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Host Scott Lollar is a 35 year veteran of the painting industry, and founder of Consulting4Contractors. The Beyond $1,000,000 Podcast serves as a touchpoint to painting contractors who have hustled, sacrificed, and worked hard to get their business to where it is today. Now, you need the guidance, expertise, experience and team to make it into the multi-million dollar company of your dreams. You'll hear stories and interviews from "Brothers of the Brush" and "Sisters of the Sprayer" who have been where you are and are charting a new course for their company's success. Listen in and go beyond $1,000,000!
Transforming the World of Paint Contracting: An Insightful Journey with Tom Droste, the Visionary Behind Estimate Rocket
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Scott: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining us today. We have Tom Droste, who is the co founder of Estimate Rocket, along with his wife, Kathy, to talk a little bit about his journey, learn a bit about him and of course, a lot more about his product, Estimate Rocket.
[00:00:13] Intro
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[00:00:54] Tom Droste's Journey to Estimate Rocket
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Scott: Welcome Tom.
Tom: Oh, great to be here, Scott.
Scott: , I want to start a little bit about. [00:01:00] Tell me a little bit about your background, pre-Estimate Rocket, how did you get here? You know, a little bit about, you know, what qualified you to develop this product and, you know, a little bit about your earlier years.
Not necessarily all the way down to infancy, but you know, somewhere between here and there.
Tom: Let's, let's start around, let's start around, there's, there's some, I'll make some hops here, but, I went to college, the, I applied to one school, make my parents happy because I figured they'd want me to apply to college. I was actually thinking I would probably go, go into the contractor path, to tell you the truth.
And. I got accepted to the school that I applied to, so that kind of changed the direction a little bit. Went to school for, to an accounting school, basically, and , liked, liked some of the stuff about accounting. Made it through three years in the accounting program, and then I said, [00:02:00] nah, this is not really what I want to do.
Got through an intermediate accounting, which was useful stuff. And then advanced accounting looked like this is not going to be any fun. This is why people, this is for people who make fun of accountants. That, that's where that, that break off was. So, so I got through on a managerial program, you know, finished with a management degree, got my first job as an accountant, staff accountant.
Sounds more like an infection than a, than a actual position. And , Spent the year there, went to the next job, same type of job, had one of those epiphany moments where my boss's boss, my boss, my boss's boss, and my boss's boss's boss, their heads like aligned at this one moment as I'm looking out across the office, I swear this is the truth, and I just looked and I said, I really don't want to wait till I'm as old as that guy.
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Tom: Quit my job, quit my rock solid job. You know, I was fairly newly married, rock solid job as an accountant with full [00:03:00] benefits, you know, you know, career path and everything. And got a job at the local computer store. This is. This is way back when, you know, and, and I loved it. And I was there for about eight months and I was helping people.
Basically I was the, I was the trainer and I was helping people use computer, you know, personal computers got going. They did their, they were doing the thing. I met so many people that were trying to use these computers for accounting. And I was like, you know, this, this can easily be a gig. And so sure enough, like six months after I took that job.
I started my own company and it was mainly training, teaching people how to use computers and for accounting, you know, for accounting purposes that went on. I started. Then I started writing programs for some of these people on the side. One of the very first ones was actually an estimating program for a plber.
Believe it or not. Now, this is this is way back to pieces of equipment that Most listeners probably have never seen before floppy disks. I mean, that's how, that's how we booted these babies [00:04:00] out.
Scott: Yes,
Tom: So, you know, went down that path for awhile, started a first company, wrote software for supermarkets for a whole bunch of years.
That was a lot of fun, but I saw the market we were in was drying up. And so about, about 10 years ago, we started Logical Engine, which is the company that owns Estimate Rocket or has wrote, has written Estimate Rocket.
Scott: got it.
Tom: That was a, consultant, another consultant I was working with had some clients that were in the concrete repair business.
So we wrote this iPad app that would do estimates for them because it had a secret sauce calculation in it that they would use to get the, the, the quantity of foam of materials they were going to need in order to do the job and price it out for them. Very simple, you know, very easy program. Very, you know, not a lot to it, but, it really took off pretty well.
And we started to realize, well, the iPad native iPad app is [00:05:00] okay, but we really need this to be multi user. We need multiple people to be able to access it. And that's when we, about seven years ago, we started Estimate Rocket, built it out, come a long way.
Scott: Yeah, so okay, so and when you start at the computer store, what kind of what it's all what kind of computers you talking about? Now that must be early on with the PC or somewhere like wait, you know, this must be fairly early PC.
Tom: It was really early PC. And so this computer store actually was a big Apple dealer. And nobody was doing any business stuff with Apple yet, although, interesting story, one of the current presidential candidates wrote a package called Great Planes that actually, accounting package, that actually ran on the Apple equipment way back in the day.
So, interesting. When I saw his name, I'm like, geez, I recognize that name. , yeah, so IBM PCs, you know, dual floppy. I mean, hard disks were probably three or four years into this [00:06:00] process, and they weighed like, well, it was pretty much like a boat anchor. You can just, you know, drop it over the water. And we also had these really cool laptop computers called Compaqs.
They weren't really laptops, they were sewing machine sized things, weighed about 35 pounds. But hey, they were portable, and , that was our other, like, platform of choice. I don't think anybody was bringing those on site at the time, but
Scott: Yeah. They're trying to convince you was portable.
Tom: Exactly.
Scott: Yeah. Well, it's funny you say, some of your list, some of the people listening to this won't know, have, know what a floppy does. That's funny. 'cause I have a two year old grandson and we go to Home Depot. He likes to open up and shut the, doors of the, the demo doors.
And, we, we walked through this, design department. He saw a desktop phone and he looks, he says, Papa, what is that?
Tom: Yeah. That's not a phone.
Scott: He's like, I don't, I don't, I've never seen one of those. I'm like, yeah, okay, forget it. Let's move on. ,
Tom: It's,
Scott: yeah, yeah, that was funny though. He got, he got distracted. , [00:07:00] okay, cool. So this is interesting. So, this is interesting for me. It's why I love doing this. So, I probably got introduced to Estimate Rocket.
Not all that far into your journey. If you're saying you're about seven years old as a product, you know, I, I probably introduced to you probably five for sure. Maybe six. So interesting. So my, my thought was, I bet you were older than this. So as far as a company, but so interesting. So you've grown quickly.
And so you, Now, I want to go back to one of the very first comments you made, which is you said, I wasn't really going to go to college, I was going to go the contractor route. What kind of contractor were you speaking of?
Tom: I had no idea. My dad, my dad was a, structural engineer and he was a professor at RPI actually way. I mean, he was like genius and, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I was, you know, he would take me on job sites, some of the construction sites he was doing and, and so I got, you know, [00:08:00] familiar with it and he had, he talked to me a little bit about it because we're getting out of high school.
I was not, you know, I had three sisters, they're all brainiacs and, you know, valedictorian of the class. I was a rock solid B minus student, you know.
Scott: Yep.
Tom: , So it wasn't, you know, my track was not clear at that point as to whether it would be a waste to go to college or, you know, I really didn't know. And things have changed now.
I mean, I think, I think there's a lot more people who probably be better not going to college because I don't think they're getting enough skills. If I didn't have the accounting thing, actually, I wouldn't have known what to do. I mean, I would add a whole different struggle because it was really the trade, the accounting trade that I use to.
Build everything I did,
Scott: Yeah. Yeah.
Tom: core
Scott: Yeah, I shouldn't have gone to college either, but I did get a wife out of it. So, for, for those that are, those that are interested, I could tell you exactly how much my wife cost. , but that's a different podcast. , all right.
[00:08:57] Estimating Program for Painting Contractors
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Scott: So you now I have another [00:09:00] question here because, I work with.
principally painting contractors and of course you're marketing your product to painting contractors but I also know that it's not a painting estimating program it's an estimating program so you know who was this designed for and how did you get to us our industry you know tell a little bit about that process
Tom: So, so the design, as I, as we worked with the, and one of the things I've always done in developing software is, you know, you take a look at. The specific thing you're talking about and working on, but you also take my approach is always take a step back and look at it and say, well, yeah, I could do it just like that, but if I do it just like that, it's only going to be good for this very small niche.
And it was to begin with, it was concrete repair, concrete
Scott: yep
Tom: And so I took a step back and I said, okay, what, what's [00:10:00] common between concrete lifting and other people that do things like this, and we figured it out that They had sort of the same sales cycle. It was, they all required some sort of an estimate that most cases was done on site.
So you needed to build it kind of in the field. Ideally you'd build it in the field and they had a pretty steady, steady cycle. It was, you know, you get an incoming lead, which we start at the incoming lead. We don't necessarily get leads, but we start there and you make an appointment. either do over the phone or whatever.
So that's the first phase. Second step is, okay, meet with them once you get an appointment. And this, this really repeat. And then if, then you follow up until you get the deal, then you schedule the work and invoice it. And. Start all over again. That is pretty common practice for almost all the trades, exactly how they estimate materials are different, but [00:11:00] the billing at the end is all the same.
The basic scheduling process is all the same. And so we figured, and so we built the part that we made really flexible was the part for the estimating because that's really the main differentiator between the different. People that use Estimate Rocket.
Scott: Sure. Now, what I love about these conversations, it's pretty fresh, so I'm, I didn't do a lot of pre planning. So I got, I'm, I'm, I'm got questions right now. I'm like, this is exciting. Now, so you started about 10 years ago, nine, nine, 10 years ago, starting to programmer. So you're, I'm going to call you a programmer is what you really were.
I think. , is that fair? I
Tom: And not, not, yeah, not then I had programming help then. I did do a lot of programming in my first company, second company. It was, it just was not, didn't make sense for me to do that. I,
Scott: Okay, but
Tom: got hired help.
Scott: seven to 10 years ago, sort of that building range, you're on the front end of cloud based programming.
Tom: Oh yeah, absolutely.[00:12:00]
Scott: So how did you even, I mean, you're, you, you haven't,
Tom: a young guy.
Scott: did you? Okay. You haven't told us to our face that you're a pretty smart guy, but you're a pretty smart guy. I mean, you got into computers early and now you're into, into cloud software early.
Tom: Yeah, it was. And I knew by the way, that, that was a lesson learned from my first company. My first. Company was all on premise software. Of course, the beauty of that, the curse and the blessing was you had, you had each of your customers basically had their own copy of the software so you could experiment on customer a bugs out and then roll it out to your other
Scott: Yeah. Yeah. And then give
Tom: nowadays it's a one for all.
Scott: Then you go back to customer and say, okay, here's a new copy. I'm sorry about the first one. Okay. So you develop this. . Okay. Okay. What, who did you roll out the first version to like, was it, you just, did you just do a shotgun and go, if you're a contractor looking, [00:13:00] you know, acting person, call me or did you have an industry?
Did you start in the concrete lifting? Where did, how did you
Tom: So yeah, definitely started in concrete lifting. We're heavy in that area. , and then, and I can't remember how, I mean, we weren't doing a ton of advertising. We were doing a little trade show stuff. But the other nice thing about the trades is they do meet and talk with each other. So, you know, somebody sees it out in the field and there was really a lot of word of mouth.
People see it out in the field and say, Hey, that's, oh, that's pretty neat. Yeah. Where'd you get that? You know, what is it? Yeah. And I think a lot of our early growth was that way. Now, that is how it kind of trans, you know, went transformed into, into different trades and spread out. So we get one, you know, we got a painter and we said, Oh, what do we need to do for painters?
And we figured out, okay, here's how we can handle what we do for the painters. And then we got, you know, a roofer and we figured out, okay, here's what we can do for the roofers. Because again, fundamentally. [00:14:00] It's the taking and calculating of the estimate that's unique for the trades, but at the end of the day, it's a list of services and materials that you're going to provide terms and conditions contract information that proposal ends up holding the same.
You know, they all look very similar, just different words for different, you know, different types of contractors
Scott: Perfect. Alright, so now you're in business. , how many people,
Tom: struggling
Scott: yeah, so you, so you, sounds like you had some programmers, some hired guns that help you develop the product, and it's you and Kathy. , and you, and here, here we go, we're selling it, we're online. Taking some money, still eating macaroni and cheese, probably.
,
[00:14:43] Estimate Rocket within the Painting Industry
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Scott: so, so how, you know, tell, take me through the first couple years. How did it grow? What was the evolution? Tell me some of your wins and losses during that first, you know, call it the 1. 0.
Tom: sure. , we we hit it at a really Really [00:15:00] good time. , and I think I think Even today, the trades in general are underserved, and I will tell you why, because they're really hard to reach. Like, as a group, there's too many little groups, there's no big groups. So they're really hard, it's really hard to market and go after and get visibility other than word amount.
So, you know, once, once we, we went to, we went to World of Concrete and that was, that was sort of almost comical for us because that was like, you know, this massive, massive show. Nobody knew anything about it. Yeah. It was like we were nobody. So that was, that was interesting. But we also did partner with a company that, that manufactures concrete lifting equipment.
They make the spray gun, you know, the foam spray guns and a rig that they can, you know, that they can go and use. And they were actually, they were actually would present us when they do their pitch to new, they're not really franchise, it's not a franchise thing. [00:16:00] It sort of seems like it because of, you know, the fact they sell them the equipment and the training and the materials.
, but, they would, you know, they would promote us as the way to. You know, the best way to get going with in a new business with it, because we kind of handled things end to end for you.
Scott: great, yeah.
Tom: that was a, that was a good growth.
Scott: Then from there, where'd you go?
Tom: , then, we found a couple of painters and we ended up going to the PCA. And, that was, or then the PDCA and, we went to, we went a couple, went to a couple of expos and, that was like amazing.
So that was the first actually big association and I still think they're probably one of the best trade associations that's out there in terms of what they do for the, for their trade. , those are hard to find. We've, you know, searched far and wide for other organizations like that, and they just, they don't exist in that way.
They're more, [00:17:00] manufacturers representative groups than they are. , about, you know, lifting up a trade and, and helping people to actually get better at the, at the craft.
Scott: Yeah, I remember your first year, and I'm trying to think where that was, but I remember you coming on
Tom: No islands,
Scott: yeah, you see in your booth, and I, and, and, I think in just, you know, there's always that buzz of, okay, don't be an early adopter, let them, let, let someone else practice,
Tom: right? Yeah.
Scott: yeah, cool, fun, okay, so,
Tom: at that stage, I got one more thought at that stage. , I happen to watch this, video by the lady who started, Constant Contact, and the title of the video, and it's really, it's kind of fun to watch, is called The Long Slow SaaS March of Death.
Scott: nice.
Tom: And, and it's because... You know, you, you got a good thing.
And one, generally speaking, you know, our customers have a fairly long life with us, you know, once we, once we, once we get them [00:18:00] and, and can make them work, you know, properly with our system, or make the system work properly for them, we haven't for awhile. And that part's great, but the model, the pricing model for SaaS is, is really difficult when you're starting up because you obviously have a lot of expenses to, you know, programming, you've got infrastructure, cloud infrastructure and all that stuff.
And, and it just feels like it's taking forever when you get started. So I know how, I know how that feeling works in any businesses like that. It's just that the size of each deal in our business is very small in the short run, long run. And it's great.
Scott: Yeah. Yeah. You have to build almost like a critical mass where it's like,
Tom: Exactly.
Scott: yeah. All right. So let's shift a little bit. , it's obvious to me, but I thought I just want to ask the questions. I want to go through some of now we can shift to painting contractors. Now we just go ahead and, you know, so, so [00:19:00] what are the, Okay.
What are the primary, secondary, and other things that Estimate Rocket does, does, I mean, for lack of better terms, what do you think it does best? And what are some things you've bolted on to it to support the primary? Because it seems to me it's fair to say that primarily, it's an estimating tool. It's really it's primary use.
But you've bolted on some other things, so talk a little bit about... You know, the evolution tell me now, you know, tell me a little bit about if you're, if you were going to give me the pitch, tell me, tell me why I should be using Estimate Rocket. And what are some of the tools that I might not, you know, and our audience might not know, because I think this is classic technology.
I mean, QuickBooks, anything, right? It, it does, we use it for something, but you're like, it does 500 more things, but you're like, I just, I just do these two things. I like, you know, tell me a little bit about Estimate Rocket and how we would use it in the painting industry.
Tom: If I had to do it again. I wouldn't have named it Estimate Rocket,
Scott: What would you name it?
Tom: because [00:20:00] it pigeonholes it to, that's what people think is all it does. And initially that is, that is all it did in fairness. So, so, here, I gave you the, I gave you the elevator pitch, which is really short. Estimate Rocket is an end to end software solution that enables service contractors to run their businesses efficiently, saving them time and money so that they can stop focusing on technology and start focusing on the customers and work that matters.
That's the, that's the 30, 000 feet view.
Scott: That's beautiful. It's like you read that. You've said that a few
Tom: I almost haven't memorized that. Yeah. Just about a thousand, I think,
Scott: Your co founder will be very proud.
Tom: there you go. And she'll be, she'll be happy that I'm
Scott: Yeah, that's right. There you go.
[00:20:46] Estimate Rocket Features
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Tom: Yeah. So we kind of, I kind of look at what we do is there's, there's three major elements and they're kind of the elements of business. There's the, there's the, estimating sales and proposals and the follow and [00:21:00] the closing of your deals.
That's one big portion. You know, I consider that phase one, and that is where a lot of people get started because once you, if you start in the middle, you could go use it right out of the gate to do, you know, work schedule. You still got to have somewhere, you got to have the details of what the job is about.
So it really kind of makes sense that you start there. And, and the next phase is really what I think is actually the most important part of it. And that is the, you know, coordination and scheduling and communications pieces and the way and the ability to. have all of the docentation for the job just in one spot.
So you really have everything about your job, each job in one place, and it's easy to get at, and everybody can get at the same information. So there's no more paper file that you're, you know, somebody's looking for. There's no more, I always call them rice bowls. There's no more things where, I gotta [00:22:00] get that from, from John, or, you know, we can't do the job because he's the guy that has that one piece of paper that's got all
Scott: Right.
Tom: the information on it.
And avoiding that, if you're gonna grow, you have to be able to avoid that, so you've gotta have that common repository for what you need. And you need documentation just for, you know, when jobs go bad, if something goes wrong, you need to be able to show what you did and how you did it. , and then the final piece is really the accounting and, you know, know your numbers is a real popular phrase these days and that, and it, and it, unfortunately, as I used to tell people, my specialty is the desperately dull and boring portion of running a business, which is the accounting is, you know, how do you account for things, what numbers are important to you, how do you collect them, how do you keep them updated?
I mean, those things are the lifeblood, but it has to be presented in a simple enough fashion that you can digest it. You know, it. It, it has to be simple, and that's really one of the things that we do.
Scott: Yeah. So let's dig [00:23:00] in there. So interesting. So I'm going to go move through the estimating because I think, in the interest of time, I think most people know or are aware of the, the way Estimate Rocket , estimates. And if you are unsure, just log into YouTube and go to the Estimate Rocket channel and look at some of their stuff.
So, assemblies and, and all that stuff. I mean, I, I think, I think, we're gonna get stuck if we're not careful. We're gonna be three hours on this podcast. So, but, but, I, I will just, I will just, affirm that Estimate Rocket estimates very well. I mean, there's all sorts of ways you can do it. You can do it old school, T&M type of hours and paint.
You can do, Production rates are still in there. You can put your own you can put them together. It's called assembly. So does it does it very well? So I'll , let's what I would I want to go into is what you just said which was sort of interesting to me Which is you really think the production section of of the workflow is really what you are [00:24:00] excited about today , tell me a little bit about that So I said, yes, let's go excited
Tom: Yeah.
Scott: where starting there is where I just heard that you think your program operates really well.
Tell me a little bit about some of the steps that are current in your program, and, and how people can use Estimate Rocket in that section all the way from, I said yes to I invoiced you.
Tom: Yeah. So one of the big things again, throughout the whole application is accountability. And by that. I mean, simply knowing who did what and when. So, and, and before that, who's going to do what and when. So, the assignment of being able to assign the project at various stages to a different team member.
Is one of the keys because I can assign again, depending on how many people you have, you know, the estimators might be the sales guy too. So that person kind of owns the project all the way through, but we [00:25:00] have a lot of companies that have, they have the head salesperson or the owner owns the project, but they'll assign it to the estimator to do the estimate.
The when the estimate gets accepted, they'll assign it to the crew leader or project manager that's going to run it. And then when it's when it's done, or even sometimes in the middle, they'll assign it to bookkeeper to get the invoices done and make sure everything gets, you know, a project coordinator to make sure that they clean up everything on the tail end. So keeping track of that and being able to report on it, being able to at any time to be able to say, Okay. Hey, you know, we got killed on this job. What do we do? And then, but you can easily quickly see. Oh, it was, you know, john and mark were on that. One's the estimator. One's the one's the crew leader. You can have them.
You can have a meeting and do an after action, you know, review and say, Hey, what happened? You know, did we blow the estimate? Do we miss out some information that we should have captured when we were doing the estimate? , you know, so [00:26:00] we can get better and not have that happening again. That's really the goal.
[00:26:04] Find Out More About Consulting4Contractors and Estimate Rocket
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[00:27:00]
[00:27:13] Tags and Estimating ROI in Marketing
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Scott: So could you tell us a little bit about the function of tags? So what you just said was we assign users, specifically a user. So here's an estimator. Here's a project manager or whatever. , how are those different than tags? And what are, what are some of the ways tags are useful in, in using your tool?
Tom: Yeah, so, so tags are used, typically for status or, definition and by that I mean, a great example of tags are, you know, hashtag interior, hashtag exterior. What kind of project was it? , but you can also use tags as a, a sort of a status indicator. Cause you can add them and then [00:28:00] delete them when they're no longer relevant.
So you could say, you could have a hashtag, you know, need paint colors. You can have a hashtag. Waiting for permit, you know, hashtag, you know, whatever statuses you might need, because you can search for those super easily when you're looking at your list of projects and find out, okay, hey, what are all the projects that are, we're waiting for color selections on?
What are all the projects we're waiting for permit or, you know, whatever those key blockers are that you have in, in your company that you need to be able to get, you know, pull those all together and know which ones you can move forward.
Scott: Okay. So a way to sort of quickly look at a category different than assigning. To a person.
Tom: Yes. Yep. Exactly.
Scott: right. Let's talk a little bit about lead sources and about, how to, how would Estimate Rocket help us determine our ROI and marketing with our different lead sources, whether it's [00:29:00] three or 12. It doesn't matter.
But, you know, help me understand how, how do we use Estimate Rocket in this way?
Tom: sure. Well, there's actually a, there's actually a key report called the closing ratio report. And that report can be done, by a nber of different, groupings or sorting. You can do it by the project owner. You can do it by the estimator. , you can also do it by, by the lead source, and you can do it by the city or zip code town, you know, town name or zip code.
So, When you run that by when you sort that by source, it gives you a list of, you know, how many projects by lead source. Did you close? What was the average project size of those? So you can easily if you've got your, you know, you've got your costs for those, you can easily calculate what your what your ROI is for, you know, what your lead cost is for those projects.
And you can know more importantly, what are the ones we're closing [00:30:00] most often? And what's the average, what's the average product, project, amount for those projects.
Scott: Yeah, great. Yeah, that's what it really is. Because that's, I think that's one of the challenges, especially with all the marketing available. People Call you and say, Hey, spend some money with me because we're the latest, greatest and people, it's an emotional decision. If you don't have the data, they go, you know, you know, if someone, someone's going to charge a couple grand a month for the rest of your life, you know, did you make, did was, did it convert?
And if you, if you may, if you spent 2000 and made nothing, well, that's a problem. ,
Tom: Big problem. Yeah.
Scott: now,
um,
Tom: I hate my, I hate marketing for that reason. You talk to them, you know, not to, not to slam any marketing people, but you know, when they say, Oh, but your, your, your clicks are up. Yeah, okay, that's great, but we haven't done any more business. So you can click out the wazoo. We got the wrong people clicking right
Scott: Yeah. If that was our, if that [00:31:00] was, if that, if clicks were what we were headed for, then I guess we'd be winning. But money was, is typically what I'm headed for. ,
Tom: Exactly.
Scott: , Exactly now,
Tom: My son's going over the yard arm here. So my, my bright lighting has
Scott: Oh, it's okay. It's all right. No, it's, it's, this is better for audio, not video. No one ever said I was a good looking guy. . All right. So what I was wondering is now this is something that, we, we, we work with our clients on, I call it a cookbook, it's basically a projection. Like, yeah. So like, Hey, you know, it's, and I appreciate what you said.
You're, came from accounting. I know. Insert joke here, but the idea is there is a, there is an element of, business is really science. Unfortunately, entrepreneurs do all this because they're emotional and crazy. So they're like, ah, I hate science. They're like, well, unfortunately that's really important.
But the idea of if you want [00:32:00] to do a million dollars and you close one in three, then you need 3 million of estimates. You'll close, you know, it's law of averages. You know, I, I'm not going to argue it, it works. So the idea though, is one of the things that I think a lot of people struggle to. With and I'd love your your thoughts on this both just intellectually and then with Estimate Rocket is , we're always asking this question.
What's your pipeline? You know, how many live bids do you have and and you know I remember reporting to the bank with a line of credit at 90 days. They go, we're going to cross that stuff off. We don't think you're getting paid, you know, in the same token, you know, there's this idea of going, yeah, I've got 5 million of, of pipeline.
Like, is it live? Like, really? Like, you know, so, you know. And that's one of the challenges I think with the estimating program is when do we mark those as lost or is there a different way to do this like closed or how do you have some feedback for, you know, painters that would, would [00:33:00] have that question of going, you know, you know, at some point we need to kind of go, I don't think they're going to do this right now.
Tom: right. Yeah, we, so my preference for that is, and we actually renamed this recently because we used to call it cancel the project and no one would do it because I think they thought it was going to go away and they'd never be able to get back to it. So we renamed it archive. And so when you archive a project, it basically takes it out of the numbers
it's no longer in the open estimates. It's, you know, so it's out of the flow, but it's still there. If you want to, if you want to reactivate it, there's a reactivate project. So, that's really what you should do. Even when you, even when you, deactivate it, you can still have an automated follow up, email setup.
You can set up a couple emails that would go out even though it's archived. That's kind of a drip campaign that, you know, will keep working for you [00:34:00] after, after you've archived it. So you can keep it alive, but not have it be in your numbers all the time.
Scott: Interesting, great comments. So that was one of my, one of my questions is, is when you archive it, I was thinking that stops the, automate the campaign.
Tom: No, no.
Scott: And, for those that don't know, in Estimate Rocket, you can set up all sorts of campaigns. I think. Even pre appointment, you could set up a campaign before the appointment.
So, they make an appointment, you send them an email, two or three, look at our video, do this, do that, and then, and you could, you could set it up forever. So the idea, and, and, this would be, this is a great tool for those of you, that don't do any of this, is to react, for reactivation, you know, just, you know, we, we don't want to aggravate people truthfully, it's not helpful, but.
, I'm a type of guy that needs a little push. You know, I'm typically the guy that's buying the most expensive thing. And when you told me the price, I'm like, well, let me just pretend that didn't happen. And then, but you, [00:35:00] if, if you pursue me, I'll buy from you. And this is what Estimate Rocket will do for you.
It'll keep pinging you every so often with different messages. And so even though it's archived is what you're saying is if they didn't say no. Or didn't say, stop stalking me. You can, you can, you can keep act, you can send him something every month or whatever you want. That's interesting.
Tom: Yeah. In fact, the completed when you complete a project, there's a completed camp, you know, completed project campaign and the completed project campaign. , actually goes out, I forget, like 30 days, says thank you, you know, a thank you note, 60 days, you know, is a note that says, hey, if you know anybody who needs any work done and, you know, let us know, and then 365 days.
And I also have some folks that will do, you know, if it's an exterior job, they'll actually do one out for five years or whatever they, whatever their refresh time is when people typically need the next go around on their, on their paint job.
Scott: Yeah. [00:36:00] So we don't have five hours, but interesting enough, and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm thinking about this live. Like I've, I've often had, so those of you that have warranty things like, Hey, set up, set a two year timer. And then two years ago, Hey, your warranty is about to expire. Or like Tom just said that five years say, Hey, it's been five years.
, Maybe it's time to take a look, and there's a lot of things you could do here. , you could also probably trigger, you could, you could trigger anything. You could trigger your click here to give us a review. You could do all this stuff. So, yeah, so much there. So that's what, your point of you saying, Gosh, I, I think it's actually not an estimating program.
That's just a, a piece. It makes sense to me now.
Tom: You know, one of our biggest challenges is, is learning, is getting people to understand some of the capabilities, because there's a lot there. It's, you know, like any, you know, some applications are, are super simple and they stay simple and that's all they do. And then I always like to use the example of Excel or Google Sheets, where you can [00:37:00] get in and use Google Sheets and Excel really easily and make some lists and print them out and, you know, send them to people, or you can do some really, really sophisticated things with Google Sheets that, you know, can help you run your business or help you at least model some of the things that I use them.
There's a lot of things that, you know, I, I'm not going to get out of my accounting program that I need to for analysis purposes. And something like Google Sheets is great, but learning it takes, you know, a long time. I'm still learning. I'm still looking, and every time I go in to do something, I still have to look up some function or something because I've forgotten what it's called, or because you don't do it all the time.
[00:37:36] Estimate Rocket Support Team, Collaborative Tuesdays, Changes
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Scott: So to that end, I know the Estimate Rocket has done some, has some things that I believe are towards that training end don't you have some, tell us a little bit about what you offer to support the program, the
Tom: Sure. Yeah, so we have, included when, you know, for our subscribers, we have a An onboarding [00:38:00] process where, and I will tell you not enough people take advantage of it. It's, you know, we're, we're kind of there for you. We give you some pointers on where to get started and how to get started.
, help with templates if you need some templates or tweaking to your templates. , but then, but we're there to answer those quick questions and kind of keep you going. We have a support team that'll, you know, is a chat phone or email. , and. They are always around helping and, and our, my whole philosophy about technical support is, you know, I hate saying no to people.
So I understand there's things that we don't do. I mean, every, everybody, you know, man's got to know his limitations. , but there are a lot of things that we don't do exactly the way you're. You might be asking for it, but I can get you the result you want, you know, by if you, you know, follow these steps and you'll get the same result.
It's just not exactly where [00:39:00] you were hoping it would be. And that's my goal is that we help provide an alternative. If it's something that we don't do exactly, you know, right out of the box, that we can provide some sort of alternative help to get you around it and get you, you know, the results that you need.
And then we have every Tuesday, we have a program called Collaborative Tuesdays. And basically, we pick a topic, usually something that's, you know, a little, hey, if you don't know how to do this, this will save you a lot of time things. And, but it's also kind of an ask me anything session. So, you know, we'll, our topic usually is 15 to 20 minutes worth of time.
We're there for 45 minutes to an hour. And. Whatever you got, just bring it and ask. It's a great, you know, a great opportunity for users to get whatever questions they want to answer.
Scott: So
Tom: and usually that's staffed by, one of the support team people. , I do them every now and then, and I have a great time.
Scott: those are great things. So almost like a webinar style thing where,
Tom: Yeah,[00:40:00]
Scott: so that is an amazing, Offering that people should hear and take advantage of because that's almost like one to one coaching With you know for free, right? So, you know, you might be like, oh, I got a call them I got a chat Tom saying every week they have a live event where you could probably it's probably a chat But hey, I've got this issue.
I got this problem Could you explain it and and yet people simply don't get on that call and it's a great tool
Tom: No, it is a webinar. It is a live webinar and you can, and we do, we do have a, we do screening, you know, we do have a live screening. So we actually go through stuff in the program, you know, show you how this particular thing is done or, and when we're answering questions as well.
Scott: Yeah, now I've seen some other things like sales, this or that, and you know, what else you have.
Tom: Yeah. So on the sales side, it's really, it's really wrapped up in the same flow as the work side. So in the work side with the [00:41:00] automated follow ups, you know, when, when they, when you book the work, it sends them, it sends them a drip. It says, here's when your appointment's going to be, you can send them, you know, you want what to expect docent or stuff like that before you're going to do the work.
, so in the sales process, it's the same thing. When new lead comes in, There's a short drip to say, Hey, trying to get ahold of you to schedule an appointment, or hopefully you'll call them. , these drip campaigns, by the way, I, we highly recommend that some of them go to you because the email we all know is not everything.
And people don't read emails because the email inboxes are so full of crap that They don't get through. So in a lot of the sequences, we suggest you email yourself and it has the customer's phone nber on it and you pick up the phone and call them. Because that's probably still the most effective way, I mean, and almost every service contractor spends a lot more time on the phone than they spend on anything else.
So it can really take, you can really [00:42:00] tailor 'em to, you know, get whatever results you're looking for.
Scott: Excellent. All right. A couple more things before we wrap up. I did want to ask you, in this, you know, this is, you might have something you might not, but what are some things that you see changing in the contracting world, over the last seven years? You know, what, what, what, have you seen anything that's interesting or worth mentioning?
Tom: I think probably the biggest thing we all saw, which was Covid made a big change in how we do things and how people wanna be interacted with. , and they've made a lot of opportunities to not have to be on site for every step of the project. And I think. People need to take more advantage of that. , you know, you can do a, you can do a very, you know, persuasive, kind of pre qualifying call with people when you're trying to schedule an appointment with them and find, and make sure that they're in your price range, you know, make sure that they've got a budget for the thing that they're asking [00:43:00] for before you even go out and look at the work.
We all, you know, there's ranges of some of these jobs that, for the most part, unless there's something you know, really unique, well. Unless there's a lot of unique things. Everything has some unique stuff, but , so you can pre qualify a little bit without ever going out on site. And that's way cheaper for you to do pre qualifying a little bit than it is to go out and spend an hour going somewhere, an hour, half hour waiting for people.
You know, that chews up a really, really big percentage of your time. And that, that's hard.
[00:43:33] Wrap-up & Estimate Rocket for Sales and Painting
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Scott: Yeah. The other thing that the, a program like this for those of you that aren't using this kind of a tool and it'll, it'll be a learning curve. You'll have to, you'll have to learn it, but to plug in these things live on an iPad as you're walking through or my style was, hey, you Walk through with me, tell me everything you want.
Then I'm going to take a second lap by myself. So, you know, you always feel this, but this idea, and we do a lot of sales training and we'll have some, we have [00:44:00] some, people that know me know that I'm a big proponent of sales, but the idea of before you leave this. appointment, which is the warmest this leads ever going to be.
, you can using a tool like Estimate Rocket go, ah, this is looking like it's a 10, 000 thing. Now we can talk about money and you can range it. You can, there's a lot of sales tools, but you can walk away and before you walk away, you, you can talk money. And if their eyes roll back in their head, they fall on the floor, they, they kick you out of their house. Then, then you have wasted an hour, but you haven't wasted two hours, right? The idea of, okay, this tool helped me give them, a verbal. And they told me to, n n never call them again. Then you can, you can, you can learn from that experience. You practice your sales thing, you didn't have to write it up.
But, you know, these things give us a lot of ability to instantaneously. And the other thing we advocate is... We love [00:45:00] hiring salespeople that aren't painters, right? So how would you tell someone? Well, you have to have production rates. You have to have a tool like Estimate Rocket to teach a non painter because we think you could teach someone to plug in numbers
, Teaching someone how to sell is a much more difficult. So, the tool is critical. And, you know, just the ability for the documents to be electronic. We have all these issues where, Oh, I handed the work order to Joe and now Joe's sick or he's broke. You know, I gotta get the work order. No, you don't.
Work order's electronic. It's an Estimate Rocket. Send it to him again or have him log in or whatever. So,
Tom: Log in when you clock in.
Scott: There you go. There's so many tools. We could be here for hours. I would, I would, advise everyone to go to the Estimate Rocket website. Go to their YouTube channel. Check out, they've got all sorts of things.
, it's, you know, too numerous almost to talk about, but a lot of good things. I want to finish up with, if you have any thoughts of anything that you think are ripe for disruption, for painting specifically, or anything that [00:46:00] you're working on, at Estimate Rocket.
Tom: Yeah, I don't have any major disruptors in the bag at the moment. , I think it's funny. Last year I went to, CPIA, conference and they had somebody talking about a robotic painting and you know, it sounds good, but even the presenter said, look, this is still in its infancy and it's not. We're a long way because of all the irregularities on a construction site, we're still going to be a long way from that level of automation being used on anything except major, you know, big projects that are very repetitive in terms of how, you know, so these robots basically can be programmed to do this over and over for the 5000 rooms or whatever in the skyscraper, whatever the project is.
So, you know, I think that stuff's coming at some point. I mean, AI is interesting. , you got, [00:47:00] it's got all the press right now. The only thing I'll say about that is there are some very handy things that ChatGPT or your AI tool of choice will do. You just have to you have to read them. You have to read them after it gives you, you know, its results because , in a lot of cases I've found that it It takes your personality out of it.
So if part of how you're writing things is, has your emotion in it and your feelings in it, it will, it'll strip that out in a lot of cases and you'll end up with something very genericized. And I think that's. You know, that's one of the, I think people are going to rely on that a little too heavily, and they're going to get disappointed because the people are going to start reading their things and go, Oh, this, this just is sterile.
There's no, there's no feeling emotion to it or, or character to it.
Scott: And and there's a few of out there that need to use it so that you stop putting so much emotion in your emails.[00:48:00]
Tom: That's a good point. It's a very good point. It's very good for that stuff though. It is actually a good tool to bounce your thoughts on, onto. And, you know, it'll, it'll come back with some, you know. Accurate things. Just make sure that it hasn't stripped all your feeling out of it.
Scott: Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Any last thoughts before we wrap this up?
Tom: Oh, no, it just, it was a pleasure. I, I enjoy, I enjoy reminiscing, enjoy talking about the, you know, the product that we love and, and really do enjoy helping people build businesses. That's just been, you know, part of everything I've done. And since I, you know, got out of college, so it's, it's still doing it.
Scott: Well, I'll say the Estimate Rocket still is very responsive company. You know, Often these, technology platforms start off as Tom did, as sort of a ma and pa, if you will, and he answered the phone, he was the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, and then they, they, they get a couple, they get a hundred, or two [00:49:00] hundred, or five hundred, or a thousand, and next thing you know they move to, well, chat with me, and oh, email me, and next thing you know there's nothing, like, you know, try to get, try to get a hold of, Intuit, or something like that, you're like, forget it.
, so back in the day, It was phone calls because I'm an immediate gratification dude, but they are still very responsive, highly responsive, in so many different ways and, and, so any, any. I would suggest everyone just go to their website. They have a trial feature if you've never used the tool, heard of it.
Watch their YouTube videos. , get a demo. Whatever you need. , they're very responsive. , and , if they, if you need some hand holding, they'll hand, they'll hold your hand. And , and then they've been , really great. , we haven't even talked about. Pre Estimate Rocket, but as far as other things, but they they [00:50:00] really do a good job And I think one of the things I I want to just finish with is what Tom said is any It is a machine, right?
Software is a, is, is, you know, not think like you exactly, but whatever you want the sausage to look like out of the mission out of it, you can do, because I used to do that a lot. I, I like my terms and conditions differently, and I just made him, I made him an item template. Like, I'm like, I'm just gonna do it.
I'm like, yeah, how about it? How can I make this header different color? Sure, we can do that, you know? So, you know, cool. The best thing you could do is ask because the answer is almost always yes, we can make it do that. We could make it look like that. So they're a great resource. Very responsive time. It's been a pleasure.
Say hi to Kathy for me. And thanks for adding value to our community
Tom: My pleasure. It was really great being on and, anytime you want to chat. I am more than happy.
Scott: there. Awesome. All right. Take care.
Tom: Thanks, Scott. [00:51:00]