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Welcome to Contractor Cuts , where we cover

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the good , the bad and the ugly of

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growing a successful contracting company

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.

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Welcome back to Contractor Cuts . My name is Clark Turner

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, I'm Jared Flo . Thank you for joining us again this

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week . So today we are

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talking about how much free work should

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I do to land that

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job ? Where is the line of

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an estimate ? Some guys

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charge for estimates to show up day

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one , to even get their eyes on your

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job all the way through . I've been

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running down the road for four months on this

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job doing free work . I'm just trying to get a signature

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on this estimate . So where is

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the line that we're going to draw between ? Hey

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, this is what I'm doing and at this

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point , if you want me to continue , I

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need to get paid for my time .

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Yeah , and I really think this is a place of frustration

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for a lot of people , because I think everybody in our industry

0:53

has experienced doing the

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client having a demand of things that they want

0:59

from us at the beginning of a job and

1:01

we really want to land the job . We're

1:04

customer service oriented and so we

1:06

do all of these different things and then

1:08

something happens and they go . They disappear

1:10

, that we lose them , and I've spent time

1:13

and money that I could have been spending

1:15

somewhere else to land a job and now I'm out

1:17

. All that money .

1:18

Yep . So getting started , we're going

1:21

to kind of walk through some thoughts on that

1:23

. First off , some people

1:25

say charge for estimates . I always charge for estimates

1:27

to make a ton of money . Do not charge

1:29

for estimates . Charge

1:31

for the depth that you need to go into if

1:34

it's required to get the signature

1:36

. So let's talk about what that means . So for us

1:38

, we don't offer free estimates

1:40

. And then if you want us to do a consultation

1:42

, it's $350 . Consultation

1:45

means I'm going to sit , walk through your job site for two , three

1:47

hours with you , figure out what's going on , start

1:50

dreaming and put together a

1:52

list of what needs to be done . That's a consultation

1:54

. If you want an estimate , I need a list from

1:56

you , I need pictures from you . I need to be able to put

1:59

together an estimate of what you

2:01

want done Right , black and white , not

2:04

not any . Well , something over here

2:06

can give me three versions of it this way , and

2:08

so we draw that line . Now we've never charged I

2:10

don't think ever for that consultation

2:12

. But having a line of demarcation between

2:14

what you can pay me for and what I'm going to do for

2:17

free on the estimate is where

2:19

we get people to say , yeah , just give me the free one . We'll start

2:21

there , and so we're engaged , they're happy , they know

2:23

what they're getting and I can spend

2:25

a little extra time and , just , you

2:27

know , be the good guy on it . Hey , you know what I'm

2:29

going to . Let's just figure out what you want done here . I'm not

2:31

going to charge you . Let's get it , get it done . But

2:33

then they feel you know I'm helping them out

2:36

and they're happy and and

2:38

I'm working for them and doing

2:40

some free stuff and in essence I

2:42

would have done that for them anyways . But now they know that

2:44

this is what I charged for and this is what's free . So

2:47

, our opinion , do

2:49

not charge for estimates , Do

2:51

the free side up front , and

2:54

then where ? Where are we going to draw the line ? We'll

2:56

talk about next , that's right . So

2:58

, going into that , what we want to

3:00

do is run through

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and if you've listened to our last podcast , you

3:04

know that we push desk estimates

3:06

heavily . If you haven't listened to that podcast there's

3:08

it's a number of podcasts ago , but we

3:10

talk about how to do a desk estimate and the

3:13

estimating process . So

3:15

when a new client comes in , I

3:17

, as the head of construction or the general manager

3:19

of my company is , I am going to put together

3:22

a desk estimate , which is a 30 minute quick

3:24

estimate of scope that you've given

3:26

me , and round ballpark numbers

3:29

to try and hit an

3:31

estimated amount for your job . That way , if

3:33

you want a new kitchen and I'm like it's gonna

3:35

be $68,000-ish and

3:37

you got a $5,000 budget Based

3:40

on HGTV Great yeah , I'm not gonna

3:42

come out to your house and waste the next 10 hours

3:44

of my week trying

3:46

to get you landed and then all of a sudden you see the

3:48

price in your ghost . Yeah Right , so that's kind

3:50

of . We're not gonna go into the desk estimates today , but

3:53

that's the free part . I'm gonna do that for free

3:55

and then I'm even gonna come out and do an onsite

3:57

assessment of that estimate .

3:59

So we come out . If , after the desk

4:01

estimate , I assess you know what

4:03

, the probability

4:05

of me landing this as a client is high

4:07

. The price was around

4:10

what they wanted . I've gotten to know the

4:12

client . I've gotten to know whether they are . Are

4:14

they a little bit nuts ? Are they asking some

4:16

really weird questions ? Do I wanna work with this

4:18

client ? I've determined all those things and it cost

4:20

me nothing . Yeah , An hour of my time

4:22

and a 30-minute phone call .

4:23

Yeah , and everything we're talking about today is

4:26

this is how I'm assessing the

4:28

gamble I'm doing with my time yeah , right

4:30

. So if I get on that call and they're like , yeah

4:33

, 68,000 for the kitchen , that sounds amazing

4:35

. That's right on what I'm trying to

4:37

do . I've already got my designer , we're

4:39

ready to go , but we just need to find

4:41

the right company , if I'm getting all of those signs

4:43

, I'm gonna spend a little more time for free to

4:45

try and land that client . If someone's like I don't

4:47

have time for a desk estimate phone call , I'm like just give

4:49

me a price and let me know I'm

4:51

not landing that client . They're just trying to shop it . They're

4:53

trying to sell the house . They're trying to figure out and

4:56

price me against another contractor

4:58

. They're not engaged in actually hiring

5:01

us . They're trying to get me to do some

5:03

free work .

5:03

But if I determine you know

5:05

what this seems like a legit lead that I probably

5:08

am gonna be able to land , I'm willing to

5:10

spend more of my time and money

5:12

because the odds of me losing

5:14

this are gonna be less . Yeah , that's right . So I'm

5:16

willing to go the next step of now

5:18

. I've got my desk estimate , my template

5:20

, of what this estimate's gonna be . Now I need to

5:22

go on site and dial it in with some real

5:24

numbers and real conversations with the client .

5:27

And so , with that being said , we like

5:29

to start out with every client to let them know

5:31

and understand kind of the timeline . We

5:33

talk about our client engagement agreement a lot and

5:36

that is where we sit down with the client before

5:38

starting and lay out exactly

5:40

how the renovation goes , all the rules of the

5:42

game around , what we are responsible

5:44

for , what they are responsible for and all

5:46

of that . I'm not gonna go into that again because we've covered

5:48

that plenty on these podcasts how to do

5:50

a client engagement meeting . But

5:53

just like we do that for the renovation

5:55

, I'm doing that upfront during the desk

5:57

estimate or my first conversation as to

6:00

what to expect from this process

6:02

up till when you need to sign . And so

6:04

we tell them listen , we're gonna do this , this and

6:06

this . But I don't say

6:08

I'm not gonna do this other stuff for you , but I start laying

6:10

out like this is our process . We're gonna

6:12

do this desk estimate , that I'm gonna have someone come out and

6:15

do a revise estimate by meeting

6:17

you on site and kind of walking through in person . Then

6:20

we're gonna come back and revise that and start

6:22

ensuring that we chip away and get the price

6:24

exactly right and if you're ready to go , we're gonna

6:26

sign and get going . But

6:28

what I'm not gonna do and

6:30

where I'm gonna draw the line is pre-construction

6:33

work , and kind of the rule of thumb for us is

6:36

, if I'm doing something for you that

6:38

you could take with you and have another contractor

6:40

do , that in my mind

6:43

is pre-construction work , and so

6:45

pre-construction is a phase of our

6:47

jobs that we're doing before the

6:49

construction started , but you need to pay

6:51

me for my time to do it . So I

6:53

try to separate out what I'm doing for free

6:55

and what I'm charging for into kind

6:58

of using that rule of thumb . So , for instance , if

7:00

you want me to work with your designer in an

7:02

architect , that's going to be hours

7:04

of my time . That is pre-construction

7:06

, to prep for the construction , and normally it's not

7:08

one meeting , no it's not one

7:11

meeting . It's not a single , you know 30

7:13

minute phone call . It's a back and forth , it's

7:15

a bunch of other things like that . So what we

7:17

want to start doing is drawing the line between

7:19

what we are going to do for free and

7:21

what we're going to do before the signature

7:24

, and so freeze before the

7:26

signature and what we need a

7:28

financial commitment for to complete

7:30

. Right Now everyone says , well , you know , they

7:32

might not be ready to sign that $300,000

7:35

estimate of mine because they need more information

7:38

from me . So I've got to run down the road and pick

7:40

out selections and do all my trade

7:42

walks to make sure that my numbers are perfect , right

7:44

, and I need to do all that stuff before I can give them a

7:46

final number , right . And so what we do

7:48

and what we coach on is you

7:51

need to separate out into the top

7:53

section of your estimate , especially on the larger

7:55

construction ones , new builds , additions

7:57

, that sort of thing . You need to separate

7:59

out a section called pre-construction

8:02

. Yep , every single one of our estimates that are the large

8:04

really anything over 50,000 usually

8:06

is going to have a pre-construction section

8:09

in it , and some of the smaller ones too . If there's more

8:11

work that needs to be done up front . If it's not , if

8:13

it's not , hey , go paint the walls . Yeah , that's

8:15

, that's that's straightforward .

8:17

It's specific action items that are needed

8:19

to set the job up for success Right

8:21

. Some of the details that are needed to be gathered

8:23

, some of the information you

8:26

know permitting . You know there's a bunch of

8:28

different things that you know are a

8:30

part of this , but they are the things . Like you

8:32

said before that if this

8:34

client were to walk away at the end of me executing

8:37

this and go with somebody else , that

8:39

person would have had to have done

8:41

those things as well . But now they're going to be able to take my

8:44

work and use it on

8:46

somebody else's job site , so that would . That's

8:48

the kind of qualifier , like you said before

8:50

, of something that I'm going to say and explain

8:52

to the client . This is what we're

8:54

going to do . We're going to do all of these things , but it's a

8:57

require us time and money

8:59

, and I'm willing to spend that . I'm excited

9:01

to spend that , because that's going to really help us dial

9:03

in and make sure everything is perfect so that we

9:05

can really execute this job for you . But

9:09

all of that

9:11

stuff happens before I swing a hammer and you're

9:13

expecting me to invoice you for things that I'm

9:15

swinging hammers on .

9:16

Yeah , people think they don't owe you money until I break ground

9:18

. Yeah , and so what we want to do and

9:20

I'm not starting out by trying

9:22

to get them to do the pre-construction

9:24

first I'm trying to sell them the whole estimate . But

9:27

if they're not ready to sign but want me to spend

9:29

the time , I already have the itemized

9:31

line items on my quote for

9:33

pre-construction items and so I

9:35

explained to them listen , I got a . This

9:38

is a lot of . This is taxed too , because

9:40

you come in and say I'm not doing that for free for

9:42

you until you sign with us , right , clients

9:45

gone . If I come in and say , hey

9:47

, listen , I will love to dive in

9:49

. It's gonna take me 20 hours to do X , y and Z . I

9:51

want to dive into this and get started on it . I think

9:54

. I think we're very close to signature

9:56

, but we need some of these things finalized . Can

9:58

we break this into two jobs ? One is gonna

10:00

be your pre-construction . I'm gonna get started on that . It's

10:03

$2,500 to do X , y and Z . Are

10:06

you cool with me spending the next 20 to

10:08

30 hours of this week and next

10:10

week Working on all of this stuff to

10:12

get your job lined up and doing all that work

10:14

. I've pulled it out of the line items You're not paying

10:16

me twice for this stuff but I've separated

10:18

out to where you're gonna pay

10:20

me to do your selections and I'm gonna be doing

10:22

a gantt chart for you and walking with my crews Making

10:25

sure that I can do all of get everything

10:28

accurate to where we can move forward . But I

10:30

got to spend 30 hours on that and it's gonna take a lot

10:32

of my time . Are you cool with paying me for that ? And

10:34

if you're good and if everything

10:36

ends up the way that it is right now , we're

10:38

gonna sign and get the job done

10:40

. If not , you can still back out . There's no

10:43

long-term commitment for you . You're just paying

10:45

me for the time I'm gonna spend on prepping

10:47

and getting the construction ready . So

10:49

we can we can start swinging hammers .

10:51

What's interesting , you know , we we just

10:53

recently went to our annual retreat

10:55

, yeah , and we were going over

10:58

some of this information . I remember one of the guys

11:00

specifically said he's like you

11:02

know , I've , I've told clients when we were

11:04

going through this Look , here's

11:06

the reality . Every single contractor

11:09

has this information in there

11:11

. They've just cooked the books . It's in

11:13

, it's it ? They've inflated their line items

11:15

to cover this stuff . We're the only

11:17

ones that are willing to put it in front of you

11:19

and say these are the real cost . Yeah , right

11:22

, so that there's there's a benefit

11:24

of being able to sit in front of a client and say , look , you're

11:27

paying for these costs , whether you go with me or somebody

11:29

else . I'm just the one that's willing to actually tell

11:31

you line item , line items are yeah

11:33

.

11:33

So what , what we include in that and

11:36

where we draw the line of pre-construction ? It's first

11:38

off , it's picking selections picking

11:40

out life fixtures , picking out plumbing fixtures

11:43

, picking out flooring again

11:45

, those , some of those , are gonna be changing the final

11:47

price Right , and so we need to understand

11:50

some of those , because all three of those things

11:52

that I just listed can get really expensive

11:54

. I mean , do an LVP verse doing

11:57

a really nice Brazilian hardwood Mm-hmm

11:59

is a 10 to 15 thousand dollar difference for

12:01

a house and so stuff like that to where

12:03

things can really start scaling in price

12:06

. Let's capture all of that stuff

12:08

before we move forward , because you might want to change what

12:10

we're doing on the estimate depending on the

12:12

selections . You want to match that , and

12:14

so I explain it to the client , say , but again

12:16

, I don't want to start going through those selections

12:18

because that's a lot of time and effort to build that

12:20

selections list for you and To start walking

12:22

you through kind of how , what I've budgeted . But

12:25

that needs to be done before we get growing . That's

12:27

a pre-construction item , another pre-construction

12:29

. I'm dealing with your architect blueprints

12:31

back and forth . How is this gonna be laid out ? Where's

12:34

the water closet for this ? How are we doing

12:36

the HVAC and a utility

12:38

closet here , all of that stuff

12:40

. I need to be working with your Architect

12:43

. If you don't have one , I we've got a

12:45

plenty that we you can choose from that We'd love to introduce you

12:47

to but do working with your

12:49

blueprints and architect outside of looking at

12:51

it to build an estimate . That needs

12:53

that's during our pre-construction phase . Something

12:56

else we do is trade walks and final revision

12:58

. So I know that I can install an HVAC

13:01

unit in this house for $10,000 , but

13:03

there's some factors that I might have

13:06

missed . I I want to get my HVAC

13:08

guy to walk the property , make sure he understands what

13:10

we're doing , look at the blueprints and spend

13:12

a couple hours of his time Building

13:15

a plan of how he's gonna be doing the

13:17

install for you . So I

13:19

want to do that during our pre-construction , but

13:21

I I gotta pay him for a couple hours of

13:24

that work . Yeah , usually with that good

13:26

relationship , I don't have to pay him , but I budgeted

13:28

to where I can cover his time . So I'm not taking advantage

13:30

of my guys . If we don't land this job

13:32

, I'm gonna slip them 200 bucks for , you

13:34

know , for spending the time and doing all this load

13:37

, calcs and all that stuff . Yeah , but I'm

13:39

not going to go and walk the job site with seven

13:42

crews to make sure our numbers are tight and revisions

13:45

, unless I'm getting paid for that time

13:47

. Now we also tell our clients hey

13:49

, listen , if there's a 10% variance on these

13:51

prices , once I get these revisions we're

13:54

going to . You know , let's pull out of this and

13:56

pause and figure out what's going on . I

13:58

don't want my numbers to change by more than 10%

14:00

. If that is the case , we're going to do a deep

14:02

dive into why that happened .

14:49

Well , and we give our clients an out right

14:52

Because we're telling them to

14:55

move forward , we need a signature that you're okay

14:57

with going with us . But we're also

14:59

, in the same breath , telling them the

15:02

next steps may change the final

15:04

cost , right , and so they're a

15:06

little hesitant of like I'm going to sign

15:08

on the bottom line , but you're telling me in the next couple

15:10

of weeks this number probably will change , and

15:12

we tell them , if there is a 10%

15:15

variance where we go up by 10%

15:17

, over 10% , we

15:19

will give you the option to back

15:21

up and say , hey , you know what this is more

15:24

than I expected , right .

15:25

And that's usually when we're trying to get them . Yet when they're signing

15:27

the whole thing at once up front , if

15:29

we haven't done those final trade walks and they're

15:31

ready to sign , we give them that out

15:34

. Yeah , but at the

15:36

same time , if they're not ready to sign like well , I just need to know the final numbers

15:38

before I move forward with the signature , what

15:40

we do is say , okay , listen , I want you to approve section

15:43

one on my estimate . Section one is pre-con

15:45

is $2,800 . I'm

15:47

going to build you a Gantt chart . I'm going to lay

15:49

out at what crews are going and where I'm

15:51

going to meet my crews on your job site . I'm

15:54

going to start building a selections list

15:56

and then I'm also going to look into the permitting

15:58

process and what's needed there . And we could

16:01

probably even put the permit costs into

16:03

this , because even if you don't go with us , you need this permit

16:05

and so we can get lay

16:07

the groundwork on that , even though I'm not pulling the permit yet

16:09

, unless you're ready to move forward , start dealing

16:12

with what we need for that specific municipality

16:14

and pulling a permit there . So saying

16:17

, this stuff needs to happen and you can

16:19

take all this with you if you go with someone else , but

16:21

we have a ballpark number that we're both pretty

16:24

good with in terms of . I think it's

16:26

accurate and it's within your budget . If

16:29

you're not ready to sign the whole thing , let's break this into

16:31

two parts . I'm going to have one job that's pre-con

16:33

, and then I'll have a secondary signature

16:36

once you're ready to approve the actual quote

16:38

. Is that fair to ask of you ? And

16:40

I have never had a

16:42

client be like no , I'm not going to pay you for doing

16:44

that stuff . Every client like that makes sense . You've

16:47

given me hours of free time . We

16:49

have a scope put together that I

16:51

understand . It's it within my budget . We're

16:53

very close . I need some final details

16:55

. I want you to do the work to get me those final details

16:57

. I can pay you $2,500 for that

16:59

, because that's going towards the job .

17:02

Well , and at the end of it they will not

17:04

have just paid you for time . That's just nebulous

17:07

out there somewhere . Right , they will end

17:09

up with something tangible . Yeah Right

17:11

, they'll have architectural drawings , they'll have blueprints

17:13

, they'll have permits . Whatever

17:16

the action items that you execute for

17:18

that pre-con stuff , at the

17:20

end of it there is something tangible they're getting

17:22

, they're paying for and they will get in

17:24

return . Hopefully , your

17:26

process of executing those things

17:28

are further going to land and confirm

17:30

yeah , I want to go with these guys .

17:32

And again , this is not a hard

17:34

line in the sand for us as a company

17:37

. We use intuition and

17:39

again , this is more of our guys that we trust

17:41

long term , that have been here for a long time . That

17:43

might be head of construction general manager wheeling

17:46

on their intuition not the new project managers

17:49

intuition but again , we're

17:51

always gauging the time spend

17:53

versus the profitability

17:56

and our confidence in

17:58

landing this job . So we've got a job right

18:00

now that's over $500,000

18:02

. It's a really good profit

18:04

. I mean , it's a fair profit , but it's

18:07

above 10% . Right , it's a

18:09

really good profit for the price point . And

18:12

we're in that job . And the

18:14

client wants to walk some other properties with

18:17

us that they're just doing their due diligence because they've been

18:19

burned by a contractor in the past and

18:21

so we've had the conversation with me and my GM

18:23

about it of like , all right , so we're going to

18:26

walk these properties with her . She has everything

18:28

done . We've done revisions for her

18:30

. This is where we're going to draw

18:32

the line after they do these walks this day

18:35

and let them know that if you want

18:37

to move forward at this point , this is what we

18:39

got to do . Next , we need to be paid for that stuff , what

18:42

we did ? Probably Eight

18:45

hours of extra work for this client . Sure

18:47

be that . They wanted to feel safe

18:49

because they've been burned before it was a choice that

18:51

we make yes , because we're making six figures

18:53

profit on a job . It's like it's worth it

18:55

to gamble that now . If it's a $80,000

18:58

job and my profit maxed out at 25%

19:01

, I'm not spending those extra eight hours . I'm saying

19:03

listen , this is where I'm at , this is what happens

19:05

next . I'd love to move forward with you . We have a pre-construction

19:08

section that all of these next things

19:10

happen in . What can we do to Make

19:13

you feel safe ? I'm moving forward and sign of this quote .

19:15

Yeah Well , and the reality is is that most customers

19:17

Feel like that's what's

19:20

supposed to happen . Yes , they have access

19:22

. I'm interested in going with

19:24

you , and so , as much as I need

19:26

you out here , come walk this house again , come do

19:29

this thing . Let me ask questions . Look , they feel

19:31

like that's just what is afforded

19:33

to them , yep , and they don't really

19:36

understand that Some of that

19:38

is just a time cost

19:40

and some of it is time and money cost

19:42

that You've got to pay for

19:44

. And if you don't help them

19:46

understand the expectation and draw that line

19:49

for them , then they're they're

19:51

not jerks , right ? They're not trying

19:53

to take advantage of you . They just think that that's

19:55

how it's supposed to go Well , and the big difference is proactive

19:57

versus reactive .

19:58

I mean that's , you can name , rename , prostruct

20:00

, alliance , proactive versus reactive .

20:02

That's all .

20:03

That's everything we do , because yeah with this

20:05

being said , if Jared was my client

20:07

and and I was like hey , jared , before we get started

20:09

, let me just kind of lay out the process . We're gonna do this . When

20:11

you get revision , I'm gonna make sure everything was good . If

20:14

you're ready to move forward with us

20:16

, this is what we do during pre-construction . We

20:18

can do that for you and and have

20:20

that conversation at this point . That's , this

20:23

is where we need the signature and this is what we start doing

20:25

and this is where you have your outs . If you want a blah , blah , blah

20:27

, you're like great , that makes sense . And so when I get to

20:29

the spot where I'm like hey , listen , we're at the spot . Are you

20:31

ready to move forward with us ? Yes , I think I

20:33

am . No , I need this information to get there . Whatever

20:36

that conversation is , it's , it's been proactively

20:38

talked about . If we get down to this spot , I'm

20:40

like and Jared asked me to do three more

20:42

things for him and I'm like well , this is where my line is

20:44

. I'm like sorry , jared , I'm not doing that till you pay me right

20:47

.

20:47

Well , this guy's after my money .

20:49

He's trying to nickel and dime me now , and it's this

20:51

because , reactively , if you

20:53

had an assumption that I was gonna keep doing this

20:55

until you were comfortable , though if I said

20:57

it Proactively ahead of time , hey

21:00

, just so you know , this is kind of the process . Well

21:02

, I'm the professional I've been . I do this day in and

21:04

day out for 18 years . You're a Client

21:07

that maybe has done one or two renovations

21:10

. You're gonna go with my plan , right

21:12

, and so , laying it out proactively

21:14

, having this conversation ahead of time , to

21:17

where , hey , this is what we do . This

21:19

is when I'm gonna need a signature . Hey , let's

21:21

do that , let's make you comfortable . But I

21:23

love to spend all this time on this job

21:25

, which is kind of my

21:27

go-to line . It's the . I'm asking permission

21:29

to spend more time on your job . Mm-hmm , I'm

21:32

not telling you . You owe me money , right , right

21:34

, and so it's like I really want to do this stuff . Can

21:36

. Are you cool with approving me to go ahead and spend

21:38

these next ?

21:39

30 hours on this stuff , yeah , which is , which is

21:41

literally tipping the meter from . Are

21:43

you for me ? Yeah , as your

21:45

client , or are you only for

21:48

your dollars ?

21:48

Yeah , it's the rhetoric rhetoric of of

21:51

being a Advocating

21:55

for the client , it's the it's

21:57

. How do I say this so they know that

22:00

I'm advocating for them ? I'm not falsely saying

22:02

it , but I want , instead of saying I

22:04

can't do anything else for you until you pay me

22:06

, I'm changing how I'm saying it to approach

22:08

them in a way that that I'm giving

22:10

them what they need , which is saying , hey , listen , if you

22:13

, I would love to spend this time on this

22:15

, can we do that ? I just need your approval . Yeah

22:17

, yeah , that's fine . I mean 2,500 . I'm gonna pay this anyways

22:20

. I think we're going with you . That's great , go ahead and do that . Yeah

22:22

, but it's not . I'm not asking for a thirty thousand

22:24

dollar deposit at that time . I'm saying listen , I'm

22:26

gonna spend some time on this for the next

22:28

three weeks . It's gonna be . I need 3,500

22:30

and a 1200 , whatever . Whatever

22:33

I can justify my time spent on

22:35

that's what I need to get paid for , in case they

22:37

walk away without signing .

22:38

Yeah , well , and every , every client comes

22:40

to us Thinking that

22:42

all we care about is money . Yep , right , and

22:44

if they're met with a no

22:47

, can't , not until you pay me money , yeah , they

22:49

go . Aha , I found

22:51

them , I found you out , I knew it . Yeah

22:53

, right , but if you come at them with that , you're

22:55

saying the same thing . Right

22:57

, but it's like you were talking about . It's the rhetoric , it's

22:59

the , it's the I'm advocating

23:01

. I'm right , I want them to understand

23:04

that they're safe with me , that I'm gonna take

23:06

care of them and I'm looking out for their best

23:08

interest . But I'm also

23:10

a business and I have a process . That this is

23:12

how it works . Yeah right , they're fine

23:15

with that . Yeah right , there's actually a

23:17

level of respect and trust that comes from

23:19

even though they're having to jump , so drop

23:21

, jump through some hoops that they weren't expecting

23:23

. There's a level of trust and

23:25

respect that comes from how they I have a

23:27

plan , they have a plan .

23:28

Yeah , they're not some problem , I there's there's

23:31

a reason behind this right , so . Well

23:34

, that's it . Next week . We're talking about

23:36

Estimates and what's missing

23:39

from your estimates that you have to put on there . There's we

23:41

see all the time when we're reviewing estimates , spots

23:43

where our leaky buckets are happening

23:45

, where you you should have put certain things

23:48

on that Estimate . So it's a good transition

23:50

from this this product podcast , because

23:52

, like , okay , pre con is part of the estimate

23:54

. I'm separating that out . How should that detail look

23:56

? What level of detail should I have ? How do I look

23:58

at my project managers estimates , yeah

24:01

, and and really coach around those

24:03

with him to help him build those out

24:05

. More Rebust and we're not missing things essentially

24:07

.

24:08

You know , how do I stop losing

24:10

my original profit that I was trying

24:12

to make Yep ? I started off at 30 and

24:15

I ended the job at 18 .

24:17

How did that 12% go right ? And let's , let's

24:19

make that to where it's a 2% , not a 12%

24:21

drop . If you're doing a million dollars a year , that's

24:23

a hundred thousand dollars a profit You're losing , yeah , so

24:26

let's , let's . How do we tighten that up ? And we're

24:28

gonna talk about that next week . If you want to talk with Jared

24:30

or I , yeah , we will personally help on a

24:32

zoom with you . Go to go to pro struct 360

24:34

comm . Hit , contact us , sign

24:37

up for the software . We have a free version of the software

24:39

. You can get right now pro struct 360 comm

24:41

Love to get you on the software

24:43

, start using it . It is a very robust

24:45

, high-end software that that we run

24:47

our company on , all of our people

24:50

that we coach run their company on it

24:52

is built around as the

24:54

the bones of our system and

24:56

then we coach around it to where it's like okay

24:58

. So this is why we have the software set up

25:00

this way . That's right , because you can manage your employees

25:02

, you can manage your crews , you can receive payment , you can

25:04

do all this stuff to where it's a one-stop

25:06

shop for the one . You know , the one

25:09

, two , three , four man shows that

25:11

that might not be doing a hundred million a year

25:13

, but I need something that's where

25:15

I don't have seven software .

25:16

So it's a really keep organized

25:18

, create some efficiency , that's it , and duplicate

25:20

your company .

25:21

All right , thanks for tuning in . We'll talk to you next week , yeah .