Adam (00:21)
Welcome to Masters of Home Service, the best podcast for home service pros like us. I’m your host, Adam Sylvester, and I want you to crush it in business. Tech is not going to replace your team. It’ll supercharge your team. Give your team the best tools for the job, and they will become unstoppable, both for the field staff and for the office staff. My guests are Ryaan Tuttle and Rob Soper, and we’re going to get into all the technology that can increase your efficiency in your business. Guys, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here on Masters of Home Service. 

Rob (00:55):
Yeah. Really looking forward to it. 

Adam (00:56):
Rob, tell our audience who you are and what you do. 

Rob (00:59):
Great. My name’s Rob Soper. I’m a senior business development manager for Eagleview Technologies. We’re an aerial imagery company that supports basically the home exterior and renovation contractor base providing aerial measurements. Basically, we extract digital 3D models of structures with our imagery and provide that data through technology to the contractor base. 

Adam (01:21):
And what does that allow the contractor to do? Quote? 

Rob (01:24):
Well, it allows a lot. Not just quote, but go all the way to material ordering. The accuracy of our imagery and the data that we output from these structures is down to the sub one-inch in many cases. So you can get spot on estimates for a quoting to customers, but at the same time, you can also push that right into production and order your materials right from your supplier. Really minimize the overages or underages and get it right on with both your estimates and your material costs. 

Adam (01:52):
Awesome. Okay. So a lot of companies using Eagleview are roofers, gutter guys, lawn care people measuring the lawn, or is it just the house? Ordering roofs? Materials? 

Rob (02:01):
We’re doing a lot of other things. We’ll get into that. In the environmental space, around structures, but really our bread and butter is the roofing industry. That’s where we started. But now we’ve expanded with our imagery, the quality of our imagery to be able to really support any exterior contractor. 

Adam (02:15):
And you’re integrated with Jobber. 

Rob (02:17):
We are. We launched the integration, and it’s available to all the customers in there. 

Adam (02:23):
Great. Well, thanks for being here. I really appreciate it. 

Rob (02:25):
You bet. 

Adam (02:25):
Ryaan, tell us about you. 

Ryaan (02:26):
Thank you, Rob. Ryaan Tuttle, founder of Best Handyman Boston and Best Handyman New Hampshire. Running a great handyman operation with Jobber running the back end of it. Been doing that for about eight years now with great success. 

Adam (02:42):
Awesome. So you guys are both tech guys. Would you guys agree that the right tech is just another tool in our team’s tool belt? Would you guys agree with that statement? 

Ryaan (02:52):
Yes. I would definitely say that. Jobber for us has become that extra employee in the office, that extra admin that’s doing all those nitty-gritty things we typically would forget about, job follow-ups, review requests, all those sort of things. 

Rob (03:06):
Yeah. I agree completely. You can’t be in business without technology today. And I mean, I’m fortunate that I get to see roofing contractors and exterior contractors all across the country that use a variety of different platforms out there. And I see what’s working, what’s not working, and honestly, how fast people turn to success by implementing some kind of technology in their stack. And it was pretty… Early on adopters are the ones who’ve come the farthest, but the technology has advanced even in the past couple years, just dramatically. 

Ryaan (03:40):
Yeah. I’d agree. My first business was a remodeling business that I had for 10 years. I’ve spoken about it before, but we started out handwriting estimates on carbon copies. And one of the things we wanted to change with the handyman business was not only the experience for the customer, but for our team as well. And the only way we could do that was by leveraging technology. 

Adam (04:01):
Yeah. I would go as far as to say that the most successful home service businesses in the future will be ones who consider themselves a tech company that just happened to do handyman work, or just happened to cut grass, or just happen to do this or that, because the technologist gives you such an advantage, especially over people who aren’t really using it at all. And guys, let’s be real. There’s a lot of listeners today that really haven’t introduced tech into their business at all. Some of the plenty of listeners are still doing the way you used to do with the pen and paper. They’re definitely not using a CRM. And so today’s episode, I really want to encourage those listeners to get off the fence, get on board, because it’s happening. It’s already happened. And technology is there to make your people better. It’s not going to do anything else. It’s going to make them better. 

Ryaan (04:46):
Yeah. For some reason, especially in the home service industry, I feel like there’s a lot of fear around technology. And there can be a challenge. Yesterday’s, everything’s moving so fast that yesterday’s technology could almost be today’s problem, the way they’re updating it and innovating it. So one of the things we’ve been able to do is look for player coaches to hire and help us learn about the technology and implement it at the same time. That’s been very advantageous for us. 

Rob (05:12):
Yeah. And what I’ve seen across the industry is the customer profile has changed. The customer expects technology. It’s different. I mean, my kids are in their late 20s, they’re buying houses, they’re buying cars, they are the future customer base, and they expect to buy things on their phone. You have to be app-based, you have to be web-based. I mean, you have to be able to deliver things like Amazon delivers things, even in the home remodeling industry, otherwise you’re just going to get left behind. And I would say the other thing that is a fairly new trend is the private equity roll-ups on the roofing side is huge. And they’re leveraging technology to standardize operations across multiple states, multiple businesses. And they are moving at lightning speed. And if you don’t adopt technology, you’re just going to get left behind. You’re really just going to get squashed. 

Ryaan (06:01):
Yeah. We were talking about that last night, how private equity’s been rolling up plumbing businesses, HVAC, roofing companies. And what they do is they just inject all their technology and expedite everything. So that customer does get the Amazon experience. 

Rob (06:16):
Exactly. 

Adam (06:17):
Technology allows you to repurpose your team’s time to go do something more efficient or more revenue-generating activities. You want to talk more about that? 

Rob (06:28):
Yeah, absolutely. I would say, well, I’ve been with Eagleview since 2017, and that was really when CRMs started to accelerate. I mean, there were the early ones that were out there, but they’ve really taken hold. Our biggest competitor when I started with Eagleview was a tape measure. It was the hand measure. It wasn’t competitors to EagleView. It wasn’t another aerial measurement service. It was literally a tape measure. And that was a really easy sell. You don’t have to go on the roof. You can bid when it’s cold out. You can bid when there’s snow on the roof. It really doesn’t matter. The companies who leverage that technology bid more, bid faster, quite honestly, bid more accurate because geometry’s tough on roofing. It is for anybody. And if we automate it for you and do all the math, there’s absolutely no reason to not leverage that technology in there. And those sales reps or estimators who are out in the field doing that, they’re still there. They’re just bidding faster. 

(07:26)
What we’re seeing with the companies, and we’ve done some really cool case studies as well. And we’re seeing the repurposing of those people, actually, not repurposing the people, having them focus on the revenue-generating, high-important tasks, not the redundant, low-important tasks that don’t have a return on there. And we had one company we did a case study on their average revenue per salesman out of the five they had over the course of adopting a CRM and Eagleview on their technology stack. And this was five years ago. They increased, I think, $78,000 in revenue per sales rep. 

Adam (08:05):
Oh, wow. 

Rob (08:05):
Without increasing headcount, the company grew by like 70% in revenue. 

Adam (08:10):
And that’s because they were able to do more estimates faster? 

Rob (08:13):
Yes. 

Adam (08:13):
More or less. 

Rob (08:14):
Okay. And I mean, their closing rate went up because people got their bids faster. 

Adam (08:18):
Quicker turnaround. 

Rob (08:19):
Instead of a week, it was down to two days, and now it’s down to hours or minutes in some cases. 

Adam (08:24):
Right. 

Ryaan (08:24):
Quicker scheduling, all that. 

Rob (08:26):
Right. 

Ryaan (08:26):
Yeah. 

Adam (08:27):
How has tech improved the operations for Boston Handyman? 

Ryaan (08:31):
It’s changed the game for us. I mean, from day one, we hooked up with Jobber and have been able to grow with them as they innovate. And it’s helped us streamline our operations, our systems, and the customers love it. When we get those five-star reviews through Google, and it pops up in Jobber, and we look at them, it’s the same thing over and over. They got back to us with an estimate within an hour, quick scheduling, no cash or check involved, and we’re able to follow up with a review request as soon as we close that job out. 

Adam (09:01):
You touched on it. Just collecting payment with technology is so important because there’s a lot of people listening who still take checks. God forbid they take cash. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but that is not how the modern-day buyer or consumer thinks about paying for something. They want to pay for it just like they pay for Netflix, online and fast. I think I’m running out of checks at home. I think I have three left, and then I’m not going to order anymore. So things have changed. And so I think just collecting payment with Jobber Payments is so important and just so simple and makes so much sense, just so much sense. 

Ryaan (09:38):
Yeah. I used to spend time driving around to mailboxes and picking up checks, waiting for them in the mail, and they somehow never came or waiting for a customer to get home to make a payment. Now we’re able to get that payment in seconds. As soon as we close out that project, we can invoice. And I think there’s a fear behind that. I talk to a lot of people in the home service industry, and they’re afraid of that 2.9% and all that other stuff. But if you’re marking up your projects properly, you shouldn’t have to worry about that. 

Adam (10:09):
Yeah. 

Rob (10:10):
I agree. Especially with financing. It’s not really our lane, but obviously with the integrations that we have, there’s a lot of finance partners out there. And even as a consumer, the easiest you can make it to deliver the money is better. And obviously you should, you shouldn’t eat that cost. You should bake that into your service because it’s what you’re providing and it’s a win all the way around. 

Adam (10:34):
And even on top of that, my company uses Wisetack, which is integration with Jobber for financing. And not a lot of our clients do it, but some do. And I assume that the ones who use Wisetack to finance the big purchase, they wouldn’t have done it at all with us. So it made or break the sale. It can also automate the things in your business that slow down the production time. There are things that slow down the production time that humans have to do between the hours of nine and five each day, but there’s things that we can automate that compress that timeline a little bit more. 

Rob (11:09):
Completely. I mean, we kind of formulated this concept called project compression on the Eagleview side. And you start as early as you can with the data you need to do the job, one of which is Eagleview data, the measurements for a job. You can’t really bid a job unless you’ve got the measurements there, but start as early as you can and leverage the value of that in your own workflow, getting the measurements. So you used to be hand-measuring. Now it’s clicking a button on a computer inside Jobber to get your measurements. Instead of hand-jamming things down, it automatically integrates through Jobber to populate your estimate templates. You can schedule faster. You can run more leads. All of those activities that start a job from a lead all the way to collections, you just squeeze them through automation and technology to not only expand the book of business, but to make your business run faster. 

(11:57)
And again, we’ve seen some really good case studies that we’ve done with contractors. We’ve asked them very tough questions about their own business. A lot of that they didn’t know they needed to know or thought they knew until they started digging into the numbers, until they got a stopwatch out and said, This is how long it takes me to do this, this is how long it takes me to do that.  And what we found is you take a job cycle from maybe three or four weeks from lead to collections, and you turn that into three weeks or two and a half weeks or two weeks. And what that does, again, is your cash flow goes up, you free up those resources to do other things, and that whole project compression life cycle is alive, and it’s really only capable with technology. 

Ryaan (12:43):
Yeah, I agree. I think for someone that hasn’t been able to implement technology or they don’t know about integrations or automations, it’s like, where do you begin with that? Where do you even start? One of the things that’s been very successful for us is using upwork.com. You can go on there and hire virtual assistants or freelancers or specialists in whatever you’re looking to get done. We’ve been successful and we’ve had relationships now going for five, six, seven years with developers and other people that we’ve been able to find that helped us implement the technology, but also taught us about it as well. 

Adam (13:17):
Guys, this is a great conversation. I want to pause for a minute to talk about Jobber and why we love Jobber so much. How does Jobber, how has it supercharged your business and your team? 

Rob (13:26):
From Eagleview’s perspective, they’ve got one of the most robust integrations that we have out there from handling the reports, to importing the data, to building those estimates, integrating with the distributors to get your material estimates or your material orders right out the door super quickly. So much of the manual tedious work. One, it makes it faster. Two, it makes it higher quality. No redundancy in data entry, no errors in data entry. You know if it gets imported on the front, it’s right. It goes all the way to the end of your workflow. 

Ryaan (13:56):
Yeah. Our team loves the ability to just look at their app, and they’re armed with all the information they need to go out and execute that job properly. They love the review requests. We incentivize our team for reviews and so they just love the ability to have everything there right in a button. And one of the greatest new features is we get a lot of requests for additional work when we show up or maybe a change order. So now they can just open up their app, talk to the phone and create a quote right on the spot. 

Adam (14:27):
Yeah, totally. It’s great. Back when I used to use Mailchimp to send emails, I never really felt compelled to share that with my team, log in, show me how to use it. But with the Jobber Campaigns, my team sends email blasts now through that so easily. And I freaking love that. And it supercharged them, supercharged them. If you’re not using Jobber to supercharge your business and your team, then you’re missing out. Go to jobber.com/podcastdeal and supercharge your business today. 

(14:55)
Do you guys have any specifics, like concrete examples, how your business compressed the amount of time in between steps for a customer experience or just how tech has elevated your employees to the next level? Do you guys have any hard examples of that just to give our listeners like fill in the black and white with color? 

Ryaan (15:13):
Yeah. One of the most time-consuming tasks we have is putting together estimates. That used to set me back a day or two. I’d be in the office trying to get those done, get them out, approve them, figure out material cost, all that other stuff. A couple years ago, we found a developer on upwork.com who helped us create our own ChatGPT assistant that does our estimating for us. Now we’re able to delegate that out, and we’re streamlining that estimate process and getting those estimates done within minutes. 

Adam (15:43):
Tell me even more. Give me more details about that. 

Ryaan (15:45):
Sure. Yeah. So we got a subscription to OpenAI. We went in the backend and made our own GPT, custom GPT, uploaded all the information from our company, our hourly rate, markup, disposal, any trash, any finished materials that the customer might have to supply, we typically don’t supply those. And now what we do is drag and drop the PDF estimate request along with the photos, and the AI tool does the rest and creates that estimate within minutes. 

Adam (16:15):
So the customer goes to a website and says, I want you to fix my faucet. Here’s a photo. You literally just copy and paste whatever they said and a photo into the ChatGPT model that you created, and it uses AI to fill in the rest and tells you how long it’s going to take. It’s amazing. 

Ryaan (16:31):
It is amazing. It even reviews the photos that we put in there as well and attach. So what used to take maybe 15, 20 minutes, a half hour to do is getting done in minutes now. So we’re able to get those estimates out even faster. 

Adam (16:46):
Yeah. And your competitors are taking days, and you’re taking hours. 

Ryaan (16:49):
Correct. Yeah. Typically, most people are going to search around for two or three estimates for a project or look for a couple different contractors, which I always suggest to them anyway. So while they’re searching for other contractors or other handyman companies to get back to them, we’ve already sent over an estimate down to the penny, ready to schedule and get that job done. 

Adam (17:06):
And you’ve already sent over an automated reminder. 

Ryaan (17:08):
Yes, exactly. 

Adam (17:11):
How much did all that cost? 

Ryaan (17:13):
That particular GPT assistant we set up was free. However, we have another GPT assistant that we set up for a marketing program, and we worked with a developer, and it cost about $3,500, and it’s for realtors. They’re able to take their home inspection reports and drop them right in their PDF and get an estimate based on their zip code within seconds. 

Rob (17:36):
That’s pretty sweet. 

Ryaan (17:37):
Yeah, it’s been great. 

Adam (17:39):
Rob, what about you? 

Rob (17:40):
Yeah, I would mirror what Ryaan was saying. Estimates are really a big component of what we’ve done in terms of discreet compression. We’ve eliminated the site visit because we’re an aerial imagery company. We fly every day. When you type in an address into eagleview.com or into Jobber to get it, we don’t launch an airplane to go take pictures. 

Adam (18:00):
Well, this is huge. This is amazing because your salespeople aren’t driving all over place anymore. It’s huge. 

Rob (18:06):
And they’re not putting ladders up. They’re not walking a roof. They’re not taking ladders down. I would imagine your workers’ comp is being reduced as kind of an ancillary benefit to it because you don’t have your sales team who you’re paying either 1099s or W-2s, but I mean, you’re paying workers’ comp for your entire organization, and it minimizes that. It’s one of the most dangerous things you can do is climb on your roof, but it’s no site visit. So rather than rolling a truck and driving across town and doing all those things, it can cost hundreds of dollars to the company to actually do that, either in commission time for the sales rep or actual, if they’re W-2s and you’re paying them to go out there and do the estimating. But we speed that up. You click a button, two or three hours later, you’ve got the full measurement set for the structure, whether it’s roof, siding, windows, garage doors, whatever we measure. And it automates with the Jobber platform and spits out your estimate in seconds. I mean, you click a button, wait for the report to come back, and then it already has your estimate built. And especially with the automation, I haven’t seen anybody use AI like you’re doing now. I mean, I’m super interested in AI, but it’s going in a whole different direction now. 

Ryaan (19:17):
Yeah. Well, it’s nice hearing Eagleview. I’ve heard a lot about Eagleview over the years. I’ve never used it myself, but I think we might actually be getting a subscription ourselves now since it’s hooked up with Jobber as well, because we stopped pulling a ladder off the truck years ago, but we would fly the drone up. But we have a problem in Boston. If you’re too close to the airport, you can’t fly those drones unless you have an FAA license. 

Rob (19:43):
Right. And you still have to drive the job site, drive a drone. 

Ryaan (19:45):
Yes. 

Rob (19:46):
Exactly. You can do it from the peace and quiet of your office in the middle of the night if you want to. 

Adam (19:49):
The thing that I’m hearing you guys say indirectly is that it makes training your people a lot simpler because you don’t have to train them to go take measurements and do geometry. That’s amazing. And for someone who’s been training people for years and years and years on all this stuff technically, being able to do that and using Eagleview is like a total game-changer. 

Ryaan (20:11):
Yeah. I mean, we have to look at the whole calendar year, not just today or this week. If you’re looking at a 365-day calendar every year and you’re trying to work on the business instead of in the business, you’re looking for time. I’m always looking to get my time back so I can excel the business or innovate a little bit more or work with my team. And so this is where you save that time is with the technology. 

Rob (20:35):
We see it across the construction space as well. Contractors are hiring salespeople, not roofers. 

Adam (20:41):
Exactly. 

Rob (20:42):
And they’re getting away… No offense to roofers, they are not probably the best salespeople out there, but their salespeople are solid nowadays, and it’s a different skillset. And you accelerate, one, you accelerate the knowledge and you reduce the time to train those folks, but you can standardize your process. I mean, from a quality control perspective, from a finance or just installation, you have much greater management controls leveraging technology. 

Ryaan (21:10):
Yeah. And I’d say it makes the team happier, right? I mean, it’s less burden on the team having to drive around to six different towns or cities and do all that work. They’re happier, the customers are happier, and that whole experience is just better for everybody. 

Rob (21:25):
Right. 

Adam (21:25):
Yeah. And talking about quoting, I think the next… This is the way of the future. I think this is totally going this way. I got this from Cory Byron, and I’ve seen it with my own eyes, is virtual assessments on Zoom. So I think instead of driving around to all these people, no matter what industry you’re in, and just doing it virtually, using technology, as we’re talking about, to talk to the client on the phone, FaceTime, Zoom, whatever, and say, Hey, show me your house, show me your HVAC, show me your plumbing, show me your lawn, show me whatever you have, your whatever. And they can just walk around the house and show, and you just reduced all the drive time. If you don’t want to feel comfortable giving them an exact price, you can give them a very good ballpark. And if someone’s like, Oh, that’s way too expensive, then you just save yourself a trip, and you can do that way more often throughout. You can do that 15 times a day versus driving all five or six people getting stuck in traffic. And so there’s so many ways to use technology to improve the quoting process. I think the quoting process in general and home service is a little behind the curve. 

Ryaan (22:23):
I agree. Now the customer doesn’t need to take a day off of work or look at, 

Adam (22:27):
Yes. 

Ryaan (22:28):
It’s just a quick, easy, simple process to get an estimate. And I think there’s a lot of fear behind that. I see a lot of our subcontractors are afraid to go look at projects, I mean, afraid to quote a project without going there. And essentially, if you have all the information you need in those photos or a video or you’re able to do one of those Zoom videos with a customer, you just saved yourself hours of time that you can put back into the business. And that’s a mantra for us. 

Rob (22:57):
We saw a lot of the uptake on platforms and Eagleview during COVID. When the economy shut down, when face-to-face shut down, there was no alternative to getting out there and seeing customers. So a lot of the contractors that we deal with really either adopted or improved their process just because they had to. And we saw contractors grow because of it, because the other contractors weren’t adapting to the new environment. And for us, it’s a game-changer. Eagleview doesn’t even have a corporate office anymore. I mean, we shut it down. We have one office in Rochester, New York where we do all the hardware, build cameras, and do all the photogrammetry and hard drives, but that’s it. It’s just kind of a shop. It’s got some office space there, but we went completely remote as a company. I’m a big fan of working remotely. And I can take a bid from wherever I happen to be for any home service that I have. So I mean, I’ve completely adopted that way of life now, and the contractors that are getting more successful are doing the same. 

Adam (23:57):
Guys, this is great. I really think we’ve given our listeners a lot to chew on how can we use tech to supercharge our employees in our own time. I’ve got three takeaways I think our listeners can do right now to start changing their business. Number one is use technology to collect payment on your invoice. No more checks, no more cash. Get paid now and don’t let any of those invoices fall through cracks. Use Wisetack for financing, use Jobber Payments, whatever it takes to collect payment on your invoices now with tech. Number two is, I think this is the way of the future, quoting estimates virtually. FaceTime, Zoom, whatever it is, in your PJs, at your office, no more driving around, give them a ballpark, price on what you think it’s going to be. Most people say, That sounds great. When can you start? Some people will say, Oh, that’s too much. I can’t believe it. And you saved yourself a trip. So virtual assessments. And number three, use a site like Upwork to find a freelancer who can help you build a tool that you’ve envisioned or you’ve heard about. You can even ask AI, What kind of tools can I build on your platform? It’ll tell you what you can do. There’s all kinds of resources out there, and you should use all of them. Guys, that was fantastic. Thanks so much for being here. Rob, how do people find out more about you? 

Rob (25:09):
Find me on LinkedIn, Rob Soper, S-O-P-E-R, Eagleview. I’m there, and I’d love to hear from anybody in the audience about what they heard here today. And like you said, if you need some advice or you need some contacts in your markets, I know thousands of roofing contractors. I’ve been in this industry for decades, so I’ve got a big book of business out there. Happy to help. 

Adam (25:31):
Bingo, thanks for being here. I appreciate it. 

Ryaan (25:33):
Yeah. If you have questions after watching or listening to today’s podcast, you can always reach out to me on the Jobber home service forum or Instagram @besthandymaninc. Or if you have bigger business questions, you can always find me on LinkedIn. 

Adam (25:48):
Awesome. Ryaan, it’s always a pleasure. Thanks for being here. Appreciate it. On the next episode, we’re breaking down how to craft offers your customers can’t say no to without slashing your prices. We’ll get into what really makes an offer irresistible, how to present value that stands out, and how to boost profits while giving customers exactly what they want. Follow or subscribe today so you don’t miss out. And thank you for listening. I hope that you heard something today that will help you supercharge your team with tech. I’m your host, Adam Sylvester. You can interact with me at adamsylvester.com. Your team and your clients and your family deserve your very best, so go give it to them.