April 10, 2024 • 34 mins
Ever wondered what it takes to transform a small family painting business into a thriving entrepreneurial enterprise? Grab your earbuds and tune into our latest Profitable Painter Podcast episode with Dmitriy Ivanchuk, the mastermind behind Hey Pros. From tales of elevating his father's business revenue to launching his own companies, Dmitriy's journey is a masterclass in overcoming industry challenges with innovation and smarts. His insights are not just inspiring; they're packed with actionable strategies for anyone looking to brush up their business acumen in the competitive world of painting.
Navigating project management pitfalls can be as tricky as painting the corners of a vaulted ceiling, but Dmitriy's got you covered. Get the lowdown on how his creation, HeyPros, is changing the game by connecting skilled subcontractors with the perfect projects, all while ironing out those communication creases that lead to budget blowouts and scheduling snafus. And if you're curious about how technology like estimating tools can integrate to streamline your workflow from start to finish, this episode has got the scoop on making your business operations as smooth as a fresh coat of paint.
As we wrap up, Dmitriy doesn't just leave you with a fresh perspective on the painting industry; he extends an invite to join the conversation at HeyPros.com or the 'Grow Your Painting Business' Facebook group. This is more than just a chat about painting—it's an opportunity to connect, grow, and paint a brighter future for your business with the personal touch that Dmitriy brings to the table. So, get ready to color your world with the tips and tricks from a seasoned pro that will help your business shine.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the profitable painter podcast.
The mission of this podcast issimple To help you navigate the
financial and tax aspects ofstarting, running and scaling a
professional painting businessFrom the brushes and ladders to
the spreadsheets and balancesheets.
We've got you covered.
But before we dive in, a quickword of caution While we strive
to provide accurate andup-to-date financial and tax
(00:20):
information, nothing you hear onthis podcast should be
considered as financial advicespecifically for you or your
business.
We're here to share generalknowledge and experiences, not
to replace the tailored adviceyou get from a professional
financial advisor or taxconsultant.
We strongly recommend youseeking individualized advice
before making any significantfinancial decisions.
(00:41):
This is Daniel, the founder ofBookkeeping for Painters, and
today I'm here with DimitriIvanchuk, Super excited.
Dimitri Ivanchuk founded heyPros in 2021, a software built
to help painting companiesmanage their subcontractors from
compliance, dispatching workorders and billing.
He also founded HomeZcom, whichis a residential flooring and
(01:03):
painting company, in 2022 andscaled it to over $3 million in
annual revenue in 2023.
Welcome to the podcast, Dimitri.
How's it?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
going Doing well.
Thanks for having me, daniel,absolutely.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Super excited to have you.
I'd like to dig into yourhistory.
Before we do that, though,could you give us a description
of what you do?
How do you describe what you dofor folks?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, Currently I'm the CEO and founder of hey Pros,
which is a subcontractormanagement software.
We primarily work with paintingcompanies and a little bit with
flooring companies, helpingthem manage their subcontractor
databases and help themefficiently dispatch work orders
.
We'll get into that more later.
(01:54):
That's primarily what I do.
I founded a couple of othercompanies, HomeZcom being one of
them.
Since scaling it, we've passedit on, but still actively part
of it and still helping it grow.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Nice, awesome.
From my understanding, youactually had a background even
further back.
You worked with your dad in hispainting business.
Can you tell me about that abit?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Yeah, of course, my first painting job was at the
age of 16, working summers atthe painting company my dad used
to work for.
He's been a W2 employee,painting employee for his whole
entire life.
I worked at the company that heworked at for a few summers.
Then, at the age of 18, Ithought, hey, I'd really love to
(02:45):
help my dad out and give him abetter paycheck.
At the age of 18, I founded myfirst painting company and went
out and started looking for jobsand hired him on as the solo
painter.
Then we got a couple morepainters and really helped him
pretty much quadruple his incomewithin the first year or two.
It was kind of where I got mystart.
(03:05):
That was about nine years ago,but that's something that got me
started in this painting spaceand led me to understanding
subcontractor management andthen founding a software for it
and then also starting aresidential floor and a painting
company to kind of prove thatwe know what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
That's amazing.
You wanted to help your dad out.
When you turned 18, you startedyour own painting business,
hired him and brought him on andthen tripled his take home pay.
That's awesome.
That's amazing just by it.
If you're doing that now as a20, 30 year old or whatever, but
(03:46):
to do it when you're 18, that'spretty impressive.
Where did you get that idea andhow did that come about?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, I've always been into digital marketing.
When I was 16, I was taking alot of marketing classes in high
school and learning aboutGoogle ads and Facebook ads and
stuff like that.
But when I turned 18, my dad wasreally miserable, working as a
W2 painter, making like $16, $18an hour, something like that,
(04:19):
and he really wanted to be hisown kind of business owner.
But since we're immigrants andhe immigrated from Ukraine I was
born there too he didn't reallyknow the language and didn't
know how to go and sell jobs.
So he kept pushing me sayinghey, when you become older,
you're going to kind of help meout, and so I always thought of
that as like my mission.
(04:40):
So when I turned 18, I went,opened up a contractor's license
in the state of Oregon thatsame evening, launched a website
because I knew how to buildwebsites, launched Google ad and
within 24 hours got our firstlead, went out and estimated the
job didn't know what I wasdoing at all, sold the job and
(05:00):
we split the profit two ways andI made like 700 bucks in two
days and he made 700 bucks intwo days and it was the most
money we've ever made.
So we kind of went rock androll from there.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
That's awesome.
That's the American dream rightthere.
That's awesome.
That's good stuff.
Okay, so you started that withyour dad and then what made you
do the hey Pros?
What made you start that andhelping folks with managing
subcontractors yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
So the dream was always based on the experience
that I saw with my dad andseeing kind of how
subcontracting worked.
A lot of subcontractors arestuck in a almost like a rat
race where they're working withone company, and that's
something that these newcompliance, contractor,
(05:53):
subcontractor compliance laws inmany states are trying to
battle, preventing asubcontractor from working with
just one company.
But that's kind of what happensis, even if you're a
subcontractor, you're kind ofstuck working with one company.
You don't have very manyoptions, you don't have very
many abilities to be able totake work from anybody else
because you are your ownbusiness owner, but you don't
(06:15):
have very many avenues ofgetting work.
And the reason is because ittakes a lot of networking, it
takes a lot of seeking out totry to find jobs, and most
subcontractors or contractorsfor that matter, don't know how
to go talk to a client, so theywould prefer to get their jobs
from a GC or from a paintingcompany or from a flooring
company, whatever trade they do.
(06:35):
And so when looking at theexample of my dad, I thought,
well, why wouldn't there be kindof a way to?
And this was when I was in highschool, it was the early days
of Uber.
So that's what I was hearing alot of, and so I was thinking
well, why couldn't there havebeen a way for contractors to be
able to get work from manydifferent companies?
(06:55):
A lot of companies sellpainting jobs or flooring jobs
or any other trade.
Why can't they be able to havetheir own little mini empires or
mini networks of subcontractorsthat they could give out work
to?
And why can't we handle thedifficult part of it, which was
the compliance, the negotiationand the payment of it right,
like, why couldn't we help allowthese immigrant or
(07:18):
non-immigrant subcontractors beable to get jobs fast, easy and
without the need of knowing thelanguage even so?
That's kind of where the ideawas born.
It's a pretty long story of howwe got there, but I launched my
painting company with my dad anddid that for a few years, got
it to a point where it waspretty autopilot and then kind
(07:45):
of got connected with anothercompany that does marketing
things like that.
So they actually stepped on asan investor of Paypros through a
friend of mine who actually wasthe original founder of Paypros
.
He was a flooring installer, hewas a subcontractor, and this
was early days of COVID, rightbefore COVID and right after
(08:08):
COVID, where a lot of our localcompanies in the Oregon area,
oregon and Washington area werecomplaining about labor
shortages.
They were saying there was notenough painters in the area and,
being in the industry, I had alot of friends that were
painters that were sitting athome during early COVID days
saying they didn't have any work, and so it was kind of like,
(08:30):
well, if there's not enough workbut you're saying there's a
labor shortage, but there's abunch of guys sitting around
with no work, what's reallyhappening here?
And that's where the idea cameof hey, let's create a platform
where companies can be able toeasily get work out to all of
their subcontractors in one fellswoop.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
So it's basically like that Uber for
subcontractors.
Yeah, exactly.
Instead of going on, a lot offolks go to Craigless and make a
post or maybe try to hang outat the paint store, put an ad on
the paint at the paint store.
They can go to HeyPros andbasically see subcontractors and
(09:11):
reach out to folks.
There Is that kind of the.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
That was the original intent of it and I'm glad we're
taking this direction.
That was the original intent.
We wanted to be a marketplace.
We wanted to actually be anUber for contractors, but that
turned out to be a very bigmistake on our end.
So that's exactly what we didin early 2020, early 2021, when
(09:34):
we launched the first version ofHeyPros it was we went and
found 100, I think it was 300 or400 subcontractors and we found
a few dozen painting andflooring companies and we
started connecting them throughour platform.
And what we found is it workedway too well, but nobody was
willing to give us a share ofthe profits for all the headache
(09:58):
that we went through.
So we were connecting at one,like we launched in August and
August 2021.
And by December, we were doingI think it was three or 400 jobs
a month.
So in just five months, we weredispatching 300 or 400 jobs a
month where we were connectingthese companies to
subcontractors.
But there was just they weretaking our subcontractors and
(10:22):
keeping them and just not usingthe platform anymore, or they
just didn't want to give us ashare of what we were doing.
But we were ultimately taking alot of the risk.
We were making sure all theseguys were compliant, we were
making sure that they didquality work, we were vetting
them, and then we wouldn'treally be able to take a cut off
of it.
So we kind of stopped doing thatand said, okay, well, what
(10:44):
we've proven is this actuallyworks.
The thing that we built does dowhat we want it to do.
But maybe we shouldn't just begiving out subcontractors.
Maybe we should be helpingthese companies use the tools to
better expand their networks,rather than just mooching off of
the network we've built forthem.
So that's kind of what happenedand that's where Homesy starts.
(11:06):
So we didn't originally come tothat conclusion of we're going
to provide software.
The first conclusion we came towas well, if you guys aren't
willing to pay us for ourservices, then we're just going
to build a much bigger andbetter flooring and painting
company than you guys could everbuild because we have the labor
.
So that's what we started inJanuary of 2022.
(11:26):
That's when we founded Homesy,which was supposed to go and
compete against all of theseflooring and painting companies
in our town that were refusingto basically give us any credit
for the help that we were givingthem.
So we said well, let's see ifwe could do this.
And that's when we foundedHomesy and kind of scaled it
(11:47):
from there.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Okay, that's awesome.
So basically, it's like theequivalent of using Uber one
time but then getting the numberof the driver and then just
using him as your driverdirectly like coordinating,
instead of using Uber again.
Exactly, yeah, that's tough,but then it's hilarious on how
(12:10):
you got back at the folks thatweren't using the app properly.
You just started your ownbusiness, using the same
platform, at least partially, toget some contractors and using
that to scale, because youscaled it very quickly.
You started in 2022 and by theend of 2023, you were at $3
(12:30):
million in revenue.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yep, yeah, we just took a very head-on approach.
We started our own company andjust said, okay, well, we're
going to take our local marketand we're going to see what we
could do in our local market,because we were still.
Our goal was always I mean,building a nationwide flooring
or even painting company is notreally in our goal.
(12:53):
That's way too much work,that's decades worth of building
, that's a lot of infrastructure, that's very difficult to do.
So the goal was never let'sbuild a nationwide painting
company, but we did want toprove that what we had actually
worked and it was able to helpbusinesses scale.
And so that's what we did.
In our local and a PortlandOregon area.
(13:15):
We launched Tomzi.
We went heavy on marketing, wehired estimators, we used the
subcontractor base that wealready built and we essentially
just went full speed ahead andwithin the first six months we
were already doing close to$100,000 a month of work.
And all of this was justbecause of the background
(13:36):
knowledge we had.
I had built a painting companyand some of the other founding
members had worked withsubcontractors.
So we just kind of hunkereddown and did the best that we
could and proved that whatHAPROS was able to do actually
helped businesses scale, and sowe kind of did that for two
years.
We kept building HAPROS, andHAPROS was by no means a perfect
(13:59):
software at that point, and Idon't think it's a perfect
software right now either.
We're still continuouslydeveloping.
But what it allowed us to do isreally go alongside a real
company that was willing tocooperate because it was our
company and give us the feedbackwe needed in the real world to
continue developing tools.
So that's what we did.
We started onboarding five, 10,15, 20 subcontractors, started
(14:22):
doing 60, 70, 80 jobs a month,started selling more and more
and trying to figure out well,what's the best way to dispatch,
what's the best way to schedule, what's the best way to price
these jobs for oursubcontractors?
So everything came from trialand error over the last two
years.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Yeah, that's great because it seems like the best
softwares are always, you know,somebody created it to solve
their problem first, and then soyou guys use it in your own
company to solve your issues.
And then now you're justproviding that software because
it, like you know, a John frompaint scout, tanner from drip
(15:03):
jobs, david from pro, to allthose guys built that software
for basically first for theirbusiness and then and then
another providing it toeverybody else, so that that
that's awesome.
Okay, so dive into, I guess,what, what issues were you?
(15:26):
Did you have that?
That?
Hey, pros, the software thatyou developed.
What is that really solving?
Like you know, because I knowjust from my experience working
with folks like compliance isbig for subcontractors, like
getting making sure you get yourW nine, your insurance, your
(15:47):
subcontractor agreement signed.
Are those the type of issuesthat it's kind of helping solve?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
or yeah, yeah.
So what?
What does paper has reallyhelped solve?
I keep mentioning it helpedhomesy scale, and the reason why
it helped homesy scale isbecause, in my opinion, selling
a painting job is a lot easierthan fulfilling a painting job.
(16:14):
Most issues happen duringfulfillment.
I think builder trend buildertrend did a study a couple of
years ago and one of thestatistics that they quoted was
I believe it was 51% of jobsconstruction jobs go south on
budget or scheduling due tomiscommunication between the
company and their labor.
(16:34):
And it was, it's really true.
Because you can go and sell ajob, I can hire a sales person,
I can teach him how to talk to acustomer and sell a job, but
when it comes to actuallycompleting that job, if you
don't have the right laborworking on on on the certain
schedule and don't have a goodproject manager that can ensure
(16:54):
that everything happens smoothly, everything goes south.
And that's that's where themoney's made.
Right Customer will not pay youif the job is not done
correctly and you're going tohave a ton of issues.
You're going to have changeorders, you're going to have
delays and you're going to endup losing money on that job.
You're not going to make anyprofit if you can't fulfill it
in the way you promised.
And so that's really where hatepro steps in is.
(17:18):
The classic way of doing it inthis industry is you get a job
that's sold and then you give itto a project manager, and the
way that your project managertypically works is very manual,
very manual.
You pick up the phone, you callyour list of 10 painters and
you say, hey, are you availableto take this exterior painting
(17:38):
job that's happening in abouttwo weeks?
It's a Cedar shingles on a 75year old house.
It has X, y and Z and we'rewilling to pay $5,000 for it.
He goes Well, can you send mean email with some pictures, or
can you text me some pictures?
I want to take a look.
That's the kind of what's thetimeline?
How soon does it need to bedone?
(17:58):
I need to take a look at myschedule.
Wait, you said $5,000.
What's the score footage of thehouse?
There's just I mean there'ssoftware out there like drip
jobs and paint scout to do avery detailed estimate for the
homeowner, but the subcontractor, the painter, gets almost none
of those details when they'retrying to make the decision on
(18:20):
doing the job or not.
And so how can you expect acraftsman to take on a job and
then not have questions whenthey didn't get adequate details
communicate to them?
And so there's no easy way foryou as a project manager to get
in front of all 10 of yourpainters and say, hey, who's the
best one for this job?
And we're not just pickingcheapest price, we're picking
(18:42):
who's actually going to do thisjob the best.
And project managers alwaysresort to first come, first
serve.
The first person that picks upthe phone and says I'm willing
to take it is usually the job,the person that the job goes to,
just because of how much timeit takes.
We have some clients of oursthat are doing I don't know 30,
40 jobs a month with one projectmanager.
(19:04):
If I'm a project manager that'sphysically managing these 30
jobs a month and I'm also theone that's calling 510 subs to
see who's available to take it,that's just so much manual work.
When we started HAPROS, Imentioned it was because of a
labor shortage during COVID timeand the reason why there was a
labor shortage was because therewas such an influx of work.
(19:24):
But these project managers werespending four hours on the
phone a day trying to call theirlist of sub thing who's
available.
So it's just an inefficient wayof getting the right
information in front of theright person and matching up
that best contractor to the job.
Because you've got schedules,you've got pricing, you've got
location, you've got skills, andso that's what HAPROS really
(19:45):
solves.
We allow you to post a job to,let's say, you pick five of your
best painters that you thinkwill be a best fit for this job.
You post all the details.
Once you send it out to them,they all get a notification.
They can all take a look at thejob and their leisure.
You don't have to go call them.
They can all place a.
We offer a couple of differentoptions.
(20:06):
We offer them to either place abid on your work order if you
want them to, or you could justgive them an option to say I'm
interested.
And so what you get is you get alist of, let's say, three
painters that say I'm interestedto take this work order for
this date, for these details,for this price, and then you
take your pick.
We allow you to have a reviewsystem so you can be leaving
(20:27):
your subcontractors a reviewafter every completed job.
You can see the gallery oftheir completed work so you can
see who specializes in thatparticular job.
And on top of that, we alsooffer compliance management.
So you're creating compliancerequirements for each and every
subcontractor and you can ensurethat this person is qualified
to do exterior work because yougave them the opportunity to do
(20:47):
exterior work for your business.
And if you don't want them, ifyou want to not allow your
project managers to let the subtake on exterior work, you can
prevent it by not giving themthat working category.
So it's completely customizablein allowing painting businesses
to really pick and choose whothey choose for which job and
how they dispatch work and keepit all organized and easy to
(21:08):
access.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
So when they when you okay, so I closed a job and I'm
looking to schedule it.
Let's say I'm using paint scout, so I have a work order that
paints out generates, do I likeenter the information in hey
pros or is there like justupload it at PDF or something
(21:34):
like that or like how does thatthat process work?
Speaker 2 (21:38):
So you, you upload all of the information from the
paint scout signed job into heypros.
But, funny enough, we'reactually working on a
integration with paint scoutcurrently and ideally in a few
weeks or a month or so youshould be able to just see as
soon as a job is signed in paintscout, you'll see a draft work
(21:58):
order already built out insteadof hey pros with all of the
details from your paint scoutsigned estimate that you want to
pass over.
So all your project manager hasto do is set the work order
price and assign it to or sendit out to 510, 2030 or all of
your subcontractors right thenand there.
So we're working on thatintegration.
But at the moment, yes, youdownload the details from paint
(22:20):
scout, you just upload it andcreate a work order in hey pros
and then hit, hit, publish andyou can publish to one or all or
any number in between of yourpainters.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Okay, that's awesome.
So paint scout integration toto come.
You have approximate,approximate timeline.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
We're working on it.
I work, I hope.
I hope that it's going to be inthe near month or two at the
latest.
I hope, I hope we're done withit in less than two months, but
definitely in the next month orso.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Okay, cool.
So we're recording this in midMarch of 2024.
Just because this might bereleased a little bit later, so
hopefully it'll be out by thetime we release this.
Yeah, okay, no, that's.
That's really awesome, becauseI know a lot of folks use paint
scout and so that's awesome thatit integrates that, that piece
of it.
But otherwise you would, youcould upload or download and
(23:17):
upload it to the system and thennotifies all the subcontractors
that you want to notify.
And is this like an app thatthe subcontractor has on their
phone?
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah, okay, yeah, so we created a desktop app and a
mobile app, but so there's amobile app.
It's it's very user friendly,very easy.
We designed it around the ideaof a 50 year old subcontractor
that's not good with technology,so very user friendly.
And we went a step above andbeyond that and we actually
(23:50):
created an option for you to nothave to let not have to force
your subcontractors to downloadthe app.
We have a text work orderversion where, if your
subcontractors never want todownload the app, they just get
a text method with a magic linkevery single time there's an
actionable item and all theyhave to do is click the link and
they're automatically logged inon the web version and they can
(24:11):
do whatever they need to do.
So it's, it's meant, it'sdesigned around the idea of a 50
plus year old subcontractorthat does not want to use
technology.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Yeah, no, that's good to know, because I know there's
definitely those folks outthere that don't want to
download any kind of app.
So so it works.
They just get a text message,they can just click on it and it
opens up.
So that that's.
Yeah, that's amazing.
Okay, good stuff, all right.
So we got getting getting thejob, or getting folks on the job
(24:40):
, getting a subcontractorallocated to a job, and then I
think you mentioned you know thecompliance piece.
So I'm assuming when they, thesubcontractor, is getting on the
app, there's like an onboardingprocess or something where they
can provide those, those youknow key information pieces for
(25:00):
for the, the painting business,like insurance or sub agreement
or W nine, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Yeah, exactly so.
We wanted to create it as asopen ended as possible.
So each each painting businessdoes compliance a little bit
differently, so we wanted tomake it as customizable as
possible.
So when you're building outyour account, you can create
your own custom requirements forany which way you want.
(25:28):
Meaning you can have a generalrequirements list where you have
it applicable to every singlesubcontractor you onboard, but
you can also have customrequirements that you create
that you can assign to just oneor two or five subcontractors.
So if someone needs aparticular certification,
especially for commercial jobs,you can assign it just a couple
(25:49):
key subcontractors.
And our system doesn't preventyou from onboarding contractors
if they're not compliant.
So what we allow you to do is weallow you to actually invite
them and get them into thesystem and then assign these
compliance documents to them.
So you you in theory, if youwanted to use papers this way
could actually dispatch workorders to uncompliant
subcontractors.
(26:09):
Let them tell you they'reinterested and then not, and
then have that barrier of well,if you want to take this work
order, you need to fill outthese documents for me, right?
So you're not you're notforcing 10, 20 subcontractors to
fill out documents for you ifthey're never going to take a
job from you, so you can reallyonboard them into the system.
Let them say I'm interested intaking this work order, but we
(26:31):
prevent them from being able totake that work order until those
documents are done.
So we kind of move that needlea little bit further down the
road so you don't have to do allof that grunt work in the
beginning if you don't want to.
With with compliance, I meandoing compliance with 20
painters and then having two ofthem actually work for you is a
lot of work.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Yeah, that makes sense.
So basically you don't ask forthat that information until they
say hey, I want to, I want towork for you this job
specifically, and then you getall that information and that
just stores right there and hatepros.
So if workers compot it comesaround, you have all that
information.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yes, everything, everything is saved for
subcontractors.
So the reason why we built itthis way is we saw a lot of
companies using a CRM to managetheir subcontractor compliance.
They would create like a anotherCRM account on Monday, dot com
or salesforce or HubSpot, andhave all their subs in there
with documents attached.
So that's pretty much what weallow you to do is have it's
(27:30):
like a subcontractor CRMspecific for your subs.
Right, so you can leave noteson your subs, you can mark them
compliant, you can mark them oncompliant, you can give them
standardized categories, storedocuments and their assigned
documents.
And on top of all that, we alsohave a reminder feature so you
can literally toggle a littletoggle that will remind your
(27:51):
subcontractors if a particulardocument is expiring.
And then, if it does expire, wehave you, we give you a toggle
that allows you to basically say, hey, this document, like a,
let's say, a COI, a certificateof insurance, is important for
my business, so if this oneexpires this is a non negotiable
for us this will mark them oncompliant in the system and a
project manager will not be ableto give them a work order.
(28:13):
And that's that's what we aresystem allows is basically
automatically marking them oncompliant as soon as that
document expires.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
That's good.
Yeah, I know you get theinsurance in the beginning and
then you're like, okay, well, Icompleted that task, but then by
next year you've forgotten thatthat insurance needs to be re.
So if you're not reminding them, they don't give it to you, and
then you don't have it.
Yeah, so you're back at squareone.
(28:44):
So that is a really awesomefeature.
Okay, so what other?
Is there any other issues thatthis is that HeyPros is solving
with that, working with subs.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yeah, the biggest one is also communication.
So when a work order isdispatched through HeyPros, that
work order lives inside ofHeyPros until it's done.
So we offer communicationinside of the app.
So there's back and forth.
There's a chat thread inside ofthe work order that's dedicated
to that work order between thesub, the project manager and any
(29:22):
other staff that need to beattached to that work order.
So any communication pictures,documents, files, everything can
be communicated in that chatand it's stored on that work
order.
So if a painting company ownerneeds to access a job and see
what was communicated between aPM and a sub on a job two years
ago, he could find that withinseconds on HeyPros, rather than
(29:45):
asking the PM to scroll throughyears of text messages with that
subcontractor and then changeorders are tracked inside of
HeyPros with timestamps and IPaddresses and approval and
rejection of change orders.
So everything is tracked,documents are stored in there.
And another integration thatwe're working on is company cam,
so we want to release that inthe next few months as well.
(30:08):
So all of these documents thatare being communicated back and
forth inside of HeyPros are justautomatically synced to the
project inside of company cam bydefault, so you don't have to
have the subcontractor uploadthem twice as a project manager
upload them twice.
And then, obviously, somethingwe mentioned is billing right.
We handle the billing of thework order.
So when when a subcontractor isdone with the job, they can
(30:30):
mark the work order done insideof HeyPros and that running
total with the change orders andthe original starting prices
being tallied up inside ofHeyPros.
And what we do is we create ainvoice with all of those line
items, change orders andstarting price in there that the
project manager can thenapprove or reject.
And if the work order isapproved and the subcontractor
(30:51):
is marked done, then we generatea PDF invoice that gets sent
over to a bookkeeping softwareor the accounting email that can
easily be then stored and paidout.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Nice.
So taking through, it's allbeen basically all the issues I
could think of in terms ofdealing with your subcontractors
, from the work order tocompliance, billing, work order
changes, and plus you'rebuilding integrations with paint
scout and company cam to makethese things talk to each other.
(31:28):
And yeah, that's awesome.
Is there anything else that yougot coming down the pike?
Speaker 2 (31:40):
I mean, we're always working on stuff, right.
We have.
We really we're not venturing.
I don't think we'll ever not.
I don't think I know for a factwe will never venture away from
subcontractor or labormanagement.
We don't want to become an ARP,right.
We don't want to do with anydeal with anything except for
(32:02):
the labor portion, right.
So we would much ratherintegrate with other softwares
that do things better, but wewant to focus on just labor
management.
So the next things is justfurther organization of the job,
the work order, such as staticimproving customization of
statuses, allowing customizableworkflows for the status of the
work order.
(32:22):
And then another thing that Ireally hope to touch on this
year is getting into employeemanagement and being able to
help with employee labor inaddition to subcontractor labor.
So I hope, I hope we can getinto that this year as well, so
we can be kind of the solutionfor painting companies that use
both right.
So be able to store all yourwork orders for both your
(32:43):
employees and your subs in oneplace.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Yes, that would be.
That would be amazing.
All right, that's next year.
All right, good stuff, cool.
Well, if folks wanted to reachout to hate pros or learn more
about hate pros or yourself,what would you ask them to do?
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
If you want to learn more, goto hate pros dot com and request
a demo with us.
Or if you want to reach out tome directly, I am all I'm all
open to chatting and learningabout people's journeys and
companies and helping out.
So you can reach out to medirectly at Dmitri at hate pros
dot com.
Or or just request a demo onhate pros dot com and ask, ask
(33:30):
one of our fantastic reps to getin touch with me.
Yeah, we're a fairly, fairlysmall company at this point, so
we're all very tight knit.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Amazing.
All right, thank you, dmitri,for your time and for those that
are listening.
Definitely check out.
Grow your Painting Business.
If you go to Facebook, type inand grow your painting business.
Join the group.
Ask questions for Dmitri.
I'll add them into the group.
If you have any questions forhim, and also if you have any
ideas for future episodes, letme know your thoughts and with
(34:03):
that, we will see you next week.
Welcome to the profitable painter podcast.
The mission of this podcast issimple To help you navigate the
financial and tax aspects ofstarting, running and scaling a
professional painting businessFrom the brushes and ladders to
the spreadsheets and balancesheets.
We've got you covered.
But before we dive in, a quickword of caution While we strive
to provide accurate andup-to-date financial and tax
(00:20):
information, nothing you hear onthis podcast should be
considered as financial advicespecifically for you or your
business.
We're here to share generalknowledge and experiences, not
to replace the tailored adviceyou get from a professional
financial advisor or taxconsultant.
We strongly recommend youseeking individualized advice
before making any significantfinancial decisions.
(00:41):
This is Daniel, the founder ofBookkeeping for Painters, and
today I'm here with DimitriIvanchuk, Super excited.
Dimitri Ivanchuk founded heyPros in 2021, a software built
to help painting companiesmanage their subcontractors from
compliance, dispatching workorders and billing.
He also founded HomeZcom, whichis a residential flooring and
(01:03):
painting company, in 2022 andscaled it to over $3 million in
annual revenue in 2023.
Welcome to the podcast, Dimitri.
How's it?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
going Doing well.
Thanks for having me, daniel,absolutely.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Super excited to have you.
I'd like to dig into yourhistory.
Before we do that, though,could you give us a description
of what you do?
How do you describe what you dofor folks?
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, Currently I'm the CEO and founder of hey Pros,
which is a subcontractormanagement software.
We primarily work with paintingcompanies and a little bit with
flooring companies, helpingthem manage their subcontractor
databases and help themefficiently dispatch work orders
.
We'll get into that more later.
(01:54):
That's primarily what I do.
I founded a couple of othercompanies, HomeZcom being one of
them.
Since scaling it, we've passedit on, but still actively part
of it and still helping it grow.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Nice, awesome.
From my understanding, youactually had a background even
further back.
You worked with your dad in hispainting business.
Can you tell me about that abit?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Yeah, of course, my first painting job was at the
age of 16, working summers atthe painting company my dad used
to work for.
He's been a W2 employee,painting employee for his whole
entire life.
I worked at the company that heworked at for a few summers.
Then, at the age of 18, Ithought, hey, I'd really love to
(02:45):
help my dad out and give him abetter paycheck.
At the age of 18, I founded myfirst painting company and went
out and started looking for jobsand hired him on as the solo
painter.
Then we got a couple morepainters and really helped him
pretty much quadruple his incomewithin the first year or two.
It was kind of where I got mystart.
(03:05):
That was about nine years ago,but that's something that got me
started in this painting spaceand led me to understanding
subcontractor management andthen founding a software for it
and then also starting aresidential floor and a painting
company to kind of prove thatwe know what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
That's amazing.
You wanted to help your dad out.
When you turned 18, you startedyour own painting business,
hired him and brought him on andthen tripled his take home pay.
That's awesome.
That's amazing just by it.
If you're doing that now as a20, 30 year old or whatever, but
(03:46):
to do it when you're 18, that'spretty impressive.
Where did you get that idea andhow did that come about?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, I've always been into digital marketing.
When I was 16, I was taking alot of marketing classes in high
school and learning aboutGoogle ads and Facebook ads and
stuff like that.
But when I turned 18, my dad wasreally miserable, working as a
W2 painter, making like $16, $18an hour, something like that,
(04:19):
and he really wanted to be hisown kind of business owner.
But since we're immigrants andhe immigrated from Ukraine I was
born there too he didn't reallyknow the language and didn't
know how to go and sell jobs.
So he kept pushing me sayinghey, when you become older,
you're going to kind of help meout, and so I always thought of
that as like my mission.
(04:40):
So when I turned 18, I went,opened up a contractor's license
in the state of Oregon thatsame evening, launched a website
because I knew how to buildwebsites, launched Google ad and
within 24 hours got our firstlead, went out and estimated the
job didn't know what I wasdoing at all, sold the job and
(05:00):
we split the profit two ways andI made like 700 bucks in two
days and he made 700 bucks intwo days and it was the most
money we've ever made.
So we kind of went rock androll from there.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
That's awesome.
That's the American dream rightthere.
That's awesome.
That's good stuff.
Okay, so you started that withyour dad and then what made you
do the hey Pros?
What made you start that andhelping folks with managing
subcontractors yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
So the dream was always based on the experience
that I saw with my dad andseeing kind of how
subcontracting worked.
A lot of subcontractors arestuck in a almost like a rat
race where they're working withone company, and that's
something that these newcompliance, contractor,
(05:53):
subcontractor compliance laws inmany states are trying to
battle, preventing asubcontractor from working with
just one company.
But that's kind of what happensis, even if you're a
subcontractor, you're kind ofstuck working with one company.
You don't have very manyoptions, you don't have very
many abilities to be able totake work from anybody else
because you are your ownbusiness owner, but you don't
(06:15):
have very many avenues ofgetting work.
And the reason is because ittakes a lot of networking, it
takes a lot of seeking out totry to find jobs, and most
subcontractors or contractorsfor that matter, don't know how
to go talk to a client, so theywould prefer to get their jobs
from a GC or from a paintingcompany or from a flooring
company, whatever trade they do.
(06:35):
And so when looking at theexample of my dad, I thought,
well, why wouldn't there be kindof a way to?
And this was when I was in highschool, it was the early days
of Uber.
So that's what I was hearing alot of, and so I was thinking
well, why couldn't there havebeen a way for contractors to be
able to get work from manydifferent companies?
(06:55):
A lot of companies sellpainting jobs or flooring jobs
or any other trade.
Why can't they be able to havetheir own little mini empires or
mini networks of subcontractorsthat they could give out work
to?
And why can't we handle thedifficult part of it, which was
the compliance, the negotiationand the payment of it right,
like, why couldn't we help allowthese immigrant or
(07:18):
non-immigrant subcontractors beable to get jobs fast, easy and
without the need of knowing thelanguage even so?
That's kind of where the ideawas born.
It's a pretty long story of howwe got there, but I launched my
painting company with my dad anddid that for a few years, got
it to a point where it waspretty autopilot and then kind
(07:45):
of got connected with anothercompany that does marketing
things like that.
So they actually stepped on asan investor of Paypros through a
friend of mine who actually wasthe original founder of Paypros
.
He was a flooring installer, hewas a subcontractor, and this
was early days of COVID, rightbefore COVID and right after
(08:08):
COVID, where a lot of our localcompanies in the Oregon area,
oregon and Washington area werecomplaining about labor
shortages.
They were saying there was notenough painters in the area and,
being in the industry, I had alot of friends that were
painters that were sitting athome during early COVID days
saying they didn't have any work, and so it was kind of like,
(08:30):
well, if there's not enough workbut you're saying there's a
labor shortage, but there's abunch of guys sitting around
with no work, what's reallyhappening here?
And that's where the idea cameof hey, let's create a platform
where companies can be able toeasily get work out to all of
their subcontractors in one fellswoop.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
So it's basically like that Uber for
subcontractors.
Yeah, exactly.
Instead of going on, a lot offolks go to Craigless and make a
post or maybe try to hang outat the paint store, put an ad on
the paint at the paint store.
They can go to HeyPros andbasically see subcontractors and
(09:11):
reach out to folks.
There Is that kind of the.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
That was the original intent of it and I'm glad we're
taking this direction.
That was the original intent.
We wanted to be a marketplace.
We wanted to actually be anUber for contractors, but that
turned out to be a very bigmistake on our end.
So that's exactly what we didin early 2020, early 2021, when
(09:34):
we launched the first version ofHeyPros it was we went and
found 100, I think it was 300 or400 subcontractors and we found
a few dozen painting andflooring companies and we
started connecting them throughour platform.
And what we found is it workedway too well, but nobody was
willing to give us a share ofthe profits for all the headache
(09:58):
that we went through.
So we were connecting at one,like we launched in August and
August 2021.
And by December, we were doingI think it was three or 400 jobs
a month.
So in just five months, we weredispatching 300 or 400 jobs a
month where we were connectingthese companies to
subcontractors.
But there was just they weretaking our subcontractors and
(10:22):
keeping them and just not usingthe platform anymore, or they
just didn't want to give us ashare of what we were doing.
But we were ultimately taking alot of the risk.
We were making sure all theseguys were compliant, we were
making sure that they didquality work, we were vetting
them, and then we wouldn'treally be able to take a cut off
of it.
So we kind of stopped doing thatand said, okay, well, what
(10:44):
we've proven is this actuallyworks.
The thing that we built does dowhat we want it to do.
But maybe we shouldn't just begiving out subcontractors.
Maybe we should be helpingthese companies use the tools to
better expand their networks,rather than just mooching off of
the network we've built forthem.
So that's kind of what happenedand that's where Homesy starts.
(11:06):
So we didn't originally come tothat conclusion of we're going
to provide software.
The first conclusion we came towas well, if you guys aren't
willing to pay us for ourservices, then we're just going
to build a much bigger andbetter flooring and painting
company than you guys could everbuild because we have the labor
.
So that's what we started inJanuary of 2022.
(11:26):
That's when we founded Homesy,which was supposed to go and
compete against all of theseflooring and painting companies
in our town that were refusingto basically give us any credit
for the help that we were givingthem.
So we said well, let's see ifwe could do this.
And that's when we foundedHomesy and kind of scaled it
(11:47):
from there.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Okay, that's awesome.
So basically, it's like theequivalent of using Uber one
time but then getting the numberof the driver and then just
using him as your driverdirectly like coordinating,
instead of using Uber again.
Exactly, yeah, that's tough,but then it's hilarious on how
(12:10):
you got back at the folks thatweren't using the app properly.
You just started your ownbusiness, using the same
platform, at least partially, toget some contractors and using
that to scale, because youscaled it very quickly.
You started in 2022 and by theend of 2023, you were at $3
(12:30):
million in revenue.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yep, yeah, we just took a very head-on approach.
We started our own company andjust said, okay, well, we're
going to take our local marketand we're going to see what we
could do in our local market,because we were still.
Our goal was always I mean,building a nationwide flooring
or even painting company is notreally in our goal.
(12:53):
That's way too much work,that's decades worth of building
, that's a lot of infrastructure, that's very difficult to do.
So the goal was never let'sbuild a nationwide painting
company, but we did want toprove that what we had actually
worked and it was able to helpbusinesses scale.
And so that's what we did.
In our local and a PortlandOregon area.
(13:15):
We launched Tomzi.
We went heavy on marketing, wehired estimators, we used the
subcontractor base that wealready built and we essentially
just went full speed ahead andwithin the first six months we
were already doing close to$100,000 a month of work.
And all of this was justbecause of the background
(13:36):
knowledge we had.
I had built a painting companyand some of the other founding
members had worked withsubcontractors.
So we just kind of hunkereddown and did the best that we
could and proved that whatHAPROS was able to do actually
helped businesses scale, and sowe kind of did that for two
years.
We kept building HAPROS, andHAPROS was by no means a perfect
(13:59):
software at that point, and Idon't think it's a perfect
software right now either.
We're still continuouslydeveloping.
But what it allowed us to do isreally go alongside a real
company that was willing tocooperate because it was our
company and give us the feedbackwe needed in the real world to
continue developing tools.
So that's what we did.
We started onboarding five, 10,15, 20 subcontractors, started
(14:22):
doing 60, 70, 80 jobs a month,started selling more and more
and trying to figure out well,what's the best way to dispatch,
what's the best way to schedule, what's the best way to price
these jobs for oursubcontractors?
So everything came from trialand error over the last two
years.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Yeah, that's great because it seems like the best
softwares are always, you know,somebody created it to solve
their problem first, and then soyou guys use it in your own
company to solve your issues.
And then now you're justproviding that software because
it, like you know, a John frompaint scout, tanner from drip
(15:03):
jobs, david from pro, to allthose guys built that software
for basically first for theirbusiness and then and then
another providing it toeverybody else, so that that
that's awesome.
Okay, so dive into, I guess,what, what issues were you?
(15:26):
Did you have that?
That?
Hey, pros, the software thatyou developed.
What is that really solving?
Like you know, because I knowjust from my experience working
with folks like compliance isbig for subcontractors, like
getting making sure you get yourW nine, your insurance, your
(15:47):
subcontractor agreement signed.
Are those the type of issuesthat it's kind of helping solve?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
or yeah, yeah.
So what?
What does paper has reallyhelped solve?
I keep mentioning it helpedhomesy scale, and the reason why
it helped homesy scale isbecause, in my opinion, selling
a painting job is a lot easierthan fulfilling a painting job.
(16:14):
Most issues happen duringfulfillment.
I think builder trend buildertrend did a study a couple of
years ago and one of thestatistics that they quoted was
I believe it was 51% of jobsconstruction jobs go south on
budget or scheduling due tomiscommunication between the
company and their labor.
(16:34):
And it was, it's really true.
Because you can go and sell ajob, I can hire a sales person,
I can teach him how to talk to acustomer and sell a job, but
when it comes to actuallycompleting that job, if you
don't have the right laborworking on on on the certain
schedule and don't have a goodproject manager that can ensure
(16:54):
that everything happens smoothly, everything goes south.
And that's that's where themoney's made.
Right Customer will not pay youif the job is not done
correctly and you're going tohave a ton of issues.
You're going to have changeorders, you're going to have
delays and you're going to endup losing money on that job.
You're not going to make anyprofit if you can't fulfill it
in the way you promised.
And so that's really where hatepro steps in is.
(17:18):
The classic way of doing it inthis industry is you get a job
that's sold and then you give itto a project manager, and the
way that your project managertypically works is very manual,
very manual.
You pick up the phone, you callyour list of 10 painters and
you say, hey, are you availableto take this exterior painting
(17:38):
job that's happening in abouttwo weeks?
It's a Cedar shingles on a 75year old house.
It has X, y and Z and we'rewilling to pay $5,000 for it.
He goes Well, can you send mean email with some pictures, or
can you text me some pictures?
I want to take a look.
That's the kind of what's thetimeline?
How soon does it need to bedone?
(17:58):
I need to take a look at myschedule.
Wait, you said $5,000.
What's the score footage of thehouse?
There's just I mean there'ssoftware out there like drip
jobs and paint scout to do avery detailed estimate for the
homeowner, but the subcontractor, the painter, gets almost none
of those details when they'retrying to make the decision on
(18:20):
doing the job or not.
And so how can you expect acraftsman to take on a job and
then not have questions whenthey didn't get adequate details
communicate to them?
And so there's no easy way foryou as a project manager to get
in front of all 10 of yourpainters and say, hey, who's the
best one for this job?
And we're not just pickingcheapest price, we're picking
(18:42):
who's actually going to do thisjob the best.
And project managers alwaysresort to first come, first
serve.
The first person that picks upthe phone and says I'm willing
to take it is usually the job,the person that the job goes to,
just because of how much timeit takes.
We have some clients of oursthat are doing I don't know 30,
40 jobs a month with one projectmanager.
(19:04):
If I'm a project manager that'sphysically managing these 30
jobs a month and I'm also theone that's calling 510 subs to
see who's available to take it,that's just so much manual work.
When we started HAPROS, Imentioned it was because of a
labor shortage during COVID timeand the reason why there was a
labor shortage was because therewas such an influx of work.
(19:24):
But these project managers werespending four hours on the
phone a day trying to call theirlist of sub thing who's
available.
So it's just an inefficient wayof getting the right
information in front of theright person and matching up
that best contractor to the job.
Because you've got schedules,you've got pricing, you've got
location, you've got skills, andso that's what HAPROS really
(19:45):
solves.
We allow you to post a job to,let's say, you pick five of your
best painters that you thinkwill be a best fit for this job.
You post all the details.
Once you send it out to them,they all get a notification.
They can all take a look at thejob and their leisure.
You don't have to go call them.
They can all place a.
We offer a couple of differentoptions.
(20:06):
We offer them to either place abid on your work order if you
want them to, or you could justgive them an option to say I'm
interested.
And so what you get is you get alist of, let's say, three
painters that say I'm interestedto take this work order for
this date, for these details,for this price, and then you
take your pick.
We allow you to have a reviewsystem so you can be leaving
(20:27):
your subcontractors a reviewafter every completed job.
You can see the gallery oftheir completed work so you can
see who specializes in thatparticular job.
And on top of that, we alsooffer compliance management.
So you're creating compliancerequirements for each and every
subcontractor and you can ensurethat this person is qualified
to do exterior work because yougave them the opportunity to do
(20:47):
exterior work for your business.
And if you don't want them, ifyou want to not allow your
project managers to let the subtake on exterior work, you can
prevent it by not giving themthat working category.
So it's completely customizablein allowing painting businesses
to really pick and choose whothey choose for which job and
how they dispatch work and keepit all organized and easy to
(21:08):
access.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
So when they when you okay, so I closed a job and I'm
looking to schedule it.
Let's say I'm using paint scout, so I have a work order that
paints out generates, do I likeenter the information in hey
pros or is there like justupload it at PDF or something
(21:34):
like that or like how does thatthat process work?
Speaker 2 (21:38):
So you, you upload all of the information from the
paint scout signed job into heypros.
But, funny enough, we'reactually working on a
integration with paint scoutcurrently and ideally in a few
weeks or a month or so youshould be able to just see as
soon as a job is signed in paintscout, you'll see a draft work
(21:58):
order already built out insteadof hey pros with all of the
details from your paint scoutsigned estimate that you want to
pass over.
So all your project manager hasto do is set the work order
price and assign it to or sendit out to 510, 2030 or all of
your subcontractors right thenand there.
So we're working on thatintegration.
But at the moment, yes, youdownload the details from paint
(22:20):
scout, you just upload it andcreate a work order in hey pros
and then hit, hit, publish andyou can publish to one or all or
any number in between of yourpainters.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Okay, that's awesome.
So paint scout integration toto come.
You have approximate,approximate timeline.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
We're working on it.
I work, I hope.
I hope that it's going to be inthe near month or two at the
latest.
I hope, I hope we're done withit in less than two months, but
definitely in the next month orso.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Okay, cool.
So we're recording this in midMarch of 2024.
Just because this might bereleased a little bit later, so
hopefully it'll be out by thetime we release this.
Yeah, okay, no, that's.
That's really awesome, becauseI know a lot of folks use paint
scout and so that's awesome thatit integrates that, that piece
of it.
But otherwise you would, youcould upload or download and
(23:17):
upload it to the system and thennotifies all the subcontractors
that you want to notify.
And is this like an app thatthe subcontractor has on their
phone?
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah, okay, yeah, so we created a desktop app and a
mobile app, but so there's amobile app.
It's it's very user friendly,very easy.
We designed it around the ideaof a 50 year old subcontractor
that's not good with technology,so very user friendly.
And we went a step above andbeyond that and we actually
(23:50):
created an option for you to nothave to let not have to force
your subcontractors to downloadthe app.
We have a text work orderversion where, if your
subcontractors never want todownload the app, they just get
a text method with a magic linkevery single time there's an
actionable item and all theyhave to do is click the link and
they're automatically logged inon the web version and they can
(24:11):
do whatever they need to do.
So it's, it's meant, it'sdesigned around the idea of a 50
plus year old subcontractorthat does not want to use
technology.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Yeah, no, that's good to know, because I know there's
definitely those folks outthere that don't want to
download any kind of app.
So so it works.
They just get a text message,they can just click on it and it
opens up.
So that that's.
Yeah, that's amazing.
Okay, good stuff, all right.
So we got getting getting thejob, or getting folks on the job
(24:40):
, getting a subcontractorallocated to a job, and then I
think you mentioned you know thecompliance piece.
So I'm assuming when they, thesubcontractor, is getting on the
app, there's like an onboardingprocess or something where they
can provide those, those youknow key information pieces for
(25:00):
for the, the painting business,like insurance or sub agreement
or W nine, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Yeah, exactly so.
We wanted to create it as asopen ended as possible.
So each each painting businessdoes compliance a little bit
differently, so we wanted tomake it as customizable as
possible.
So when you're building outyour account, you can create
your own custom requirements forany which way you want.
(25:28):
Meaning you can have a generalrequirements list where you have
it applicable to every singlesubcontractor you onboard, but
you can also have customrequirements that you create
that you can assign to just oneor two or five subcontractors.
So if someone needs aparticular certification,
especially for commercial jobs,you can assign it just a couple
(25:49):
key subcontractors.
And our system doesn't preventyou from onboarding contractors
if they're not compliant.
So what we allow you to do is weallow you to actually invite
them and get them into thesystem and then assign these
compliance documents to them.
So you you in theory, if youwanted to use papers this way
could actually dispatch workorders to uncompliant
subcontractors.
(26:09):
Let them tell you they'reinterested and then not, and
then have that barrier of well,if you want to take this work
order, you need to fill outthese documents for me, right?
So you're not you're notforcing 10, 20 subcontractors to
fill out documents for you ifthey're never going to take a
job from you, so you can reallyonboard them into the system.
Let them say I'm interested intaking this work order, but we
(26:31):
prevent them from being able totake that work order until those
documents are done.
So we kind of move that needlea little bit further down the
road so you don't have to do allof that grunt work in the
beginning if you don't want to.
With with compliance, I meandoing compliance with 20
painters and then having two ofthem actually work for you is a
lot of work.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Yeah, that makes sense.
So basically you don't ask forthat that information until they
say hey, I want to, I want towork for you this job
specifically, and then you getall that information and that
just stores right there and hatepros.
So if workers compot it comesaround, you have all that
information.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yes, everything, everything is saved for
subcontractors.
So the reason why we built itthis way is we saw a lot of
companies using a CRM to managetheir subcontractor compliance.
They would create like a anotherCRM account on Monday, dot com
or salesforce or HubSpot, andhave all their subs in there
with documents attached.
So that's pretty much what weallow you to do is have it's
(27:30):
like a subcontractor CRMspecific for your subs.
Right, so you can leave noteson your subs, you can mark them
compliant, you can mark them oncompliant, you can give them
standardized categories, storedocuments and their assigned
documents.
And on top of all that, we alsohave a reminder feature so you
can literally toggle a littletoggle that will remind your
(27:51):
subcontractors if a particulardocument is expiring.
And then, if it does expire, wehave you, we give you a toggle
that allows you to basically say, hey, this document, like a,
let's say, a COI, a certificateof insurance, is important for
my business, so if this oneexpires this is a non negotiable
for us this will mark them oncompliant in the system and a
project manager will not be ableto give them a work order.
(28:13):
And that's that's what we aresystem allows is basically
automatically marking them oncompliant as soon as that
document expires.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
That's good.
Yeah, I know you get theinsurance in the beginning and
then you're like, okay, well, Icompleted that task, but then by
next year you've forgotten thatthat insurance needs to be re.
So if you're not reminding them, they don't give it to you, and
then you don't have it.
Yeah, so you're back at squareone.
(28:44):
So that is a really awesomefeature.
Okay, so what other?
Is there any other issues thatthis is that HeyPros is solving
with that, working with subs.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yeah, the biggest one is also communication.
So when a work order isdispatched through HeyPros, that
work order lives inside ofHeyPros until it's done.
So we offer communicationinside of the app.
So there's back and forth.
There's a chat thread inside ofthe work order that's dedicated
to that work order between thesub, the project manager and any
(29:22):
other staff that need to beattached to that work order.
So any communication pictures,documents, files, everything can
be communicated in that chatand it's stored on that work
order.
So if a painting company ownerneeds to access a job and see
what was communicated between aPM and a sub on a job two years
ago, he could find that withinseconds on HeyPros, rather than
(29:45):
asking the PM to scroll throughyears of text messages with that
subcontractor and then changeorders are tracked inside of
HeyPros with timestamps and IPaddresses and approval and
rejection of change orders.
So everything is tracked,documents are stored in there.
And another integration thatwe're working on is company cam,
so we want to release that inthe next few months as well.
(30:08):
So all of these documents thatare being communicated back and
forth inside of HeyPros are justautomatically synced to the
project inside of company cam bydefault, so you don't have to
have the subcontractor uploadthem twice as a project manager
upload them twice.
And then, obviously, somethingwe mentioned is billing right.
We handle the billing of thework order.
So when when a subcontractor isdone with the job, they can
(30:30):
mark the work order done insideof HeyPros and that running
total with the change orders andthe original starting prices
being tallied up inside ofHeyPros.
And what we do is we create ainvoice with all of those line
items, change orders andstarting price in there that the
project manager can thenapprove or reject.
And if the work order isapproved and the subcontractor
(30:51):
is marked done, then we generatea PDF invoice that gets sent
over to a bookkeeping softwareor the accounting email that can
easily be then stored and paidout.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Nice.
So taking through, it's allbeen basically all the issues I
could think of in terms ofdealing with your subcontractors
, from the work order tocompliance, billing, work order
changes, and plus you'rebuilding integrations with paint
scout and company cam to makethese things talk to each other.
(31:28):
And yeah, that's awesome.
Is there anything else that yougot coming down the pike?
Speaker 2 (31:40):
I mean, we're always working on stuff, right.
We have.
We really we're not venturing.
I don't think we'll ever not.
I don't think I know for a factwe will never venture away from
subcontractor or labormanagement.
We don't want to become an ARP,right.
We don't want to do with anydeal with anything except for
(32:02):
the labor portion, right.
So we would much ratherintegrate with other softwares
that do things better, but wewant to focus on just labor
management.
So the next things is justfurther organization of the job,
the work order, such as staticimproving customization of
statuses, allowing customizableworkflows for the status of the
work order.
(32:22):
And then another thing that Ireally hope to touch on this
year is getting into employeemanagement and being able to
help with employee labor inaddition to subcontractor labor.
So I hope, I hope we can getinto that this year as well, so
we can be kind of the solutionfor painting companies that use
both right.
So be able to store all yourwork orders for both your
(32:43):
employees and your subs in oneplace.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Yes, that would be.
That would be amazing.
All right, that's next year.
All right, good stuff, cool.
Well, if folks wanted to reachout to hate pros or learn more
about hate pros or yourself,what would you ask them to do?
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
If you want to learn more, goto hate pros dot com and request
a demo with us.
Or if you want to reach out tome directly, I am all I'm all
open to chatting and learningabout people's journeys and
companies and helping out.
So you can reach out to medirectly at Dmitri at hate pros
dot com.
Or or just request a demo onhate pros dot com and ask, ask
(33:30):
one of our fantastic reps to getin touch with me.
Yeah, we're a fairly, fairlysmall company at this point, so
we're all very tight knit.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Amazing.
All right, thank you, dmitri,for your time and for those that
are listening.
Definitely check out.
Grow your Painting Business.
If you go to Facebook, type inand grow your painting business.
Join the group.
Ask questions for Dmitri.
I'll add them into the group.
If you have any questions forhim, and also if you have any
ideas for future episodes, letme know your thoughts and with
(34:03):
that, we will see you next week.
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