A contractor's journey to self-mastery requires discipline, integrity, and respect. Welcome to Hammer and Grind. And welcome to the Hammer and Grind podcast, the podcast built for contractors to help maximize profits and get you off the tools before burnout or bankruptcy happens. I'm your host, Brad Hebner, and I'm here to help you on your journey to self-mastery. Make sure you check us out on our social media platforms, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. Just search for Hammer and Grind Podcast and you'll be able to find me there. Consider joining my free Facebook group called the Contract Your Profit Blueprint. I created this free group to give you as much information as possible to help you in your business. I go live in there once a week, tons of content to help you in your business. Now, if you want to accelerate the success, consider joining my paid coaching group called The Profit Club. In there is a great community of contractors all willing to share information and help each other succeed, as well as hundreds of hours of training, coaching calls, everything you need to accelerate your business. If you want to learn more about that, you can find out more information on hammerandgrind. com forward slash The Profit Club, or just send me a message and I'll be happy to share that with you. Now, let's get on to the show. Hey, welcome back to the podcast. It's Brad here. This is episode 118, My Tech Stack for Construction. Now, a lot of times I get asked by people, what software do you use? What types of technology do you use and all that stuff? So I put it in this podcast for you. and going to share with you what those are. Now, I'll put links in the show notes to all the different technologies that I use. Some of them have discount codes, others do not, but I'm going to put them in there for you. So go to the show notes and get those links for the different softwares. Now, this is specifically software-based. I'm not talking about any hardware, any technology, cell phones, tablets, anything like that. This is strictly software-based. tech that I'm going to give you. Now, something you should know about me if you don't know already is that I am a tech nerd. I like technology. One of my first businesses I ever started, I had a part-time side gig. I built computers, set up networking for people. I went to the community college and got a certificate in IT. I had my A-plus certification, if you guys know what that is, so I could build computers. This is back in the day. I'm dating myself a little bit here. But I have a strong technology background. That's why I've used technology significantly in my business because it's a force multiplier. It allows you to do the job of two or three other people. It allows you to eliminate office staff if you use technology. At the end, I'm going to share a little bit of thoughts around technology and how people... kind of say, well, I'm not good with tech, therefore I don't do it. I'm going to give you some thoughts of that in the end. So let's get started into this. And I'm going to share with you what I use and then maybe some alternatives as well, because not everybody's going to want to use exactly what I use. Okay. So the first thing right off the bat is you need to have some type of database of like information, like a software suite. So I use Google. I just use Google Workspace, you know, for my Google Docs and Excel, Sheets, Google Sheets, all that stuff. I just use Google Workspace. I paid for it. I didn't use the free version. It's like $12 a month or something cheap like that. $5 per email. Spend the money. Get a domain. Get your Workspace. So that's your name at yourbusiness. com. But Google Workspace is like the main email slash Word document, all that stuff, the office suite. Of course, you could use Microsoft Office if you like that. This is just more of a personal preference. The second thing is really the most important thing to keep track of your business and its performance, and that's QuickBooks, some type of accounting software. Now, I used QuickBooks Desktop when they first came out, when I first started. But as soon as they came out with Desktop Online, QuickBooks Online, I switched to that within a year or so of them launching it. It is more expensive. You're going to pay a lot more. I think I ended up paying somewhere around $350, $400 per year to have access to the QuickBooks Online version, whereas you could just buy the desktop for $200 or $300 and you could use that for two or three years before you had to upgrade. It's just worth it, guys. My accountants, my bookkeepers, payroll, all that stuff had access to it online. They just log in, do their thing, and it's done. If I was in my truck and I needed to send a quick invoice, I just pull up my phone. I could send an invoice right there on my phone. None of this, well, when I get back to the office, I'll print it out and send it to you. No, I got to call my secretary, my office manager, and have them send it to you. No, I just did it right there on my phone. It took me less than five minutes to do it on my phone. So having access to all your accounting records is super beneficial for you as a small business owner. Now, QuickBooks Online is designed mainly... One of their main products is for contractors. So you have invoicing, estimating. They don't have a very good scheduling. There's really no scheduling. They do have some timesheet tracking now built in. They got payroll and stuff like that built in. So it's very convenient for contractors. However, the pricing is getting crazy on it. So there is an alternative that you can use called Wave Accounting. So in my construction business, I use QuickBooks. In my coaching business, because I have a lot fewer moving parts, I have a lot fewer expenses, and I don't have any subcontractors and stuff to track. I use Wave Accounting in my coaching business. But I use QuickBooks in my construction business. So you can use Wave Accounting, especially if you're a small shop. If you just got one or two employees, you don't have too much craziness going on. Wave Accounting works really well. And the best part is that they have a free version of it. It's completely free. I use the free version and it works great. It has online banking, all that stuff as well. The only downside to Wave accounting is that a lot of other parties, other softwares do not connect with it natively. So that could be a downside. One of the benefits to QuickBooks is that the next software, which I'll, not the next one, but what I'm going to talk about, which is the project management software would automatically sync into QuickBooks. And so all of the financial stuff would automatically sync over. So just know when you're using technology, sometimes there's trade-offs. Sometimes the technology, the software may be much better, but you're trading off convenience. So just keep that in mind. The next thing is I use what's called OpenPhone. This was my phone software, my phone number that I had for my business. So when I first started, I knew I did not want my cell phone to be out there. I did not want people to have my cell phone number. So from the day one, I got a phone number and it cost me more money. It's one of those expenses that I wanted to have up front. And that I started with Vonage. So Vonage was a voiceover IP service. And if you don't know what voiceover IP just means that it works over the internet. It doesn't work through a dedicated phone line. Most of you probably understand that now. But Vonage was what I started with. I switched to Grasshopper. And then I ended up with OpenPhone for the last few years. Once they came out, OpenPhone is still a relatively new company. But they have a ton of features. It's very inexpensive. And there's so many benefits to it. Your people in the field can have apps they can download. They can call your customers from the app so that they don't give out their personal cell phone. This is one of the reasons why I switched. It's because if my lead guy or any of my employees had to call a customer to get information, now the customer would have my employee's phone number and they'd be calling them at 9 o 'clock at night trying to get information. And I did not want that to happen. So with open phone, you can download an app. on your phone and all of your employees can download the app and you can have it set up so that when they call out, it will call from your work number. It will disguise their personal number. And then it also tracks those calls and it records the calls and it also records and tracks all the text messages. So if your employee called a customer and said, Hey, Mrs. Johnson, we got a problem here, this and this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then Mrs. Johnson later on says, well, I never got a call. No one ever said anything to me. I have a recorded phone call between my lead guy and Mrs. Johnson. Or if she says that he said something else, I can go back and listen to it and be like, I listened to the call. He never promised you they were going to fix the tile. He never said they were going to paint that wall. Well, he said he did. No, he never did. Here's the recording. So even for legal reasons or to check on your guys to see how they talk to the clients. Maybe the client says, he was really rude to me on the phone. You go back and listen and sure enough, your employee was rude to them. Now you can go back and say, hey, look, John, you can't be talking to the clients like this. We got to have a discussion. So there's benefits to that. As well as texting and there's so much more. This is just scratching the surface. You can have multiple phone numbers. You can have one phone number. You can have... dedicated extensions and all there's all kinds of crazy stuff you can do with it you can put notes in there for the customer you can put to-do lists you can tag other employees say hey check with so-and-so on this call like it's pretty robust pretty awesome system open phone is the one that I recommend now the task management you really need to have some type of task management software in your business and this is just for like incidental tasks. This isn't like project management. This is just like, hey, we need to order new business cards or we need to order new t-shirts or we need to send out thank you cards to the Christmas cards to the customer. Little tasks, things that need to be done. You need some type of system to organize that. Now you can use Google Workspace. It has a task manager in there, but that's really just for you. It's not for teams. So I used Asana. is the one that I use. And there's lots of other ones like Trello. There's ClickUp. There's Monday. com. There's lots of other ones that are like that. They all are very similar in how they work. Some people even use Slack, although Slack is not really a task management. It's more of a communication channel. But there's ways you can use Slack to create tasks and organize stuff. This is with your team. So with Asana, you can have different teams. You can assign different projects to them. You can assign different tasks. You can assign resources, so on and so on. And so one of the ways that I used Asana in my business was for SOPs. So I had an onboarding SOP that whenever I hired a new employee, and then Asana, they call them projects. So it's like a board with a project and then you have all these different things in there. You can... create a template so that when you hire a new employee, you just basically template that project and assign it to an employee. And then all I have to do or all we had to do was go through the steps. So like one little... They call those... What do they call them? Boards? What do they call them? I forget. They all have different names. I'm trying to remember what they call them. But you can assign a task and in that task, you can have subtasks. So one task might be collect paperwork. And then in that subtask, you have fill out a W-2, copy their driver's license, get their shirt sizes, get their uniform sizes, get their cell phone number, assign them an email, give them login to the software, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so they can be checked off. So you have a template that has all of the information already in there. And then all you have to do is assign that template to a person and then that person goes through and makes sure everything is done. That's like an SOP. So once you fill that out, I don't have to think about when I hire someone, Oh, let's see. What do I got to get together? Okay, I need to have you fill out W-2. Oh, I forgot. I need to get... Come back to the shop tomorrow. I forgot I got to copy your driver's license and I got to get your direct deposit. There's no more remembering. It's a template. It's in there. It's a one-click thing assigned, and now I have all the information that I need. So you can use these types of things for SOP, for internal processes, stuff like that. Asana is the one that I use the most. Projul. The next one is a project management software. Now, some people confuse this with a CRM. And CRM gets used loosely, kind of like Kleenex does with tissue paper. A CRM is a client relationship management or client relations manager. The CRM is designed to have their personal information and then be able to have communications with them. And that's it. That's really all a CRM is designed for. A project management software is designed to do estimating, invoicing. It's designed to manage the project with Gantt charts or any kind of scheduling. You can assign tasks. You can assign work orders. That's like a project management software. So Progel is the one that I ended up with and used and liked the most. And Progel is not... Technically, it's not a CRM, although it has CRM properties to it, if you will. But it's mainly to run your business. Progel was the main thing that I ran my business. So it has a built-in lead flow or lead funnel. So when someone calls in, they go, Hey, I'm interested in getting service. We put them in as a client. And then there's funnels. There's stages to the funnel. The first stage may be schedule an estimate. The next stage may be complete the estimate. The next stage is send the estimate. The next stage is estimate approval. And then project scheduling and so on and so on. So there's a built-in stage lead funnel for that client. And that's one of the reasons why I like Projl. There's a ton of reasons I'm not even going to get into. I could spend a whole hour talking about all the features. But that is designed to run your business. Your clients have access to certain things. You can send documents. You can send estimates and invoices and work orders. They can approve them digitally. They can pay online. Everything. This will do everything for your business. And it does sync with QuickBooks as well. It does not sync with Wave, what I was talking about earlier. So Progel is the one that I use. I do have a partnership with Progel. So they have a pretty significant discount. I believe it's 15%. Don't catch me. Don't hold me to that. But I believe there's a 15% discount if you use the link in the show notes. I have a special link with them. And I'm one of the very few people that they actually give a discount to. I have a very good relationship with Progel and their staff. Because I'm very impressed with that software. There's other softwares though that are project management. Others that I recommend are JobTread. There's also CoConstruct, Buildertrend, Jobber. There's Cost Certified. There's other ones that are really more estimating softwares. They're not project management softwares. They just kind of help you do the estimating. There's 24-7 Pro. There's Cost Certified. There's lots of softwares out there that will help you with project management. It can get crazy. And you need to do the research on it. Don't just take my word. But I've tried many, many different ones. And if you're more of a service-based industry or service-based business like an electrician, a plumber, heat and air, there's ones that are specific for your industry. Service Titan is probably the largest. It's also the most expensive. There's ones like Service Fusion. I've used Service Fusion. Was not impressed with that. But it is a very robust software. So there's lots of different softwares out there that are project management slash CRM type softwares to run your business. Do your due diligence. My favorite is Progel and JobTread. So the next one is CompanyCam. Now CompanyCam is a picture-taking app. And it is the best out there, hands down. If you want to track your pictures per project so that everything is neatly organized, that you can easily find it and not have any issues with your pictures, CompanyCam is the way to go. Now, one thing I want to back up on with Progel. Progel does have a built-in picture catalog organization built into it. It's very similar to CompanyCam. With CompanyCam and Projl, both, you can draw on the pictures with your phone. If you have a smartphone with a pen or even your finger, you can take a picture or something and then draw on it and take notes. Both CompanyCam and Projl will do that. So you can just get Projl and have the picture taking. Their picture taking is pretty robust. It's the best that I've seen with any type of project management software. However... Company Cam is by far the better one in this market. They do a better job than anybody else out there. So they have GPS tracking. It knows when you pull up in front of a house that you're at that house. When you open the app, it automatically knows you're at the Smith residence because of GPS tracking. It will timestamp it. It will GPS stamp it. When your guys are taking pictures, it tells you who took the picture, what time it took the picture, what the GPS coordinates are. All of that is documented. You can do video in there as well. You can do voice notes on pictures. You can take a picture of a shower, then record a voice note that says, hey, we're going to be demoing out this shower, going back with tile, blah, blah, blah, whatever. You can do voice notes. You can do text notes. There's a central chat. What do you want to call it? Communication. So if you have a project like the Smith job, You can have internal chats, messages and comments inside just that project. So if I'm on the Johnson job, I don't give a crap about what's going on with the Smith job. I want everything centrally located to that job. And it is. You can do templates in there. You can do checklists. There's so much stuff you can do that I don't even know what all is out there now. There's so many new features. It is expensive. I'm not going to lie. It's pretty expensive. It's like $20 a month per user. It may even be more than that. But hands down, if you need to document and keep track of pictures, there's no better software than CompanyCam. I used to have a discount with them. I do not have that anymore. They discontinue that. But CompanyCam is the one that I recommend for picture taking. Now, the next one is one that I used initially. But then I stopped using it, but I still partially used it. And that's HubSpot. Now HubSpot is a true CRM slash marketing platform. HubSpot is designed to keep track of your customer information and then do all the marketing efforts around that. HubSpot is a very, very, very complicated... And a very robust software. It's also very expensive. It's designed for corporations. It's designed for people like Apple and Microsoft and Google and large corporations that have hundreds and thousands of employees because the cost of it is several thousand dollars a year to have access to it. It has pretty much everything you would need as far as customer management and marketing. But it doesn't... It's not user-friendly, especially for most contractors who are not, quote, tech-savvy. It's very difficult. When I first started using HubSpot, someone who's very tech-savvy and who understands this a lot, when I first started using it, I got frustrated with it and I quit using it for like three weeks. And then I went back and then I spent more time with it. I got a little less frustrated. It took some time to set it up. It's very complicated. So I don't recommend that for most people. But what HubSpot does better than most anything else is tracking your customer journey. So if someone goes to your website, clicks on a blog post, it tracks all that. So it knows how many blog posts it's read, how many website pages it went to, when it filled out the form, how many emails they opened. It tracks everything about your customer journey. So if you're at a point in your business where you're really trying to dial into the nitty-gritty of your customer, the customer journey, and all that, HubSpot's going to give you the tools to do that. But if you're a two-man operation and you're just trying to get the phone to ring, don't even think about it. Don't even waste your time researching it. It's not for you, I promise. HubSpot's going to be more for companies where the owner is 100% off the tools. You got guys out in the field. You're doing probably over $1 million in revenue a year. It's for a larger-based company. The next one I want to use is a very simple software, but it's very powerful. And that's called Publer. Publer is a social media posting software. So it connects with all of your social media platforms. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube. Yeah, YouTube. There's some other ones to Twitter. There's some other... I'm trying to think of all the different platforms it connects with. But you can go into Publer. You can create one post. Say you have a picture. You got a picture of a project you did. You can post it on there and then you can customize it for each location. So maybe on Twitter, it's just more words. On Facebook, you have a long paragraph or whatever about different stuff. So you can customize it for each location if you want. and then hit publish or schedule it, and it would just send it to all those locations. It's got a built-in scheduler calendar. You can do reoccurring posts. If you want to have a post that drops every Monday at 9 a. m. for the same thing, you can set up reoccurring posts. You can do RSS feeds. I use it for the podcast. So if you're on any of my platforms, the RSS feed will automatically post the podcast with the link to the episode. And that's automatically and I do that through Publer. So Publer is a very powerful social media management and posting platform. And the last thing I want to talk about here is called NiceJob. Now, NiceJob is a reputation management software, also known as reviews. So NiceJob is designed to collect reviews for your business. Prior to using NiceJob, I tried out a couple of other ones. Didn't really care for them. But Nice Job is very affordable. It's $75 a month. And it does exactly what it's designed to do. And that is to get reviews for your business automatically. You don't have to do a single thing to get collective review. It will send out text and emails or a combination of both. However you want to have it set up. For me, I had a five message campaign. It would send two texts and then follow up with three emails. And it will tell you the open rate, percentages of each one. And the funny thing is, for me, the highest converting message was number five, the fifth email, because it said, this is the last time I'm going to contact you requesting a review request. And what I believe is that people, they want to leave you a review. They have good intentions. They just get busy and they forget. So when they see that last one, it says, this is the last time I'm contacting you. Like, okay, I got to get this done. I've ignored the other four messages. I got to get this done. So my highest converting message was number five. Again, this is completely automated. You could send two messages, seven messages, text, email, doesn't matter. It's completely automated for you. And it collects reviews. The first time I started using it, within one year, I had collected over 150 reviews. It added 150 reviews in over one year. So it was a major, major, impact to my reputation and my lead flow. Because I don't know if you know this, guys, but reviews are critical to your leads. People are reading your reviews. 100% guarantee. So you need to collect as many reviews as possible. And Nice Job does a fantastic job at doing this. They also can post it automatically to your social media like Facebook. So when someone leaves you a five-star review, it will automatically post it to Facebook. You can regulate it so that it only posts five-star reviews and nothing else or whatever you want. You can collect pictures. You can put a widget on your website. So when people leave a review, it'll post it to your website with pictures. They got some pretty awesome stuff. So NiceJob is the reputation management software that I use and recommend. The last thing I want to talk to you about is called Zapier. Now, Zapier is a unique software. If you've never heard of it, it sounds funny, and you may not have any idea what it does. Zapier is a software connector. Its job is to connect multiple pieces of software that don't natively talk to each other. This is a game changer. When they came out with Zapier, which has probably been, I don't know, seven, eight years now when they came out. In my opinion, it was the best piece of software ever invented. It's that powerful. It uses what's called API. And I don't even know what API stands for. But basically, an API is like a backdoor. So think about if there's strip malls or if you have commercial complexes, a lot of times you'll have like a... a Target or a Walmart and there'll be a couple other big anchor stores and you got little bitty stores and the big stores are in the back and the little stores are kind of in the front if you usually how that's designed. But a lot of times if you have a bunch of stores in a row, I think you have like seven stores in a row in a strip mall or outlet mall, outlet building, strip building, there's a back door to those. And sometimes there's an alley, especially if you have buildings back to back, there'll be an alley down the middle. And there's a backdoor. Well, what API does and what Zapier does is it goes into these buildings. Think of each store as a piece of software that you use. Zapier goes in the backdoor and gets access to each piece of software and then takes the information that you want it to and converts it over to another piece of software. So imagine this. If you have QuickBooks, OpenPhone, Progel, CompanyCam. And nice job. You're using these softwares. If they didn't talk to each other, you would have to go into each one of those softwares and put in your customer database. Put in their first name, last name, email, phone, address. You'd have to put in all this information, which is a ton of data entry. In the past, you would have to hire a full-time person to come in and just enter data into different pieces of software. It's time consuming. It's a waste of resources, a waste of money. Zapier automates all that information. So you could go into, like, for example, if someone calls in, I put their information in Projo. Now, I will tell you this. Projo currently does not have API support. It's the one feature that I've been hounding them to add, but they do not currently have API support. But like QuickBooks does. So let's say you put... a customer's information into QuickBooks, then it will take that information and Zapier will automatically put it into, you know, company cam and it will put it into whatever else you want it to. Nice job or whatever. Whatever software you're using doesn't matter. Zapier works with hundreds of thousands of different software and you can do so much with it. I automate a lot of my coaching business with Zapier. A lot of it's automated. for example, and it will sync with Google as well. So when I onboard a new client in the Profit Club and I hit basically save, like once they've paid, I have an automation software, a CRM, if you will. Once they pay, it triggers an entire workflow in Zapier. And what it does is it will create a Google Drive folder for them. It will copy about six or seven different files that I use in my coaching business. It puts them in that folder with their name on it. It assigns their name to it. It adds sharing permissions to it. Then it sends them an email directly and says, here's your access to your Google Drive folder. So when the client gets that email and clicks the link, it takes them to a shared Google Drive folder with all of these files in there that has their personal name on it. That is completely automated. If I had to do that myself, it would take me probably about 30 to 45 minutes to set all that up each time. But it's completely automated with Zapier. So think about any electronic systems that you use, any software, anything that's electronic, and you're tired of double-entering stuff. Look into Zapier. It's pretty easy to set up. It's also very robust, so it can get super complicated if you want. I mean, you can do just about anything you can think of. So those are everything that I use in my business as far as software goes. I mean, there may be a couple of little other things that I use, but these are the main ones that I use in my construction business and the ones that I would recommend that you use for your business so that you can have an advantage over everyone else. Now, the part I want to talk to you about, which I said I would get to later. is this idea that we say, well, I'm not tech savvy. I don't like tech. Well, first of all, it's much bullcrap. Nobody's born with being tech savvy. They have to be good at it. Now, you may have certain... If you're not very analytical, or if you're not very good with numbers, or if you're not very good with certain types of things, then yeah, it could be a little bit of a... You know, a debilitating skill set, I guess is the word I'm trying to look for. It can hurt you a little bit. But it's just like anything else. If you can build a house, if you can do landscaping, if you can run a chop saw, if you can run a skill saw, a sawzall, a drill, any kind of power equipment, if you can do those things, you can use tech. The only difference is you don't want to. And that's okay. You don't have to do that. But if you don't do those things, you're going to get passed by everyone else who does. And the next alliteration of this right now is AI. If you're not using AI to your advantage, the younger people coming in who adopt it and use it will blow by you. They will leave you in the dust like you're riding a bicycle and they're on a rocket ship. Because AI is going to change everything. You can't have this mentality of, I don't like software. I'm not tech savvy. I don't like all that stuff. You just can't. If you don't like it, then find somebody, hire somebody to do it for you. But you can't put your head in the sand and just say, I don't want to do it. You have to get on board with some of this stuff. It's going to make your life so much easier. And yes, it's going to be frustrating and challenging. But the more you do it, the better you get at it. It's almost like anything else in life when you actually practice. Imagine that. You have to actually implement and do these things. So I even put a... I just recently launched a couple ChatGPT, which is AI trainings in my program because it's such a powerful thing. You can use ChatGPT to create lots of social media posts. You can use it to write blog posts for you. You can use it to script out videos. You can even use it to have conversations with people. You can create chatbots so that if somebody goes to your website and fills out the little chat and they start a conversation, they will have the conversation with them. And it's not like the old chatbots that you know it's a computer and they don't really help you. This new chatbot with AI is totally different. You won't even know you're talking to a robot. It's that powerful and you can train it. Yes, it's Skynet. It probably will kill us. It'll probably take over the world and within 20 years we'll probably all be dead. But what's the alternative? It's going to happen without you. Skynet's coming whether you use it or not. So you might as well start using it now and get a good life out of it before we're all killed by Skynet. You can't just put your head in the sand and say, no, I don't want to do it. This is how I got successful in my business. Because when I started in 2009, nobody had websites. I had a website. Nobody was using technology to their advantage like I was. They weren't doing social media. I started doing social media dominated. Nobody was using reviews, Google reviews when they came out. I started doing it dominated. Nobody had vehicle wraps on their truck whenever they started doing that. I did that dominated. You have to be the first. The tip of the spear always is the winner. Always. I don't care what it is. So don't wait on this stuff. Don't put your head in the sand and say, it's not for me. Implement it. All right? And if you have any questions around this stuff, join my Facebook group. Come in there and ask. More than happy to send you information, resources, all that stuff. Just reach out to me. I'll give you whatever I got. And like I said, all of the... Links for this will be in the show notes so you can go and check them out. Some of them have some discounts and different things. But go check them out. And hopefully this was helpful because I get asked this a lot about different technologies. Go back, save this, listen to it. Again, write down the list, all that stuff, and then go and start figuring out how you can use technology to be a force multiplier in your business. All right, guys. That's all I got on this one. You know where to find me? Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. It's the Hammer and Grind podcast. And remember, until next time, profit is not a dirty word.
