Blue Collar Business Podcast
Welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast with Sy Kirby. Dive deep into the world of hands-on entrepreneurship and the gritty side of making things happen. Join us for actionable tips on scaling your blue-collar business, managing teams, and staying ahead in an ever-evolving market. We'll also discuss the latest industry trends and innovations that could impact your bottom line. If you're passionate about the blue-collar world and eager to learn from those who've thrived in it, this podcast is a must-listen. Stay tuned for engaging conversations and real-world advice that can take your blue-collar business to new heights.
Blue Collar Business Podcast
Ep. 44 - How to Get Paid Faster
Ever finished a job perfectly, only to wait weeks or months to actually get paid for it? For blue collar businesses, cash flow isn't just an accounting concept—it's the lifeblood that keeps crews working, equipment running, and families fed.
In this revealing conversation, tech entrepreneur Joe Kaye shares how his journey from corporate boardrooms to blue collar solutions began when he nearly purchased a trades business himself. During due diligence, he discovered a universal pain point across the $657 billion trades industry: inefficient invoicing processes creating cash flow nightmares. This revelation sparked the creation of Procured, a veteran-built mobile invoicing platform specifically designed for smaller trades businesses.
What makes this discussion particularly valuable is Joe's recognition that existing software solutions have failed the trades. "The smaller businesses have been forgotten," he explains, as most platforms are prohibitively expensive and needlessly complex. Procured takes a different approach—simple mobile workflows that let field teams create professional invoices on-site, integrated with QuickBooks, without exposing sensitive financial information.
The episode also explores the demographic shifts transforming the trades, with retiring baby boomers creating both challenges and opportunities. We're witnessing private equity firms actively purchasing plumbing, HVAC, and other trades businesses, consolidating them into larger entities—a trend that underscores the long-term value and stability of these essential services. As Joe notes, "Robots aren't coming to replace plumbers or fix septic tanks anytime soon."
Whether you're an established contractor struggling with administrative bottlenecks or a growing trades business looking to scale operations efficiently, this conversation offers practical insights on using technology appropriately to solve real-world problems. As Joe reminds us, success ultimately comes down to personal initiative: "Make it a great day or don't. The choice is yours."
Ready to transform how your business handles payments? Reach out to Joseph at joseph@procured.us to learn how Procured can help your business invoice faster and get paid sooner.
Click the link above for a free marketing audit with insights to boost your blue collar business!
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Hey guys, welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast, where we discuss the realest, rawest, most relevant stories and strategies behind building every corner of a blue collar business. I'm your host, cy Kirby, and I want to help you in what it took me trial and error and a whole lot of money to learn the information that no one in this industry is willing to share. Whether you're under that shade tree or have your hard hat on, let's expand your toolbox. Welcome back, guys, to another episode of the Blue Collar Business Podcast, sponsored and brought to you today by PodcastVideoscom's team here in Rogers, arkansas. These guys, we have been with them right out of year. They have been displaying the show to you guys. They built the website. You guys see all the ads ads that come out and short form content. Those are built by the team here and I can't tell you they have transformed the message and the value of the show.
Speaker 1:I could have kept it going from my kitchen, but it would have been definitely far and few between and I dang sure don't think we would be anywhere close to 40 episodes in. So, thanks to them and their beautiful solo pod room, here I come at you guys with a remote guest and today we're going to be diving off into the weeds a little bit. We're going to be hanging around the techie world guys. Basically, the motto of the day is going to be asking questions about getting that invoice out as fast as we possibly can so we can get our payment as fast as we possibly can. So we can get our payment as fast as we can.
Speaker 1:And I have brought you guys a guest today that has been in major boardrooms before, that knows how to talk the talk and walk the walk in the technology world and, as you guys know, the blue collar work in space. It's so hard to make this transition into a handwritten notepad of what I got done today, to putting it in an email format or, for god's sakes, we start talking about another software. And so you guys have all fought the software battles and have had struggles, but I am passionate about what Joe is trying to do. Him and basically one other gentleman founding partner have been working very diligently on a company called Procured, essentially to help you and me get invoices for work that we've done out the door and everybody in between the time we take contract to the time we get paid. Job is easier is what we're trying to effectively talk about today. So, furthermore, thank you so much, joe Joe K, with Procured Thanks, for being here buddy.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Cy, You're hired man. That was an incredible opening speech there for us.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me on 40 episodes in, probably getting a little seasoned, I guess you would say Shout out to a few of the podcasts I have been guesting on over the last couple of weeks. I've been doing some traveling for you guys in the audience and I'm really excited for those to hit the market so you guys can hear me as a guest. So be looking out for that. But furthermore, joe, thank you so much for joining us and you're located nowhere near where I'm at.
Speaker 1:Go ahead and give us a little brief intro who you are on this show, so we can understand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, thanks again. So much for having me on. I am uh located just around the corner from sai here in manhattan, new york. Uh, we're gonna. We're gonna figure out a way to do this in person, maybe next time um I'll come up.
Speaker 1:Don't even threaten me with a good time, big dog okay, yeah, let me know you're welcome.
Speaker 2:You're gonna have to probably share the couch, though you know we're looking at 700 square feet of an apartment here.
Speaker 1:I've never been to central park but I'll. I'll come up there and do a podcast in central park.
Speaker 2:All right, uh, it sounds good. That sounds awesome, um, but, uh, it's, it's. It's great to be on. Obviously, my name is Joe uh, the co-founder of Procured. We've been working on Procured for about a year, so I'm excited to talk about it and explain you know how we got from A to B today, and a little bit more about what we do.
Speaker 1:Freaking love it, buddy. You have a briefly off air. Joe was sharing some of his background and how he got to here and it's so cool I guess is the word how podcasting brings two individuals like us from far ends of the spectrum. Our paths probably would never cross, would never cross. And here we are talking about the massive problem of not just getting work done, but getting work done that you can document you've done and talk a little bit about why you guys thought this was such a need, and maybe a few of the folks that you can see drastically need this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think, like to get to that I have to start really where this all began, and so sorry.
Speaker 1:I'll start where this all began.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I just hit my. The desk here is shaky, I guess. But so, rewinding, you know I was part of this startup company. I was very, very early on at the company. I was around employee 40, 50. We grew to about I don't know 600, 700-ish employees.
Speaker 2:I was an equity holder and I was part of the transition of a private equity from private equity and I received a payout for payout for my equity and my shares. And so I immediately called up my mom and dad and I was like, hey, look what I just did. And then my second call was to my accountant. So I reached out to my accountant and I said, hey, mark, what the hell should I do with all this money? Am I putting it into the stock market? Am I putting it under my pillow? Am I putting it under the mattress? You know, or you know, what should I be doing?
Speaker 2:And so we we saw this trend of of how big you know private equity is in acquiring some of these smaller businesses in the space. You know buying up plumbers and HVACs and kind of. You know, taking them and unifying them into one. You know PEO pool if you will. And I thought, okay, that could be. You know I had some background and I, throughout my life I worked in construction, through high school and in college, to pay, you know, for the bar tabs, no-transcript, ready to acquire businesses. And this is, you know, this process was about five, six, seven months, um, and we're, you know, getting ready to pull the trigger on one specifically, and then we're really starting to peel the layers back of the onion and I'm like, hold on a second, something fishy is going on here with the finances. I need to do a little bit more due diligence. We asked those third, fourth, fifth layer questions and something wasn't adding up. So we pulled back and I said, all right, I'm going to pump the brakes on this. I don't want to buy the business right now. I'm just going to just sit and kind of think on what I want to do.
Speaker 2:And so I think, from all of the research and all the conversations that I did and that I had, one of the big things that kept coming up was cashflow. Cashflow was always a consistent issue with all of these businesses. And then I started to reach out to other businesses after that and think, just from a perspective of like, hey, I'm just doing research, I don't want to buy the business. I'm not trying to do anything else other than just ask a couple of questions. And we started to do more and more research and I was like learning hey, all right, it's about 50% of these guys don't know when they're going to get paid. You know, they've got, they've got lead invoices. They don't know what the heck's going on with their, with the payments, et cetera.
Speaker 2:So I kind of built this idea of like hey, what about invoicing software? What if we could create a software that can make life easier, you could invoice faster and get paid sooner. And I started doing some research and I thought, okay, there's, there's some competition out here, and and and I welcome the competition, right, if there's. If there's other sharks in the ocean, right, then you know that there's probably some fish there, because there wouldn't be competition in an empty you know an empty pool. So that's right, you know. So I'm starting to think, all right, this could be a potentially a good idea. And I'm starting, you should, you should see the first PowerPoint like presentation that I put together to kind of pitch my co-founder, luke, on this. It looks ridiculous and we actually joke around. We'll send it to each other every once in a while, but so I called my buddy.
Speaker 1:Luke up, let's start somewhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got to start somewhere for sure. So I called Luke up and I said hey, what do you think about this idea? He's like give me a couple of days, let me see if I can figure out how I would do this and map it out. Luke is a much smarter than I am type guy and he is a genius, for lack of a better term. He calls me back in a couple hours and he's like I can do this no problem. So that's sort of the birth of Procured. We came up with the idea from really just connecting with a bunch of businesses. I was thinking about acquiring a business or buying into business Found this big problem in the market. I talked to one of my buddies and I said hey, do you think we could build this? And you know, it's been about a year now. Um, and so, yeah, that's what. That's really where the the idea came from.
Speaker 1:You want to talk about an entrepreneurial spirit. My guy, literally, it's so cool, number one. Good on you. Congratulations on number one joining into a force, becoming a force within the force and earning your fair share of what you, you know, rightfully helped build so and then turn around and not just going and blowing it like, yeah, a large percentage of folks that I know probably would, including myself, but investment, of course, is where you're sitting here, you're looking at and were you when you were talking about buying these companies. Are you talking about buying skilled trades business or was it just another tech business? I wanted to start there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it was. It was strictly a trade business. Um so yeah, I was looking into, you know, potentially being like a part owner and like going in and extending a, you know an offer to an HVAC or a plumber and and being a part owner of the business, cause there's a lot of businesses that are trying to sell. Go ahead.
Speaker 1:It's so and it's so crazy because you've got a lot of plumbers, a lot of electricians, a lot of concrete guys, steel guys, pipe guys, dirt guys. They're all listening to this as the skilled tradesmen, the blue collars of the world. We're just out here trying to make it to Friday, literally. You know what I mean. And so for you to sit there and say that, as a guy sitting in Manhattan worked his ass off to get where he's at, did it right, made the money and is now sitting on it and he's attracted in buying a blue-collar trades business because why?
Speaker 2:I mean it's one of the fastest-growing markets in the country. You know it makes, I think and don't quote me on these numbers but I think it makes 4% of the workforce in the US right now. The TAM, the total addressable market of the industry, is $657 billion. I mean this is one of the biggest industries in the world and surely in our country. And what we're seeing right now is when we really start to look at the finite granular numbers and start to really do research and think about let's look at the macro and micro views of this industry. We're seeing a huge shift. We're seeing those 50, 60, 70 year old guys that are trying to get out of the business and they're retiring and their sons and their daughters don't want to get into the business that mom and dad owned.
Speaker 1:They want to go to college. Statistically, they're selling these businesses because there is nobody there to take it over.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, and so we're in a kind of a weird spot right now. This dichotomy of like, hey, who's going to be taking on the businesses? Like we still need plumbers, we still need roofers, we still need HVAC, guys Still need the pavers, so you know, we still need people that are gonna dig up septic tanks and put new ones in right, Like that doesn't change.
Speaker 2:So there's a massive demand right now for them, and I think, and I'm and, and procured, and Luke and I and our other uh, we hired a part-time guy as well Shane, Um, we, we're, we're taking on the gamble and the bet that this industry is going to grow, that there's going to be younger people that are going to get into this and those younger folks are going to be into software.
Speaker 1:Man, you are so far ahead of where you guys are at because, number one, before we go any further, joe, I just wanted to shine light to the guy that's down there in Alabama or over in Utah or up there in Ohio working his freaking balls completely off every single day. Every single Saturday he's missing out on ball games and he's just wondering if this is going to be worth it. And there is a Joe sitting up there looking to buy him. If what guys? Joe just told you what you need to have ready to go at all times, and that's some freaking financials.
Speaker 1:Man, inside accounting is huge in a business and I, joe, I'll, I'll tell him, tell him myself here. Man, I didn't have the best inside accounting. Just I mean surprise 90 of blue collars, especially within the first five to ten years. Don't even know what a pnl and balance sheet is. So it takes some time, but it's just really just encouraging to you guys, even you guys down there that are doing a million to $2 million worth of revenue.
Speaker 1:If you're showing 10 to 20% on that at the end of the year, a guy like Joe can't smell any fishiness coming from a CPA, audited, ready to go, financial statement at least once a quarter. And then look, you are striking on an opportunity to literally walk away or turn around and be an operations manager or whatever the case may be, but you built it from nothing. So I just wanted to encourage you guys and highlight that and not skip over that A guy that's up there in the boardrooms of all the boardrooms living in Manhattan wants to buy you guys. And so just a little bit of encouragement there. And, joe, you're absolutely right, dude, in the next 10 to 15 years, all the boomers are going to be gone. That Gen I think it's Gen X, or is it Gen?
Speaker 2:yeah, gen X after that I can't keep up anymore with the F.
Speaker 1:And then you've got millennials, which is me and you, and so the service industry. I mean, I don't know how it was up there where you went to school at, but junior high, through high school, there was no shop class. They took away even shop class, and down here in the South that was a big deal, like there was no zero involvement in. Hey, what about a trade? What's a trade? Go to college, go to college. Go to college, go to college. And I'm like I'm not going to college. Guys Like I didn't have trouble, dude, through school. I didn't whatsoever. I I should have made more of it, 100%, but I didn't. I got some college courses done in my, in my, in my junior year, my senior year, I did the work program. I was gone. But if I had somebody within the high school regimen be able to go, hey, dude, this guy's got a little bit of a trade mind, let's grab him and let's start posturing him and mentoring him so that we can line him up with a local economy guy around here. So I'm a part of that system now.
Speaker 1:Now a couple episodes back here on the show bluecollarbusinesspodcastcom. You can catch that with Chad Burkett and two 18-year-old graduating seniors from the Tyson School of Innovation down here in Springdale and they have their CDLs my guy commercial driver's license at 18 years old. They have OSHA 30, so they're hitting the market. So just a little bit of encouragement there. I thought there wasn't many programs out there as well, but there is. They're starting to to to really come on, because it's a fricking problem.
Speaker 1:The whole premise of this show and message of this show is to highlight the blue collar working man and woman in this country and help them with resources that they need to obtain to be better at what they do so they don't give up and quit. So we do have that daggum plumber here. We do have that electrician here in the next five to 10 years. So just wanted to shine a little light on there. But you're absolutely right, there needs to be more focus on cash flow financials, just financials in general. You use terms, joe, already that I haven't hardly understood within our brief intro, but it's because you're in that world. But I could make you completely spin your head off your shoulders our terms as well, but it's.
Speaker 1:It's navigating the other where I was going with this. The other major message of this show is doing exactly what we're doing here today is taking a white collared individual no offense, brother, that's the route you took in life and a blue collar individual putting us together in the same room and speaking the same language so that maybe, just maybe, we help the guy or give somebody encouragement to keep the fight going. So sorry, that's a little bit of a rant there, first part of the show, but thank you seriously for shining light on these tradespeople, man, because they need it or we're not going to have anybody and you know there's not many. Last thing, there's just not many folks in their early 30s with 10 or 15 years of business in the skilled trades. So we've really got to pour the gas and fire here in the next 5 to 10 years and bring awareness to this subject and, for sure, spotlight them, but trying to make their job just a little easier. You are 100% on.
Speaker 1:A major, major pain point is cashflow and you know you electricians and plumbers, you still have your cashflow problems. But from an excavation guy I don't know how you guys have cashflow problems because you got S10s and or bands and $20,000 worth of tool and then bands, and I've got a truck full of four guys with $20,000 worth of tools, a $300,000 dozer, you know, and I'm going to just go on just to get their day done. So I, when you have major overhead and indirect costs, like an excavation contractor compared to a plumber, how are we still dealing with the same issue? Well, it's getting that payment in the door quicker. So I said all that to kind of give you some breezeway there into how is Procured going to help us get our invoice out. With the amount of work that we're already done, we don't want to be waiting on that payment. How's it? How's it going to solve the problem, my guy?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, and I think, just prefacing that, like that, you, you mentioned a couple of things there and I think you hit on a ton of really crucial points.
Speaker 1:if youpack him, if you want my guy, we got all the time in the world.
Speaker 2:But I think, from a standpoint of it really comes down to where the money is right, like as somebody that's in high school. They're thinking, oh, the plumber's not making as much money as the guy that's trading stocks on the stock market. So I'm gonna go to school and I'm gonna go to finance, I'm gonna get into finance right, but cool. And I'm gonna go to finance, I'm gonna get into finance, right. But I think we're actually at an inflection point where the pendulum's gonna swing back and the plumbers are gonna start making more when, you know, ai takes over and there's all this other stuff going on because robots not coming to fix, you know, the septic tank, robots not coming in to replace your heater, their robots not coming in. Or maybe there's going to be robots to pave driveways so pavers watch out for that Maybe. But all jokes aside, robots aren't going to be replacing these guys anytime soon. So we're going to see, I think, a pendulum swing and I think these folks are going to be in the month. So, to answer your question on how we're helping, so everything is mobile right. So we've built this software so you can do everything directly in the field. You can um, I actually wrote along, uh, with quartz plumbing. Shout out to quartz plumbing. They were actually the first podcast that uh, that took me on. So shout out to those guys. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:But they let me drive in their um truck for for the day. I went in and I was like, hey guys, is it cool if I just drive around with you and weirdly just see and follow you around while you work for a full day? I need to see how your day works. And it's just driving in. They're looking, got the flashlight going behind the tanks, they're like, oh, you need X, y and Z stuff that I don't. It's way past. You know my breadth of knowledge.
Speaker 2:And the most important thing is when you've got that client in front of you to be able to execute on the contract. Right, if you've done the work, you're right there. If you let something sit I mean I've been in sales If you don't get something done right away, if you don't have what we call next steps on the calendar See you later You're not seeing that money until they're ready to pay you, you bet. And so what we're able to do from a standpoint of our application and our software is to create invoices on the fly. You know, you can say, hey, this is what I think it's going to cost. Then you do the work.
Speaker 2:They, once they've approved on hey, this is what it's going to cost. You do the work, you can send that invoice via text, via email, and they can pay directly with their credit card right away. Um, and so the whole process should be pretty seamless. And then all that stuff maps to QuickBooks. We're looking at a couple of other accounting softwares, but as of right now, we're mapped to QuickBooks, so you can report all of your taxes and your accountants. Lives will be a little bit easier.
Speaker 1:And so you know where I'm going with this, because this is the question you guys face all the time. It's well, I can do that from QuickBooks, or I can do that from whatever app you know like. Literally, I can send an. Our transactions normally don't get paid by credit card, but at the same time, if a guy is you know doing those 400, when we were starting out, dude, I can't tell you how many 300 and $400 ditches guy, is you know doing those 400 of the when we were starting out?
Speaker 1:dude, I can't tell you how many 300 and $400 ditches I did you know, 10 of them in a day and, yeah, they need to all have separate addresses, they all need to have separate invoice numbers, and so, yeah, that can get pretty cumbersome and if you don't do them right then you're not getting the next 10 ditches done tomorrow and so production's got to slow at some point. But literally what? What makes it more unique? Is it the reporting? Is it the tracking? Is it the seamless? Is it because there's already products out there doing that? And I'm not trying to be any way my guy, but I told you I'm not. I'm kind of a software challenger, especially for my audience, because they understand where I'm at with softwares over the years.
Speaker 2:So a couple of things about our software. First and foremost, we are a veteran built company. My co-founder is a veteran.
Speaker 2:So we think that that's absolutely crucial. We support veterans and we believe that it's actually one out of every three folks that are in the service space are veterans. So we thank them for their service and we believe that that is a really important thing to support and back veteran businesses, and we think that folks that are in the service industry will care about that. So, not necessarily a differentiator and product, but for sure a differentiator and, like hey, who we are as a company. I think from another standpoint. We've built this product to be incredibly simple.
Speaker 2:My father does not know how to use a computer. When he types, he types like this. He doesn't know a single thing about products and he's able to use this thing pretty much without any problems. And then the other thing is cost. The biggest, obviously the most important thing is cost. We've leveraged our product where and not to, like you know, share too much of the secret sauce here, but our kind of, our goal here is more so a market share grab versus, like hey, we want to grab the really big clients that are out there and charge them 20, 30, 40 grand, and that's how we're going to drive our business.
Speaker 2:We believe that the smaller businesses have sort of been forgotten when it comes to, like the service titans and Housecall Pro and some of these other guys that are out there. I forget the name that you had mentioned, but they're really complicated. There's so many bells and whistles, there's so many things going on. They're so expensive. It's $1,000 a month and if you want to add another user sorry that's going to be another $150. And so we've designed this so it's not only pretty simple and easy, but from a cause perspective, it's there for the folks that are smaller. It's there for the folks that are building their business and need products to get to that next level, and so our hope is that we can evaluate and grow our product with companies, but, as of right now, we are really geared towards the smaller businesses that are out there.
Speaker 1:So you're saying, if I wanted access for my superintendents or anybody in the field to be able to send invoices, because QuickBooks is mainly managed by the admin team in-house, like nobody gets into QuickBooks. Now, when you're first starting out, I mean I can't tell you how many invoices I sent on QuickBooks online sitting on that mini X on my phone on the browser, as I sent on QuickBooks online sitting on that mini X on my phone on the browser and so. But as you scale and you've got a few crews running around, it's not as easy. Yeah, well, and it's transparency like we were talking about. Yeah, you want to be transparent, but there's some things that they just don't need to see, so you don't want them sending them from quick sorry, from quickbooks. But if you were a high transaction, high volume based water heaters and um plumbers, a service calls, etc. You guys think about it. How much easier it would be that the superintendent is sitting out there in the field and and I think you're hitting the nail on the head is gearing it for those guys in the field, because those guys don't do excel. Now I agree with you that the new age guy like myself, you know that late 20s, early 30s or, hell, even early 20s, especially, he's going to have a better chance.
Speaker 1:But the guys that have been in the game a little bit is what I'm trying to say five, six to seven year company history and they're sitting there really questioning themselves after a few years of maybe bad years or a really good year, and then two, you know, a bad year, and they can't figure things out. And it's these small pain points that, at the end of the day, once problem is finding and researching. Before you just jump in bed Because I have done that before Procore and a couple other companies and thought that was the magical solution to all these problems I'm going to find one product and fix 17 problems, and it's just not. You need to have some strategy, you need to have some planning. So if you, if procured, sits here and go straight into into QuickBooks, somebody um, it's along the lines of the text messages is so cool. Number one and how?
Speaker 2:is it?
Speaker 1:displayed to the customers. Is it in a professional format, I would assume?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you can add your, your information on it, right? So, like, you've got your logo, your contents, on there. It's it's a standard invoice, but, yeah, it's in a professional tone for sure, right? I think the other thing to note, too is you had mentioned, like hey, we don't need everybody inside of our QuickBooks, like, we don't need people seeing the bottom dollars, right, we don't want everybody to know how much revenue we made in 2022 and 2023 and so on.
Speaker 2:We have the ability in our software to create admin levels and then users, so certain folks won't have access to the admin aspects of the business, which I think is another really important feature, because you don't want people to see all the you know, especially if you're just like imagine you hire somebody and they're they're working for you for two months. You don't know them that well, um, even hell, even six months, right. And then, all of a sudden, you're like hey, here's all my financials. No, that's, that's not what you want. So, um, yeah, we, we've built it. So there's, there's layers and levels to it for sure layers and levels to it for sure.
Speaker 1:Talking just real quick. Well, before I hop on on that subject train and that matter I want to. I want to shout out my guys blue collar performance marketing. They have been extremely valuable in what CyCon blue collar business podcast. Everything behind the scenes how we're getting out in front of you guys has been behind the scenes strategically planning, as I'm sitting here talking about with Joe. Literally he sits down once every other bi-weekly with my content team and we see how the roadmap's going, where'd we fail, what's doing good, what's not doing good. He's been working and tweaking on my website.
Speaker 1:I'm telling you guys, if you want a comprehensive free look at your marketing campaign or program at your blue collar or skilled trade service based company, give them a shout at bcperformancemarketingcom backslash blue collar podcast. Shoot them an email. They'll hop on a discovery call with you and give you a full broadband overview of where you may be doing good, you may not be doing anything and where you may just be flat, missing the mark. So get with Ike and the team and they'll get you hooked up. All right, but from there, my guy Joe, I want to talk about replacing it there's I literally was talking to a member of our YouTube channel and the members behind the scenes. If they get a little bit more juicy content, I guess you would say more real, raw content, the things that I can't put out there just for everybody insurance bonding. You know the customers, essentially, and clients and everybody that's viewing everything that you're putting out there, and if you guys don't think they are, you're freaking crazy because they are, first thing they do is they're googling your butt. So spin around, talk to these guys. You know.
Speaker 1:This certain individual think is great for this conversation. He's 28 years old. He's been with this gentleman six years. This gentleman's 61 years old who's the current owner of the company, and they are working out an agreement to basically him take over the business and so he's sitting there as acting owner with little to no power. So, uh, he's reaching out to me. Obviously hey man, he's got a giant, enormous job going. Um, georgia is where this is at, cool.
Speaker 1:And he's asking me and I just start real simple about time tracking and job costing and, hey man, what are we doing for the guys' time? Well, time sheets. I'm like, oh, okay, okay, no judgment there. I was there myself. First thing we got to do is we got to get them on a time tracking app. You have to for the size job. But where I'm going with this is is that he expressed to me that he has been researching this stuff as a new age donor, knowing, obviously, with all the amount of content surrounding these said issues. Yeah, he knows for a fact that it needs to be done, but. But then you've got a working 60-year-old owner who's not really in it, kind of checked out, done with it, burnout, but won't let him necessarily make these calls. So replacing those clipboards and spreadsheets with these mobile-friendly workflows, just in general, talk about the quartz plumbing and the some of the success that they've had, etc. How do we get from there to where we're talking about now, even with the non-techie folks?
Speaker 2:so I think you know you, you have to adopt it really like it's. It's at the end of the day, that's just. It's as simple as that. And I think that's the question you're asking me is like how do you, how do you, get a little bit bigger from being smaller? Is that, is that?
Speaker 1:the question Great, great way of putting it. Brother.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so so I mean, I think you know, first and foremost, technology is is your friend on. It's an unfortunate. You know, first and foremost, technology is your friend. It's an unfortunate circumstance. I actually don't have any social media myself, no personal social media. I'm not a big tech guy.
Speaker 1:I don't like to spend a lot of time in front of the computer.
Speaker 2:As a matter of fact, like 930, 10 o'clock if I'm not super busy with stuff, all screens are shut off in this house and so you know from my standpoint. I hear where people are coming from, I hear it. It's just like pain in the ass. You don't want to be in the phone. You don't want to be doing that, sean. Unfortunately, it's just the way you got to do it. I had a.
Speaker 2:So over the course of like the last 12 months to maybe even 18 months, as I've been building this and creating this company, months as I've been building this and creating this company, I've done this rule with myself where I have to meet with one founder every single week. I have to go out. I write people on LinkedIn. I will poke at friends to say, hey, can you introduce me to this guy, can you introduce me to that gal? And try to just get in front of people and pick their brains. And I've been doing that for a really, really long time and I've gotten a ton of incredible advice. And I've been doing that for a really, really long time and I've gotten a ton of incredible advice.
Speaker 2:And I've met with, like you know, private equity guys and CEOs of $30 million companies, $150 million companies, like sat in rooms with guys, you know that are billionaires.
Speaker 2:And one thing that was pretty common and pretty funny to me is you don't really start your business until you get your first lawsuit, and one of the funny things that kind of comes from that is that if you don't have your ducks in a row, you're going to lose that battle 10 out of 10 times. And so I think, from a standpoint of getting your ducks in a row, it's about making sure that you've built the foundation to scale and build the house and make sure that your ducks are in a row, from not only a standpoint of the foundation but also all the stuff that you need to track time, track invoicing, how much money you've made this month, this quarter, so you can actually figure out your cashflow. Can you hire additional people? Is it a possibility? Is there a possibility that you won't be able to pay Joe out on Monday because you don't have cash flow? Those things are really important and if you don't figure that out early on, then you're setting yourself up for failure in the future.
Speaker 1:Dude, it's you, and here's the problem. I'll let you in on a little bit about the skilled trades and the blue collar working world. From my experiences, these guys work so hard in the business and they don't even know how to start working on the business, let alone enjoy it, let alone know where to start. I mean, you may be completely talking a foreign language to a lot of these guys that are listening today. So you know, maybe, just like my YouTube member I was speaking about, where do these guys start coming from, you know the tech side of the world, and where do these guys start if they have never had any experience with the tech world? And you know, maybe it is that old head, 55, 65 year old man, that is trying his hardest to obtain some of this knowledge. Where can he start? Or maybe the entrepreneur that's sitting there trying to go oh man, I am too old at this, how do I go ahead and get into this game? Where do I? Where does he start?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think we in in 2025, we've got the most information out of our fingertips than ever before. Um, you go on YouTube, watch a couple of videos, do do some research. You can have a book on your front doorstep two days from now if you go on Amazon. I think it's all about education and educating yourself.
Speaker 2:If, for example, before I was doing this and I had no idea about the massive problem of cash flow, of invoicing in this blue collar space, I was doing a ton of research, I was reading books, I was going on and I was finding podcasts to listen to. Podcasts like this one, right, like where you come on and you hear about, hey, this is a problem I'm having and this is what we're talking about, and then, all of a sudden, things start to click. It's all about educating yourself and I know it can be like very cumbersome at first and you're like a little nervous about kind of jumping into a pool that you don't know how to swim in. Um, but it but it's absolutely crucial that you figure out how to educate yourself and it's so, it's so available, it's, it's in youtubes, it's it's download if you're you're you're curious about, hey, I don't know how, uh like, some of these apps work. Go and download it and try to use it. I think, like you know, there's no silver bullet to this. It's just like you know, it's about educating yourself and trying to do so through some of the different, you know, things that we have available. So books and YouTube, I think, were huge for me.
Speaker 2:And then I also, I think a lot of people are afraid to reach out and ask, and it's really that simple. I mean, like I'm reaching out to people that I don't even know. I'm like, hey, this is what I'm doing. I would love to pick your brain for 15 minutes. Can we do that? Yep, and it's crazy how receptive people are. And sure you're going to have some people like I've had some bad phone calls. I've had some weird awkward interactions, for sure, you know there's some. There's there's people that are incredibly rude to me. There's people that are like, hey, well, you're wasting my time, you know, sure, but you got to kind of just take that and move on. There's a saying, there's a saying that I, that I've got actually stamped to my wall and it's make it a great day or don't? The choice is yours. Gotta win the day. Baby, gotta win the day.
Speaker 1:Beat the devil back, get up early and just keep moving forward and he's waiting for you as soon as you crest over that threshold at six o'clock in the morning, big dog oh yeah, man, it took me a long time because you know, as I can go off on that subject for forever, but literally just some encouragement. Oh yeah, you got another set of folks going hey, I need this right now or we're never going to get this job done. You have all these people asking you all these time concept questions.
Speaker 1:Just win the day, that's all you can do sometimes and then guess what Some of them string together and you're like, hey, what's going on here? But again, like Jocko says, says nothing changes. If nothing changes, man, and you've got to, you've got to start the change and educating yourself is a great answer to that. I mean we, we can go off into a whole different scary two letters of ai and what's going to come of that. But chat gpt will do half the excel building for you now, like literally.
Speaker 1:I am not even an Excel, I know because it's scary. It's scary to those old guys. You know what I mean. Older, I shouldn't say old, but older generation guys that didn't grow up with this technology. And you know our generation.
Speaker 1:We can remember when computers were getting integrated into schools, you know, by the masses and like figuring it out. And now these kids are literally learning how to embrace AI at the high school education level. It's insane, dude and but like they're there, these kids are so smart they're using just, they're just having chat GPT do everything, and not just that one specific AI, but that's the one I utilize most. Right, just that one specific AI, but that's the one I utilize most. Right, but I am so uneducated in that world trying to slowly, like literally trying to figure out how to utilize AI in smaller tools, like I'm going to blow somebody's mind today. But you can put a set of PDF civil documents into chat GPT if you pay for plus, and it will literally give you a approximate quantification of water, sewer gas, electric, whatever you're trying to take off. I hope I helped somebody with that today, cause I just found that out myself this week and just playing around with it at work.
Speaker 1:I'm like running some excel, trying to build some sheets, because I'm not an excel guy, but I the the the folks on my team. That's how they read and recept information, so I'm trying to meet their you know requirements of how their brain works and ticks, and because they do the same thing for me. So, hey, chatgpt, here's my information. Throw this in with these columns and these categories and this is how it needs to be shown. Two minutes later, export it in PDF and shoot it to them. And people are like what did you just do? And I'm like I literally just bought 15 minutes of my life. Back is what I did. Anytime as an entrepreneur, we can buy time. Anyways, going off on the AI train, that's not what we're talking about today, guys.
Speaker 1:But, literally buddy. I truly appreciate you coming on here and having focused and founder is Luke, right Other founder is Luke.
Speaker 2:Yeah, co-founder is Luke Shout out to Luke.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for your service. My guy Truly need more minds focused on this issue. The awareness of the blue collars dwindling and we're not making it any easier on them and we need some help here. So I encourage you guys for sure to keep this thing going. Look forward to hearing more about it. Um, but one last question here before we end the show.
Speaker 1:My guy, I ask every single guest whether you're white collar, blue collar, I don't care. Um, I need to know. And you kind of hit it on the nail on the head. I think I already know your answer already. But the blue collar worker who is just sitting there being stuck in the mud, or even you know what, the white collar, let's step out there, because you grew up in that, like you came through that world, in corporate world, I could only imagine. Yes, we probably don't have as many folks listening in that world, but sitting in that office chair trying to get eight to five, or that blue collar guy who is just mentally, emotionally, physically, they're just stuck in the mud and they don't know how to get up and do it again. Talk to them for just a minute, joe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So, first and foremost, I feel you We've been there, man, trust me you know there's there's good days and there's bad days, but it's really like a choice, I think, like everything's a learning experience. And if you're not taking that negatives and flipping it and saying, hey, I just learned a really, really great lesson here, you know, then then you're missing out. I think, like you know, you got to want it, you have to want it, and that is like a big piece of this there's.
Speaker 2:I've, as I've gotten older, I've learned that there are people that just simply don't want it as much as as me or as others. And like you'll see it and and if you want it more, you'll see it too. Like you'll, you'll be able to see that there's a massive difference, uh. But I think like, if you can you get up a little bit earlier, you can figure out a way to kind of make the day a little bit better. Um, good things will come, and I I can't remember what the actual term or the actual like phrases, but it's like hard work and people are luckier right Is ultimately the takeaway from it, and it's you can create your own luck by just busting your butt a little bit harder, um, and there's light at the end of the tunnel for sure, so just keep going.
Speaker 1:You know what? Just to add to that just a little bit, nobody's coming to save you guys. Oh yeah, Literally just the next day is the next day. Yesterday is yesterday and we're never going to talk about it unless you want to talk about it. So make today a different day, Make tomorrow a different day.
Speaker 1:Get up just a little bit earlier. You're right, Joe, that's a lot of it. I used to try and sleep in right till the bell would ring off, and now I'm up 30, 45 minutes before my alarm, getting things done, so I can have a little bit of time to do this or that, you know, just before I head out with the kids or whatever the case may be. But try and be very um, what would be the word intentional with my time, and it has changed a lot in my life over the last three, four years. Um, you know, not wasting time on people that don't need to waste waste my time or theirs and but also to being more intentional about the people that do need my time to hopefully help them out of those moments.
Speaker 1:So Joe I really appreciate you for coming on my guy with Procured, so check them out. Where can we find you guys?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're in the process actually of changing the website over from getprocuredus to procuredus. So soon you'll find us at procured P-R-O-C-U-R-E-Dus, but right now it is at getprocuredus. You can reach me at joseph J-O-S-E-P-H at procuredus and, yeah, reach out to me if you've got questions, comments, concerns. I'm more than happy to address them as they come through.
Speaker 1:It sounds like Joe would also take some research from anybody that's willing to give it to him.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah, so feel free to reach out to me. I would love an opportunity to connect with you and learn a little bit more about your business, see where Procured can fit.
Speaker 1:I'm just saying Sorry to have you ahead. No, go ahead.
Speaker 2:No, because when you're saying, you're saying about the. You know how can you get a little bit bigger, stronger, faster? You know, tomorrow One of the big things that I forgot to mention and you kind of had said it. But, like, I write down my goals every single morning. Every single morning I get a new sheet paper, rip it off, new set of goals. It's time to you know, finish and complete those goals and those tasks. So I think that that's a massive thing that a lot of folks don't do, and when something's written down, I think it's 36% a higher chance of it getting done. So write down your goals and wake up at 5.30 instead of six.
Speaker 1:My problem is that just be a difference. That's right, my guy that is right, no dude, I really appreciate you shining light, shining light on vets, veteran-owned businesses. Shout out to them across the entire world or entire country, and I really appreciate you guys shining light on a massive problem within our industry and keep after it, my guy, it's good things coming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure the light at the end of the tunnel is coming for Procured and not that we're in the tunnel. I feel like we're kind of out in the pastures right now enjoying the sun. So feel free to reach out to me if you've got any questions, comments, concerns, as I mentioned at josephiprocuredus, because we'd be happy to start those conversations.
Speaker 1:But thank you so much, zach. Guys, until next time. I really, really, really appreciate Joe coming on. And until next time, guys. You guys be safe, be kind, be humble. If you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to give it a like. Share it with the fellers. Check out our website to send us any questions and comments about your experience in the blue collar business. Who to send us any questions and comments about your experience in the blue collar business? Who do you want to hear from? Send them our way and we'll do our best to answer any questions you may have. Till next time, guys.