Started Elevation Flooring in 2018 - installed over $45M+ of commercial flooring since
Baltimore, MD
Joined May 2020
- Tweets4.2K
- Following541
- Followers4.8K
- Likes5.8K
I did the carpet in this exact room lol
LIVE: 🇺🇸 Fed Chair Kevin Warsh FOMC Press Conference
xitter.cf/i/broadcasts/1XxyggjoV…
First project from new CRM just hit. Here we go again
I vibecoded my entire CRM from scratch. It has been an insane three months. I’ve probably spent 60 to 80 hours a week working on it.
All the promises of vibe coding are real. The agents, the cost savings, and the 10+ API integrations connecting all our existing software.
One thing though it takes a lot longer than you think.
A huge part of the work is building the skeleton all the way through. I already had a version I created in 2021, so I knew exactly how I wanted the system to work. But connecting everything and dealing with all the different APIs still took a ton of troubleshooting.
After three months, I finished the estimating side and got six people using it every day.
I rolled it out a little too early at first. It just wasn’t ready. There were too many bugs, and some of the features we needed weren’t there yet. After building a little more, it became good enough to actually use.
Then six people started using it every day, reporting bugs, and showing me exactly where it needed to improve. Once real people are using your app, the speed at which it gets better doubles. After a few weeks of continuous troubleshooting, the estimating side is now basically perfect.
The biggest difference I’m noticing now is how quickly I can build new features. I can think of something that would be a real game changer for our company and just add it. I finally have complete control over a live piece of software in a way I never had with the systems we used before.
Today, my entire estimating department loves the new CRM, and the old one already feels obsolete.
All new projects now begin in the new CRM, while project management is still operating in the old one. As the projects we’re estimating start turning into awarded jobs, they’ll flow into project management through the new CRM. Then I’ll go through the same troubleshooting phase again and work out the bugs on that side.
It takes longer than people make it seem, but once the foundation is built and your team is using it every day, the speed at which the software and the entire company can improve is insane.
one of my absolute biggest pet peeves is the smell of peoples lunches lingering in the office all day. Moving the break room to the farthest part of building ASAP
Our goal at Elevation Flooring is to bid 100 to 140 projects every month. Out of roughly 120 bids, we want to win 20-25 projects and generate between $1.2M and $2M in sales.
Even at that volume, moving our closing percentage by just 1% or 2% can mean an extra $50K to $100K in sales every month. That’s why following up is probably more important than simply bidding as much as possible.
One day every week, almost our entire estimating team focuses on following up on their projects. My chief estimator and I follow up that day too.
Almost every time we have one of these follow-up days, it starts a sequence that leads to us winning two or three extra projects within the next week.
Projects will always trickle in naturally. But having a system where you can say, “Okay, let’s go win some jobs,” and put a wave of effort into motion gives you much more control over how your sales function.
Another very important thing is having your Whale projects. you want to have 2-3 wins of these a month. And this is a separate batch of projects you need to keep a fat bag of and you need to constantly keep schedule of when the whales will close. As a subcontractor biz owner this is the biggest leverage you have in sales and you need to use it
I vibecoded my entire CRM from scratch. It has been an insane three months. I’ve probably spent 60 to 80 hours a week working on it.
All the promises of vibe coding are real. The agents, the cost savings, and the 10+ API integrations connecting all our existing software.
One thing though it takes a lot longer than you think.
A huge part of the work is building the skeleton all the way through. I already had a version I created in 2021, so I knew exactly how I wanted the system to work. But connecting everything and dealing with all the different APIs still took a ton of troubleshooting.
After three months, I finished the estimating side and got six people using it every day.
I rolled it out a little too early at first. It just wasn’t ready. There were too many bugs, and some of the features we needed weren’t there yet. After building a little more, it became good enough to actually use.
Then six people started using it every day, reporting bugs, and showing me exactly where it needed to improve. Once real people are using your app, the speed at which it gets better doubles. After a few weeks of continuous troubleshooting, the estimating side is now basically perfect.
The biggest difference I’m noticing now is how quickly I can build new features. I can think of something that would be a real game changer for our company and just add it. I finally have complete control over a live piece of software in a way I never had with the systems we used before.
Today, my entire estimating department loves the new CRM, and the old one already feels obsolete.
All new projects now begin in the new CRM, while project management is still operating in the old one. As the projects we’re estimating start turning into awarded jobs, they’ll flow into project management through the new CRM. Then I’ll go through the same troubleshooting phase again and work out the bugs on that side.
It takes longer than people make it seem, but once the foundation is built and your team is using it every day, the speed at which the software and the entire company can improve is insane.
Becoming an AI ingrained business or Agentic business or whatever this thing will be called is a pivot small business and huge corporations with both have to do.
For a dinosaur old huge business this will be extremely difficult. Tech companies can pull it off but think about the 90% of businesses in construction or manufacturing that wont. There is tremendous Alpha in truly understanding a trade + understanding how to become an Agentic business.
The Icing on the Cake is the PE companies that are the core of your competition in these industries. If debt remains expensive and they cant make the pivot faster than you , you can out work them and win the business war.
Even though AI is the most hyped thing right now, its still under hyped. The things small business is capable of now is truly limitless. People talked to stupid chat bots and thought the revolution would take a few years.
The truth is its going to take 10-15 years for this AI trend to ingrain into business and either you get with the program now or you will never ever be able to catch up.
Anything with a margin is going to be attacked and market share is going to be even more focused into a few names in basically every industry. If what Netflix did to Blockbuster was bad it is going to be 10x worse
When it comes to the decision on whether to bid a project or not the number 1 question first is “ is the General Contractor I’m bidding a winner or loser”.
If it’s a GC who’s bidding a type of project outside of their wheelhouse either they will be a good client of mine I will help them win it or I will deny the bid. I will also only bid with people who have repetitive work and I will build relationships with these estimators after years and years of bidding.
The trick to commercial bidding is to have sooo many invites your biggest decision is to allocate resources to a bid or not. If you do you need to 100% all in and not only bid the project but also anticipate anything that come up. You become a resource to help GCs win work not just show up on bid day and together a price.
Real big money work comes from methodical bidding and budgeting and locking the job down early.
Commercial construction is just starting to heat up , and especially if interest rates get some relief in the next year or 2 and new construction ramps back up it is going to be a very good wave of work
If you’re in residential , especially finishes it might be a good time to try to do some light commercial work
Claude code lets you use Fable until July 7?
What’s the play here ?
Forcing me to work this weekend?
Today I took over the second half of my block to add 5k Sqft to our warehouse .
When I say capacity- the physical infrastructure is so crucial to growth .
The path from 20M to 50 has been set !!!
Q2 finished, single best quarter ever, margins stronger than ever
There’s so much I learn about the commercial construction business every day.
The single most important part of winning more projects is increasing the capacity of the work you can easily handle. This means capping out at 90% capability but increasing the total capability.
This comes from field manpower, funding and office strength.
Once capability goes up, revenue starts trending that way. Has nothing to do with marketing blah blah.
Do people realize if you connect into apps with MCP and you have active agents you can just take the agents into other softwares with you ??!! This just blew my mind . Pretty sure I’m not saying it right but I understand the potential
Making a new CRM is not a new thing, I will never forget the power the programmers had over the speed of the project and how I had to pay for every feature and it was death trying to get them to understand my processes.
People say vibe coding is dumbing but the trade off between relying on some random to understand your biz and moving at light speed that’s takes alittle more troubleshooting is 100% worth it .
