Loading summary
Transcript177 lines
- [00:05]
A
Welcome to the Cost of Doing Business podcasts. Things on Instagram are pretty shiny, but here we're going to get to the reality behind the scenes on the hard journey of growing a business so we can all learn from each other. I'm your host, Weston Zimmerman, co founder of Synced Up. Been in the green industry my whole life. Let's get into it. Welcome back to another episode of the Cost of Doing Business podcast. This morning we are in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I'm here at Alex Bellow's office company named Inca Stone. Actually, I should let. Just let you do the intro, Alex, but thanks for giving me the time. We've had a great morning already. Or at least I have fun.
- [00:46]
B
Learn some stuff.
- [00:48]
A
But yeah, give everybody an intro for everybody that's listening and what kind of what your company looks like, your crew and so on.
- [00:54]
B
So obviously, Alex with Ink of Stone. We're a design build company in Western Pennsylvania. Small company of five of us, total we' employees, including myself. That's how I look at it. Primarily focusing on. On hardscape and getting into more swimming pools and that kind of stuff. Yeah, that's. That's pretty much. Pretty much us in a small nutshell.
- [01:15]
A
How long ago did you start your business?
- [01:17]
B
So technically, the LLC was formed in. Oh, man. What's the date? We're coming up on our anniversary. July 15, 2021.
- [01:25]
A
Okay.
- [01:26]
B
Yeah.
- [01:26]
A
And how many people did you have right out of the gate?
- [01:30]
B
Right out of the gate. Just myself and one person. Yeah.
- [01:33]
A
And you're up for to a total of five.
- [01:36]
B
Yeah, five total.
- [01:37]
A
Five total amounts myself.
- [01:38]
B
Yeah. Yeah. You know, the company was born out of a failed partnership. So when that. I remember that. Yeah. Kind of like everybody dispersed and it took some grit and a couple years to get everybody back. And everybody's pretty much back now. And. Yeah, that's kind of where we're at.
- [01:52]
A
Yep, understood. And what did the process look like going from one to a total of four employees plus yourself? Like, did you hire them all in year two? Was it like one a year? Like what did that.
- [02:05]
B
No, growing slow and strong is very important. So we brought people back as we knew we could support them as the volume of work was stable and we knew that there wouldn't be any worry, so to speak.
- [02:21]
A
Yeah.
- [02:22]
B
So everybody was, you know, there, but the business was so young, they couldn't support, you know, what it needed to do. Yeah, in the early stages.
- [02:30]
A
Yeah.
- [02:30]
B
You know, because everybody's a sole provider for their families. And these are very talented people who command a very fair Wage, so we had to kind of get going slow again.
- [02:43]
A
And you mentioned design build. Like, you don't do any maintenance. Nope.
- [02:47]
B
No. No snow, no maintenance, no cleanups, Nothing like that.
- [02:51]
A
So you basically have the model of take our production season, make it as profitable as possible, and price in the cost of keeping the lights on during the off. Off season.
- [03:01]
B
Yes.
- [03:02]
A
Yeah.
- [03:02]
B
Y. Yeah.
- [03:03]
A
Which is. Which is the classic trap that contractors run into, Meaning, like, hey, I'm making a lot of money in. In the summer, and then be like, oh, shoot, it's February. And that pot of money I thought was mine to keep is gone.
- [03:18]
B
Yep, Yep.
- [03:18]
A
Yeah.
- [03:18]
B
Yep. So, yeah, we. Yeah, no snow. We pretty much try to get going late February and go far into December as we can. Depending on the type of project, January and half of February is usually. Forget it. There's just nothing happening. We'll be working on maybe some systems and some projects here, but not. Nothing really.
- [03:38]
A
Yeah. And I thought it was really interesting how right behind the camera there, there's a whiteboard with, like, magnets for. For, like, the jobs that are sold on. It's like, the whiteboard's a calendar, so the jobs are sold are on to represent the time that they're gonna take. But then what's really interesting is the ones that you are having the pipeline magnets for each one you have in the pipeline, and the ones that end up not closing just go to kind of up there to the top. You know, it's really, really interesting. And I'm thinking about it in the context of the production season and all of that, and how you were saying, well, like, well, dude, this job we could do when it's muddy out this job, we can't. So just off of that fact alone, I'll essentially tell the customer, hey, we can do it in this time of year. So I leave the prime production season open for other jobs that can't be done just any time of the year. So I just thought that was such a genius concept because it's all about maximizing the production. You can get out of the infrastructure and crew you already have built.
- [04:40]
B
And it is not, can you work faster? Can you run? It's not a physical. It's a chess piece move to make sure there's no holes in the schedule.
- [04:48]
A
Exactly. Like what you were doing on that whiteboard, which it was like playing chess. It's like you're moving pieces around on the board to make room for what you need to do. And instead of having your prime production season in the summer, take that job that could be done in the winter or the rainy, muddy season. You just ask the client, hey, can you do this in November? Yeah, sure. No problem. Okay, great. I got the rest of the season open for other work that I couldn't do in November.
- [05:15]
B
Yeah, if you're selling in, you know, March, February, March, you're selling projects and they're willing to wait till October. Absolutely. Put that in October. Absolutely.
- [05:24]
A
That's the other angle is like, you were like, so if they can wait till the time of year when it's hard to fill the pipeline. September, October, November. You'll be selling jobs, what, in April, May, for the end of the year. And working backwards.
- [05:37]
B
Yeah. First question in qualifying people is, what's your timeframe? And if they're like, oh, we'd like to do it now, it's like, okay, we know what to do. If they don't really have an opinion, it's like, hey, are you okay with the fall? And if they say yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. Great for production.
- [05:52]
A
So to your point, it's like, it's not about, yes, you need to work hard. I'm not saying that, but it's not about working harder. It's about playing chess with the pieces you have on the board.
- [06:02]
B
Yep. Yep. It's finding the true potential and the capacity of the team.
- [06:07]
A
Yeah.
- [06:07]
B
You know, and if you can link projects back to back to back and not let rain and weather interfere too much, you know, you can maximize a lot of unrealized revenue.
- [06:18]
A
Exactly. You can extract a lot more production out of the same infrastructure.
- [06:22]
B
Oh, yeah, for sure.
- [06:23]
A
For those listening to the podcast, the reason I'm here is I'm filming with Alex for the contractor summit event that's going to be in September here in Pittsburgh. September 10th and 11th. Which, by the way, you can get your tickets to. If you get. Listen to this. Before the end of July, there's a code for 100 bucks off your ticket. July, 100 is the code. But what I was getting at is in planning for this video shoot where we're essentially putting Alex's business on stage and showing off their internal processes. In that conversation, there was a couple things that you mentioned that I thought were really interesting. One being like, hey, I mean, we. We work lean and mean, you know, you're a small team, highly profitable, growing at the speed of cash. And one of the things you mentioned was, yeah, and we have an excavator for every crew member. I was like, what? Really? Wow, that's impressive.
- [07:13]
B
Yeah.
- [07:14]
A
So talk about that like how did you. Isn't that like a ridiculous amount of money? Aren't you, Aren't you. Couldn't you save more money than you're making with those excavators? Like just talk me through that.
- [07:26]
B
Yeah. So I don't know. So keeping production going. An excavator with a tilt rotator is essentially almost a human being in some aspects. It's a labor machine. And when I try to make sure that we're always productive, if we are rained out on a job or we have to demobilize and remobilize, it's way easier and better to sometimes have a machine just leave it there and have another one at another job that you can go get done. You need to have options at all times. Downtime is also huge. All our machines are under warranty. But you know, if one little thing happens and that machine goes down for a day, you lose a lot. It's not just a little bit. You lose a lot. So a few things play into that excavator per employee, you know, thing. Yeah. One of them is eliminating downtime and the other one is investing in your future. You know, I could. At the end of the year we face our ginormous tax bill that I know is coming. I can take the money for myself and you know, pay the tax or I can just reinvest. And you know, Dave Ramsey doesn't like taking loans out. But you know, we're betting on ourselves. So we do have a lot of equipment, but that's a future bet on ourselves is how I look at it. And it served us very well. Yeah.
- [08:40]
A
I mean, you're not the only one. I don't know if you're the. You're the first one I've heard say an excavator for every employee. But what I was going to say is you're not the only one going for that highly mechanized, well equipped tilt rotator. Small team, small company. Small like you're not like dozens of people and just focusing on maximizing production, maximizing efficiency with, with, with that approach. And I know you already said it, but I'll say it again. Not by working harder and 2 o' clock in the afternoon when the sun's beating down on you, but just by being strategic.
- [09:17]
B
Yeah.
- [09:17]
A
You know.
- [09:18]
B
Yep, yep. There's a lot of margin left in the shadows. You know, you can find with a skilled team, with any team, really.
- [09:26]
A
Yeah.
- [09:26]
B
You know, it's not more people, it's not more hours. Essentially. Yes. There's a certain nut you have to Crack to get a certain scope of work done. But you know, being billable for the hours of the day that you budget for is huge. Yeah, it's hard to recover a rain day. Yeah, it really is company wide. Like that's. If you look at what a rain day costs. That's a lot.
- [09:48]
A
Exactly. And we were just talking about. Because we were filming for the, the videos we're going to show at the summit and we were talking about job costing, analyzing your data and what you do with that. And, and he, Alex was showing me this spreadsheet he had made that kind of shows when they didn't get the billable hours in they needed that week or got more in like they had overtime in. And one of the things that came out of that conversation was like it helps him understand when they didn't produce what they needed to produce in that span of time. And the spreadsheet flagged it as red and all of that. And actually right now behind me the, we just set him up with Claude coworks. So it's, it's building, it's rebuilding that for that spreadsheet in a chart for 20, 26 hours to get it an update to him every. On a regular cadence. So that'll be cool. But the point that I was. I'm leading up to a question for you, Alex. And that is, you know, how do you think about the, the, the, the things you can't control versus can control and how do you budget for that or plan for that? Meaning you can't control when weather hands you a bad card, but you can control like what you were saying when you do what jobs.
- [10:58]
B
Oh yeah.
- [10:59]
A
How you recognize your crew, like all of that stuff. So how, and one of the things we had said in that conversation was just how you price in what you can't control. Whether in your budget in unbelievable hours. So it's just factored in. You're not going to have a surprise and then look at your data to figure out, well, like what am I seeing here that I could have controlled?
- [11:23]
B
Yeah. So one thing that probably now that we're talking about it is putting applying pressure to always being productive is we're like 80% salaried company.
- [11:34]
A
Okay.
- [11:35]
B
So that changes your mind completely. I mean you, if you had a rain day, a company could shut it off. Hourly employees don't get paid. Our payroll still keeps going.
- [11:44]
A
Yeah.
- [11:45]
B
So we, you know, subconsciously I have to pivot from a job getting shut down due to weather to what else can we do? So that's where you know, the multiple machines come in plan, plan A, plan B, plan C, we'll sell small jobs, maybe a one or two day, tell the customer, hey, you're three months out, but there's a good chance I'm going to call you and we can come tomorrow. And people love that. But you sold a job that isn't shiny and awesome, but man, that fills a day and at least you're going to break even on that day. So to be able to do that, though, you do need more equipment and resources. Just not demobilize and totally remobilize for another job.
- [12:21]
A
Yeah. Because there's a cost to that.
- [12:22]
B
Oh, gosh. Yeah. Oh, gosh, yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of how, how that comes into play.
- [12:27]
A
Yeah. Okay. That makes a lot of sense why you went through the motions of creating that spreadsheet to begin with because you needed to essentially see where are we earning our keep, so to speak, versus where are we falling under the threshold. And is there something we could learn from it or do about it? Is there any stories that you learned from looking at that spreadsheet?
- [12:45]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, in our company, time off is pretty much never denied. Everybody's an adult. They treat their time responsibly. Vacations are just, they can overlap. And on the board, luckily everybody's vacation doesn't overlap. We got a couple back to back. But when you look at that from a high level of, you know, billable hours and production, I think it's important to look for patterns. So that spreadsheet, you know, showed us patterns where I could look at a month and say, why were we down? This whole week we were down. And it's based on weather or we didn't. Someone was on vacation. Or you could just look quickly and adjust to that kind of stuff. And then real quick back to the excavator thing. I was thinking about it. You know, our first year we put like, I think we put like 1900 hours on an excavator. Like we, we lease the machine and we use the heck out of it. And when you, you know, when I did the math on, I was like, this thing costs US$13 an hour to run. Like, it really isn't that expensive. You know, you can look at a machine and one of them, you know, we have one that's 2,600 bucks a month, one that's $3,100 a month payments. But you break it down to the runtime per year and you're billing out 170 or whatever hour for that, like, they don't really cost that much because when they're running, you're billing for them, you know, so it's easy to kind of do the math on that based on justify. Yeah, yeah.
- [14:05]
A
And that's how. That's how what looks like maybe a big sticker shock expense to somebody on the outside looking in.
- [14:10]
B
Yeah.
- [14:11]
A
Makes all the sense in the world.
- [14:12]
B
Absolutely.
- [14:13]
A
To the guy trying to get the maximum production out of the company.
- [14:15]
B
Yeah, you know, y. Yeah, totally.
- [14:18]
A
And speaking of your guys, how did you. How did you arrive at getting most of them on salary like that? Talk about that.
- [14:28]
B
Let's see here. So in the very, very beginning, it was like panic mode. Start a company. I don't have enough work for these guys. And the very beginning, two guys were. They were 10.99 and we would work a little bit and then we'd all like go out and work for someone else like till we could gain some traction. Because, you know, I had, you know, I. A decent reputation in the industry, but like our Inca Stone was nothing to anybody. So when you have a seasoned team and not the volume of work to support it, you have to. You gotta adapt really quick. So for a short period of time, they were 1099. And then we finally got our insurance and everything up and running. And then I think Mike came on. I think we just did salary just because, you know, I think it was like a. A mutual agreement and. Oh, piano PA. Unemployment's terrible. Like, I remember when I work with Mike in the past, it was always a nightmare to collect unemployment. Like I just remember the struggles he had. And I had two and we were employees for another company. It's like you just don't want to do that. Like it's. Sure it's free money or whatever you paid for it, but my word, trying to budget for the little bit that they give you and your checks don't come in. And I just, I didn't want that stress for anybody. And then as we brought people on, Gabe's primarily sales, so he's going to be here a lot. And his role does command, you know, a salary position. Logan is a field laborer, you know, he. But he does get overtime because he's salary. But it's just. It's basically eliminating the worry of winter. Let everybody take a break. I'll carry that. That's fine. But I'll tell you what, man, it makes you focus on production and scheduling and efficiency different. You know what I mean? It's just a different beast.
- [16:12]
A
Would you. Would Say with. With a couple years under your belt under that. Like, would you. Would you say, what are the pros and cons or the trade offs, like, between the hourly salary model from your
- [16:22]
B
experience so you know beforehand if you're. If you're billing out, if you're paying hourly employees, you know, a rain day is a rain day. No one's making money. Those guys are sitting at home unless they have something else to do. Losing 20% of their paycheck. That sucks. So if it's. Well, let me take that off the plate. And I think that's. I don't know. That sounds pretty good to me in their shoes. But then it puts the pressure on me to, can we move the needle forward anywhere, even if it's inefficient? Like, yes, there's three of us. We're gonna go do this thing, we're gonna blow the hours, but we're moving that needle forward a little bit. Even though the, you know, the hours are blown, we're still paying for the salaries anyways. So when it, you know, you could go out in the field and do this job, like, hey, this is taking way too long. It's muddy. Like, we did a lawn repair. We did. Logan and I did something. It was just like, we really. You should really do this. When it's a different, you know, climate. But we got it done. We got it off our plate. We can now focus on more billable work in the better season. So you kind of look at stuff almost backwards. Like, it doesn't make sense. A lot of times when you're out there, like, muddling through things, but you're just getting certain chunks of work off your plate so that when it's nice out, you can be full steam.
- [17:33]
A
That's. Yeah, that's good. That's a good point because, like, it makes me think of, like, you know, Tussie Landscaping has a lot of salary employees, too. And, like, over the years, they've gotten more and more into just, like, knuckling down and working through winter months where you can.
- [17:48]
B
Yeah.
- [17:48]
A
And it's like you could argue, is it even worth it? Like, you're maybe working at 40 to 60% efficiency.
- [17:55]
B
Oh, yeah, right. That's terrible.
- [17:56]
A
Yeah. And you know, from the. Again, from the outside looking on, is it even worth it? But like you said, you're still moving the needle forward so that when the good weather does come, you made that progress. You were paying for it anyway.
- [18:08]
B
Yeah. That job may not be quote unquote, profitable, but that job did recover overhead to some degree that is better than nothing.
- [18:14]
A
Yeah.
- [18:15]
B
You know. Right. So, yeah, it's a different, different beast. Obviously it's not a scalable thing. Like, I don't think there's a scenario where you could get a large, you know, company on that same program.
- [18:27]
A
I mean, you could, you just have to price it in and. Yeah, to your point, it would make you look differently.
- [18:32]
B
Yeah. And it takes, and it, I believe it takes special people to be team and goal oriented because you can. Salary can be a double edged sword. You know, you could have the person who's like, I'm getting paid and I'm gonna do the least amount possible because I'm still getting paid, or everybody's on the same page, like, we gotta get this done. You know, I'm getting paid no matter what. Doesn't really matter.
- [18:53]
A
So speaking to that, like the thing that I admire every time I come see you is your, your team and your culture, like the culture you've built. I mean, you see it in the telegram channels like we were laughing at, you know, earlier. But the, the thing that I wonder. Okay, so let me say this. I'm going to pick a topic like tracking hours. And one of the top things I hear from owners is like, my guys don't want to do it. And this is in the context of mostly hourly people and they still don't want to do it, you know, meaning. And it's like, well, the employee just. Or that the owner just ends up paying them anyway even if they didn't track their hours. And so it just, it just keeps on happening. Yeah, but my point is, is if you don't have. And what I've always said to those owners is like, well, hey, just start paying them based on the hours they've logged. And if they skip something or forgot something, payroll's just gonna get run on what's logged. And if there's a mistake, sure, we'll fix it. Of course we're gonna pay for it, but it's inconvenient, so put a little pain to it when they don't do it. It's kind of been my message. But the thing that I think is remarkable and commendable for you and your guys and what I wanna do have you talk about a little bit is your culture and for everybody else to hear is how do you get salary? Employees that aren't even paid off the hours they track, tracking their hours so
- [20:13]
B
religiously because it matters.
- [20:16]
A
But how it matters to you, why does it matter to them?
- [20:18]
B
Because we're all Competitive and we all want to, we want to win. Whether. Doesn't matter what the trophy is, you want to win. So hours tracking is, you know, job costing is huge. It's just our culture, it's just we need to know where we're at at all times. We run at a high level, expectations are very high. And it's just, I don't know, it just is what it is. It's not. It's almost a non negotiable, like time has to be entered. We have to know what bucket it goes to, what you know, every work area, every job, every second you're under the umbrella of Inka Stone's insurance coverage for the day. Like it's got to be accounted for somewhere. It just has to. Yeah, I don't. It's not something, it's not beat into anybody. It's not written on anywhere. It's not anything. It's just how it is because it truly matters. It truly matters. At the end of the job, we need to know if we need to course correct. And if you don't have the data to do that, if you don't have the hours, the material logged in there, you really don't know if that was a good job for you or a bad job. And if you can't measure it, you can't fix it. So that's, I mean, that's basically it. That's it.
- [21:24]
A
Yeah. It's like if you shoot at a target, never look where you hit.
- [21:26]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [21:28]
A
How are you supposed to correct the scope on the gun or whatever?
- [21:31]
B
And shooting isn't fun if you don't look at the target. Right. If you're out, if you're just shooting into the woods, like that's cool to hear a bang and a kick and the smell, the smoke, but that lasts like two shots. Then you want to know if you can hit something. Yeah, yeah. Can you hit something moving? That's even more fun. You know what I mean? So, yeah, that analogy, it works for like one time.
- [21:49]
A
Yeah, yeah. The other thing, when we were talking before we started recording, you were saying how well my guys want to see their scorecard. And it made me stop and think a little bit because like, well, if pain is the motivator for hourly guys to track their timing. Oh, my payroll screwed up. And that is not a thing for salary employees. Isn't that remarkable how the desire to see how they performed on their scorecard is arguably more compelling than the pain of getting my payroll messed up to get people to track the time, you
- [22:26]
B
know, I mean, it's a competitive culture and I think like when you have small groups of people in any industry who are all focused on the same goal, like it's, it's, it's like everybody wants the same result.
- [22:39]
A
Yeah.
- [22:40]
B
And if you have, you can't have somebody on this team that doesn't want the same result. And the result is a win. It's really. Did we bid it right? Obviously we build things, I would say per industry standard and well above the quality. That's not part of the conversation. But how was our bid? Was our design good? And then did the team execute it? It's a whole multifaceted bunch of things that have to happen to create a true win. And everybody just want to win.
- [23:09]
A
And you might be wondering what do I mean when I mention the word scorecard? It's just the estimated versus act report on the screen and synced up. It's all it is. And what you did with that spreadsheet and what Claude is back there building a report for right now is just taking mass amounts of data and surfacing it by any different angle and slice you want so you can be like, be more informed, map cause to effect. And what I'm going to do about it to make it to be better next time, or said differently, job costing is not the goal. The goal of job costing is just to make my next estimate more correct.
- [23:48]
B
Yeah.
- [23:49]
A
More on point.
- [23:50]
B
Yeah. Less guessing.
- [23:51]
A
Less guessing. Speaking of which, talk about the herringbone border story.
- [23:56]
B
This one hurts. It's very real. I mean, so guessing. We bid a job, I think it was. We actually bid it last year and a client elected to upgrade to a very complex border that required a lot of cutting. We did it one time before, looked awesome, but we never tracked it. This was like way in the early days. We just did it and it was whatever. I don't even know if we won or lost, but it just was what it was. And the client saw a picture of that on our website and said, I want that. Like, cool. We can try to guess how long it's going to take, but we never measured. And so we came up with a number based on. I don't even know, to be honest with you. But I'll tell you what was not, not accurate. It was 440 some percent off. So we just lost our shorts on one description in a project. Overall, the project was great. It went well. But this one work area failed miserably because I went in with a kind of a guess and a gut feel. And I also Said there's no way they're going to pay more than seven grand for this upgrade. We'll just leave the price there. And that was based on just emotion, you know, it's terrible. Totally on me. Yeah. Yep.
- [25:10]
A
Yeah.
- [25:10]
B
So.
- [25:10]
A
And now you're dealing with the after effects of it.
- [25:13]
B
Yeah, yeah. The pain. The pain is mine. It's not theirs. You know, it's not anybody in the teams. This is like I, I sent it, I stamped it, I approved it and I misfired because I never tracked it when we did it before.
- [25:24]
A
Yeah.
- [25:24]
B
You know, it's kind of a. The only second time we've ever made thousands of cuts on a border. So. Yeah, that's my problem.
- [25:31]
A
What I think is valuable to learn from that story is that you know in your gut when a job took longer than it should have, that sucks. But do you actually stop to like sum up what it actually cost your company? And if you don't. Well, my guess is is that's why you get to winter and be like, where's all the money?
- [25:52]
B
Yeah.
- [25:52]
A
Because just in this little work area for the Herringbone border story, although you went, you bid 30 hours and it took 130, so. 100 hours.
- [26:00]
B
Yeah.
- [26:01]
A
Said differently. $13,000 worth of labor.
- [26:03]
B
Yeah.
- [26:04]
A
That you paid for.
- [26:05]
B
Yeah.
- [26:05]
A
That you couldn't go do another job to earn. Like you lost the opportunity cost too. Right. And it's, it's, you know, it's, it's just a cascading effect. So.
- [26:13]
B
Absolutely.
- [26:14]
A
It's, that's how it translates to real world dollars.
- [26:19]
B
Yeah.
- [26:20]
A
And how much work could you get done in the year? The other thing worth mentioning about that is how the. Oh, shoot. I lost my thought. I was gonna say something about the Herringbone thing.
- [26:32]
B
Well, the cost of that mistake, the only thing I have from it now is a hard lesson. You know, we probably will get a cool picture out of it. Great. But you know, but like now we have it.
- [26:42]
A
Yeah.
- [26:42]
B
Now we know. We have the data. We have it and it's rock solid because we track that whole thing to one work area. It's not built into the patio. It's literally a specific. We know it took 140 or 129 hours to cut 100 lineal feet of this 9 inch herringbone. Born like it, it's down, it's done. We'll never forget it.
- [26:58]
A
Yes. That's what I was going to say is like you guessed on this one. Right. And you tracked. Learned a painful lesson.
- [27:06]
B
Yeah.
- [27:07]
A
What are you going to do with it? Well, you're going to take that data, this many feet of that herringbone border, it took this many hours, divide it, find the production rate, put it in your next, in your template for the next one. You do and bam, you pay the price of that education. You're done.
- [27:21]
B
You're done.
- [27:21]
A
But, but without, and then you either sell it or you don't.
- [27:25]
B
Right?
- [27:25]
A
You're not going to do charity work anymore. But without that data, without that tracking, you're doomed. I'm going to use that word. You're doomed to guess again.
- [27:36]
B
Absolutely. And you guess again. You wouldn't even know where you lost it on that job. That was a 70, $80,000 job. That was only a $7,000 Porsche. Well, that's more than seven. But if you look at the job overall, you could never fine tune if. Did you miss on the base? Did you miss on this? Did you miss on that? Like you would never know that the border was the one unless you tracked it like that.
- [27:55]
A
So incredible. And I, I think, you know, I, I, I, I hate even admitting this, but one of the things that is a thorn in my side is how much, what percentage of synced up customers don't track their time religiously?
- [28:10]
B
I don't know.
- [28:11]
A
And it's, it, it blows my mind. And, and, and it's, we, let me put it this way, in extreme ownership, we are failing to communicate just how critical it is that you track. Because if you knew, if you actually understood and were able to translate that to dollars and cents, there's no doubt about it, you would do it. I don't care that Johnny doesn't want to. You're doing it or you don't work here. You know, it's like your own metrics, like how long it took your crew to do that herringbone border or pick any service that you do is that data is absolute gold. And I think for the sake of everybody listening, you know this, I'm preaching to the choir. But for the sake of everybody listening, like you can go out there and ask, hey, what would you bid for this? Hey, what about that? Hey, what machine would you buy? You can ask all those what would you questions, but at the end of the day, your labor and how long it takes your crew to do something is unique to you.
- [29:06]
B
100%. That's almost with any business. It is. There are a ton of. And you see them all the time. Hey, what would you guys charge for this? I don't even know what state you're in, how much you pay your guys, what your Zone of climate is your skill level, your equipment, you know, 10 hour days. Like you, dude, you cannot do that. You just can't. Because my numbers aren't your numbers.
- [29:29]
A
Yeah. What you could compare is how long, how many man hours would it take your crew to do X versus mine. Now you can actually start having a productive conversation.
- [29:38]
B
That's probably the only comparison because your overhead and the equipment you have, like our hourly rate is probably higher than most. But our overhead is probably higher than most. Perfect. Per employee, but we probably get it done a little bit faster.
- [29:50]
A
Well, you do. And that's. And that's how a lean and mean company that's highly mechanized like yours can actually come in and price sometimes still even win on price. Oh yeah, because not because your hourly rate's cheaper, it's not. But because you're more efficient.
- [30:05]
B
Right, Totally.
- [30:06]
A
Yeah.
- [30:06]
B
Yeah. That's where the Forex creators come into place.
- [30:08]
A
Yeah, exactly. 100%. And so the, the. If you forget everything else we talked about, the thing I hope that you, that people listening to this conversation take away is how utterly critical your own data on how long it takes your crew to do things is. It is literally the thing that you cannot buy. Yet an asterisk there on the future of synced up with AI, but it is literally the thing that you cannot buy. And without it, you're doomed to guess. And when you're doomed to guessing, the margin of error is too wide for my comfort zone.
- [30:43]
B
Absolutely. And also when you guess someone is winning and someone is losing, you're winning or your client's winning, you're losing or clients. Yeah, it's not a symbiotic, both winning scenario. You guess too high, you win, your client overpays, you guess too low, they win, you get. You know what I mean? So guessing someone gets hurt in that game. Yeah, And I don't ethically like that.
- [31:03]
A
Yeah, I get what you're saying. It's like as a business owner, I want to do my due diligence and do my best to serve my client by giving them an accurate estimate.
- [31:10]
B
For sure. Yeah. I mean if I just say, yeah, it's going to cost and I just 10x it. That's not even. That's not right. Right. I mean.
- [31:16]
A
Right. So I think it's a very good point.
- [31:19]
B
Yeah.
- [31:20]
A
Well, I can't wait to have you on stage Summit.
- [31:24]
B
Great. I became a landscaper so I wouldn't have the public speak, but I. If you ask me to do something, Weston, I'll do it.
- [31:31]
A
Well, thank you. And I, and I really appreciate the relationship we've, you know, friendship we've formed over the years. You know, you've been with synced ups pretty much since the beginning. And the reason I picked you and now I'm doing a bit of a pitch for the summit. The reason I picked you and the reason I want people to come and hear your story is because I think you are a poster child of what it, what a lean and mean operation that's highly efficient, highly mechanized looks like where your hourly rate might be 50% more than other people in the, in that room, but you're getting the same job done in less time for similar prices.
- [32:07]
B
Yeah.
- [32:08]
A
And it's because you're so efficient.
- [32:09]
B
Yeah.
- [32:09]
A
And, and, and you're, and you know, all the, I mean, I could keep going down the list. You're carrying salary guys through the winter. You're, we didn't even mention the other things you're doing for them like the Roth IRAs, like the, the generous matching, like all that stuff doing to create career style jobs here.
- [32:25]
B
Yeah, absolutely.
- [32:26]
A
And I, I, you know, I, I'm, I'm, I'm putting you on a pedestal on purpose for the people listening here because I really want you to come and see behind under the hood of Alex's operation. Like we're going to be the reason, like I said, the reason I'm here is we were recording a bunch of videos of how the, how they operate in their business or sales process, their estimating process. Of course, some of that is how they use synced up. And today we were filming a video of, you know, we're literally getting Alex going from zero to hero and using AI tooling to analyze this data and go from spreadsheets to just AI analyzing the data for him. So a lot of really exciting things that we're going to be showing off under the hood on stage at the contract summit event. So, you know, this is my pitch for you to be there in that room, get your tickets. Alex is going to have his whole team there. So you can hear that. You can hear the other versions too. Like not just from the owner, but from the team.
- [33:18]
B
Oh yeah, you can get the dirty stuff too. Go for it. Open book. Come to Pittsburgh. This is your only shot.
- [33:25]
A
But Alex, you got an awesome culture, an awesome business. You deserve an attaboy and a pat on the back for the, for the, for the, for the trailblazing you've done. Like, it's, it's really commendable.
- [33:37]
B
Thank you. Appreciate it. All right.
- [33:38]
A
Absolutely. Well, shall we go grab a camera off here and go out there and kind of walk around and just do a quick walk around your yard and show how you operate.
- [33:46]
B
Yeah, if you want to. It is nothing glamorous.
- [33:49]
A
Okay, well, quickly, before we cut the recording for the podcast, where can people find you and follow more, more about
- [33:55]
B
your Inca Underscore Stone? Instagram is probably where you can just see the Inca Underscore Stone.
- [34:02]
A
Underscore stone, yeah.
- [34:03]
B
Yeah, you can follow us there. There's a website in Facebook, but I don't really do much on there. But if you want to kind of
- [34:08]
A
like, we'll grab it, put it in the show notes.
- [34:10]
B
Yeah, you can do that or you can come out to Pittsburgh and, you know, we're kind of a. I'm definitely an open book person. You know, a lot of people in the industry I communicate with and if they want information, I'll definitely share it. You know, I don't have anything, anything to hide. You know, there's a lot of, A lot of people out there that just need that little bit, that little nugget of information.
- [34:31]
A
What does it mean? Oh, that's how you do you.
- [34:33]
B
Yeah, yeah, yep.
- [34:35]
A
And that's the whole point of filming these videos to show on stage at the contractor summit is because you hear, oh, you have to track. Oh, you have to job cost. Oh, you have to do templates. And so what. What you get is information overload on the principles and why and the how. But there's some real value in being able to see. Oh, that's how you do it.
- [34:53]
B
Yeah.
- [34:54]
A
With your own eyes and like. Well, yeah, I can do that.
- [34:57]
B
Oh, yeah, you can operate out of an old dog kennel, you know, with no running water, you know, and still be extremely profitable and everybody wins.
- [35:07]
A
It's very nice. I know it's a dog kennel, but it's very nice in here. And this cedar desk that you made makes the whole room smell like cedar. It's awesome. Okay, well, thank you again, Alex. Let's do a quick walk around of the shop property out here and we'll check back on how the Claude is doing with that, with that 2026 hourly analysis report. That'll be interesting.
- [35:30]
B
Sounds good.
- [35:31]
A
Hey, thanks for listening to the Cost of Doing Business show. If you need help with knowing your numbers or you're looking for a better automated system to run estimating and scheduling and job costing or more in your business, just hit me up. You can book a demo@syncedup.com or DM me on Instagram @syncedup, which is spelled syn k e d u p. See you on the next one.