Latest / Around the House with Eric G®: Home Improvement Remodeling & DIY / AI Remodeling Estimates: Instabid.pro Review, Scan a Kitchen and Get a Bid in Minutes (Best Of)

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AI Remodeling Estimates: Instabid.pro Review, Scan a Kitchen and Get a Bid in Minutes (Best Of) · Around the House with Eric G®: Home Improvement Remodeling & DIY

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  From coast to coast.
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  It's the nation's number one home improvement radio show and podcast with certified kitchen designer Eric G and co host John Dudley, a former contractor and online technology expert.
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  Delivering real fixes, smart tech and trusted advice.
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  Remodels, repairs, energy savings, smart home diy.
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  We've got your answers.
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  It's around the house.
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  Dive in and get inspired.
• 0:38
  This weekend on around the House, we're bringing you a best of episode.
• 0:42
  Eric had to make a last minute trip out of town for a family emergency, so we're replaying one of our favorite shows.
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  Our thoughts are with him.
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  He'll be back next week with a brand new episode.
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  Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.
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  Thanks for joining us.
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  Today we've got John Dudley back in the studio.
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  Good to see you, brother.
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  Back in the studio.
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  Here I am, as usual.
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  Exactly.
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  He's alive.
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  It has been a spell though.
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  It has.
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  You have been knee deep in code and robots and everything else going on.
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  So glad to get you from under the hood and out of the rabbit hole.
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  Yeah, it's nice to.
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  I might be a little punchy, but it's nice to get the break and actually talk to a human instead of screaming at 22 robots.
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  Yeah, that's awesome.
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  Today guys, I wanted to talk about the latest technology and how it's going to be affecting construction, remodeling in your home because I think there's so much stuff changing so fast out there and it's something we really haven't
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  dedicated an episode to in a while.
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  And the first thing, Johnny, I want to get in my soapbox for a second.
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  One of the things that I just laugh at when I see it on social media and I mean, it's kind of kitschy Nichy, whatever you want to call it, but it's the, I guess they're calling it a 3D
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  printed house, but it's really just a glorified robotic arm running a concrete pump and it's squirting a tube of concrete out and running around the outside border of the house and it just keeps stacking it up.
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  You've got this looks like concrete tubes almost stacked on top of each other.
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  And to me it doesn't look great.
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  Two, concrete's not a great insulator.
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  And three, I got a gut haunch.
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  That thing's gonna crack and fall apart.
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  Only because if you go through enough freeze and thaw cycles, I don't think it's big enough to actually hold up a house in My opinion first, I'm.
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  Going to laugh at you because you're looking at social media.
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  There we go.
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  There we go.
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  But I will say this.
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  All they did was replace the pump guy.
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  I mean, right?
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  Right.
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  Good work, fellas.
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  All that engineering and robotics to replace Bill, the one guy that holds the hose.
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  You still got to do the rest, don't you?
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  I mean, I watch them stand up whole floors of commercial apartment buildings in the Ukraine with just a guy holding the pump all day and 10 other guys screen it out or whatever.
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  But, yeah, I don't see the efficiency, I guess, the accuracy.
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  I don't know.
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  What are the benefits?
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  What do they claim?
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  Why?
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  And why are they not using straw and corn husks and coconut shells?
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  Right, Yeah.
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  I mean, there's so much stuff.
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  And even my guys, Peter from System 3e, I like his stuff because he's got the LEGO box, that stack.
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  That's stacks.
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  Way better program.
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  To me, that system's awesome.
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  Yep.
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  Yeah.
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  So that's good stuff.
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  I wanted to talk today, too, about AI and what you're seeing out there.
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  And it's so funny, because what I'm seeing on the, again, social media side is people are taking.
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  And you're seeing this even in real estate these days, where they have the AI decorator.
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  And just like anything else, when you're given a homeowner a tool and they're trying to take, maybe it's chat, GTP and stuff, I think it works pretty well on giving a visual.
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  But unless you've spent a lot of time on programming that robot, you're giving it too many choices, I think.
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  What's your take on that out there?
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  When it comes to just jumping on a.
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  A platform, whether it's Claude or Chat, GDP or any one of the other ones, residential people trying to design without setting that up correctly.
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  Design?
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  Yeah.
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  Like what color wall do they.
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  Let's say they load their living room up and say, okay, I want to put in new furniture and new lights and Wal and colors and stuff like that and tile or something.
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  What's your take on that?
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  Honestly, that part's pretty simple.
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  But first I want to say, you obviously haven't heard that AI is going to kill us all in the next year or two.
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  I think a good chuckle at that.
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  I want to call it.
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  All right.
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  It's marketing is what it is, my friend.
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  There's that.
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  There's literally people getting paid to go out and push that message right now.
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  And I can do this in any.
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  Industry, by the way.
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  You can take 10 disgruntled employees that all get together in a Facebook group and all reach out to their local media things and want to give a testimonial.
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  You can take almost any industry down if you get 10 people talking to the media on the same day.
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  Yeah.
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  No, I mean, not AI.
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  It's not going.
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  That's like saying cars are going down.
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  Forget it.
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  Well, keep.
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  Keep in mind, in the 70s, when you and I were kids, I remember seeing that whole campaign out there, and I think it was done by Leonard Nimoy about how the earth is going to be so cold, we're
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  going to be all in this arctic win.
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  And it was this whole thing, and it was a whole video.
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  Look it up on YouTube, guys.
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  And it's a story about 2026.
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  Sounded so far into the future.
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  Right.
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  And here's the crazy part is they were wrong then.
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  And I think by now, when all the famous people that are saying that are still out there buying waterfront homes in Massachusetts, I'm gonna bet that these guys aren't betting.
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  Why would you buy some $20 million house if it's gonna be gone in three years?
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  Nobody believes.
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  I'll say this, and then I'll answer your question, because we've totally taken a left turn at Albuquer.
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  AI figures out how to decimate the human population.
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  We kind of got it coming.
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  Really?
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  Yeah.
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  I mean, if we can't stop it, that's fair.
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  You win.
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  Natural selection.
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  Yeah, but my question, Johnny, is can't you just pull the plug out of the machine at that point?
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  Just go, I'm done.
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  No, Eric, it's gonna create an army of robots that are gonna.
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  I don't know what they're thinking, dude, I might get hit by bus 2.
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  To your question, I think AI's got a ton of tools out there that are really effective for that kind of simplicity.
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  Right.
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  What do my walls look like?
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  I mean, that's been around for a while.
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  For years, honestly.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  And that.
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  I mean, now it's ridiculously good.
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  Again, if we want to talk about instabid for a minute.
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  You walk a kitchen with your phone.
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  With your phone camera, Right?
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  Walk a kitchen.
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  Yeah.
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  We want to replace these cabinets.
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  And the agents saying, I see granite countertops, I see double basin, stainless sink.
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  Tells you what it's looking at.
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  You tell it what you want it to change.
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  Spits out a bid in a minute.
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  By the time you hang up, the homeowner can't check their email before that bid arrives.
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  Full material.
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  List everything but here's what I'm talking about.
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  Not only that, it spits out the before kitchen, your exact kitchen, and what your new kitchen is going to look like with the everything.
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  It's crazy, dude.
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  It literally.
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  I did it in my kitchen.
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  I've done it probably 100 times in my kitchen, let's be honest.
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  Yeah, exactly.
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  I was going to say that's not.
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  New testing of thing, but it's actually 1462 times it's been ran.
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  But I digress.
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  Literally leaves my knife set on the counter, my fruit basket on the counter, my gals fruit basket.
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  I have a fruit basket.
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  So the point being is.
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  But it'll turn the cabinets cherry and the countertops to Taj Mahal Quartzite and the backsplash tile to red.
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  What?
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  And it's whatever you are.
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  It's crazy.
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  It leaves the Tupperware sitting in the corner.
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  There's a million tools out there.
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  You can go, I mean, do one Google search and there'll be a million tools.
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  Do not pay for anything.
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  That's the one thing I'd say.
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  There's so much open source and free things out there.
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  Free tools, free sites, everything.
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  Don't go subscribing to something like that.
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  It's table stakes at this point.
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  Nice.
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  Here's the thing.
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  Let's take a look back at when you and I were doing kitchens and bathrooms all the time.
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  So what would happen would be that you would get a phone call, right?
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  And or even a maybe a message off the website.
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  Hey, I need kitchen.
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  You'd call them up and cool.
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  You'd call me up as the designer.
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  We'd go out there and measure stuff up.
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  I would sit there and have my notepad and measure things up and get all the dimensions.
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  And I would have to go back and it might be three, four, five days to get a kitchen design drawn up and get it back to you.
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  And then you would take that and go, okay, we're going to need countertops.
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  So you'd send that off to the countertop manufacturer to cut that together and figure out the quote there.
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  And then it would go out and you'd have to sit there and spend hours putting a quote together on a kitchen.
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  That could be half a day as you're waiting for stuff, and then two weeks later, which is fairly fast in that process, all of a sudden you're dropping an estimate on them and that's round one.
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  Or they hired Bill already because he got there quicker.
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  There's the technology part, right?
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  So I have to smirk because I was the guy, right, that just.
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  I wouldn't.
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  I'd put it off for two weeks, then take another week to get it right.
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  I lost jobs and I knew I was losing them, and I just didn't want to do the bid.
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  Not tomorrow.
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  Then you got to chase all your subs.
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  Then you got to chase your designer.
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  Then you got to answer 10 phone calls for 10 questions they have.
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  Is it going to have this?
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  What's this?
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  How many visits you got to make out there?
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  All that stuff.
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  Yeah.
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  Instabid's got auto sub notifications.
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  You put in your book of subs.
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  A kitchen remodel comes in, it notifies you.
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  It notifies my concrete guy.
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  It notifies.
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  Right.
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  Done.
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  You literally don't touch anything.
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  Spits out the bid.
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  Spits out the material list.
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  That used to take us two weeks.
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  It takes two minutes.
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  Yeah.
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  There's two times.
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  Yeah.
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  That is insanity.
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  Imagine what we could have done back then with that.
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  Now let's talk a little bit more about instabid for the people that haven't heard.
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  Yeah, yeah, maybe, maybe.
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  But let's talk about instabid.
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  Let's back up because there's.
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  I'm sure we got thousands of people or tens of thousands of people in the audience that are going, what's this insta bid thing you guys are talking about?
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  That are just tuned into the show.
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  Yeah, sorry.
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  I wasn't trying to make a marketing pitch out of it, but.
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  No, no, but let's talk about it so people know what we're talking about because we are talking technology here and how it's changing construction.
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  And no, there's not going to be some robot underneath your sink putting in plumbing tomorrow.
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  But at the same point, this is technology that's helping homeowners get numbers fast and really speeding up the slowest part of the project, which is that design and estimation part.
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  Yeah, yeah.
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  And I mean, just again, I don't want to just go off on how great my product is, but our product.
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  Yeah, but honestly.
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  Right.
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  It benefits everybody.
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  It keeps contractors honest.
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  Because now you can actually go get a number priced for your region, priced by part that's real.
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  You can't really lie about that.
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  Right.
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  In your $60,000 pickup.
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  Sorry, sorry, Scott.
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  And other.
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  But yeah, so.
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  Right.
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  It helps the contractor because he doesn't have to do any of that admin anymore.
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  None of it.
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  I mean, you put your own parts in so you can trust the price, and then it pings your phone when you're on the roof and it says, bit just came in you want to approve it or you can
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  set it to auto if you know your prices are good and you literally will not touch a thing.
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  Follows up with the client with emails.
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  If they don't, if they go quiet on you.
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  It's crazy, dude.
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  Yeah.
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  How do people access this?
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  So if Mr.
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  And Mrs.
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  Smith are sitting down at their computer going, okay, I need a roof.
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  Is this on the roofers website?
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  Is that where that lives?
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  Exactly.
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  Yep.
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  That's.
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  I mean, and that's what I was going to say earlier.
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  Sorry, I'm a little sleep deprived.
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  You're always sleep deprived because you've been working 20 hours a day on this.
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  Yeah, 40, 73.
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  But.
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  And there's only a 27 page punch list.
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  So the other half of I was going to say is that it solves the issue of the homeowner.
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  And you've expressed this more than a dozen times about the windows you tried to get done when you were going to sell.
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  Right.
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  Dude.
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  Okay.
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  Before I built this thing, it was just going to be one little page for a lead magnet.
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  It's turned into this monster.
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  I reached out on HomeAdvisor and Houzz and anyway, I contacted 20 contractors looking for bids.
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  I got two responses ever.
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  Ever.
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  Two out of 20.
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  Wow.
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  And every right people like, oh, when do we get to redo the kitchen?
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  But oh, what a pain in the butt to find a good contractor.
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  One you can trust, one we know he's not cheating us on the price, one we can trust around our child or.
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  And I'm not saying but you know what I mean, it's a pain to find a good contractor.
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  And everybody says get at least three bids.
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  You're like, it'd be great because I have to contact 10 or 20.
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  I contacted 20, I got two.
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  I didn't even get three bids.
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  Yeah.
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  That is probably the biggest broken part of remodeling is that homeowner via contractor thing there of just trying to get connections connected with the right people and have that communication going.
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  And this automates that, which is what's so smart about it.
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  Yeah, yeah.
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  And right.
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  And so if three contractors in your area are subscribed to Instabid, it's all, it's each of their independent pricing.
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  They can put whatever wage, whatever part price they want.
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  So you're getting three bids, you're not getting just three bids from Instabid, you're getting directly from the contractor with his prices and you're getting in 60 seconds.
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  Really?
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  You fill out a two minute form, Mrs.
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  Smith and Bam.
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  Or Mr.
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  Smith.
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  Yeah.
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  And here's the cool thing too, I think is also so important with this is contractors.
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  When they're busy, it is so easy for them to make a mistake.
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  Oh, I forgot to add the countertop numbers.
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  I forgot to add this, I forgot to add that.
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  Because even with the latest technology outside of Instabid that's out there, there's nothing that really walks you soup to nuts, start to finish on this out there, that does the process.
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  Right.
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  And I think that's the cool part, is that all of those things have been considered automatically as part of it.
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  So in, in most cases, and I'll say this because you never know what's behind the walls until somebody puts eyes on it to some extent.
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  But at the same point, you know that those big pieces were all taken care of in the process.
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  So you're not going to get the other.
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  The number was 40,000.
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  It seemed cheap.
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  And then they came back out and it was 180,000 because they forgot eight pieces of it because they were tired doing it on a, a Sunday night at 11pm and they had a 5 o' clock meeting at a
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  job site.
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  Yeah, yeah.
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  And again, I think it helps keep contractors honest in that respect.
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  And you also can.
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  It also auto does change orders, scan receipts.
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  Your crew can send labor hours in all of it.
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  It takes that mistake out of the mix.
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  Right.
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  You don't have an excuse.
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  And I love that.
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  I love that.
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  It's keeping people accountable and keeping them as honest as they want their numbers to be.
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  Right.
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  And here's where I'm going to dog on AI actually, because I'll tell you where Incubid stands alone, at least in my opinion.
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  And from.
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  Trust me, I've trialed pretty much everybody out there.
• 15:23
  Yeah, you have.
• 15:24
  For example, there's a company that does AI estimating for you that only specialized in one particular trade for four years.
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  We ran ours against their specialty.
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  We have 11 trades on Instabid.
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  They had one.
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  They solely focused on that trade.
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  We ran ours on a $67,000 job.
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  This was a couple months back.
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  We were within $400 of them.
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  That's a company that's been doing it for four years.
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  So we nailed the roofing.
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  We ran our 600 square foot addition remodel against theirs.
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  Because they don't have all those trades.
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  Right.
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  Exactly.
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  They were 60 grand under.
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  I'm like, dude, somebody is going to get hurt with numbers like that.
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  They legit say, these are AI estimates.
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  Be sure and check them.
• 16:13
  So basically you're paying for something that you can't trust.
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  It's a spitball.
• 16:17
  So they're selling it to you because it's convenient and it's fast.
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  But it's.
• 16:22
  I mean, you legitimately have to go do the bid.
• 16:25
  That's pointless to bid.
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  You don't.
• 16:27
  With Instabid, your client can call your phone number, push one, get a call in bid.
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  They can scan their own kitchen with the phone, send it to your instabid number.
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  They can go to your website, fill out the form.
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  You don't do anything.
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  All these other ones, you have to sit down and go, oh, I'm going to make a bid anyway, so.
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  And those programs have been selling for 20 years online that have companies that have built these manual estimating and management tools are just a CRM for everybody else out there.
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  And it's.
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  That's just the old manual way of doing it, which for contractors is probably the hardest and most boring thing because they gotta now take time out of their day to sit there and learn this.
• 17:09
  Like they're trying to write Excel spreadsheets and nobody wants to do that.
• 17:13
  You know my story, right?
• 17:14
  2005 or 4 or 6, somewhere in there, I legit bought Xactimate.
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  I'm not bagging on Xactimate.
• 17:22
  Great company.
• 17:23
  They're great at what they do.
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  It's nothing, not even our market.
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  But I bought it when I was running ASM and it sat on my floor and collected dust.
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  I plugged it in, I looked at it and I went, no.
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  And again.
• 17:34
  Another competitor that's currently out there.
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  We do AI estimating.
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  All you have to do is enter in all your form fields, enter in all your parts.
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  That's the same company that showed my password in the URL.
• 17:45
  I'm like, good work, guys.
• 17:47
  Three of their.
• 17:48
  Three of their five pages errored and wouldn't even show.
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  Dude.
• 17:54
  Yeah.
• 17:54
  That's brutal.
• 17:55
  Yeah.
• 17:55
  And when you're throwing a $300,000 remodel at somebody in an addition, you don't want it to be off by 2%, let alone error.
• 18:05
  And by the way, here's the easy way to get hacked in.
• 18:07
  Yeah.
• 18:07
  Or their chatbot on site, different competitor.
• 18:10
  That tells you it's 2024.
• 18:12
  You're like, it told me, yeah, we're going to be releasing more trades in early 2026.
• 18:18
  I'm like, or early 2024.
• 18:22
  No, 26.
• 18:23
  No, I was like, you.
• 18:24
  You realize it's August, right?
• 18:26
  26.
• 18:27
  I'm sorry, I thought it was 2024.
• 18:29
  What?
• 18:29
  I meant I was like, my gosh.
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  Yeah, I don't.
• 18:33
  I mean.
• 18:34
  And that's the difference between Those guys with $20 million investment behind them and a SaaS company building a tool for a contractor versus a 30 year general contractor that goes 2 gallons of duck mastic on a 500 square
• 18:49
  foot remodel is perfect or it's not.
• 18:52
  Right?
• 18:53
  You can't make those decisions unless you did it for 30 years.
• 18:57
  I mean you could after five if you're really sharp.
• 18:59
  But you can't if you're 24 and you're working at a SaaS company saying that you run an estimate tool with AI because AI does not do that for you.
• 19:07
  It can't.
• 19:08
  There's look.
• 19:09
  And that's where I'm going to dog on AI again.
• 19:11
  Nobody can tame the nuance that is the monster of construction.
• 19:16
  And every contractor out there knows I'm speaking the truth.
• 19:19
  One's got a muddy yard, one's got a dog that bites, one's got it, you know what I mean?
• 19:23
  One's on a hill, one's.
• 19:25
  Yeah, one of them has no parking.
• 19:27
  Out front and you got to pay $1,000 parking for it, right?
• 19:31
  Or a parking garage on a condo in downtown Seattle or.
• 19:34
  And nobody figures in those miscellaneous expenses.
• 19:37
  Nobody knows.
• 19:38
  That takes 36 hours, not 20.
• 19:41
  And that's why I've been sitting here going through 22,786 part rows going, nope, wrong.
• 19:48
  And yeah, sorry, I get carried away,.
• 19:51
  But no, dude, but it's seriously, I.
• 19:53
  Mean there's nothing out there this good.
• 19:55
  And for 99amonth for your trade, you forget it.
• 20:00
  We have better data than RS means at this point.
• 20:02
  I hope somebody quotes me on that because I'll prove it.
• 20:04
  All right.
• 20:05
  I love it.
• 20:06
  I love it.
• 20:06
  That's a big deal.
• 20:07
  Especially when you think about with contractors right now, parts of the country.
• 20:11
  You have contractors out there that are just trying to get by because the economy out there is tough.
• 20:17
  People don't have a lot of disposable income.
• 20:19
  They're not buying another house because interest rates are higher enough that they're looking at their 3% interest rate going, Holy smokes, I've got a three point interest rate.
• 20:28
  But if I go buy a new house, it's 7%.
• 20:31
  Now that affordability goes away because they just can't afford to go pay that interest rate on top of the bigger or better house they want to get.
• 20:39
  So remodeling is back in.
• 20:41
  But people look at that go, man.
• 20:43
  With diesel gas in the States at seven bucks a gallon.
• 20:47
  And the.
• 20:48
  The trucks are hauling across the country.
• 20:50
  Wow.
• 20:50
  I mean, think about.
• 20:51
  I mean, when you look at something and go, okay, I need a pallet to go cross country.
• 20:55
  Now you've got a quote that's thousands of dollars, and you're just trying to get tiled to the job site.
• 21:00
  Right.
• 21:01
  That's why in the past here, we've worked with so many different companies here on the show of that have showrooms that you're not paying that for, really, because they have their own trucks out there.
• 21:09
  It's the small showrooms that sometimes eat it because they're buying from their distributor, which is based in New Jersey and they're located in Arizona.
• 21:19
  That's a problem.
• 21:20
  So things got expensive quick.
• 21:23
  And I think that having a program to help do that work for you and help track that, and then, you know, you've got an honest basis.
• 21:30
  You're not going to go out and lose your butt.
• 21:32
  As a contractor and as the homeowner.
• 21:34
  Wow.
• 21:34
  This has had an extra set of eyes on it because this was created properly.
• 21:38
  Yeah.
• 21:39
  By a guy that did it for 30 years.
• 21:41
  I will never, ever claim that I nailed every number.
• 21:44
  There's no way.
• 21:45
  You can't.
• 21:46
  I didn't when I was doing it.
• 21:47
  I can't do it still.
• 21:49
  Nobody can.
• 21:50
  If they can show me, I dare you.
• 21:51
  That's up to the contractor.
• 21:52
  They know what their numbers are way better than I do.
• 21:55
  And they can add a new part.
• 21:56
  If they know they buy coffee for the crew every day, they can put it in as a custom charge that goes on every job they bid.
• 22:03
  Poof.
• 22:03
  It's already done.
• 22:05
  You can tell our little agent that's on your site to go do that for you.
• 22:09
  But I mean, for 99 bucks a month, dude, that's not even 20% of the time I would spend on one bid.
• 22:16
  Driving there, talking with the people, driving back home, sitting in traffic.
• 22:20
  Especially in the Seattle area.
• 22:21
  It used to cost a thousand bucks just to pull the truck out of the driveway with a crew.
• 22:25
  Right.
• 22:26
  But just me going out and bidding or paying Kevin to go out and sell 99 bucks.
• 22:32
  Come on.
• 22:32
  You don't do any of that.
• 22:34
  The other thing I'll say is I did a lot of data research in Portland because knowing that you guys are having a rough time up there, I'm like, I want to focus on that and I want to pay
• 22:43
  attention to it, and I want to look at the multipliers that go by region and make sure we're accounting for where These regions are actually sitting in reality.
• 22:52
  Not just a BLS blanket rate that says it should be $27.
• 22:55
  I'm like, nobody leaves the couch for $27 an hour.
• 22:59
  You crazy.
• 23:00
  Like that.
• 23:00
  And a lot of research, a lot of data points, and it all went into this and.
• 23:04
  And I'm really proud of it.
• 23:05
  That's why I can't stop talking about it.
• 23:07
  You should.
• 23:08
  You've been living and breathing it now for a long time.
• 23:10
  And where is it at now?
• 23:11
  Where is Instabid Pro at now?
• 23:13
  What's the status?
• 23:14
  It's available.
• 23:15
  Go sign up.
• 23:16
  My phone number's on the website.
• 23:18
  Call me directly.
• 23:19
  How about that?
• 23:20
  There we go.
• 23:22
  That's an obs line.
• 23:23
  That is a NoBS founder that's sitting here.
• 23:26
  Yeah.
• 23:27
  Trying to feed dogs.
• 23:28
  Right.
• 23:29
  Right.
• 23:30
  And tame a woman.
• 23:32
  But she's taming you, brother.
• 23:33
  Don't even start, man.
• 23:35
  Not today.
• 23:36
  Not today.
• 23:37
  Don't us.
• 23:38
  Let's not kid ourselves here.
• 23:40
  Yeah.
• 23:41
  No.
• 23:41
  It.
• 23:42
  Go to Instabid Pro.
• 23:44
  Poke around, read the data, read the features.
• 23:47
  There's 12 pages on there of stuff that you'll look at and go, huh, this looks cool.
• 23:52
  I want to press buttons.
• 23:53
  And then you'll hit the trial and you can check it out for 10 days and poke around and do almost anything with it.
• 23:58
  And yeah, if you dig it.
• 24:00
  There we go.
• 24:01
  Sign up.
• 24:02
  If you don't, call me and tell me, please, like, legit.
• 24:06
  This is not some big money play for me.
• 24:08
  I'm 56 years old, man.
• 24:09
  I live a happy life.
• 24:10
  It's calm and peaceful.
• 24:11
  And this started as, like, I should spin up little lead magnet pages.
• 24:15
  And then I realized, wait a minute.
• 24:17
  I've got this huge head of knowledge that could actually serve, and I genuinely want to help the little guy, man.
• 24:23
  You're either.
• 24:24
  You're either paying two grand a month for Procore or you're paying 49 bucks for a lie.
• 24:29
  I'll say it straight out.
• 24:30
  And that's.
• 24:31
  It's.
• 24:32
  I didn't like it when I was in the business, and I don't like it now, man.
• 24:35
  I don't like the guy that's pulling gypsy prices on people.
• 24:38
  So the guy that actually does go and work 12 hours a day because he's feeding three kids and trying to keep a roof over their head, he should make.
• 24:46
  He should win.
• 24:47
  Amen.
• 24:48
  Love it, man.
• 24:48
  I love it.
• 24:49
  And I think this is one of the biggest things that's going to change the industry in the next year or two is how this is going to be efficient.
• 24:56
  This isn't going to put one person out of a job.
• 24:58
  This is actually going to make it efficient, make it more accurate.
• 25:02
  By gee, so much more.
• 25:04
  And just change how construction does business, especially with remodeling day in and day out.
• 25:10
  And I think that's generational change because.
• 25:13
  We haven't really changed it that much considering the possibilities.
• 25:17
  No, we've barely scratched the surface on construction because.
• 25:20
  Which is odd to me, right?
• 25:21
  Because running my digital agency for over a decade, you see all these marketing, digital marketing firms, right?
• 25:27
  Go for the contractors, go for the contractors.
• 25:29
  But it comes to AI and nobody's helping the contractor because they don't know how.
• 25:33
  They know how to build them a website or run their social media, which is great.
• 25:38
  They need that.
• 25:39
  And we could do that too for them.
• 25:40
  Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 25:41
  But they don't know really how to help contractors in.
• 25:45
  There's so many ways, man.
• 25:46
  You know me, scatterbrain, I'm slamming ideas on the whiteboard all day, right.
• 25:51
  What's interesting, and I want to jump off of this for a second, I want to come back and hit that.
• 25:55
  But as far as technology out there, that's really changing stuff.
• 25:58
  I think this is where the big emerging stuff is.
• 26:00
  But at the same time we're seeing stuff that was, especially in the tool space that was so unaffordable, affordable for people out there, has now gone into something as a homeowner and it makes sense.
• 26:12
  And yeah, great example.
• 26:14
  I just got sent a tool this last week, Ryzen, and they make a digital thermal imaging camera.
• 26:22
  I got it right here.
• 26:23
  I'm going to show you.
• 26:23
  Johnny, this goes on the end of your phone.
• 26:25
  Nice.
• 26:26
  It's a spot tracker for thermal, basically.
• 26:29
  So it'll give you the live temp.
• 26:32
  So now when I walk into a house, I don't have to go get the three thousand dollar FLIR camera.
• 26:38
  I can get the, the basic one for 139 that plugs into the bottom of my iPhone.
• 26:42
  Or your smartphone.
• 26:43
  Wow.
• 26:44
  Or you get the Pro model that's in the 250 range that just came out this week, which just showed up on my desk this morning.
• 26:51
  And all of a sudden I can walk around and go, wow, there's water leaking behind this wall.
• 26:57
  Because I can see the big blue spot where the insulation got wet.
• 27:01
  Yeah.
• 27:02
  I don't have to open the wall up now.
• 27:03
  I can go, wow, that's wet.
• 27:05
  Or if I'm inspecting a house and I'm looking at buying and go, huh, they missed the insulation in this room.
• 27:10
  There's no insulation in that wall.
• 27:12
  Super cool, man.
• 27:13
  And I love technology.
• 27:15
  Like, affordable for people.
• 27:18
  And it's just cool stuff.
• 27:19
  It's a toy.
• 27:20
  But at the same point, I used it when I was going on vacation with the rv.
• 27:24
  What did I do?
• 27:25
  I'm towing a trailer and I'm going 300 and something miles across the state.
• 27:29
  I walked around and looked at the back hubs on the trailer to make sure they weren't too hot, right?
• 27:33
  Check your brake pads, right?
• 27:35
  I could.
• 27:36
  Because I'm like, okay, we just came off the hill.
• 27:38
  I'm gonna hit the rest stop down here.
• 27:40
  I thought, what?
• 27:41
  Not a Greek use case study for this.
• 27:43
  And I looked around and I went.
• 27:44
  It was interesting.
• 27:45
  It's in the door of my truck.
• 27:47
  Plug it in, walk over and go, huh?
• 27:49
  Cool.
• 27:50
  Everything's sweet.
• 27:51
  Nothing over 90 degrees.
• 27:53
  Beautiful.
• 27:53
  Love it.
• 27:54
  I wanna.
• 27:54
  I wanna hit my golden retriever with that because I wonder about him sometimes, right?
• 27:59
  He literally laid in front of his food dish last night and just looked like the saddest dog on the planet and wouldn't eat.
• 28:06
  Like, what's wrong?
• 28:07
  Yep.
• 28:08
  What's wrong, buddy?
• 28:08
  I needed the heat meter.
• 28:10
  She got a heart in there.
• 28:11
  What's going on?
• 28:11
  Yeah, what's going on?
• 28:13
  So anyway, that's stuff that you can do out there as far as technology that's just making life a little bit easier.
• 28:18
  And you start looking at the bigger companies out there, man.
• 28:21
  I tell you what, you can spend two or three grand for something that does the same thing.
• 28:24
  And it's really good because if you're doing H vac or electrical, you can see if there's.
• 28:28
  Wow, that breaker's hot.
• 28:30
  Why is that.
• 28:31
  Why is every other breaker at 70 degrees and that one's at 111?
• 28:35
  What's going on?
• 28:36
  Here's.
• 28:37
  And here's what.
• 28:38
  I'll actually plug AI and say that there's the crowd that wants to focus on.
• 28:43
  It's going to kill us.
• 28:44
  Right?
• 28:45
  But in the meantime, it can do so much good things like that.
• 28:49
  Making things affordable, making life easy.
• 28:52
  Life's hard enough, man.
• 28:54
  We don't want to put two weeks into a bid or find out three weeks into a water leak that your entire attic's full of wet insulation.
• 29:02
  You know what I mean?
• 29:03
  Like.
• 29:03
  Like, absolutely.
• 29:04
  And if we focused more on just making things a little bit better and keeping people accountable.
• 29:10
  So, I mean, on.
• 29:12
  On so many levels, I won't go deep on that one.
• 29:14
  But I mean, it really can make a huge difference for the good.
• 29:18
  Granted, there's going to be bad seeds out there and there's going to be exploits and there's going to be damage.
• 29:24
  But look what cars have done for us.
• 29:26
  Yeah, okay.
• 29:28
  This kind of reminds me of the Y2.
• 29:30
  Yeah.
• 29:30
  Remember Y2K?
• 29:32
  This reminds me of Y2K.
• 29:34
  Right?
• 29:34
  We're all gonna die.
• 29:36
  The computer doesn't know how to change into the next century and it's gonna crash.
• 29:41
  Calendar ending and the.
• 29:42
  Yeah, yeah.
• 29:43
  It's always something.
• 29:45
  And then when it all came down, it was a non story.
• 29:49
  I remember exactly where I was.
• 29:54
  Yeah, see, and you look at it and go, that was a nothing burger.
• 29:58
  Now I will say AI for me has been fun.
• 30:01
  I was in the hospital.
• 30:02
  I've been in the hospital a lot this year, unfortunately.
• 30:04
  But I'm in the hospital, I get a CT scan, it shows up on my phone as a new test result in my chart.
• 30:10
  Well, I know I got 40 minutes before the doctor gets to take a look at that.
• 30:13
  Pops into the hospital room in the ER to see what I got going.
• 30:16
  So I cut paste, drop it into my AI bot and it comes back and gives me a full read all while saying it's not a doctor.
• 30:25
  And I'm like, okay, that's what I got.
• 30:27
  That's what I'm up against.
• 30:28
  Got it.
• 30:28
  Cool.
• 30:29
  Yeah, man.
• 30:30
  45 minutes later, the doc comes in and basically reads off exactly what the AI bot said.
• 30:36
  And I'm like, cool, thanks.
• 30:38
  Every, every company, every agent.
• 30:41
  Right.
• 30:41
  Has the disclaimer at the bottom.
• 30:43
  AI can be wrong.
• 30:44
  Be sure and check.
• 30:45
  Right.
• 30:45
  In general and agreed.
• 30:47
  You should check a couple models.
• 30:49
  Google with Gemini is free, right?
• 30:52
  Chat GPT, almost every one of them.
• 30:54
  Meta's got a free one.
• 30:55
  There's a million free ones out there.
• 30:57
  Double check.
• 30:58
  But I mean, put together an entire legal case for my storage unit thing it right?
• 31:05
  So that's.
• 31:06
  And that's what I love, like the accountability.
• 31:08
  Guess what, lawyer?
• 31:09
  You don't get to charge me $600 an hour or 300 to just tell me.
• 31:13
  Yeah, you need a lawyer for 30 minutes.
• 31:15
  You know what I mean?
• 31:17
  The BS can't fly anymore.
• 31:19
  It's gonna make people honest and accountable industry wide.
• 31:23
  I think in a lot of ways.
• 31:25
  Will it be exploited?
• 31:26
  Absolutely.
• 31:27
  Again, depending on which camp you land in.
• 31:29
  Like, how about landing in the one where we just decide to do good things with it instead of just crying about how it's gonna kill us?
• 31:36
  Yeah, not sound rough, but I'm gonna.
• 31:39
  Yeah.
• 31:39
  Johnny, let's wrap a bow around this subject before we Get.
• 31:42
  Running out of time here.
• 31:43
  But how do people find Instabid?
• 31:46
  Instabid Pro is the website.
• 31:48
  I'm pretty sure there's not another AI estimating company out there that puts the founder's name on the website and phone number.
• 31:57
  Sorry, my phone number is legitimately at Instabid Pro.
• 32:02
  Go there, look at it, tell me what you think.
• 32:04
  Tell me I'm full of it.
• 32:06
  Whatever I want to.
• 32:07
  Seriously, I want to hear it all.
• 32:09
  Because I really do want to do good things with it.
• 32:12
  I want the good guys to win.
• 32:13
  So we're doing this partner pilot program, right?
• 32:17
  Pilot partner program.
• 32:18
  I don't know.
• 32:19
  Ppp.
• 32:19
  Ask my marketing bot.
• 32:21
  But yeah, let's do this.
• 32:23
  I'll tell you what.
• 32:24
  The first five people that are listening right now that go to instabid Pro, look around, check it out, and the first five that call me or even text me and tell me about your company a little where I
• 32:36
  can find your website, how many years you've been in business and why you think you'd like to be a part of the pilot program.
• 32:42
  You could pay 90 days up front at half price.
• 32:46
  Whether that's one trade, three trades or 11 trades.
• 32:49
  Those are the tiers.
• 32:50
  Or half price for annual as well.
• 32:53
  The first five people that legit call me up and spend five to seven minutes on the phone with me.
• 32:59
  I guarantee you, if you're a real contractor, we'll spend more because we'll have a fun time talking.
• 33:05
  I'm not trying to sell you anything legitimately trying to help.
• 33:08
  Tell me one thing that it doesn't have that you would want or need.
• 33:14
  And not only will I give you the deal, but I'll have it built.
• 33:17
  You know me, dude.
• 33:18
  I'll stay up for 73 hours.
• 33:19
  I ain't scared.
• 33:20
  I know.
• 33:20
  I've seen you do it.
• 33:21
  I've seen you do it.
• 33:22
  Pretty sure.
• 33:23
  And look, we're all adults here legitimately.
• 33:25
  Tell me it would be great if it could do this and I'll make it do it within 30 days.
• 33:31
  How about that?
• 33:32
  If there's something that helps your business do better and makes your life easier so you can go fishing or hang out with your kids or hang out with your almost dead golden retriever.
• 33:42
  All at it, dude.
• 33:43
  Tell me what you need.
• 33:44
  Tell me what sucks, Tell me what's difficult.
• 33:47
  So you get three months.
• 33:48
  Half price or annual?
• 33:49
  Half price.
• 33:50
  But here's the catch.
• 33:52
  You owe me three phone calls.
• 33:53
  There we go.
• 33:53
  I want an update.
• 33:54
  I want an update every 30 days or quarterly if you go Annual.
• 33:57
  Nice for feedback.
• 33:58
  That's it.
• 33:59
  There we go.
• 33:59
  Instabid pro, guys.
• 34:01
  Hey, Johnny, I want to tell you one thing.
• 34:02
  Next weekend I'm actually working.
• 34:05
  Can you believe that?
• 34:06
  No.
• 34:07
  So I'm emceeing,.
• 34:11
  Right?
• 34:12
  Exactly.
• 34:12
  It's gonna work.
• 34:14
  No, I'm actually going to be emceeing the Rock the Locks Music Festival out in Umatilla, Oregon.
• 34:20
  So I am the msc.
• 34:22
  Yeah.
• 34:23
  So they take over the golf course out there and it is a massive music festival.
• 34:29
  So I'm stoked.
• 34:30
  So let me tell you the lineup real quick.
• 34:31
  And if you guys are out there, come by and say hi.
• 34:34
  I'll be moving around out there.
• 34:35
  So if you're going to be out at that music festival, it's this growing festival that's taken off.
• 34:39
  So we've got Friday night, we got God, Smack, Simple Plan, Lynyrd's.
• 34:44
  We got Lynyrd Skynyrd out there.
• 34:45
  We got.
• 34:46
  I mean, there are so many bands going, so it is going to be fun.
• 34:50
  So a couple bands.
• 34:51
  So on Friday night we've got Godsmack, Daughtry, Cruel Intentions, Jackal.
• 34:59
  Yeah.
• 35:00
  So second Sting, all these good bands.
• 35:03
  And then we got Simple Plan, Candle Box, Goodbye June, Theory of a Dead Man, Blue Tattoo, Seven Dust, Bombshell, Molly.
• 35:12
  So we got a good stuff going.
• 35:14
  Lynyrd Skynyrd, Tesla.
• 35:17
  No chainsaws allowed.
• 35:18
  No, you gotta have a chainsaw.
• 35:20
  Right.
• 35:20
  So we're talking power tools, man.
• 35:22
  So I'll be out there camping for four days at the site.
• 35:26
  And you know what's going to be interesting to me is it's going to be fun with.
• 35:29
  This is the thing that I go, wow.
• 35:31
  So God's.
• 35:32
  This is in the middle of a golf course.
• 35:33
  So they're actually literally set up in the green in the golf course.
• 35:36
  How they're going to get out the nine semi trucks of gear for Godsmack out in the middle of a golf course, they got to take the semi trucks out there is going to be interesting.
• 35:45
  They're gonna wreck the place.
• 35:46
  Who puts that on a golf course?
• 35:49
  City golf course.
• 35:50
  I mean, they could drive in the rough, not a big deal, but that's what they're doing.
• 35:53
  Yeah, throw a bunch of.
• 35:54
  Throw that crowd.
• 35:56
  Right.
• 35:56
  Seven Dust, God, Smack.
• 35:58
  Really?
• 35:59
  Really?
• 35:59
  I'm a golf course.
• 36:01
  You got it in greens.
• 36:02
  Lord, how many bonfires are gonna happen?
• 36:05
  Good.
• 36:06
  Especially if you got jack on the chainsaw.
• 36:07
  Right, right.
• 36:09
  Yeah, that's a brilliant.
• 36:15
  It will be fun.
• 36:16
  It will be fun.
• 36:17
  All right, everybody, we gotta run out.
• 36:19
  I'm Eric G.
• 36:20
  And for John Dudley.
• 36:21
  You've been listening to around the House.