Latest / The Goo Crew / What Software Do Paint Contractors Actually Need? | The Goo Crew #14

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What Software Do Paint Contractors Actually Need? | The Goo Crew #14 · The Goo Crew

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: Good day to you, sir.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_03: Morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_03: Afternoon, whatever we are now.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we're like midday, right?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_03: Which is nice.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um so Joshua, when was the last time you wasted money on software for your business?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: Three weeks ago.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: I thought I had it was a Zapier uh thing that I don't use anymore and it renewed for 250 bucks, and I tried to get a renew, uh try to get it canceled.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's too late, and that$250 is gone forever.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I saw the email this morning that it was uh a very uh polite and corporate way to say that uh to go pound sand, you're not getting your money back.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: I've wasted so much money on software over the years where I think you like you always start off just like I'm gonna use this, it's gonna be a great tool for the business.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: And then either, and I'm someone who always like, well, I'll save money if I go annual, and then two or three months in I just stop using it, and then I forget to can't like stop the renewal, and then I waste another$300 the year after.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: So I miss this when I do a quarterly review of everything.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, what the heck is this charge?
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, oh, I thought I canceled it.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: So and then that's so this episode is to see what software you actually need or use and what's a like a waste of time and kind of our experiences with that over a long period of time running a paint business.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, because Josh and I have spent quite a bit of time and money on software, and uh some of it has been helpful and much of it has not.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_03: So we've kind of landed on what works for us over the years, and uh what like originally weren't we just doing quotes on like Word documents?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: Isn't that pretty much?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: I would do Word document for quotes and invoices and then turn it into a PDF.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: So you save it as a PDF and send it over.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, that's right.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: And that worked for a while.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: But the problem is when we got look a little farther on, it just it just look not um uh I just didn't look professional at all.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: And we're like, dude, like how do how do we up this?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: And then but then I I think where people like I remember talking to my accountant and like what should I do?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: Is like I need to get like QuickBooks or an accounting software.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I've tried so many different accounting softwares and I never stick to any of them.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it's and it's not cheap, it's like you know, 40, 50, 60 dollars a month.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: The problem is you have to actually like put it in the system, yes, and connect it to your bank and like check it every month, and I would just subscribe and never check it and never put it in, and I was the worst, and I don't have to manually do it all at the end of the year, and I've wasted I don't know, so much staking money on that.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: Well, because I know the accounting software can get up there, like the QuickBooks and all that stuff.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: If you use it and it's a bigger operation, it's great if you keep it updated, but you have to like almost update it every week or at least monthly, yeah, and just put put it all in.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then I oh I just wasted so much money in that.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_03: And then uh we've had yeah, so I guess we went from that to then we'll we'll talk about where we where we landed.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um and then there's been yeah, because there's a lot of I it's probably more prevalent now than when we kind of got started 20 years ago.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, oh five.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: As far as what what's available now, but uh the software the the things that are useful are the things that you actually use, and that's been like uh I've wasted a ton of money on mostly for like the production side of things, uh where I've had things like roll over and then I forgot that I was paying for it, and then you look at your credit card state and you're like, what is this big charge?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's the renewal that gets you because the teaser rate's always that first year or the first few months, and then you're like, what?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and a lot of the software is uh especially that's not really a service, uh, they've moved to more of like a subscription model.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_03: So I used to pay a lot for Photoshop and then Premiere Pro, uh, which is what I used to edit in, and then then I switched over to Final Cut.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a big fan of like for software that's just like a tool that you use that's not like keeping a database and things, the just one-time purchase is nice.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_03: So I use Final Cut inside of um uh on like my Mac, and then there's what it I so I had when we had an editor before I took on all of that, I had frame.io, Opus clips, and like a bunch of other uh then we had like vidIQ and like all these kind of add-on things, and then that stuff adds up, and then it was great when I like I'm like I'm gonna do it all myself, and we just cancel all that, which was great.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and then for I think for painting, we did Word documents because I remember doing quotes where I would do it.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: You did a yours in Word, I did a mine in pages, uh, which is like the Mac version, the Mac equivalent, but I do remember exporting it as a PDF and then hoping they didn't like try and change something.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, you could send the quote over, but they could technically change it.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, all right, I hope they don't change it.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_03: And then I think the thing because if they clicked on it, they could actually go in and type.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_03: And the the worst I when things got uh kind of squirrely for us, it was when like the residential side of things really picked up because when we had our commercial account, you just needed to know what unit you were going to, and that was like not the we knew we're we were in the building somewhere, yes, so like the address didn't matter, but I remember routinely going to like a job where I didn't like you gave me the client name, and then I had to like scurry through my laptop or my phone to try and find the estimate that had the quote that had the address and that wasn't the address chain, like panicking through my phone to try and find the person's address or like their contact info to like call them to say that you know I you know I my tummy was upset this morning, I'm not gonna be there on time, or like I just try and like in traffic, scrolling through my phone, trying to find their info, and like that was or if we had guys going to places and then like trying to find it to like get the guys.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: Because we didn't have a central database of everything except just our old quotes.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: Well, then when you started doing a lot of the quotes, a lot of times you wouldn't write their phone number down.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you'd have in your phone and I'd go look it up.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, dude, I'm running late.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: How do I text this person or call them?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_02: Because I'm gonna be late, like, uh just show up and knock on their door.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, dude, I'm not gonna be here for like two hours.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: Wave your hands, wave your hands, like you would kill me.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: You wouldn't you sometimes you wouldn't have their phone number or like a piece of their address, and because it was not like a central, like it wasn't all centralized.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: I look at their old quotes.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: Well, also the there was no you would enter the address that you took down on like probably a notepad during the estimate, and then you like if you didn't check it to see if that was actually the address or something was misspelled.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: Uh like there was multiple jobs where I knew I misspelled their thing.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, oh, I know it's on it's like going Google Maps and like find it, and then like you know, hopefully Josh doesn't end up in the middle of the field.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: You and me would email a client if like the other one was going, like, hey, uh, where exactly do you live?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: I think I wrote this down wrong, but we had their email.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, but not their phone number.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_03: Oh man, and you then you're I remember I remembering to God that they praying to God that they checked their email the morning of because sometimes I was terrible about getting their actual phone number.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I remember like, what's their number?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Just Jerry, write down their number, please.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_03: Send a smoke signal.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so then, but once we got started getting more residential clients, and then there's just you know more turnover, more volume, there's more coordination, there's especially when we were running a bunch of guys, and then even now where it's just me, you, and Brendan, uh, usually I'm like, I've got to tell you guys where to go.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so like fast forward, we're like, you know what, we should probably get some software that would someone's probably solved this issue.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't remember uh who I think um Serena says it was she she was the one that recommended uh job the what we use now, okay.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_03: Uh which I like I don't remember because it was so long ago, but anyway, we tried uh software called Jobber, uh which 2020 or 2021 around there?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_03: It was about six years ago, and um it was like I think we did like a trial or whatever, and then but it was very simple to use uh the and it's basically uh what do they call it client management software?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, CRM client oh customer repro yeah, what is whatever CRM stands for?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: Manage all your clients.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_03: Is it uh customer resource management?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_03: Something like that.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: Relationship management.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's customer relationship management, CRM.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: CRM.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we'll just yeah, you guys get the painters, yeah.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: Whatever.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but I uh we we liked it.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_03: It was very uh like user-friendly, and I also found the uh like I've had some questions on how to maneuver through some of the things that we and their customer support has also been very like pretty much Johnny on the spot with any of the questions that we've had over the years.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um and then uh fast forward to today, and we're actually uh brand ambassadors for Jobber, which is cool because we've been using them for six years and have liked it.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: So uh, and it is what I would recommend and have recommended to other painters.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: So uh we're gonna talk about our experience with it, but if you guys are interested at all, we have a 14-day free trial and uh six or no, it was it's a 14-day free trial and 20% off your first six months if you use the link in our description.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but uh it's what I like is that there's not it, you can kind of scale it to how big your business is.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_03: And um, if you are just starting out, you can probably get by with just the Word documents and kind of how Josh and I uh you know cobbled together our our first many years of business.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_03: But once you start getting a lot of residential clients, and it's what's really nice is it centralizes all of your client information and then like when you enter their address, it's gonna search like Google and stuff.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_03: So actually, you have to verify the address so it's an actual real spot.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so our intake process has gotten way better as far as like Josh can find the clients, I can find the clients.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_03: If Josh did the estimate or if I did the estimate, we can find where this person is, their contact information, you can email them, you can call them.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, all of it is in there.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's very like straightforward.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think they'll print out anything anymore because they have a they had like an app.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: So you finished the job the other day, and they're like, How much do I owe you?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but you were the one who did the quote, so I just looked it up.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, oh, it's you know$33,642.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: And they just wrote the check and we had it just right there.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: So that was quite nice.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it is very nice because the contact info from the person and their address, as long as you like got that info initially, it's always there.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: So if they want another, so if someone calls you, it's like, hey, this is Jane Smith, like, oh yeah, you she's already in the system, and we don't need to like, hey, can I write down your address again?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh like, yeah, I'm in the same house.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: Cool.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'll see you there.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's already in my uh for is it's already in my you know system.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so like now when I do an estimate, um if someone calls me that's like a new client, for instance, I'll generally when I take first off, they're calling me, so I have their number.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'll say, is this a good number to reach you at?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_03: And they're like, Yeah, and then I I write down their address, then I go do the estimate, like or go look at the job.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_03: Then when I come back to the office, then I open up Jobber, I enter all of their, you know, usually I'm getting I've already got their address, I've got their phone number because they called me, and then I get their try and get the correct spelling of their name.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes people have like weird last names and all that stuff.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and then I get their email, so I'll put all that in.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_03: And then what's nice is when you enter it, Jobber verifies the address, so I know it's an actual real place that the place that I just went to.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and then what when you go in to do the estimates, a lot of times when you're doing uh paint work, you're gonna be doing very similar types of jobs.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_03: So if you are painting a bedroom, uh your your SOPs, your standard operating procedures are gonna be pretty much the same for if you're doing a full repaint of bedrooms, which we do all the time, or a bathroom, whatever it is.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_03: You can save templates inside of Jobber.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: So as soon as you start typing in the line items, like uh guest bedroom, it'll have it'll you can save your profile of like what the description of the work that you're doing is.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_03: So ours is like prep services for painting.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_03: Then we have a description of what the prep includes, and then you know, if you have typical products that you use, it's like two coats of promar ceiling on the ceiling, uh, two coats of emerald mat on the walls, two coats of emerald urethane trim enable on the trim and doors.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: You don't have to retype it every single time.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_03: Which we usually were cut and pasting back in the day with the Word documents, and sometimes you wouldn't change the wrong stuff.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_03: You wouldn't change something if you're like, oh, I guess I'm doing three coats on this now, or like whatever it was.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so that it makes it makes doing the estimates very quick if you are doing something that you've done before, and you might have to go in and change a few things.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but like I have things for giving price ranges on removing wallpaper and certain renovators we work behind that are like, you know, this kind of bathroom.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_03: I know the it's gonna include all of this.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_03: So then once you populate your estimate, you can look at it and then you can send it via email or via text, uh, which I have found that has been a very useful feature because sometimes people don't check their email or they think it's like spam or something.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I always kind of give people a heads up like sometimes your email provider might flag this as spam, but the text comes through from our business name.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so they get the link one way or the other, and then they can kind of get in there and then see the estimate and then approve it or ghost me or whatever they're going to do.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and then once they're once they've accepted the job, then it's like it goes into a different part of the queue inside of Jobber, it goes from quote to job, uh, which is nice for us to like look at.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_03: We both kind of know what we got going on inside of our working queue.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: And then probably my uh one of my favorite features is when I'm like getting in my truck, going to the job, I just pull up uh the Jobber app on my phone and then find that client, and then it's got their uh you just click on their like their address and it opens right up into Google Maps, um, which is like on my like truck Apple like CarPlay, and then I've already got it like could do and I forward it to you and Brendan like all the time from inside the app.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_03: So that's great.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_03: That's that right there is so much nicer than trying to like sift through old emails and uh like some crappy quote I did and a PDF.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sometimes we'll because you've done the quote like seven, eight, nine months ago.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: If it were they're a big, you know, waiting for builders to finish before us.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like, oh, you just look up the name or the address and you just bam, it's right there, the whole scope of the work.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: And easy enough, especially when a client's like, well, uh, are you guys gonna do this?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: Especially if you quoted the job and I'm working it.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'll just find it on my phone.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, actually, it says uh we're not painting this door or not painting this class.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, oh, just add that.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: So it's just nice that it's just there.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and they'll it's very easy to like have exclusions, or you can also do internal notes that only Josh and I can see.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so they're like, hey, they have a weird cat, or like just something that's like I to at this job I had this many hours for right, like 16 hours.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: That in that time.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: And you can make notes along the way inside of that form of like different change orders or whatever.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_03: You can add line items, and then when you go to invoice them, it's super easy because you just convert the quote into an invoice.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and that's really nice because it just populates it with all the line items, and if anything changes, you can add things to it, and you could delete a line item if they didn't go with part of the work or whatever.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's just very easy to make changes, and then uh you can see what we've done, and uh like I can see what's yeah.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_02: We can see what invoices you have in the queue because an issue I had before is uh I remember I would invoice and then I wouldn't really check if they paid, especially on our corporate account.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: I remember I talked to a business guy, I was like in my 20s at that time.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, you should double check your invoices to make sure they paid, like have a separate sheet for it.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, really?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, Yeah, just like call it accounts receivables, because some people don't pay.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember I did that and our corporate client at the time owed us like three or four thousand dollars and they were over you know like 45 days from paying.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: I just thought they paid because I didn't go back and check.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, because they were paying us for other stuff.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm like, hey, uh, where'd you and then they just missed it?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't it wasn't intentional, or at least they didn't tell me it was.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, so I was like, oh, it's called having your accounts receivable is like what's been invoiced but not paid.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and so I have an intake, so once I get the check, or if they pay online, and the nice trick is so on credit cards, like anytime like like so if you use any type of software uh that takes payments, you can do credit card, and usually you get charged like two to three percent.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but if you switch it to the like the ACH, which is straight from the bank, they only charge one percent.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: So we eliminated our credit cards for people paying it because not many people, I mean, some people didn't care.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: So like our clients didn't care if we use credit card or just from the bank.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so if you don't have clients that like don't care which have like a check or that, just you can save some money in percentage.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because just using the ACH uh deposit.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that three percent can really add.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and if it's like a ten thousand dollar job, you're like, ooh, it's like three hundred bucks.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, gone.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, which you could use that for other stuff.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: So um, but uh but I'll say can I tell you what else?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: All right, so so every and I've been trying to be a bus better business guy the last year or two or three.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, try it.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, but like every quarter, I'll go through and say how many estimates we did, and then how many got accepted.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so it's been much easier.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: I've been doing that, and so I just do want to know the totals for last quarter.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: So for Q3 2026, it was we did 22 estimates, and we got I think it was 17.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like a 75, 76 percent.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's like actually 78 percent acceptance rate, which is phenomenal.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: But I didn't count, so like two people came on our website and like wanted a quote, and I kind of did one via uh like a quick one on my phone, so I didn't actually go look at it.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I didn't count those because we didn't get those.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, well, I I didn't do it through Jobber.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like I never actually went to the job, I just gave them a price range, like hey, it's probably this because the odds of us getting those jobs, or it was like someone like some rando off the internet.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we I just didn't know if I should have count that in my whole total.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like, does it count?
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like it needs to be officially a quote on Jobber.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: No, yeah, I think I think that's my official official quote because I didn't look at the job, they just gave me a picture or two.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I would I I think an official quote has to be work you were actually interested in doing.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_03: And actually looked at and most of the form submissions we get off of our website are people fishing for like they're getting like nine estimates.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_03: And like those are the ones that wasn't an old client.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, those are the good ones, like oh, I just forgot you know who you are, yeah and uh I typed in your name and you worked for me five years ago because we will get some of those guys.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and those are the easiest ones to go do, like uh, especially when you go and like if you've already worked for somebody, like the quote I just did this morning.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's a how we've worked for them uh multiple properties, and like they've been a great client over the years.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I already have all their info inside of Jobber, so I don't need to like write anything down.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_03: I just need to go see like what I'm looking at on this one.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then we're gonna be working in the house that they're selling, uh, and then we're getting that one ready for sale, and they already bought their new house, which we're gonna be doing a ton of painting over there.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_03: And what's nice about uh Jobbber is well, because it's happened to us multiple times where people have you know more than one property, you can add properties under the same client and then specify which where the work is taking place, uh, which just makes it easy to keep that all organized as people move around and do stuff and for transition stuff, because I'll have with the same contact, the same estimator for uh the one builder we work behind, and I have like 20 properties under it.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: Oh right.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: So that's so that's uh those are all nice features.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um and then uh what was I gonna say?
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_03: I had another thing.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: Uh well I use my use it for marketing though.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was gonna say you've added the uh you just started when did you start doing the newsletter thing?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_03: Because weren't you last year?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_03: Weren't you doing something?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: Then we use like what's that uh MailChimp or something?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I wanted to do I did a newsletter for one of our online paint your home now um situation, which I used like another CRM that was built for a kind of a different, not not the service business.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then um I looked, I'm like, well, it'd be kind of cool just to stay in contact with our existing clients because it's uh much easier to get a job from someone you've already worked for than someone brand new.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh which is you think it's like I used to not even think about that.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, oh yeah, it's just they've worked for us and they'll hire us again.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: Usually they're not getting you know five estimates or gay, we like you, come do this job over here.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: Easy sale.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I was like, well, how would I reach out to these people?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, well, I like writing, so I just do a monthly newsletter, which is generated, I mentioned before in this podcast, just tons and tons of business where we just try to remind everyone like, hey, we're still painting, yeah, and people and people, you know, will talk.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, oh yeah, I've been I get your newsletters and they're great.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, now we have painting this year.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: We and I've been giving them a newsletter for a year and a half.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: I get those we get those emails all the time.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_03: Where uh they're like the easiest estimates too, because we've they've already we've already worked for them and they're already in the system.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and they know what to expect, they know our pricing.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_03: Well, a lot of your marketing once you're established is just letting people know that you're still alive and you're still doing what's your contact info?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: Because nobody keeps business cards around.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and then what they'll be doing is scouring old emails, being like, Well, where were those guys?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: Or what's that from?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: And then if I have uh if I show up in their inbox every day, I mean every month, it's I'm easier to find.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: Or like, what's it?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so they know you know the first week of the month they'll get an email from us.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we have like 400 people on our list.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: So, but they that works super well, and then you can I think you well, I guess you did the mail chain, you've done that stuff, but now you just added uh inside of Jobber, they have like a campaigns thing that you can just email a newsletter to all of your client list.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: And you there's other things you can do, but that's the main thing I use it for.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: But it's more it's more of like if you don't have like many clients, you can just do that manually in your own email.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: But once you get probably over 50 of your clients or so, that's where it's worth look looking into.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so what what when would you say it's worth worth it for somebody to go and start looking at something like job or something in their paint business?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: I would say if you've been painting for like you're a year into painting.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if you're a half year in and you have like I'm saying if you get like one job every three months, it's not worth your time.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: If you have if you start getting to be like two, three jobs a month, and they could be little jobs, big jobs, that's where you're like, because then there's three clients a month times 12 months.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: That's you might be 20 clients, 25 clients, thirty.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: Once you start getting your client list above 20, yeah, it really helps just to manage it all.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not much like they're I think lowest tier plan is pretty reasonable, especially if you just try it out monthly.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um, because my mistake with software is I'm like, well, I want to save money, so I'm gonna just pay for the whole year because I'm smart and I like to save money, yep.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I use it for three months, and then I don't touch it after that.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: So I just wasted tons of cash.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: Because we did do one where I was paying for leads for like you would own a zip code, and this was years ago.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I remember that.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: And like they were like, they sold it really well to me.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's like if you you'll own this zip code and you pay this much a month for it, and we'll give you any lead that comes to our system.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: So they were gonna market it.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't have to do any marketing, any leads that come into their system comes to me, no other painters.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: Which I'm like, that's great.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'll own these zip codes.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I paid some good money for the uh zip codes.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: Six months in, two leads, no jobs.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and then I just canceled.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, you guys they called me, like, why are you canceling?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, You I got zero leads.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: Right, well, did you close them?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: I said, No, they were bad leads, man.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you didn't give me anything.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, those were that was the early days, those were not great.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_03: No, you know, do you remember that software?
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_03: And it wasn't a software, I guess it doesn't matter.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's I was thinking about when we had uh the Vaster Brothers vending business and we paid for placements where those people were supposed to call and get us like our machines in those areas.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, and then it then they were like It's a total scam.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_03: It was a total scam.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I guess that wasn't software, it might as well have been.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but yeah, yeah.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_03: Then I'd show up with the machine and they're like, Who are you?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I gotta go.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_02: But there's software to do anything.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: Just my now, what I try to do is just pay it for a month at a time.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then if I'm two or three months in and I haven't touched it, especially if I haven't touched it in like two months, just cancel it.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: Because you can always you know resubscribe.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it's like if you can cancel it sooner, yeah.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm not I haven't used it for the last three days, just cancel.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: Which is uh a better way for me to go now.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but I would say of all the things that we've done, we've pretty much landed on, at least for the business side of things, is just jobber with the campaigns for the newsletter that's inside of job.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the marketing suite.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: And then uh despite uh my accountant keeps telling me to get accounting software, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then I just give them gobbledygook every year.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: I give him better gobbledygook, but whatever, it's Excel spreadsheets or whatever.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, it's close enough.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then he's like, Josh, you really you really need to get like QuickBooks or something.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, dude.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: And then I will get QuickBooks and I don't do it.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, dude, no, I I this is me.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: This you gotta deal with me.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, it's like a you're like a couple steps above a shoebox full of receipts.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's uh yeah, it's uh no we're you know, just depends.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's like well, I keep track of everything, it's just in a like you know, a normal spreadsheet.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, which is fine.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: That's what that's what QuickBooks is, just makes it look fancier.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you just gotta you have to you have to have some kind of system, which you do.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_03: So everyone has a system.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: Well plus, if you had QuickBooks, why are we paying him for?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's uh be like, shut up, accountant.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, do your job.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: Do your job, do your jar before AI comes and replaces you, sir.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: I do pay for that software too.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: I do pay for Chat GPT, chat GPT and Claude right now.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so those are very helpful.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: That's probably yeah, I would say that that's so Claude you could do annual, which I use it for months and months, so I paid for the annual, and then chat's just monthly.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: But it's if you use it, keep it, and if you don't use it, just get rid of it.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: Because you can always resubscribe later, and especially you start off with free versions, and if you max it out, then you just give do the paid version.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, like I said before, if you want to try out Jabber, you get a 14-day free trial and 20% off your first six months.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: So if you don't like it, then I would just say if you're gonna do the trial and stuff, try and at least the thing that I really uh appreciate when I because I'm particularly now I'm doing the bulk of the estimates and you wanna uh when you're the if you have a lot of them to do, which can be annoying.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_03: Like I sometimes I try and limit it to do like no more than three a week, because now the estimates I tend to do are larger, uh, so it just takes more time to like think through all the things that we're doing.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_03: But if you can uh uh inside the software, just give yourself the templates so that you can quickly fill out all of the work and then just title each line item like it's gonna shift around.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_03: But it's like you know, a family room, living room, den, basement, whatever.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: There's all houses pretty much have the same rooms.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_03: So, and then you can go in and manipulate based on the notes you've taken from when you actually went and looked at the work, like do your exclusions, doesn't include these closets, does include closets here, dub like whatever the products you're gonna use, however specific you want to get.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, I generally you want it better than some of the quotes we've seen where it's like paint house.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: You're like we've seen so many of those.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so you want to be fairly specific and make the client feel like you actually looked at the work.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then once I get all of the work listed out in the estimate, then all I do is I look at there's little boxes next to each line item, and that's where you put the price, and then the price totals out at the bottom.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_03: So, like and it's live.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: So as soon as you put a number in, it totals it out at the bottom of the form.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, so then I'm like, you I kind of have an idea in my head of like how long this job's gonna take, and then I'm just kind of you know, I have formulas for how I'm generating the numbers of like how long each room's gonna take, charge rate, all that stuff that we've talked about before.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_03: But that's the time that that's where I spend the most time is looking at the numbers, and then can I can I do this work in the time I'm giving myself?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_03: So that's where I just want to get through the part where I am typing out all the info for what the estimate is gonna include.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_03: I want to get through that as fast as possible.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm spending the most amount of time looking at the price.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: So that's my that's your my hot take on that.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_03: Your strategy.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_03: Once you're kind of over the hump of getting it to look correct, uh, then you can just spend the time on like what are the numbers, and then that's the that's kind of where you should be spending the part wrong, that's where you run into some issues.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_03: That's where you're gonna run into some problems.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we find most clients they just kind of look at they they always go to the bottom of the page and just look at the price.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: They they do just look at the price, but you want to make sure that you but when they go back and look at it, it doesn't say paint bedroom, you know, two thousand dollars.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: It says all the steps there because it does make you look more professional and better than someone's like paint bedroom, you know, 1800 bucks.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and that's all it says, and the scope of the work is so that you are eliminating ambiguity between you and the client and then your future self.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_03: Because when you go and do the estimate, you have a clear idea of what the work is, you just might not be touching that work for a couple months.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_03: And then you forget, and then you forget because you come back and you're like about that one thing we weren't gonna include, and then you can get this has happened to us so many times where the client's like, I thought the closets were included, and then you look at your estimate, it just says bedroom, and it doesn't say anything.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_03: There's no exclusion, there's no inclusion, so then you're just like, Oh, it's my work, yeah.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_03: Oh no.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_03: But if you go back and you look and you say, Oh, does not include the interior of the closets, you're like, Yes.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_02: I put like a bunch of little stars, you know, the little aspect stars.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: I put it on the bottom so that's so they don't miss it.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's not like buried in there.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's usually the exclusions that put the bottom of the room.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the space, two, three stars, and not paint or closets not included in scope of work.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_03: Or if anything's gonna be time and materials, you just make sure you specify that.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: So or your old trick where you wouldn't put anything, and dude, so many people would get pissed off.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: We got so many mad clients from Jeremy doing wallpaper removal quotes.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: Because what he would do was he would like like you wrote it on there, but you didn't in the box actually write like a put a price.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: And then they look at the bottom, and all they would see was the paint price, but not the wallpaper removal price.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_02: But on the script, it would say, like in the description, it says it'll take between, we'll say, 10 and 20 hours, and it's gonna cost, we'll just say 1500 bucks or something.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like we'll just I'll throw another$1,000, or here's the range, uh$800 to$1,200.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: Like that was a range you gave them.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: They wouldn't even look at any of that, and they'd go straight to the bottom, like, oh, cool, they're gonna remove wallpaper and paint this whole room for you know$1,500.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: Great deal.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then we give them uh, you know, we charge them three grand.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_02: They're like, what happened?
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, so I they they just didn't even read that.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so uh that was my bad.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but it happened on like a multiple jobs in a row.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, Jeremy, we need to put some price in there.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_03: So here's the thing in my in my defense, when I would do the estimate, I would tell them, I'm like, listen, I'm gonna give you a price for painting the room, and then they will see another line item that is not gonna have a number associated with it, but we are gonna do the wallpaper removal based on time and materials.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know how long it's gonna take.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_03: I have a rough idea, and and then I would say that, but then they still had the same thing where they were like, oh heck yeah, I'm gonna get this work done for a nickel, and uh, and then we would hit them with like because a lot of times, I mean, sometimes you could get really it can really stack up.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_03: Like you it could be thousands of dollars to strip wallpaper in a room if it's not good wallpaper, it's really old, whatever.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: So now what I do, because we had that happen multiple, it was always one of those ones where I'd kind of clinch and be like, oh, we got it.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_03: All right, cool.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_03: Uh where so now what I do is inside the line item, I say, uh, you know, I specify like strip of wallpaper, prep the walls for painting, blah, blah, blah.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_03: And then I say uh this work will be completed on a time and materials basis.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_03: Here is the likely range that it will be.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: That is all just inside the description.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_03: Say it's like uh$725 and$1,500.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_02: Do you put hours on it too?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_03: I don't put hours on it.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: I do put hours in mine.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_03: I don't do that.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_03: I just say it's gonna take between this amount of time, like this amount of money, and then I pick the middle range and put that in the box next to the line item, so at least it has a value that is kind of my guess as to where it's gonna land.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: But then it adds up to the total.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_03: And it adds up to the total, and they kind of okay, you're in that range.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_03: And they have more of an idea of what it's going to be, and usually we're pretty close to what I spec's.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll even put like an hour range.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll say it here's the cost, and here's the cost per hour.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I've done that too, and I get I don't get any blowback on that.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I just that that's what because when you say time materials, they're like, if there's not an hourly range, if you're like, oh, it took us 12, like, well, how much do you charge for 12 hours?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I just say it's yeah, I just give them the the price range of like how much.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: Hey man, you land a bajillion high percent of the job, so it works for me.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: When it ain't broke, don't fix it.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_03: And and it produces way less friction than the zero, and then hit them with like three grand of upcharge.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't that it happened once, it was like a couple jobs in a row.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: We had the same reaction.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's where you're like, oh, that's on me.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: Versus on them.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like, well, you didn't read it, it was in the contract.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: When it's the same reaction, time and time again.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: You're not gonna be able to do that.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think I'm always like, uh like, well, I explained it when I did the essay.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: You explained it, and you did write it, but it was like in the paragraph.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_03: They but if if it doesn't have a dollar value associated with it, they just they're just like, sweet, that's the price that's close to what I'm gonna pay.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um, which isn't it?
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_03: We learned, yeah, that was years ago.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we're getting it.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_03: We got it better.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's all good.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so all right.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_03: I think we uh that pretty well laced that up.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_03: Anything else to add, brother?
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't use the software, you can cancel it.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: And cancel it sooner before you're uh ever news six months later and you waste$250.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: Dang it.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_03: All right, all righty, folks.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_03: Well, until next time, y'all take it easy, work smart and have a good one.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks.