JobTread? Other Software? It Doesn't Matter Unless You IMPLEMENT IT

Kyle Hunt (00:15.955)
Okay. All right, everybody. And by everybody, I mean, the hundreds and hundreds, maybe sometimes thousand, not thousands, of remodelers out there listening to the Remodelers on the Rise show. I greatly appreciate you being a loyal and avid listener. The podcast is a way that I have kind of designed to just help.

our industry out. Marketing is also building no like and trust. Hopefully through this you get to know me, we build no like and trust. But the main focus of the Remodellers on the Rise podcast is to deliver value, is to truly help you become, not just, it's not just a name, but literally kind of help you be a remodeller on the rise. Not somebody on the decline, not somebody that's overwhelmed by their business, not somebody that is feeling stagnant in their business, but somebody that is continually.

striving and improving and being encouraged and motivated to be a remodeler on the rise. So I just thought I'd preface that. My guest today is Tom Houghton. I pronounced that correctly, yeah? Good. When I was pulling something up earlier, I actually typed in Tom Holland, because that name was on my head. When I say the name Tom Holland, what comes to your mind?

Tom (01:21.503)
You did, you crushed it.

Tom (01:32.287)
The Amazing Spider-Man, right?

Kyle Hunt (01:34.831)
He is a Spider-Man, yes. I think he's dating, do you know who he's dating?

Tom (01:39.498)
Uh, pop quiz. I'm failing. Zen, uh, is he still with?

Kyle Hunt (01:42.967)
Zendaya, you nailed it, Zendaya. Now, why do I know that? Because I have a teenage daughter. If you go into my Amazon orders, you will scroll back about a year and you will see a Tom Holland blanket.

Tom (01:57.511)
Oh, okay.

Kyle Hunt (01:58.563)
The girl has a Tom Holland blanket, which is basically a bunch of pictures of his face that she has in her room. So I must have had Tom Holland, but this is not the amazing Spider-Man, but the amazing Tom Houghton, who is the owner and lead consultant for Round Peg Solutions. Tom, can you tell us about the name of your business is Round Peg Solutions, but more importantly, can you give us a little bit of who you are?

little bit of your history and where you're coming from and a little bit of what you're doing today. And then we're gonna dig into everybody's favorite topic, du jour, implementing software into your remodeling business and fun stuff like that. Tell us about your business and a little bit about you.

Tom (02:41.894)
Yeah, so thank you for the introduction. High bar set to meet up with Spider-Man. I mean, depending on how you thought the series went, maybe it's maybe it's a low bar. We'll see what happens. But a little background of me, ironically, I actually did start in Hollywood. I used to work out in Hollywood. So very familiar with that world out there. There's a lot going on out in Hollywood on set. And that also applies to construction, of course, there's a lot of balls to juggle.

Kyle Hunt (02:44.236)
Yes.

Kyle Hunt (02:51.631)
Who knows?

Tom (03:11.196)
as you're managing.

Kyle Hunt (03:12.015)
Time out, what were you, time out. Nobody wants to hear anything else until you tell us what you were doing in Hollywood.

Tom (03:17.15)
Um, yeah, so I used to actually work out in Hollywood for imagine entertainment, which is Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's company. So, uh, I worked out there for five years. Um, uh, my wife in California and, uh, we had a kid, um, and we're trying to raise a family out in Hollywood, which is very challenging, uh, cause of traffic and just life and, you know, cost of living. So, uh, we decided to change things up.

Kyle Hunt (03:40.138)
Mm-hmm.

Tom (03:43.314)
So we moved to the middle of the country. I'm now based in Omaha, Nebraska, and that's where I'm at today. And since then, our family has grown. And we, yeah, so we've got three now. Yep. And we're not quite in that Tom Holland phase yet. Our oldest is 12. And I appreciate you being a parent that's like open to that. I would have shot down the Tom Holland blanket. I've been like, nope, not happening.

Kyle Hunt (03:54.268)
To how many?

Kyle Hunt (04:10.951)
Why? Because you don't need your teenage daughter looking at a handsome face all day or what?

Tom (04:16.85)
Well, you know, I'm just saying, right. But that's not that's not that's, that's weird. But specifically, I learned this out in Hollywood. So we, because I, you know, I've met a lot of really big name people. But at the end of the day, they're just people just like us. And I think that's hard. It's, it's hard seeing it so close and seeing the pressure that they feel and all of that. You know, I don't envy that at all for them.

And I think I wish more of the world would actually just see those people for who they are, is they're just another person. They just happen to be up on big billboards. So yeah, I, you know, we sometimes put these people up on these big pedestals and, you know, they're, they're humans just like us. They, you know, need to eat, they need to live, they need to interact with people. And sometimes

Kyle Hunt (04:51.427)
very interesting. I'm glad I kind of poked into that. That's a good lesson to learn.

Kyle Hunt (05:07.832)
Do you think Spider-Man puts his pants on one pant leg at a time? Just like normal people?

Tom (05:12.138)
Well, yeah, probably. I would assume so. I don't know. He's probably got some tricks up his sleeve though. Maybe he's doing it a different way. Yeah.

Kyle Hunt (05:18.651)
Okay. All right. Let's stay focused. So Round Pegs Solutions. So you came out of Hollywood, you threw a little pin in the map and said, let's go to Omaha. And tell us a little bit about your unique experience, history with kind of software for the remodeling industry. Catch us up to where you are now.

Tom (05:35.434)
Yeah, yeah. So I've always been an early adopter of technology, love technology and have had years of experience with it. At one point in time, I was the most certified Apple professional in the state of Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota and Kansas. Some of you might say that's being population-based, but I like to beg to differ on that. Yeah, so have years and years of using technology. Round Peg Solutions was

Kyle Hunt (05:57.551)
Still, number one.

Tom (06:04.002)
birthed out of what I kept seeing in the industry, which was small businesses struggling with making technology work for them instead of being the other way around. It was a continual headache. The excuses are always there because it's like, this isn't my job. This is supposed to work. I was sold this iPhone and now it's not working and now what do I do with it? The goal of creating a business was to help make the most out of technology for small businesses.

Kyle Hunt (06:10.979)
Hmm.

Tom (06:33.438)
Another way I typically say it is we take complex problems, like technology is complex and make it simple for people. Um, the only thing I hated in this industry, specifically in the industry of technology was this kind of like, um, elitism mentality, which was like, well, if you don't understand how to use every aspect of this device, then you know, you're ridiculous. You're dumb, right? You know? Um, so that was the other side that I always wanted to bring with it was the approachability of it of like.

Kyle Hunt (06:39.672)
Hmm.

Tom (07:02.662)
ask a question. Like at one point I wasn't an expert. I had to learn. And so it's my job to help pass along that to others. So.

Kyle Hunt (07:10.519)
Got it. And how did you end up focusing in on the remodeling industry and their technology needs?

Tom (07:17.642)
Great question. Yeah, so that came out of, so I did work.

Kyle Hunt (07:20.319)
Well, I mean, it was a great question. I'm a quasi almost professional podcasting host. That's where I come up with those good questions.

Tom (07:28.414)
Yes. I know everybody else was thinking it too, so I just wanted to say it. That came out of, I started working for a company called Builder Trend, which probably many of you've heard of. I worked with them for a number of years. What I fell in love with was this industry of solopreneurs, smaller businesses, bigger businesses that are day in, day out trying to make...

Kyle Hunt (07:33.463)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Tom (07:54.226)
people's lives better by creating a better space for their home. Everybody needs a place to call home. I just loved meeting these people in this industry that, unfortunately, is viewed from, I would say, a good chunk of the world as an industry of slackers and people doing shoddy work. That was not my experience at all. Of meeting all these other business owners, I'm like,

Kyle Hunt (08:16.612)
Hmm.

Tom (08:21.45)
man, these guys got it together, right? They just need a little help with this a little bit help with that, right. And so that's where I fell in love with this industry to say, like, what they're doing really matters of creating that beautiful space of home where we make our memories. And then also, they're just such good people, and they just need just a little bit more help. And so that's where I like really my passion lies in this is, I exist to make sure that they're more profitable, they can use things more efficiently.

Kyle Hunt (08:33.805)
Hmm.

Kyle Hunt (08:39.22)
Yeah, very well said.

Tom (08:49.638)
And that's what I get. I get excited every day when I get to wake up and talk to clients because you know, I know that we're helping drive change, positive change in the business.

Kyle Hunt (08:58.355)
Hmm. And especially over the last, you know, number of years, I don't know if COVID helped it or if it was just that, that time, but the, um, the number of remodelers who are realizing, eh, instead of me just putting off software and integrating technology and trying to, I have got to lean into this. The way I always like to think of it as like, all right, let's fast forward five years from now. You're telling me you want to be doing business the exact same way. You don't want to be taking advantage of some of these technologies. And most people would say, no, we definitely want to by then.

Well, you got to start now. We got to start down this path of really embracing it. And I mean, it's just amazing what I've seen over the last three years. There's been more implementation and focus and work on software in the last three years than in the previous 10 years kind of combined. So it's a very exciting aspect of, of a time period for our industry. So if we were to kind of segue into kind of thinking through for a

Tom (09:44.139)
Yeah.

Kyle Hunt (09:57.751)
really implement more technology for those reasons you're mentioning, to increase efficiency and productivity, to make things work smoother. And when I'm thinking software, I'm thinking, you know, of maybe kind of the builder trends and the co-constructs and the job treads of the world, something that is going to help us, um, with our estimating and our project management and scheduling and daily logs, um, that side of things. Can we think of, or maybe narrow it down? What are, what are three or four keys that, that your experience has shown?

in really getting that software implemented to a level where it really makes a difference.

Tom (10:32.606)
Yeah, great question. Again, I just love complimenting you though, you're very easy to compliment. So what I've typically seen in the industry, and this is true, like if you've gone to the International Builder show, so this will be my ninth show. And what I've seen over the last effectively decade is the space in the show grow from like, you know, just a handful of booths to now being like taking up almost an entire hall of technology.

Kyle Hunt (10:36.876)
Yes, I appreciate that.

Kyle Hunt (10:59.072)
Hmm, that's a good perspective on it.

Tom (11:01.81)
What we've seen though, and I hear this every time is somebody will go to the show, they'll see these like flashing lights. That'll be so exciting. And you know, what they're sold is like, this is the solution, right? This is the easy button for you to, to solve all your construction related problems and they're like, great, I'm signing up and then they log in and then it's like, why isn't solving my problems? Right. And, and truthfully, this is the hard part between, you know, and this is

Kyle Hunt (11:25.284)
Hehehehe

Tom (11:31.742)
as business owners we struggle with, right? Between marketing and then the actual like production, how do we switch those gears, right? How do we get out of the sales and into the action of it? And so this is something I talk about frequently is that it's process, your existing process plus tech. A lot of people, when they go to the show, they're just looking for that technology easy button, but they're realizing that you have existing processes in place to have other things that are needing to integrate with.

Kyle Hunt (11:37.775)
Yeah.

Tom (12:00.818)
what you're bringing on board. And so this is where implementation is crucial, right? So you go out and you purchase a software, like you said, like your project management software, like a Builder Trend or a Job Tread, can't buy Co-Construct anymore. But I know there's a lot of people out there still using it and they're wondering like, what do we do, right? We could talk about that more in a little bit, but specifically you're trying to get that up and running in your business. These companies have great support teams that can help you with that, but-

Kyle Hunt (12:02.156)
Hmm.

Tom (12:28.446)
There has to be a champion inside the business to help take this and run it all the way to the finish line. It's something because it doesn't inherently come easy for most people, right? Technology is not something, especially if you look at the generation of construction, right? You're definitely leaning towards the upper side of age there where they didn't grow up with technology, but yet technology was developed by the younger generations. That's a whole other conversation.

Kyle Hunt (12:35.649)
Hmm

Kyle Hunt (12:53.294)
Mm-hmm.

Tom (12:58.302)
Anyway, the moral of the story is we need to have somebody inside the company that's championing this. And if you take a look around your staff, there's definitely going to be somebody who probably comes to mind. And unfortunately, it might be you that has to do this. And then you're like, well, how am I going to do this by myself? Because you've got a million other hats to wear. And that's where our team can come in to help that process, make sure that you actually are successful in implementing it. I mean, again,

Kyle Hunt (13:22.915)
Got it.

Tom (13:24.238)
I saw this firsthand, which was, you know, Sony people would get this stuff, they would use it 30, 40, 50%. And that's kind of it. And you're not getting the return on the money you're spending. So that's, that's why we wanted to come up with a solution for that.

Kyle Hunt (13:33.494)
Mm.

So several things I heard as far as, you know, what are some of these keys to really implement it? You kind of started with, you know, even though Staples marketed that easy button really well, you know, this is not an easy button thing. It is not going to implement itself. And so even realizing, I think it's one of those, I remember we were on spring break years ago and we were naive and didn't do much research and said, well, that looks like a cool hike, let's go there. And

Tom (14:04.113)
Right.

Kyle Hunt (14:05.183)
We didn't bring any water. We didn't prepare ourselves. And then about three people in our group kind of turned back after a little while. And then there's some stubborn people, two of my kids plus two of the other kids plus my wife and another adult who was like, we're going, we're already on this, let's go. But it reminds us like, count a little bit of the cost and the work that's gonna happen here. Do not think this is an easy button. Has it continued to get better and easier to implement? Yes. But.

You have to approach this of realizing this is a marathon, not a sprint. You know, that was the first thing you said, have those eyes nice and open. The second thing you mentioned was, you know, another key is kind of, you've got your existing process plus tech. If you think that you are going to solve your scheduling issues that you have now because you're not doing any scheduling.

you're not organized in that, you're not paying attention to the sequence of things that are happening, let alone be able to overlay the various projects you have going. If you don't have any kind of pre-construction process, if you don't have any kind of end of day daily logs or ways of managing your files, adding technology to a disorganized, non-process driven business is usually not going to happen very smoothly. So realizing that we've got an existing, we've got to take our existing processes.

and marry them to tech. Now tech can usually streamline that. So that was another key. And then the third thing you mentioned was you better have a champion on this. If you have people that are kind of half interested in it and what's gonna happen is we're gonna get excited, we're gonna make some progress and then we're gonna run into a wall. And that's getting into your 30%. We're gonna get 30% of the way there and we'll see some benefits of that but not near the benefits. So those are some of the keys. You're gonna maybe add another key.

Those are all good. But I think the thing maybe I want to follow up on is, you know, that 30, 50%, that 30, 50%, a lot of people can get there. How do we drive from that 50% towards full completion? What are some other keys to doing that?

Tom (16:07.37)
Yeah, it's a good question. So I think I wanna speak specifically to process because that's usually what gets held up, right? So to your point, yeah, people can establish these lower level of percentage of adoption of these programs, but what really drives the needle forward is understanding how to take your existing processes and marry those to...

to the technology. And I'm not talking about like the marriages you see on sitcoms that are like, oh, I don't know about that, right? I'm talking about happy marriage, right? That's what we really all want. Is this like really harmonious union of your processes and this tech as well. And sometimes just full transparency, sometimes I see people choose the wrong product to try to, it's like, it's just like your friends, you're like, oh, would you be dating that person? Like, I don't know, right?

Kyle Hunt (16:57.08)
Hmm.

Tom (17:00.374)
Right? So sometimes it's a painful conversation to have to say like, this isn't a good fit. And that's usually just because sometimes a program works in a specific way that doesn't work with your hype of business. So there's definitely some stuff there that if you want to impact, we can, but to move past that 50%, what you really have to do is take a look at what are you not, what are you not leveraging in the program? Why are you not leveraging it? And usually that's that

Kyle Hunt (17:13.429)
Mm-hmm.

Tom (17:29.814)
the end result of that is some process is not connecting with it, right? And so it's like, well, we're gonna continue just using this other program or this other process because it's not working in this main thing.

Kyle Hunt (17:34.895)
Hmm.

Kyle Hunt (17:41.975)
Hmm, that's good. So like when you look at when we're kind of stuck or we're trying to figure out how to take on more adoption of the software, what are you not leveraging identifying maybe, okay, there's that one thing we're not doing, you know, we're not doing our time tracking through there, you know, and then why are you not doing that? Well, this kind of ties in with payroll and we've always kind of done it like this. And, you know, yes, there's benefits if we do it through there, our job costing is going to be stronger, this and this happens.

then we've got to deal with that. And sometimes we just get stuck instead of fully analyzing that and then figuring out, you know, are we all in on it and are we going to push forward? That all in thing happens a lot for me of kind of just like we're halfway there versus really committing to fully implementing.

Tom (18:28.278)
Right. Yeah. And that also, you know, one of the things I talk about with a lot of my clients is this is a leadership topic, right? We, we need the leadership of the company bought in on doing this. And part of that is it's hard to communicate that. And that's definitely like the ROI component, right, which is if you're spending x dollars a month, if you're spending hundreds or thousands of dollars a month on software, you better be getting hundreds or thousands of dollars back out of that software. And usually that

Kyle Hunt (18:36.356)
Hmm.

Kyle Hunt (18:55.853)
Yeah.

Tom (18:57.646)
there's a huge disconnect there because they're thinking like, well, we're using like 50% of it. And, you know, this is kind of working, but it's not working. And, you know, it seems too big of a hurdle to jump over to get additional percentage usage out of a program. So that's definitely something to consider is like, what do you have left to do on it? Like make that to do list? Why? And then, you know, figure out how we're going to get there by solving this process.

Kyle Hunt (19:10.2)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hunt (19:23.327)
Now, another thing on the implementation, and this was, I don't know if you'd agree with this or if this has become a little easier, but a lot of times when people have taken on, one of the big softwares and they're trying to implement it, advice that I've given and advice that I've heard and just the way people have approached it is like, let's take one piece of this at a time. Let's really figure out the scheduling, then let's figure out our daily logs.

Clients don't need to log in yet. Let's not worry about that yet. All right, let's figure out our estimating. Do you like that approach or is that just kind of, you know, a little bit of walk before you run? What's your take on that?

Tom (19:58.986)
Yeah, it's definitely a good approach. What you all, I mean, you've kind of hit the nail on the head a couple of times here, which is this software ultimately will become the backbone of your company. Especially the softwares that we're using will become the backbone of your company. And to that point, like, there's gonna be a lot that ties in, right? There's a lot of structure that has to happen there, but it's gonna become the core of what you do day in and day out.

Kyle Hunt (20:09.155)
Hmm, say that, say that again.

Kyle Hunt (20:15.193)
Mmm.

Tom (20:27.166)
So you need to make sure that there's a couple things. That one, you're actually wanting that, right? I've definitely had some people who are like, oh, well, we really like how we used to do things or we really like how this works, right? Well, these softwares were intended to roll all of this stuff into one place. And you know, it's just like you're feeding the cookie to the mouse and the mouse is gonna continue to want more cookies. But at the end of the day, you know, man, this metaphor is falling apart with mouse. But Disney's...

Kyle Hunt (20:56.195)
Hehehe

Tom (20:57.263)
Look at how far Disney's come. I don't know. There's like a mouse connection there, but you get the idea, right?

Kyle Hunt (21:01.835)
I'm still, I'm still reeling from going on spring break earlier this year to Disney. I'm not really interested in talking about it.

Tom (21:09.75)
Sorry to bring up PTSD.

Kyle Hunt (21:11.027)
I'm not gonna talk about the $87 mac and cheese that my daughter bought.

Tom (21:13.982)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And took three bytes of it and was like, I don't know, this is, you know, it happens. It's an experience.

Kyle Hunt (21:21.687)
I mean, the story of that is it was like one of those fixed price menus where it's like for $85, like there's steak on there. There's this and that, this and that. She bought mac and cheese. Of course she's like, well, can I get mac? So they still charge for that full amount. And then she didn't even like the dessert. It was just, I'm like, did you at least get like pop? No, I just got water. I wasn't really in the mood for pop. I'm still reeling from that. I should get over that, shouldn't I?

Tom (21:44.222)
It's okay. It's a good reminder for next time. Right. These are.

Kyle Hunt (21:46.765)
But as you were saying, you were talking about Disney. What were you talking about Disney for?

Tom (21:49.674)
Well, I just pulled Disney in because they're a big corporation, right? So I was going with the mouse cookie thing. I don't know. It was a bad metaphor. So forget that. Let's go back to the backbone, right? This is the core of your company. And this technology is going to be crucial to you growing as our spine obviously grows with us, right? So, and if we don't strengthen it as long, we're not paying attention to it. Right? You know, posture starts to sink all those things. So. Exactly. As you're looking. Yeah. So.

Kyle Hunt (22:05.901)
Yeah.

Kyle Hunt (22:13.751)
Everybody put their shoulders back. Stop slouching.

Tom (22:20.098)
So, I think something that gets lost sometimes in this, just being honest, is that people see like, oh, well, I'm going to go get this and it's going to be simple and it's not going to be simple because it does touch every aspect of your business. It touches sales, it touches estimating, it touches production, it touches all this, right? So there is a reason it is so complicated is because if it's done well, which it can be done well.

Kyle Hunt (22:34.081)
Yeah.

Tom (22:45.286)
then it is like you're creating a whole factory for your company to run off of. And I hear this sometimes too, where it's like, Tom, I'm not necessarily looking to scale. I just want to be more efficient. Great. This can definitely help with that. Right. And then you're also gaining additional margin because you're running things more efficiently through it. So.

Kyle Hunt (22:50.989)
Yeah.

Kyle Hunt (23:06.655)
Yeah, love it. I mean, I made you say, you know, backbone and core of your company twice there because I think that's a good kind of thought to have in your head. You don't sell cabinets, folks. You don't sell installed tile. You don't sell, you know, a pretty faucet. You know, what you do is you sell your process. You sell giving your clients a wonderful remodeling experience from start to finish.

and you sell your process and what you do. Yes, there is a result of that, but you sell your process. And when you get clear with your process and when you have software that makes your process smoother, smarter, less clunky, when everything is working in harmony in various parts of your business, and you're able to...

manage your money and your job costing more smoothly. And clients are able to log in and see all of their files and improve approved selections and pay through the website. Folks, in 2028, more and more of your clients are going to want to have all of that in one spot. They want to log in, they want to pan line. I have to write you a check. What do you want me to mail this in the United States Postal Service? You know, no, ACH, da da. So, you know, you sell a process. That's what you do at your core.

And to have software that supports that and makes that smoother and more elegant and streamlined is very, very important. A couple other areas I want to go, and I'm talking to Tom Houghton, not Holland, we already covered that, with Round Peg Solutions. I bet you if you go to roundpegsolutions.com, it'll probably go to his website, folks. And you'll learn all about him there. But a couple other kind of followups. I want to ask you about...

Tom (24:47.758)
That's right.

Kyle Hunt (24:55.531)
You said, you know, done well, software done well. I want you to give me, give us a little vision. Tell me about one of your clients that have really done this well. Describe what that looks like and kind of the process to get there. And then I have a couple other questions, but let's use that, let's do that one next. What comes to mind for this?

Tom (25:11.658)
Yeah. I'm going to give a great shout out to Doudonis Construction. Yeah. Doudonis Construction based in New Jersey. One of my clients that has really made technology a heart of their process. And the heart that so the ends, the end goal there was to get a great customer experience. So just like you were saying, Kyle, like homeowners want to be able to

Kyle Hunt (25:17.72)
to Thomas.

Tom (25:40.266)
log into a place to communicate with you electronically. Cause that's how they do that with everyone else in the world. So definitely be able to do that with you. And so Doudonnis has done a great job of making sure that technology is a core fundamental component of how they run their business. I mean, these guys are performing at a really high level in terms of project management. I mean, we're like down to the wire and seeing stuff in real time. That's the other benefit of using these systems is that you're not.

Kyle Hunt (25:46.914)
Yeah.

Tom (26:09.182)
relying on paper or Excel spreadsheets to try to calculate something and kind of like lagging behind a couple days or weeks or months or waiting till the end of the project to figure out whether or not you're profitable. You're seeing that in real time, you know, right out the gate. So they've done a really nice job of making sure. And again, part of that is leadership, right. So their leadership team has said, we're going to make a commitment to this to technology, to say like, how can we make this work for our business? So

Kyle Hunt (26:23.768)
Hmm.

Kyle Hunt (26:37.887)
And if, and if you don't, and it was, it's interesting. The I was, I wrote down leadership exclamation mark. Cause when you, when you brought that up of one of my other questions for you is how do we get the team to buy in, to use it consistently and, and that the answer to that is leadership. How bad do you want it? Are you committed to this? Is it acceptable for your team members to not clock in and clock out using technology to not do their daily logs, to not upload a quick photo or a video, to not go there to see the schedule, to not go.

to the software that you're providing that is nicely organized to see the detailed scope of work, to go there to get phone numbers that they need, et cetera. You know, is it just such a clear expectation like you just described with Doudonnes, is that how I pronounce it? Right, of like, of course, that's core to who we are and the business that we run and operate. And I think the other thing that comes to mind for that is when somebody isn't following the process, you know, I think a lot of times we just go to like, do it.

Tom (27:19.298)
Yep, do down a sale.

Kyle Hunt (27:36.439)
Here's what you need to do. You're not doing this, you need to do this. And we need to kind of pull back and talk a little bit more about the why. Convince them of the why. This may feel more clunky. This may feel like it's an extra step. This may feel like you would be able to do your job faster if you didn't do this. And some of those may be true, but we have to be wise enough to see the ripple effect of it where when we don't log this, when we don't upload this.

There's other things that aren't happening amongst the team and amongst the client. So I kind of answered the question I was gonna ask of, it's a leadership, but if you were to add a nugget to, how do we get the team to buy in to using this consistently? What else would you say?

Tom (28:16.63)
Yeah, definitely echo, you know, it is the expectation has to be set from the top. There's a great saying and I'm totally going to butcher it. But the concept is that you can have systems and processes, but whatever the, the kind of like biggest, um, grace that you'll give, meaning if somebody doesn't follow those and that's like, okay, that totally breaks all the chain of command about that, right? So that was not the correct way of saying it. There's a better saying I'll define it. No notes or something like that.

Kyle Hunt (28:38.786)
Yeah.

Kyle Hunt (28:44.004)
I follow what you're saying. Yeah.

Tom (28:46.166)
But yeah, so there's that, that thing I was gonna say about that, besides leadership, oh, to your point about time, because that's usually the, the buying is like, oh, well, I used to like write my time sheet down, you know, by hand or something. And that's why I don't wanna clock in digitally. And it's like, okay, sure. I'm gonna go ahead and we'll walk down this path, why not? That what I, the saying that I always say to my teams that I'm working with is the two seconds that it takes you to do something with technology.

will save two minutes for somebody else down the road, which will add up to two hours and then two days and then two months, right? And you start to see it grow, right? All because you took two seconds to do something. And usually if you're engaging with good technology, it doesn't take a lot to add something, to add the value. And as long as everyone's contributing together, this starts to work like clock.

Kyle Hunt (29:23.543)
Yeah.

Kyle Hunt (29:39.555)
Hmm, I like that. I like that. Yeah, but I don't want to have this on my phone because it might slow my phone down and it's going to use my bandwidth. I haven't heard that one as much recently. I think we might be getting past that one, but I'm sure it's still out there. Yes. OK. Excellent. So what I'm what I'm kind of gathering from our from our talk or my takeaways is a little bit around, you know, how committed are you to this? You're hearing about it. You're you're hearing some of your peers talk about it.

Tom (29:47.818)
Yeah.

Tom (29:53.43)
Definitely.

Kyle Hunt (30:09.167)
You've maybe experienced a little bit of the productivity or efficiencies of using various software in your company. The question is, are you really going to go all in or are you going to keep kind of dabbling? Because the all in is where we really, once we push through those obstacles and we push through some of the work, and it is work to get it there, there are some really solid rewards at the end of that. So that's one of my main takeaways.

What I would like you to do to kind of wrap us up today is to share kind of, hey, if you heard nothing else or if you wanted to emphasize something or it might be something that you haven't shared yet, what would you kind of leave the folks with? And then I want you to share how they can reach out to you. Maybe talk about your little tech stack analysis a little bit.

Tom (30:57.314)
Sure, yeah, definitely. So thanks, Kyle, again. So one big takeaway, right, is this isn't easy, but it's doable, right? And so there is a process that works of getting you to that next step. And I don't think anyone in this industry started working in this industry because it was easy. But you like doing this, and there's a way to have technology come alongside you to help you make it easier, honestly.

It's just that you've got to give it some time in order to actually get that return out of it. Just like everything, right? The more you put in, the more you're going to get out of it.

Kyle Hunt (31:34.717)
Yeah. Nah, I wanna be fit and in shape and not feel lethargic and whatnot. And I want to take my fingers and go, snap, and it just be, no, we are wise enough to not know that. I think similarly on this endeavor of aspect of business.

Tom (31:44.191)
Yeah, right.

Tom (31:51.762)
Yeah, very true. So one of the things that we can help you with is we can help make that, you know, be your guide, be your personal trainer to use that metaphor, right? Of saying, hey, this is what you can do in order to kind of like shortcut that process a little bit, definitely still takes time, right? But we can definitely alleviate some of the headaches and some of the pain. You know, a lot of what I say too is, you know, a lot of this is the same. So don't go, don't feel like you have to go reinvent the wheel here, right?

But the hardest part that I've heard from my clients is how do we take our existing processes and do that marriage with tech? And I will be that, really commit to this metaphor here, I will be that minister that helps meet you at the altar and join you together.

Kyle Hunt (32:35.688)
I didn't know if you were going matchmaker or minister. I didn't know which direction you were going. Yeah. Okay.

Tom (32:38.006)
Yeah, I went all the way there with the wedding metaphor. So, but would love the opportunity to help you if you're struggling with this or just have a conversation. So you can definitely check us out on the website round peg solutions.com. There's forums you can fill out there. That's the best way to get kicked off. And we'll reach out to you to schedule time to chat but a really quick also as you're kind of rounding out the year here and closing out 23 moving into 24. This is a conversation that I'm having with a lot of clients is like we want to be set up for success.

for next year and how do we make sure that we're using technology to the fullest? And so we offer a program, a tech stack analysis where we're gonna discover, and sometimes it is a discovery period of realizing all the technologies that you use in your business that you're paying for and potentially not using to the fullest extent, right? So we're gonna help calculate that ROI and calculate how big is your tech stack. And the goal of that too is just to kind of obviously streamline, minimize and get more efficient in those programs.

Kyle Hunt (33:20.771)
Yeah.

Tom (33:36.246)
So that way you're gonna see a bigger dollar return next year.

Kyle Hunt (33:37.979)
Yeah. And be, yeah, and be more strategic with it. I think, you know, well, where do you take your notes? Well, I use Evernote for that. That's 1099. Well, I use, I use this, we, we kind of like this for the to do. So we don't use job tread for that. You know, we, okay, we use QuickBooks time for this. Just having somebody analyze that, um, and do a little bit of a tech stack analysis could be a great way for, for you guys to get to know Tom a little bit more. And, um, is just when he was telling me about it, I'm like, that's just a smart, good service that.

I think a lot of us need to kind of go through that and analyze it. Is it a tech stack analysis or analysis?

Tom (34:14.129)
We're going to have to pluralize it. So just we offer a text-to-text analysis. There you go.

Kyle Hunt (34:16.823)
Singular. Correct. Yeah, we're not gonna analysis it in multiple ways. We're just going to do an analysis of it. I think everybody's clear. Wonderful. Well, that was fun, my friend. You're gonna get scootin', I'm gonna get scootin'. And for the people listening to this, figure out what was your takeaway? What was your takeaway from this? And here's something. If you email me your takeaway, say, takeaway from Tom, Kyle at remodelersontherise.com.

Tom (34:23.958)
Yeah.

Kyle Hunt (34:46.955)
I feel like the first person that does that's gonna get some Ruh-wallers on the rise swag. So people, if they listen all the way to the end, you never know, could be a Yeti muck, could be a beautiful hat like this. Just give your little takeaway. And first one through, you're the winner. Wow, this was just gonna be like, hey, see you later. Now we've got like a contest. All right, cool. Thank you so much, Tom. Take care.

Tom (34:51.663)
Ooh, that's good.

Tom (35:03.038)
Alright.

Tom (35:08.386)
Yeah, that's good. Thank you, Kyle.