coffee.
Speaker 3:I was going to the bathroom.
Speaker 2:If you try to go to the pro desk and get a coffee at eight 30, the coffee's out. Wow, they're making a new pot. So, eric, I love this because welcome to the shit world that we decided to get into. So and you're helping us fix it, I love it.
Speaker 1:I'm taking responsibility for this first one, though I learned my lesson that we should have already ordered the materials, had them on the job site or at least had them ready for pickup, like anyway. So they show up at the job site around 9, you know, and you know I could tell the customer was going to be a little bit more of a pain. You know he's kind of peeping out, looking, you know out what's going on, you know. But like at around 11 o'clock they realized that they needed to go back to home depot because they forgot some materials. Instead of instead of calling the project manager, instead of calling the office, instead of, like you know, just like, sending one person.
Speaker 2:All okay, chris, all three of these guys get back in the car and go to home depot, right, every one of them every one of them goes there because all three of them got to fucking shop and take another shit, because they had five fucking burritos last night and they all have to come back at 12 and get started.
Speaker 3:Oh, but then it's time for lunch.
Speaker 1:It's lunchtime, so it's noon. They literally go to the van, they pull out their microwave, plug it in and sit down on the job site for an hour.
Speaker 2:Because it's lunchtime, eric, I've been working all day obviously shit all day except two shits. You've shit for all day and you took two shits and now you're eating. Yeah, I've had a busy day, chris. I'm like I know you have, but for oh my god I'm fired up the straw.
Speaker 1:the straw that broke the camel's back was when, at 2 30, they all three get back in the truck and go back to Home Depot a third time. That's when I get the call from the customer, who's irate. He's like they have literally done absolutely nothing. Eric, you told me we're going to get this job done on time and these guys are literally sitting around doing nothing. They keep coming and going. He was so pissed and I was like, okay, I see the problem.
Speaker 2:Welcome. They keep coming and going. He was so pissed and I was like okay, I see the problem. Welcome to the Small Business Safari where I help guide you to avoid those traps, pitfalls and dangers that lurk when navigating the wild world of small business ownership. I'll share those gold nuggets of information and invite guests to help accelerate your ascent to that mountaintop of success. It's a jungle out there and I want to help you traverse through the levels of owning your own business that can get you bogged down and distract you from hitting your own personal and professional goals. So strap in Adventure Team and let's take a ride through the safari and get you to the mountaintop. Hey, everybody, we're going to be rocking and rolling. I can't shut Alan up again. Oh my God, alan's telling me stories Enough about me.
Speaker 3:Let's talk more about me, please, my God.
Speaker 2:Alan. I'm going to tell on Alan. Before we got started. Alan said a friend of mine has passed away who I met and they've asked me to give remarks about this guy and I'm like I don't know who he is. So we actually workshopped it a la Johnny Carson. Before we got on, Chris was feeding me jokes. I feed them jokes because I think every funeral needs to have them. I mean, seriously, guys, it's a tough subject, but think about that and I want everybody to think about this for just one minute. If somebody were to ask you to speak at somebody else's funeral, what would you say and how would you deliver it? Just think about that. Ruminate on that for a little bit. I've been ruminating, I know you have. It's a lot of pressure.
Speaker 3:I want all of you to think about it for a minute.
Speaker 2:This is a big deal, dude, and I think that is a, because you've always heard this story on your obituary, your tombstone. What's going to be written about you when you're gone? How about this? What are you going to say about your best friend who's sitting to your left talking on a podcast when he goes? Because I think we figured out which one's going to go earlier the guy drinking way too much bourbon.
Speaker 3:I need to start looking at my remarks for Chris, but I told him I'm like I've never been to Vegas with you. I've never even played your freaking golf course. It's right outside your house. Why would I speak at your funeral? Obviously there are many other people much more important to you than me. There are other people who could tell way better stories that would not work in a Catholic church.
Speaker 2:So you know I'm a son of a minister, I won't swear in church. Thank you, all right, alan. So work on your remarks and remember I'm a really funny guy. Thank you, no, again. Think about that for a minute, because I thought that was a big. That's a big question. You would ask in a mastermind group what would you say about your best friend to help their family get through this grieving process? I mean, it's a big question, wouldn't you agree? I agree with everything you say, chris. Thank you, alan. Agree, I agree with everything you say, chris. Thank you, alan. Can we get to our guests now? I mean seriously, eric, I'm waiting patiently. We got eric fortenberry from job tread on today. Uh guys, I've had a chance to. I've talked to him. He probably doesn't remember this, but I did talk to him when I was thinking about changing field service software and I did. Um, he told me his story. I've had three other guys here in the atlanta market who are using his software. I went to a NERI conference in Austin. Did we mention?
Speaker 3:Oh, you're the president of NERI. Thank you, I'm the president of.
Speaker 2:Atlanta and on the national board, and Eric was on stage Am.
Speaker 3:I supposed to genuflect.
Speaker 2:Well, the hat, the scepter, I've got it all coming the crown and I've got a new throne. So if you can't see me on YouTube, guys, new thrones for both of us, by the way that we do. But Eric, I got a chance to talk to him, number one, passionate about his job, passionate about his business, more passionate about his customers. This is going to be rock and roll.
Speaker 3:But we've got to cover something first, let's do it. He's in Texas, alum of University of Texas. I'm assuming he's aware that there's a game coming up this weekend. All right, so you want to timestamp?
Speaker 2:this one. Yeah, we do. Well, this isn't going out until the end of the fall. I don't care.
Speaker 3:All right, we're going to get a prediction out of him and we're going to find out if he's right or wrong, you know what out in the middle?
Speaker 2:All right, Eric Portenberry, who is going to be the national champion in the NCAA football. I don't even care about that.
Speaker 3:I want to know who's winning Texas and Ohio State on Saturday. All right, fine.
Speaker 2:You answer that, then you answer the real question.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's obviously Texas.
Speaker 3:What's the line Three?
Speaker 2:I think he doesn't care, it's three. There are three dogs, I think Ohio State's favored by three at home. How about that? First time a number one has been a dog in the first game?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Kind of a tough start to the season. No cupcake there.
Speaker 2:And they got Arch In Arch. You trust Eric.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm hopeful we'll have a good season.
Speaker 2:That is very political.
Speaker 3:Wow, you obviously between game and time. One game at a time, oh my God. One game at a time. Who's going to win the national championship this year.
Speaker 1:I mean I'm going to go with UT as well.
Speaker 2:I would I'm telling you, dude, they'd look good. I mean, here in Georgia bulldog land, we're all. They're actually UT's getting a lot of press about what that team looks like right now.
Speaker 3:Can you imagine how much that ticket's going to go for? Isn't Texas coming here this year?
Speaker 2:It is, and I'll tell you what I do know because I don't have one. And the other thing is I'm renting out my house and I've already rented it out and it's a number, I'll bet it is. Yeah, I'm covering mortgage for a couple months on that one, not selling that house just yet everybody. For those who, uh, probably don't listen much, my son went to georgia. He's down now in texas, in baylor, um. So our house that we had while he was in, uh, georgia, um, we were gonna put it up for sale. Well, we missed the window of selling it.
Speaker 3:So now I have it, except for I offered to buy it and you just glossed that over oh, eric, never have a real estate agent.
Speaker 2:As a friend who lowballs everything he ever tells you.
Speaker 1:I mean, we could do a live auction right here. I like it See.
Speaker 3:I like the way Eric thinks All right.
Speaker 2:Can we get back to Eric?
Speaker 3:please. You want more predictions. I'm not done talking to Eric.
Speaker 2:Do you want to know who's going to win the softball? What do you think about UT softball? They're good too, by the way. We could, by the way, we could talk about the bats in austin. We can't. Well, that's true, that was crazy, man. I didn't get to go see them. So, again, we talked about that. How do you know it's crazy? Well, because I had to watch it on youtube. So, in austin texas, austin texas. So if you don't know this, uh, at five o'clock at night, there's a bridge in austin and the bats come flying out of there at sunset or sundown. Right, have you ever watched that, eric?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a pretty crazy thing to see.
Speaker 2:Right. So I did, because I do another show here locally for home service companies, and this is two name drops. Thank you, anyway. So I had a pest control guy come on. I'm like, hey, do you know about this stuff? I said so, is it true that bat shit crazy Is? That? Is that a true statement? He goes absolutely.
Speaker 3:It makes you crazy. Yeah, he calls it guano. It is guano, but I mean, how does it make you crazy? Do you have to eat it?
Speaker 2:I think it's a good entrepreneurial story. You're gonna like it. So anyway, I will tell you um I we have him tell us. Oh yeah, hey, eric, what'd you do?
Speaker 1:started this thing.
Speaker 3:There's the hard questions from chris there we go.
Speaker 2:All right, man, come on, give us that story. I've, I love it let.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so where do you want me to?
Speaker 2:begin. Let's not go with what you did before this. Where'd you get this idea and what did you make All right?
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I sold my first company in 2015. A buddy of mine was running a construction company. They're about five years old, had 10 employees doing five million in revenue, but just struggling to scale the business no systems, processes. The owner asked me to come over and said hey man, can you help me figure out how to scale this thing? I was like, yeah, sure, I mean it couldn't be that hard. Right, I walk in. I mean it was just like total chaos. Right, we had just papers binders everywhere, like literal timesheets are walking in the door, they're being put into these folders. They're printing off every bill, put them into these folders, just waiting for the project manager to come by. You know whenever that was going to be. You know whenever that person comes by. They'd you know initial on it and then someone would type it up and put it in this spreadsheet and then it I get copied over to some other spreadsheet and then ultimately, you know, entered into into QuickBooks and, like I think, at one point I found like quadruple data entry and that's like when my mind almost exploded. I was like, all right, guys, like timeout, I see the problem, like you know, and this is like you know, two hours in. I'm like this is so apparent, like you guys are lacking systems and processes. You know, let me just go find you something.
Speaker 1:And I went and did a deep dive, just looked at everything all the construction management software out there put together this big spreadsheet, all the features, the pros, the cons, the cost, how customizable it was, and at the end of the day I struggled to make a recommendation for these guys. I was like this stuff looks super antiquated, been started 10, 15, 20 years ago. It looked like it was going to be super expensive, you know, or it was just going to be something that, like you know, we really weren't going to be able to customize to meet our needs. And you know, I just I kind of didn't really know what to tell the guys. Like you know, I thought I'd be able to easily find you something and then just help them implement it. But they, they ultimately came back and were like you know, look, eric, you're a software guy, can't you just build us something? And I was like Whoa, hold on, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't trying to take on a full-time job here, I was just trying to help a buddy out, you know, asking me to like, create another. You know potential one-off solution here that you know they certainly weren't qualified to maintain.
Speaker 1:You know, once I uh, you know, kind pushed back initially, got to thinking about it though, and you know my wife is actually, I think she really just like wanted me to get out of the house and go, like, find something else to do with my time Way too young to be retired, and you know she's like Eric, you know this looks like it could be another huge opportunity for you, you know. And I got to thinking about it and just, you know, again, think she's right. You know I think I need to go back and let me just talk to him. And so, you know, ultimately, I went back to the guys and said, look, I'm willing to do it under three conditions.
Speaker 1:One, I take over as CEO, need the full ability to write the ship, you know, hire to fire, implement whatever systems process we need, you know. Two, I told them I'd give them one year of my time. I would show up every single day, like we would get this team back on track, you know, fully, fully producing. And three, though, everything I build is going to be my intellectual property. So at the end of this year I've you know. It gives me that, that opportunity to go and create my next software company. And they uh, they agreed made me partner. You know whoa?
Speaker 3:they agreed.
Speaker 2:They must have been desperate seriously they didn't give you the two, they didn't give the boat like the double barrels. I mean you're doing, you gave me the hook them over and shit. But I was thinking, I'm thinking double barrels, bro, Like no, my company, my job, my business, my baby. And you came in and they said okay.
Speaker 1:Pretty much. You know it was again desperate times call for desperate measures, but, like you know, they were just like pulling their hair out. All for desperate measures, but, like you know, they were just like pulling their hair out, like I. Literally there are three partners in the business and all three of them were running at full speed in different directions, you know. And so it was just like the left hand can't talk to the right hand. Like you know, they needed. They needed not only the systems and processes, but I think they needed me to come in and play, you know, play mediator a little bit and kind of help, help get them back on the same page, get one unified leadership team going.
Speaker 1:And yeah, man, we, you know, essentially I, just I built JobTread out of a needs basis, started with the estimating. You know, like and just like, for the life of me I couldn't figure out like why in the world could we not ever hit our target profit margin? You know we're targeting 30%, you know want to make 30% on every job and, like you know, just it's just so wildly all over the map and it took a while. But eventually, like, I sat down and I'm like watching these guys build their estimates. And I finally figured out when I saw a guy he put out, he pulled out his calculator and he, like, sat there and you know he typed in his cost. Then he just did times, you know, 1.3, and so he was. He was actually instead of using whoa wait, hang on.
Speaker 2:Hang on, I need a minute. Use your fingers.
Speaker 3:Go ahead.
Speaker 2:No, I'm going to fucking kill these guys, because I've seen the guy do the same thing. I'm like what number is that? He goes? Well, I thought that was our margin. I'm like I'm about to kill you. Ding, ding, ding, here we go. All right, go, eric.
Speaker 1:That yeah, so they were marking up their cost by 30%, you know. And so that, like, if you mark up your cost 30%, the most you're going to get is a 23% profit margin. So we're literally shooting ourselves right in the foot, right out of the gate had no chance to hit a 30% profit margin, you know. And like, again, it took me a while to actually figure out what was happening. And you know, look to calculate, you know price, using margin, instead of multiplying you're, you know you're dividing it. You know a little bit more complicated, you know formula, you know that versus just kind of multiplying by, you know, by this, by this number. But you know, at the end of the day, like when we figured that out, how much is the last thing?
Speaker 3:just drove off the road you should be.
Speaker 2:If you're not, if you're not, if you didn't drive off the road, you need to go park in that Chick-fil-A, go park in that QT, go park in that public, don't park in that BP, because you're probably going to get jumped. But listen to this, because that's the number bro, you just lost that. He said oh, instead of multiplying, divide by, I'm like that's exactly where I started. I'm like. I said I know this sounds like third grade. I said but you remember when you had your multiplication tables, listen to division one. I said so stop that multiplication bullshit. Yeah, I said that's the wrong number, bro, wrong number. So eric says god, I'm two hours in and I'm like, oh my god, hey, here's your problem. Oh, wow, what's that? Um, they, they flunk fourth grade. Okay, all right, eric, back to.
Speaker 1:I, it, uh, I I realized it's like man, you guys need to put away your calculators, you know, just like you know, and there was also this extent of like they're literally just pulling numbers out of thin air, right, like you know, they they totally making things up, you know, had the the good old boy mentality, we can have handshake type deals, like you know.
Speaker 1:No, no documentation, no scopes of work, you know, and like this, this just kept biting us and we didn't. Like you know, like they keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. You know, pretty sure that's like the definition of insanity. And so so I was like you know, look, guys, like this is this is a clear first problem we need to solve is, is, is we needed to have a tool where they could build out and document all of the cost for a upcoming job. You know, we need to figure out all of the labor, all of the materials, like any equipment, permits, like whatever costs. I was like that is something that you can go figure out right now, go come up with the cost, document it, and then we will just automatically calculate our price based on our target 30% profit margin. And so, by having this first transition to creating this documentation. It really smoothed over the whole handoff from sales to project management. We literally we couldn't even use change orders because nobody actually knew what the hell we sold them.
Speaker 2:Like seriously, but the estimator said you were going to paint the whole house. No, it actually says paint repairs, no, no, no, he told me you were going to paint the whole house, not for $200. We want no, just not doing that.
Speaker 3:Did you get any pushback at first, or were they like oh, please do this.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, that's the interesting thing. So, like you know, there's all this fear about oh my gosh, like you know, if we increase our price, like you know, we're going to lose all these deals and we're not going to be able to close. And I was like all right, fine, Listen, here's the deal, you know, and we literally overnight, switched to how we were calculating our jobs. So, you know, instead of marking it up 30%, technically, you'd need a 43% markup to get a 30% profit margins. Hello, Overnight we increased our prices.
Speaker 2:So they did. They didn't say hey, Eric, you don't understand. This is our business. You're a software guy, Stay in your lane.
Speaker 1:Well, the funny thing was the owner. He was the only one that understood the difference between markup and margin, but he failed to train and implement a system that could calculate it correctly. So he got it. It was like oh yeah, duh, how did they not know that? It's like well, did you train them on that? No, oh okay. Did you give them a tool to do it for them? No, oh okay. Did you ever check their work? Did you ever do performance reviews? Like, did you ever look at?
Speaker 2:anything, right? So, eric, you're in that room, you're telling these guys to do this. Was he in the back going, hey, what eric said? You know, I've been saying that. Hey, what eric said. I've been saying that, hey, I was saying that too. No, that's what I meant, guys. That's what I meant. What was he?
Speaker 1:that, like I've been telling you all this and yada yada, and it's like you know again, sometimes you know message sense not always message receive, or just kind of in one ear out the other.
Speaker 1:But you know again, I was prepared for when we, you know, increase the price overnight, for there to be some pushback, and I told the guys like look, if any customer pushes back, you know, just bring it to me, let me know, we'll negotiate where we're not going to lose on price due to this, this change here. We did not hear a single, not a one time did a single customer push back and that's what told me. We were just leaving way too much money on the table. You know, to some extent, like I feel like we were getting taken advantage of by some of our customers who knew that we were just way under pricing and I mean this is just such a huge transition for us, you know again, being able to now, you know, use, change, orders because we had a clearly defined scope of work. I mean that was just like revolutionary, right, like we're no longer going to just keep doing the work and keep going about and not getting paid. Like that is not how you build a successful, profitable, scalable business.
Speaker 3:So you got to bless your heart. Can you imagine the customer referrals? Hey, they do great work, but they have no idea what they're doing when it comes to the sign me up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. Well, I hey, and I can see the sales guys coming back going hey, man, I just closed five neighbors. I'm like like I bet you did bro. Yeah, so you're looking for your commission right now, aren't you? Yeah, we have, we have a new calculation in place. Yeah, you ain't getting any. What? Yeah, you just sold five?
Speaker 3:That's a good question. Do you get involved in the pay plans then, too? Cause what I've noticed is a lot of companies they just have these convoluted play pay plans or they're ones that are just counterintuitive. I mean, was that part of what you built?
Speaker 1:I immediately. The first thing I did was I took both the salesperson you know all the salespeople and all the project managers and I aligned their compensation where they both were going to get a 10% commission based on the gross profit of that job.
Speaker 2:They all said oh man, sign me up, Sign me up. Oh, Eric, we loveic eric's, our new friend I mean, they're like hey, eric, sucks we.
Speaker 1:We for better, for worse we were going to be aligned with everything from the from the sailing, you know, from selling the job to how we're operating the job. It gave everybody an incentive to make sure that this job gets sold correctly, accurately, and then we go and we operate and we execute on what we sold. What was their pay plan before? Sales had some commission based on just however they it was very convoluted Some sort of bonus structure, commission piece based on just top-line revenue. Again, they could sell some bogus job at some huge amount that we can't even deliver at. They're still making money even though the company's losing money. It just didn't make sense, right?
Speaker 2:All right, so that was your one year of building job. Tread You're digging in. I mean, it sounds like it was a lot of fun, but obviously it was a lot of like managers trying to understand what the hell's going on here.
Speaker 1:How are you guys dealing with this? And why are we able to perform better on certain jobs, depending on the crew that gets assigned to it, versus others? And so I kid you, not my favorite store here. So have you all seen Undercover Boss? Yeah, so I'm like all right, I'm going to play Undercover Boss here and I start showing up at the job sites, you know, trying to just see like what is going on, right? So I show up at this one job site. I'm there at like 8 am and I expect the guys to already be there. Be there right at 8. You know they don't show up until around 9.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hang on. So this is Software Boy trying to get into the construction world. Chris is in the construction world, so you already just heard. Yeah, I got there at 8. Hi, we're in Texas. It's like 125 degrees with 3,000% humidity in the sun and you guys don't get started. Until what was that number 9.?
Speaker 1:You didn't get there until 9. It's even better. We typically started at 6 am. That. That's why I was surprised to find that the crews weren't already there. You know, I was sort of expecting to roll up secretly you mean they just don't show up when they're supposed to oh, shit. Well, so what I?
Speaker 3:did you create a program to fix that? Uh, we did so.
Speaker 1:So what I found out, though, is they went cattle prod they went to home depot to go shop for all the material. So you know I'm gonna own this one like we should have had. I call.
Speaker 2:I call that. That's the shopping shit trip. Well, they shop and take a shit and grab a coffee. Then they show up. Do they have a coffee first though? Uh, they get that. No, actually. So the way it rolls the other, uh, they walk in and if you try to go to a depot here in Atlanta in the morning and try to go into the eight-stall bathroom, there's a line, son, there's a line I had no idea. You try to go to the coffee. I was going to the bathroom in the middle of the day.
Speaker 2:If you try to go to the pro desk and get a coffee at 8.30, the coffee's out. Wow, they're making a new pot. So, eric, I love this because welcome to the shit world that we decided to get into and you're helping us fix it. I love it.
Speaker 1:I'm taking responsibility for this first one, though I learned my lesson that we should have already ordered the materials, had them on the job site or at least had them ready for pickup Anyway.
Speaker 1:So they show up at the job site around 9. At least had them ready for pickup, anyway. So they show up at the job site around 9, and I could tell the customer was going to be a little bit more of a pain. He's kind of peeping out looking out what's going on, but at around 11 o'clock they realized that they needed to go back to Home Depot because they forgot some materials. Instead of calling the project manager, instead of calling the office, instead of just sending one person manager, instead of calling the office, instead of, like you know, just like sending one person all okay, chris, all three of these guys get back in the car and go to home depot, right, every one of them every one of them goes there because all three of them got a fucking shop and take another shit, because they had five fucking burritos last night and they all have to come back at 12 and get started.
Speaker 3:Oh, but then it's time for lunch, it's lunchtime.
Speaker 1:So it's noon. So they literally go to the van, they pull out their microwave, plug it in and sit down on the job site for an hour Because it's lunchtime.
Speaker 2:Eric, I've been working all day, obviously. You haven't done shit all day, except two shits You've shit for all day except two shits. You've shit for all day and you took two shits and now you're eating. Yeah, I've had a busy day, chris.
Speaker 1:I'm like I know you have but for, oh my god, I'm fired up the straw. The straw that broke the camel's back was when, at 2 30, they all three get back in the truck and go back to home depot a third time. That's when I get the call from the customer who's irate. He's like they have literally done absolutely nothing. Eric, you told me we're going to get this job done on time and these guys are literally sitting around doing nothing. They keep coming and going. He was so pissed I was like okay, I see the problem.
Speaker 1:We were not aligned with how we had sold that job. We sold that job at a fixed price, yet we were paying our guys a variable cost because we paid them time and material, t&m. We had an hourly rate and a day rate. These guys were incentivized to go in inventory Home Depot and the nice cool HVAC instead of getting the job done on time. The first time I realized, realized too, these guys.
Speaker 1:There were always issues. They never completed the project the right way and they never cleaned up after themselves. We had to constantly send our guys back to the job site to fix what they should have done right. And so this is where I was like all right, here's what we need to do. We are going to now send out bid requests and we're going to make all of our crews bid on every single job. And if they tell us it's going to take five days and cost five thousand bucks, great, I'll go plug that into my budget. I'll go sell the job, I'll issue a work order and, bam, you're off to the races. Now, if you get it done in three, awesome you. You're getting paid the same amount.
Speaker 2:If it takes you seven. It's on you. How many jobs started to uh get done in like magic three days. All of a sudden you're like, oh, it was, it was like it was like overnight.
Speaker 1:They became like experts at their profession. The quality of the work shot up. We completed the jobs on time. They're on budget. Like. The customers were more happy, like they realized they couldn't keep just dragging these things out and getting paid to do nothing.
Speaker 3:Now, to be fair, where were they going to go take a dump? Where did they fit that in, chris? Well, here's what we do. I would tell you this, because I do have a— Do you have a training for that? Do you have a?
Speaker 2:process. I do. Actually, I tell them where to go, but no, we have a pay-for-play thing. The same way. We do not pay by the hour, we pay by the job and quality outcome which results in the review from the customer on Google. And so he built this into a system which is extremely hard to do. And that's the thing I tell everybody is that doing this it sounds great. And, guys, if you have everybody right now on time and materials, it's hard to switch over because the mentality changes. But immediately you just heard this from Eric. He just saw it from the outside looking in it happens. So you know what they do. They get everything done in the morning. That coffee happens at 6.30, 7 o'clock when they're getting ready for work, before they leave the house. Everything kind of gets taken care of. You know what I'm saying as a care of. You know what I'm saying as a regular guy. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:If you don't know what I'm saying. He took a shit before he fucking left the house and then he went to my job and then he started working and oh, by the way, if he didn't have the materials on hand already which we already told him what to have they'd be sitting there and they're ready for him to get ready to work. So no excuses to go back to Home Depot because we need all three of us to go shopping. So I love that, eric, that you get to see this Fun stuff and you know again, that's what's amazing.
Speaker 1:So we got estimating, we got that dialed in, we got our project management, our job costing you know, kind of all those aspects of it. But like when to the back office? I I might've should have started there first. I just I didn't want to dig into the QuickBooks side until you know. I sort of got got my feet under me and understood all the other things leading into that. But, man, when I took over this business, we had over $800,000 of accounts receivable. Dude, what, what? Yeah, we had earned nearly a million dollars that we failed to collect. And instead of focusing on our AR and collecting our receivables, you know what the geniuses did? They went to the bank and they took out $200,000 lines of credit collateralizing that AR to make payroll. Wow, that's when my mind almost just exploded. I was like what the hell's going on?
Speaker 2:I think you just broke, chris. I, I'm hurt, I'm actually gonna start crying. I'm like, oh my god, that sounds like a great idea boss what's the top line revenue of this company?
Speaker 3:at the time they were doing five million in revenue with 800 grand grand in AR.
Speaker 2:So I'm doing 5.5 million and my AR is 35,000. Oh my God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the most asinine thing I've ever seen. All right, how'd you fix that? Well, so there was that. And look, and so what's happening? Right, we got the guys out in the field telling the back office hey, send that, you know progress invoice, like send that invoice, the final invoice, like you know they're sending. Telling the back office this lady, she was awesome, she worked her butt off, she sent the invoice, but what happened was that she was so overwhelmed dealing with AR and AP that she just assumed that the people in the field would make sure that you know we're getting paid.
Speaker 1:Now, unless they're collecting a physical check, which I don't know, probably one out of five, or you know four or five customers still paid with a check. There was no way that they would know, because they didn't have visibility into QuickBooks, nor should they to know if we actually got paid. And the problem was we just kept working. We kept going, not knowing that we're not even getting paid, because she's so overwhelmed dealing with everything that's coming in at a million miles an hour and the guys in the field have no idea. They just keep going. And so we're just sitting here, not focused on AR at all, and every day that goes by, your chance of collecting that is just dwindling, you know, and we ended up having to write off hundreds of thousands of dollars of those receivables because we couldn't keep kicking it down the road and pretending like we're going to get paid one day, Like that was just total bogus.
Speaker 2:All right, hang on. All right, kramer, you just said oh, we just wrote it off. Oh, hey, it's a write-off, jerry. Remember the famous Seinfeld?
Speaker 3:Yeah, hey, it's just a write-off.
Speaker 2:That's 100 grand, bro. That's 100 grand that I didn't get because everybody just screwed up. I mean I would lose. I mean no, I'd be out of business. I would have been out of business. There's no way I would have kept going. I mean I don't and I'm not going to a bank to get me a loan because my guys can't collect money and work we performed and finished all right.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna ask it again how'd you fix it? Fix it, come on tell me how you fix it.
Speaker 1:Funny man well, there's, there's. There's one more piece to this, this puzzle, though. That's ar. Now, on the ap side, the accounts payable side, you know that that was like. I mean, when I started digging into that that was like death by a thousand cuts. There was no like huge, like just obvious, glaring, like hey, we just totally, like you know, got robbed. But like there were so many times where we were being double billed, we were being overbilled, we had materials on the wrong jobs, we literally had no handle on what these expenses were for, but they were coming in at rapid fire. We're running 15 jobs at a time and again we have this disconnect between the back office and the field. And so the way that we fixed it is that we needed to integrate with QuickBooks. I needed to be able to. Whenever the guys in the field using the software logged in, they needed to see here's all of our open invoices. You know the project managers. They needed to be able to have work orders and purchase orders that every single bill that came in referenced On the accounts payable side.
Speaker 1:It was very simple. We implemented a rule and said if this bill is over a certain amount, or if it was under a certain amount like 500 bucks, we weren't going to get our panties in a wad, we're just going to move on and pay it. But if that bill was over that amount and if that bill didn't match the purchase order, the work order, then those are the ones that we're going to flag. If they matched awesome, approved, paid, we're done. But it allowed us to then be a little bit more strategic and focus our time on the errors and on the issues that you know.
Speaker 1:Again, like we didn't agree to this, why are we being billed for this? Or oh, hey, we already paid that bill. Like we didn't agree to this, why are we being billed for this? Or oh, hey, we already paid that bill? I I never could directly like point to any one crew and say like you are intentionally frauding us. I, I, I couldn't do it, I couldn't. I as as much as I wanted to find that, I did not ever find that, but there was always excuses like oh, you know my my spouse, or she didn't know, or accidental, and it's like you can't.
Speaker 1:you can't kick your crew out. You know, my spouse, or she didn't know, or accidental, and it's like you can't kick your crew out. For you know, if they say they made a mistake, I mean you know I'm going to forgive once, you know maybe twice, I mean after that we're done. But you know like it was very hard to directly, like you know, I couldn't even like accuse someone because, like you know, they were very disorganized, they didn't have systems and processes, like they were disconnected. And so, like you know, at the end of the day, by linking up our QuickBooks and giving that visibility to everyone out in the field, as well as implementing a non-payment clause in our contract that said, if you do not make a progress payment, we can stop work.
Speaker 1:I'm not an attorney so I don't know what goes for everyone else's states out there. But make sure that if you want to be able to legally stop work, you have to protect yourself. And in some states they'll say look, you entered into that agreement. I don't care what you signed, you agreed to this project. You have to get it done, even if they don't pay you which again, that's bogus BS. But protect yourself with legal contracts.
Speaker 2:I think when Eric's talking about.
Speaker 2:Move out of that state. What's that? Move out of that state? No, but if you're getting to that point, it's way beyond that. But the point is is that you have a conversation and again it's 17 years. I'm in two. I'm in my second legal thing in 17 years. I already settled the first one, so it doesn't happen.
Speaker 2:What Eric's saying, though, is, if you have it there and the understanding's there, probably two rational people one of you being really organized and getting your shit together. That's you being the contractor, being the service provider. Sometimes those homeowners are a little crazy. What Did I just say? That I did. I'm going to keep saying that, but you've got to have that, because if you have that, you can come back to it and they go well, can we just agree to this, this and this? I'm like, yeah, we can, and then, next thing you know, a magic check comes up. So back to Eric's point having that as an upfront contract or being involved in that early stops a lot of that legal shit that happens after. Legal stuff is just at the end. That's the divorce contract.
Speaker 3:I always thought you just sent over a couple boys to pay him a visit. Well um, there's an intermediate process.
Speaker 2:Funny enough. You just said that, uh, we just did pay a visit and uh, magic, uh, funny enough, they were there and uh and uh, uh, goody and chris actually collected because they were thrilled with the project. They, oh, we just did. We see that we didn't see the email. You didn't see the email, the text, the phone call, maybe the, the physical mail that we sent you to. None of that, okay, but we're here. They paid. So back to eric. I love how he shows that you know that visibility shame if anything happened to that dog.
Speaker 1:We, actually we had a crew show up one time, uh armed, wanting to know where his payment was a car by fred. And uh, yeah, we, we, we had this, this one crew show up. Uh showed up with, uh, you know, very visible guns on their belts and uh wanted to know where their uh, where their check was. And I was like man, I got to get back to software. This is uh, no, we're not, we're dying over here I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1:But you know, thank god, like these guys had some you know good locks on the doors and things. But uh, you know, anyways, I wouldn't get sideways with, uh, you know, with people over uh, something too too small uh, but you know what one other either ellen you know what software.
Speaker 2:Am I ellen?
Speaker 1:no, no, oh sorry I think what one other just like again, I think one of the the craziest things that happens like right after it took over, our insurance provider reaches out you know we're a month due, you know, for our renewal, and says, hey, you know we're going to renew you guys, but can you go ahead and just send over all of the COIs, the certificate of insurances for all of the guys who worked on any jobs in the last 12 months?
Speaker 1:And I was like, yeah, sure, no, oh, eric, well, we collect it when they start, but unless they send in their update, we probably have about half of them. Oh, and so insurance obviously doesn't like that and they fine us $35,000 that we had to pay right then in order to get our policy renewed. Or we're going back out to market and it's like wait what we have to come up with $35,000 cash that we don't even have. We're like borrowing, you know, by collateralizing our AR to pay this, like stupid, like there was no, like there were no deaths, no injuries, no thefts, no issues, no claims whatsoever. But we, you know, according to insurance, took on this extra liability and all we had to do was be organized and make sure that we collected it from our subs, but nobody's tracking it. You know again just one of those things like hey, you know it'll never happen to us Like but.
Speaker 2:But, eric, these guys are good guys. You know they've worked with us for years. Yeah, I know, but didn't pay. It was their insurance. Oh, you know it lapsed, oh, did it? Oh, that's funny.
Speaker 1:Haven't heard that story before Put a little feather here on the cap. At the end of that one year, we grew this business from 5 million in sales to 8 million and we increased their gross profit by 43%. So, single-handedly, implementing the right systems, the right processes, we had hundreds of thousands of dollars of additional profit on the bottom line after just one year of this transformation.
Speaker 2:All right so looking back on it. You're in the middle of it. I just want to know here's my question how many years do you think that took off your life?
Speaker 1:Oh, a lot. I mean like and I can only imagine, like again, these partners in the business. It was like, literally like cats and dogs fighting every day and like they, just they could not, you know, get on the same page. They both were very, very bullheaded and just their way was the right way and you know it just, it took a lot more than just the system to bring them together. It's about leadership and coaching and making sure that you have a cohesive, functional management team that is on the same page and not just having one person say one thing and then someone else turning around and undermining them.
Speaker 1:We had to do a lot of that type of work as well, but it definitely can be stressful, man, undermining them. Like you know, we, we had to do a lot of that type of work as well, uh, but it it uh definitely a stressful. You know it can be stressful, man, and, like you know, the more jobs you take on it, it just compounds. And when you don't have that foundation built, you know, when you don't have the right systems and processes, like man, these guys are getting gray hair. I mean, I got gray hair now over, you know, and it was only, like you know, one year of my time. But like you know I I see this time and time again, like this is what burns people out. You know there's there's nothing wrong with working hard, but like when, when you feel like it's just like, why am I doing this? You know, you're just like literally sitting there just churning away and like not seeing the fruits of your labor. Like you're like I sell more and I'm not making any more money.
Speaker 3:well, that's, that's how you know you got a problem. Newman and Seinfeld. The mail, it just keeps coming. It just keeps coming.
Speaker 2:Publisher clearinghouse week. I know we keep referencing Seinfeld because we're old, but this is, I think, going through the crucible was what you just did. But that's what steel? Just that's how it happens. Right, you got to fire it up. Right, you got to fire it up. You got to fire up steel. Do you think that having that one year experience helped you form where job tread is today? Do you think if I didn't do that, I wouldn't be here?
Speaker 1:oh, 100. I mean I, I I've seen so many, you know so. So many other people who you know have tried to create some sort of a, a system or software, like. But they didn't actually ever spend any time in the trades or in construction or like working at a construction business, like they're just trying to like solve some problem that they think is a big problem. But like, until you really understand it, you know it's, it's very hard and I'm I'm a big believer in like it's called dogfooding, right. Like you eat your own dog food.
Speaker 1:Like you you build, you know and create your own solutions. Like to your own problems, solve your own problems, and that's like. That's what I did in my last company, it's what I've done with this Like. I truly believe that helps you to build the best possible product and to help you build it the fastest way too. Because when you feel your like your own pain, like you know your arm is on fire. Like you're going to put out that fire very, very quickly. Versus, ah, someone else is complaining about something, yeah, their arm's on fire. We'll get to it when we can. Like, no, like your literally arm is on fire. Like you're going to deal with it right away and like that is so valuable and so helpful to drive things forward in a very meaningful way.
Speaker 3:So I got to ask you this you took this over for a year and you talked about hiring and firing authority. Did you find that, at the end of the day, you needed to let people go and get the right people, or was it just more of a training and an adoption of the new process?
Speaker 1:No, absolutely Some people needed to go and it were. You know it was hard because there were relationships involved and the can't do. They were like the king of kicking the can down the road, you know, and making the hard decisions was, you know it's hard but like, at the end of the day, like it's just not always the right fit for everyone. And so, you know, but probably one of the one of the hardest ones one of the partners actually was was, was in a, was in the financial role and that financial seat. He's a marketing guy really had had no background in accounting or, you know, wasn't, wasn't you know, just, he was in the wrong role. And that was probably the hardest, the hardest ones.
Speaker 1:I was just like guys like we need a real cfo in here. We went, we did a search, we found somebody who had construction experience. Cfo brought him in, you know, and and I think he made a very uh it, it. It was really important that we got somebody who could sort of rein in all of the, the finances and the cash flow and like having the daily, you know, or the kind of the monthly closeouts and things like that. That like, just, we were just again we had a bookkeeper.
Speaker 3:I mean that guy had to have been relieved though, because sometimes, if you're shoved into the wrong role and then they find the right role for you, it's like, oh, thank God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you know, nobody likes to be kicked out of their own company, but I think at the end of the day— you just kicked them all the way out.
Speaker 3:You just didn't find the right role. The right role was to be looking for a job.
Speaker 2:So Alan says I bet you he was relieved to get the kick the fuck right out of the company.
Speaker 3:What I heard was the right role. He's a marketing guy. Well, he's gone now.
Speaker 2:So the right role is— Give us the epilogue on that year. Are you still a partner in that company? Did you sell back to those guys? What did you do?
Speaker 1:Look, even though in my agreement, you know, all of the intellectual property is mine, just to make sure it was clean, clean, clean. You know, I basically got a signed-off deal. I just gave them back everything that they had, you know, given to me as a partner. You know, gave them a little stake in this thing and had a very clean documented process Because you wanted to be out.
Speaker 2:I mean, obviously you have to be out of that because the focus you have on job trade and I want to focus on that now is growing this business and doing what you've done and growing this one. So you had this idea, you got out of it.
Speaker 1:I probably should have stayed in it, though they did break 20 million in sales in uh 2023, so maybe I should have stayed in it, but I didn't want to be distracted by all the drama and the mess, you know.
Speaker 2:We got them back on track, though, so you know you know, we can watch your baby grow from a, from afar. Yeah, so you got that going for you all, right, right? Oh, my God. Oh, I'm saying that, but I'm not really saying it. I don't believe it. I'm still pissed.
Speaker 3:I'd be so jealous right now. Anybody can have access to this. Now with the software, let's talk about job trends.
Speaker 2:So who do you serve? And let's talk about when you started it. What would you call day one?
Speaker 1:I ran that construction company in 2018, officially started JobTread in 2019. I recruited my best developer designer and my CFO from my last company. They came on, we built for two years and we started selling it in 2021. And so we got it to about 200 companies. And this was, like you know, I learned the hard way, like starting up in the middle of COVID. Like you know, it was no easy feat either. But but, once they kind of opened up and we got to start going out to the trade shows, we got about 200 customers going that first year. The next year, in 2022, we got to 1,000 customers. 2023, we got to 2,200 customers. Last year we ended at 4,500 customers and our goal for this year was 7,500. We actually hit it yesterday, four months early.
Speaker 2:Hang on, hang on, Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. This dude is kicking the shit out of it. Man, I mean I love what he's doing. Because you got to celebrate this? Because right now I'm having a flat year in my business. I thought I'd be having a great year, but no man, the economy was tough, the business is tough. I man, the economy was tough, the business is tough. I love what you're doing. I love how you're doing it. So congrats. Let's keep talking about what you did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, appreciate it. No, and you know again, I, I, uh, I'm very fortunate that our, our core team, you know was, was, was really you know people who had worked for me at my last company for, you know, rounded, you know decade, you know so. So we've all been together and I think when you can have that immediate level of trust, respect, everybody knows their role, everybody knows what to do, it really helped us to hit the ground running. People look at us and we, you know, early on, like I mean, we were just a very well-oiled machine. You know, we, we, we are extremely efficient at what we do. You know we are wildly profitable, even at $199 price point. You know, like we, we have kept that same price point.
Speaker 1:You know, the whole time, like we were undercutting all of our competition on price and it's just because, like I mean one, I'm not totally in this for the money. Like I, I want to just create something awesome. I've already had my big exit. We're good to go Like, we want to truly make as big of an impact as we possibly can and that is by getting this into tens of thousands of contractors, hands all over the world, eventually hundreds of thousands.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, like there's such an enormous opportunity here and I'm so passionate about entrepreneurship, like you know, like if you meet an up and coming entrepreneur, your chance of becoming a successful entrepreneur yourself are eight X according to the Kauffman foundation, and I'm such a big believer in that and so, like we've literally built this stage and have created this platform that we can not only give you the tools and the training, but we want to give you the inspiration, the motivation, the guidance, like connecting people, giving you a network, a way to just like again like so many entrepreneurs feel like they're on their own and they're lost and they're struggling and they're depressed. And it's like man, like there are so many others just like you that are out there doing the same thing at the same time, and it's like all we got to do is bring them together.
Speaker 2:We got to work together. Tell it, come on, minister son.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so okay, who's your who, who is your target client and what is their experience when they sign up?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's. It's, you know, really any construction based business. So home builders, remodelers, deck builders, pool builders, roofers, painters, electricians, concrete, you name it. If you are custom bidding every job, then you need to have a good handle. And we took the approach of focusing on the financials first.
Speaker 1:So many other systems out there focus on the project management, the scheduling. It's like what's the point in scheduling my job if I'm not going to make money on it? You know we got to make sure that this is going to be a profitable job worth scheduling and so, like, we've put a very big focus on the financial aspects. And so, you know it's typically small, medium sized businesses. You know you're. You know I mean we got tons of solo owner operators. I got people who have started their business a month ago and just are getting this in place and that's awesome. They're laying the foundation from the very get go.
Speaker 1:But we got people who've been doing this for 20, 30, 40, 50 years, you know, and maybe it's, you know, some someone kind of taken over. You know change, change of the. You know the leadership there. But, like you know, at the end of the day the bulk of our customers are residential. You know, probably about 75% are residential contractors. You know the other 25% you know commercial, or maybe you know hybrid between the two, but it's small, medium sized businesses usually, you know, doing anywhere from.
Speaker 1:You know a couple 100,000 to, you know I don't know. We got a couple doing. You know 50, I think we have one doing over 100 million. You know a couple. You know we started getting like these huge franchises now are bringing all of their you know their organizations and all the different franchises together. So like it's really kind of, you know, grown on us and over the years as we've continued to add more and more functionality, it's enabled us to take on and work with larger customers. You know who needed some more of that advanced you know functionality that we didn't have day one.
Speaker 3:So what happens when I sign up? Because now I'm hearing man, you're really busy. How am I going to get any personal attention? And I'm a solopreneur and I don't know how to work a computer.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So every single customer that signs up, you get a dedicated customer success manager, our entire customer success team. We hire you. You have to have construction experience, some sort of construction experience. I'm not saying you had to swing the hammer or whatever, but be involved in a construction company somehow, work with construction companies, come from the field, whatever it is. You've got to understand what it's like to be at a construction company and the challenges that they have. I can't teach that to someone. I can't teach you about the chaos that happens, you know, in the back office. Like you. Just you got to innately get it and I think that helps them to really appreciate and have empathy for all of our clients. And so every single customer that signs up has a dedicated point person on our team Now, even before they have to get in with that person.
Speaker 1:Like, we have a whole onboarding and training series Every single day. We do multiple live trainings per day and so you know we have a Job Tread 101. That happens every single day. We encourage every new customer to go to that and our training team is phenomenal. The head of our training team, she, actually has a doctorate degree in organizational change management and leadership and it's put together an entire curriculum to help people learn how to implement software and to, like you know, really bake it into your culture. You know you've got to have buy in from everyone. It's like she walks everyone through this and we've created all of this content to help people so that they can go through and, again, like in these live trainings, it's group-based, you know what I mean. There can be multiple people in there, but that has been, like, so crucial to us.
Speaker 1:Being able to scale is that you can go through these live trainings or you can watch them. They're all recorded as well. You know, I encourage the live one because you can ask questions and interact and then you use your time with your customer success manager to be a lot more strategic and focused on the things that are specific to your company, that you need to get help with or ask about or whatever it may be, but like they can knock out the bulk of their training. You know, with these, with these videos, we actually have a whole certification program. We do live boot camps in person at our office once a month as well, so there's lots of ways to get help and if that's not enough, which almost always is, we have this whole ecosystem of third-party partners who have been able to build businesses, to provide services like implementation services, coaching services. They might be marketing agencies, bookkeepers, accountants. They're also here, part of this community, fully trained on JobTread, and they're available to be resources to help these businesses to get up and running, you know, as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2:Eric, if you guys haven't figured out this passion, this kid's got passion, bro, I know I want to start a construction company now.
Speaker 3:No, the More Trusted Toolbox is back, the More.
Speaker 2:Trusted Toolbox is not back. Alan, you are going to put that away. You hold to that sidearm, son. This thing is kicking ass here in Athens, in Atlanta, we're kicking ass. In fact, we're coming to Dallas. We're going to kick the shit out of the handyman over there too.
Speaker 3:I got one more question for Eric. It's really important. We created a bond, we did, I think so Are we bonded? We?
Speaker 2:are bonded.
Speaker 3:Look at the size of that water bottle he's got.
Speaker 1:Well, everything's bigger and bigger. It is true, it's awesome, man. These are the best water bottles ever.
Speaker 2:Water bottles available on our site. That's right.
Speaker 3:He's pushing his birch. I love it. If you sign up, you get a water bottle. All right, let's important question. I should get three great questions. Pick a task, all right, fine.
Speaker 2:Let's have it. Let's start a fight here, because I just went down there, so I can't wait to hear this answer.
Speaker 1:I'm going to go with Terry Black's barbecue.
Speaker 3:Hey, that was my answer. Are they in Dallas or are they down in Lockhart?
Speaker 2:No, they're in Waco, they're in Austin, and.
Speaker 3:I believe they came up.
Speaker 2:And I'll tell you what. So we were in Austin, we went to Terry Black's.
Speaker 3:I thought this was a crappy question. Look at you go. Anyway, go ahead.
Speaker 2:So I go up to my son who's at Baylor, and so my son's name is Austin, he's going to Baylor, and I was in Austin for the Nary Conference and I went to Terry Black's in Waco Nobody there. I was like Austin. I said, bud, we waited in line for like 20 minutes to get through this. He goes Dad usually it's like that. I said, but this barbecue is just killer too. It's so good that brisket was killer. Yeah, I'm hungry now. Yeah, you should be. You know Alan's a big cook, so maybe I'll take them there. Nah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, probably not, probably not. Why change?
Speaker 2:Hey, when you come up here we can play golf on my course. Alan's going to carry the bags for you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I could carry both bags.
Speaker 1:I mean I was going to say y'all should both come down to Dallas. We have our annual user conference every January and so we'll have, like we sold out at 1,000 people last year, we'll have probably 1,200, 1,300 people coming in town. I'd love to have you all as guests at JobTread Connect. Maybe I can get the duo. You two are a great duo man, I think we can do a live podcast from JobTread Connect.
Speaker 3:Yeah, normally Chris doesn't take me anywhere. You know what? We'll come down and do a live remote. Let's do that because January is kind of a boring month. Anyway. Let's go to Texas, guys.
Speaker 2:I you know I didn't go with Eric and software, but I will tell you here's what I told you. I am, and I told him that too.
Speaker 3:That's a teen years. I still won't learn. Well, this is a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2:And I was, I am, so I'm very service oriented. We actually. He even agreed with me. So hang on while I am bullheaded. He actually agreed. He said I said look I, there's no doubt in my mind you will build a better software than I will go to, I said. But two years ago I said I got to go to an FSM but I do 2,500 jobs a year and he's like he goes. I know I can build it, he goes, but you're right, you probably go this way. I'll tell you what. He earned my trust right there. And since then people have asked me here in Atlanta, other people hey, what would you go with? I'm like, based on your business, I would go with him Based on your business.
Speaker 3:Oh, he's going to sell some from this podcast. Oh, hell yeah.
Speaker 2:And I will tell job trader. I'm like I know it was a game changer. I'm like, yeah, that's awesome, because you know why this guy has figured it out man Passion bringing it to the business, Passion bringing it to the culture. What he's doing, I love what he's doing. This is the American success story just in a little small microcosm, but it's going to be big. He is big, bigger.
Speaker 1:I mean we're arguably probably the fastest growing construction software out there right now. I mean we're signing up over 500 accounts every single month this whole year. Get on the wave everybody.
Speaker 2:All right, eric, we usually ask four questions at the end. All right, I've got just one.
Speaker 3:I like it, you ready? Yeah, I know which one you're asking.
Speaker 2:All right, we usually ask what's your favorite book, what's your favorite part of your home? Endless customers playroom.
Speaker 1:All right, your playroom, yeah, so we have a third story. This is what sold us on the house is a third story walking at it, converted to this like playroom for the kids. Incredible, just like built in like swings and slides and oh good, lord, well, he's got answers. I look, all right, give me the uh first one again uh endless customers by marcus sheridan, phenomenal book, great, great, great book he's gonna be, uh, he's gonna be our keynote.
Speaker 3:Actually a job trick connect oh, we gotta go, hey, we gotta go well we're coming up.
Speaker 2:You know what? We'll interview him. We're coming down, we'll be your podcast. We'll be your hypebeast, baby. Let's go all right back to this. So we're also customer service freaks. What's a customer service pet peeve of yours when you're the customer?
Speaker 1:hmm, customer service, pet peeve of mine. I mean like, uh, so like when I'm uh interacting with someone else's company you went to.
Speaker 2:Terry Black's. You're the customer and, by the way, they're phenomenal at customer service too. That was really cool. I was like, what's this, what's this? And they would like walk me all the way through it. They're like so where are you from? And I was with my son. I went, I'm from Michigan.
Speaker 1:They went. Oh, we'll help you, honey. Come on, bless your heart. They did too. I got to bless your heart so bad, you know.
Speaker 1:I would say my pet peeve is when a customer brings an issue like you got to listen and you have to very like you know, intentionally listen and make sure that you understand what they're explaining, what challenge or frustration, like so many times, people just immediately get on the defense. They immediately start thinking about how are they going to combat this, or they just start blaming something or whatever it's like. Just listen and acknowledge my frustration, acknowledge the problem, and that you understand Before we solve that problem. Did you hear me? And I think it's so important that people, everyone, whatever type business you're running, like you know you have to provide a great customer experience and you do that by listening. You got two ears and one mouth, you know so. So listen and understand and then you can figure out what, what problems, you need to solve. But so many people jump straight to trying to like, come up with excuses and blame things and they just skip over the whole listening Like, listen to your customers, I so bad wanted to go.
Speaker 2:what did you say? But I use this.
Speaker 2:I talk to my sales guys about this all the time. When you're in a house, if you are trying to say, the customer says my door doesn't work, I need a new door. They're like, all right, well, we have the best storage. I'm like, no, no, no, no, you blew it right there. Why does this door bother you? Because you don't know what. You don't know. What is your pain? Tell me your pain. So Eric felt our pain in construction. I love that story. I love that he felt that pain because, brother, that pain I live every freaking day because I don't need project managers. My subs knew what they were doing. I tell my guys that every day I was like dude, I don't need you if, uh, these all these guys, they wouldn't have jobs right, all right.
Speaker 2:But eric, here we go. All right, software boy, you ready, let's do it. Give us a diy nightmare story. I don't want to hear about a contractor, I want to hear about what you did, because these hands didn't happen overnight.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm going to. It's a partial DIY and a partial contractor here. So my daughter's room is it's got a closet and it's got this like little attic kind of nook, you know, where we kind of just small little tiny little walk-in closet or attic thing, and so like we were having trouble with keeping her room cool, and you know, or too hot or too cold depending on the season, you know, and like I don't know, we basically came to the conclusion that because it was so cold in that little attic room that we needed to replace the insulation. And my neighbor, a couple doors down, just so you know, owned an insulation company and you know they she's like oh well, here we'll just come blow in some spray.
Speaker 1:You know, spray and insulation, you know I was like all right, you know, sounds great, right, you know, we're going to just get that thing insulated and cool, not a big deal, right, like that'll, that'll solve our problem and so they, they come in and they basically blow in all the the spray foam there and, uh, you know we're thinking, okay, yeah, this is good, yeah, uh, but like my, my daughter started having a bunch of like rashes breaking out and like just all these like skin things and, like you know, doctors are all oh yeah, it's like eczema and like she'll grow out of it and blah, blah, blah, and like we're like, hmm, I don't know this, this doesn't quite seem, seem right. And like we, you know, my, my wife, who was just super persistent, you know, kept kind of digging in, digging in. Finally we go and we get her tested. We run some like huge panel tests. We find that she has some crazy amount of flame retardant in her system. Oh good lord, what?
Speaker 2:Yeah so literally just chock full of flame retardant. Holy shit, ellen, we just went anti-flame.
Speaker 1:And so we're like how in the world is this possible? Well, come to find out, we realized that the spray foam never cured because there was not proper ventilation in the attic. We literally just sprayed the whole thing, sealed it all up and expected it to dry. It makes sense. There also just so happened to be a leak right above, like in the roof, where now it's dripping in there, and so that led to mold, which, by the way, then she ends up chock full of mold as well. How does that make?
Speaker 3:you feel as a dad. Oh, it has been the worst several years going through this mold as well, you know, and so, like man it, uh, it's. How does that make you?
Speaker 1:feel as a dad. Oh it's. It has been the worst, you know, several years, uh, going, going through this. Luckily, we're all good now. She's all good. The home's been fully remediated, like she's passed all this. But you know we had, you know, this is up there this is the top 10.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is pretty. Oh, my god, as a dad, I you're probably going to carry that forever it'll be in her book.
Speaker 3:You know, as a catholic hero.
Speaker 2:You're absolved, eric. You're okay, it's fine, you'll do better. Keep going, keep doing what you're doing. Hey, you bring it passion, bring it fire. Job tread, eric fortenberry, go figure it out. Hey, eric, how can everybody find you guys?
Speaker 1:yeah, I mean I would say, uh, you know, website's probably great wwwjob treadcom. You know, if you want to connect with me personally, I'm really active on Facebook. We have our whole JobTread Pros Facebook group. That's got over 7,000 members in there, but definitely super active there. I'm on LinkedIn as well. You can reach out to me directly, eric, at jobtrendcom. But we've got tons of videos on YouTube. But probably our website great place.
Speaker 1:We'd be happy to have you schedule a demo. Our but you know, probably our website great place. We'd be happy to have you schedule a demo. Our team will spend, you know however much time we need to walk you through it, show you, you know, what it'd be like using JobTread. We don't do a free trial. We do a 30-day money-back guarantee just because, again, we get so many new customers that we can't go, and you know just like we need you to have some skin in the game If it doesn't work out, if it's not a good fit, we're happy to refund your money though, no questions asked, no harm, no foul, you know. But we'd love the opportunity to show you JobTread, help you understand how it can improve your business.
Speaker 2:So his sales is good, my sales is better. Go call this dude man. I'll tell you what. Don't short yourself. If that's your business, if that's your model, that's your niche, you're blowing it because you guys got to keep going up that mountaintop. And guess what? We're all screwing it up. We keep thinking everybody's marking it up like we are. They ain't Make it happen. He learned our lessons. He's learned it. He's put it in a system. Make it happen. Let's keep going. Hey, by the way, if you don't want to do that, keep listening to this fucking podcast, because we're going to make you better. Let's kick out of here. We got to go. Cheers everybody. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Small Business Safari. Remember, your positive attitude will help you achieve that higher altitude you're looking for in a wild world of small business ownership. And until next time,
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