The Secret to Scaling Your Low-Voltage Business

Doug Greenwald shares his journey from skilled technician to successful integration business owner, revealing how he developed Projects360 software to solve the unique project management challenges of low-voltage companies.

• Starting a low-voltage business requires shifting from working IN the business to working ON the business
• Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are critical for growth and should be implemented while companies are still small
• The "last 5%" of projects (documentation, testing, closeout) often prevents final payment and reduces profitability
• Weekly operations meetings that include lead technicians create project ownership and improve communication
• Project management software should be industry-specific to address the unique workflows of low-voltage contracting
• Projects360 offers integrated CRM, proposal generation, project management, scheduling, and inventory tracking
• Small companies aren't "too small" for proper systems—implementing processes early makes scaling easier later
• Change orders and project tracking capabilities help maintain profitability and prevent scope creep
• QuickBooks integration streamlines invoicing and financial management

If you find value in this content, consider clicking the QR code on screen to buy Chuck a cup of coffee or schedule a 15-minute one-on-one call. Join us Wednesday nights at 6pm Eastern Standard Time for live streaming on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn where you can ask your favorite RCDD questions.

Chapters

• 0:00 Episode Introduction
• 2:07 Meet Doug Greenwald
• 5:10 Starting a Low-Voltage Company
• 9:12 Growing Pains and Process Development
• 18:20 The Birth of Projects360 Software
• 22:54 Why Small Shops Need Structure
• 29:05 Lead Tech Roles in Project Efficiency
• 34:14 Top Five Features of Projects360
• 49:11 Scaling Your Business and Next Steps

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey Wiremonkeys, welcome to another episode of let's Talk Cabling. Are you a new low-voltage business owner and you're great at pulling cable, but you suck at the whole project tracking and estimating. I got this show for you.

Speaker 2: 0:14

Welcome to let's Talk. Cabling your gateway to the world of ICT, Get ready to dive deep into knowledge and power.

Speaker 1: 0:42

Welcome to the show where we tackle the tough questions submitted by apprentices, technicians, installers, project foremen, project managers, estimators, it personnel, even customers. We are connecting at the human level so that we can connect the world. If you're watching this show on YouTube, would you mind hitting that subscribe button and the bell button to be notified when new content is being created? If you're listening to us on one of the audio podcast platforms, would you mind leaving us a five-star rating? Those simple little steps helps us take on the algorithm so we can educate, encourage and enrich the lives of people in the ICT industry. Wednesday nights, 6 pm Eastern Standard Time. What are you doing? I do a live stream on TikTok, instagram, facebook, youtube, linkedin. Well, you get to ask your favorite RCDD and you know that's me your favorite RCDD questions on installation, design, certification, credentialing. I even do career path questions, but I can hear you. Now, chuck, I'm driving my truck. It wasn't anything. I don't want to get into an accident. Chill, take a breath. I record them so you can watch them at your convenience and also while this show is free and will always remain free. If you find value in this content, would you mind clicking on that QR code right there you can buy me a cup of coffee. You can even schedule a 15-minute one-on-one call with me after hours, of course.

Speaker 1: 2:07

So a lot of technicians always aspire to owning their own low-voltage business, and it's a great thing to aspire to. Don't get me wrong, there's some that don't. But there's a facet of installers who dream about hanging their own shingle and having their own business until they actually have to start doing the things that having your own business has to do, like working 90 hours a week and maybe not getting a paycheck that week because you got to pay material bills or pay your employees. But there is some benefits to being a business owner. But a lot of low voltage technicians, while they are great at pulling and terminating copper cable, great at pulling and terminating fiber optic cabling, they're great at customer relationships, they're not so good at project management, at tracking and estimating.

Speaker 1: 2:57

Well, the guest I have on today not only is he an integrator who's had his own low-voltage company, he also saw this need. He was struggling just like you, and he came up with a software program that I really think that you're going to really appreciate. I met him at Infocom. I wasn't even going to go to Infocom too. Isn't that kind of ironic. I met him at Infocom and when I found out about his system I was like I got to get you on the show. I so welcome, doug greenwald.

Speaker 3: 3:27

How are you doing my?

Speaker 1: 3:28

friend. Good, how are you doing? I am doing fantastic. You know I should have told you this the other day. You know, you got a. You got a radio for voice. I mean, you got that backwards. You have a voice for radio when you, when you talk.

Speaker 3: 3:39

I don't have the looks, though I have the looks for radio. We're not.

Speaker 1: 3:42

That's what my dad always used to tell me. He got the looks for radio. But no, when I listen to your voice it kind of reminds me a little bit of Casey Kasem a little bit.

Speaker 3: 3:54

Well, thank you.

Speaker 1: 3:57

There's the talent of being a good speaker. So before we get started, why don't you go and give us the 30,000-foot view? Who's Doug? A little bit about your low-voltage company and a tiny little bit about the software, because we're going to dive more into that in the show.

Speaker 3: 4:10

Sure Well, I've been in the industry for 30 years.

Speaker 3: 4:17

I started my integration company back in 2001. We do more residential. We do very high-end residential projects. We go into custom homes starting at $6 million and above. We're a big Crestron house, so we do a lot of Crestron projects.

Speaker 3: 4:32

In 2010, I was looking for a good project management software to run my integration company. I tried some things off the shelf but, as you know, we have some little nuances to our industry, so my developers have always worked for me. I never farmed it out overseas. So my senior developer goes hey, why don't we build something? So we got together with my project managers and my service coordinator and myself and kind of scoped out just the project management of Projects360. Just the project management of Projects360. Built that.

Speaker 3: 5:05

We spent 2013 and part of 2014 doing that, rolled it out to my team in 2014. And then they liked it. So I brought it to Cedia, which is the residential version of Infocom, in 2015 and rolled out just the project management part in February of 16. And since then we've expanded from project management to also be able to track your sales opportunities, generate your proposals, do all your project management, all your time tracking, scheduling, work orders, service work orders, inventory management, all that kind of good stuff. So that's kind of my background. So I've been doing this for a long time. I'm still active in it. I have a GM that runs my day-to-day operations for the integration company. But I started by being out in the field just like everybody else.

Speaker 1: 5:54

Nice, nice. I know I talked to you about this at Infocom. Does Projects360 plan on maybe start going to Bixie events, because that would be another huge audience for you?

Speaker 3: 6:08

We haven't gone to that yet. So we've gone to ISC West, which is a really good event for the security guys. So we're kind of branching to that. So we're growing. I mean, we're still the new guys on the block, but definitely open to going to other events and getting our exposure out there.

Speaker 1: 6:28

Yeah, yeah, the Big C is like the Infocom for the structured cabling industry, okay, for people doing voice and data cabling and stuff like that, and that's what I was asking, because that's who the majority of my audience is. But you know, when you say low voltage, a lot of people don't understand that You're talking about structured cabling, you're talking about fire alarm, you're talking about AV, you're talking about ability automation. That's all considered low voltage.

Speaker 3: 6:56

Correct All that.

Speaker 1: 6:57

Yeah, exactly, a lot of people like the lump low voltage Just say, ah, structured cabling. It's way more than structured cabling, right.

Speaker 3: 7:05

Oh yeah, I mean there's so much to it. I mean our industry in general. I think it's completely underrated for what we do.

Speaker 1: 7:10

I mean we do a lot yeah, until covet hit and then they realized, oh yeah, we need those guys. Now they understand how important those those category 5e, category 6, category 6a cables are. Oh yeah, when they're trying to do stuff. So I want to start off first talking a little bit about your Louis Vuitton company, right so, and your time in the field. How did you start that company?

Speaker 3: 7:31

I was working for another AV company, you know, for many years in their custom integration division they were trying to. It was a retail kind of store that was trying to get a custom department going, retail kind of store that was trying to get a custom department going. And so myself and actually I have a business partner in that we worked together in that same company and we're kind of launching that custom department for custom integration for that company. They just weren't set up to do custom integration. They didn't have the processes in place and the company was already kind of too big to and the owner didn't really want to change with times. So we actually kind of got lucky and one of our clients wanted us just to do their project and so they hired us separately to do their project and it was a very substantial, it was a six-figure project and that's how we got started and it was my business partner and myself and then we just expanded from that. So it did just start out with this two of us.

Speaker 1: 8:35

Oh, many companies do. Many companies start out with one or two people and, you know, one of the companies I worked for is a small little company called Hinkles and McCoy. They are now well, they were when I worked for them the largest privately owned communications company in the United States, with like 50 something offices. But they started off with just two brothers. Two brothers, you know, and that's how everybody starts off. Let's talk about what was the biggest pain point that you saw on the operations side, because that's going to help tie in with the pain points of my audience.

Speaker 3: 9:11

You know, the part of growing that was the hardest, first and foremost for any owner, is letting go. I mean, sometimes you're your own worst enemy and learning how to start working on the business instead of in the business and realizing you have to do that in order to grow. I mean, don't get me wrong, there's some guys that want to stay that when you're 50 some years old, or would you rather be working on your business and expanding your business and have a team doing that for you, and so that's the that's the big obstacle. I think a lot myself and a lot of owners have had.

Speaker 1: 9:58

It's not necessarily an age thing. I mean there is a you know. People say you know, there's a business saying that a lot of people say it's overrated, but it rings true. You know, I don't have the bandwidth for that when you're starting off your own company, yeah, you're doing everything, from everything from sales to estimation to doing the project, the project management and everything all at one time. But there's only a certain amount of hours in a day and sooner or later you do have to kind of it's best to kind of step back and let operations do operations. You focus on growing the business. Hopefully you might even have some salespeople have them focus on.

Speaker 3: 10:38

Well, you even said it kind of in your intro Do you want to work 90 hours a week or do you want to have a work-life balance? And that's part of it too, is having that work-life balance and not working, you know, 24 or 7.

Speaker 2: 10:53

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Speaker 1: 11:56

So what was the exact moment when you said, hmm, there's gotta be a better way to do this.

Speaker 3: 12:02

You know I was fortunate enough that it was pretty early on that I always had the envision of growing this company into something decent, you know, and sustainable, and whether I was involved all the time or my business partner was involved all the time, so it was relatively early on. We brought on our first techs within the first six months of being on our own. There were times again, like you mentioned in your intro, there were times we didn't take paychecks. Reinvesting back into the business was more priority to me and growing that and getting something established. So my first handful of hires honestly were, I think we brought on two or three techs and we brought on an engineer to do engineering and drawing.

Speaker 3: 12:50

I handled all the sales, my business partner did programming and purchasing. So we kind of just started building processes. You know really is what it came down to and departmentalizing. You know the company to a degree, even though we were small. We were still small, but we we had the picture of growing that into something like we are today. I mean my. I have 20 plus employees in that company today.

Speaker 1: 13:20

Yeah, yeah. I had a conversation one time many, many years ago with a supervisor of mine and we were talking about project managers and I've always been of the mindset a project manager should be managing projects. You know, the operation hands it over to them. They do the scheduling, the material logistics, the people logistics and do all the stakeholders stuff like that, because they can be doing anywhere between one and five projects at a time, sometimes even more. But he was of the opinion well, the project manager needs to do all that and they need to be looking for sales. I'm like, wait a minute. The problem is, if you're focused on getting sales, you win the project. Then you're so busy project managing, you kind of back off on the sales portion of it and then when you finish the project there's nothing in the pipeline and you're kind of like in panic mode. Right, you really need to have somebody else outside of project management focused on getting a thing and that's why I agreed 100%.

Speaker 3: 14:21

Huh, I said, I agree 100% on that.

Speaker 1: 14:25

Exactly, and that's why you know I'm always looking for, you know, processes and things to make our job easier. And when I was walking around Infocomm you know I've always been aware of project management software and stuff like that and then when I came across yours and I saw that it was kind of it was really fine-tuned for the low-voltage industry, right? Let me ask you this so you know the whole spark of Project 360, what made you decide? Because it's obviously a lot harder to develop and create your own software than just going with an off-the-shelf kind of software. What was the whole kickoff.

Speaker 3: 15:00

Well, I mean, in all honesty, I tried going off the shelf at first, you know I mean, but, as like I said, as you know, I mean we have little nuances that are unique to this industry, so it just didn't. They didn't check all the boxes and I already had a development company because I already started another business doing that. But we were just doing development other businesses is why my senior developer actually gave me the idea of building it and I'm like, okay, let's do it. But I mean again, it started out just to be for us and then it kind of just exploded from there because my team liked it and we only focus on this industry because, like you said, I mean you got to know who your market is and my market's, this industry and this is my expertise. I mean I've been doing it for a long time, I know how this industry works.

Speaker 1: 15:55

And you know that's one of the things that's always baffled me about the low-voltage industry is because I've worked for I don't know half a dozen low-voltage companies over my 40-plus year career and a lot of them have had, like you said, their own tracking systems, their own project management systems, their own, you know, sales systems and stuff like that. I always felt that a system kind of like a like an off the shelf kind of system or like a projects 360, it was always going to be a little bit better because now you got people who are skilled at doing software, doing the actual software portion of it, but then also, as you as, as as you start hiring other project managers, if you've got your own, one of the companies I used to work for these to have their own tracking, so it was called Hermes Hermes the winged foot guy. I don't remember why they called it that, but it was called Hermes. The problem is when they would hire a brand new project manager. If that project manager was taught and trained on another system, they had to relearn a whole brand new system.

Speaker 1: 16:59

The advantage of going with a system that can be used across multiple businesses. You know when one project manager goes to one company and next they can plug in and get up to speed fast because, oh yeah, we used to use that system at the other place and you just got to. Oh, now you just figure out the nuances for that company, for that system.

Speaker 3: 17:11

Well, we've seen that happen at Projects360, where we've had project managers that worked for other in a certain integration company that was our client, moved on to another company or even started their own business and they reach out to us and they want to get that new company or their new company started on it. Um, so I can even speak that to myself. So one of my senior service service guys moved out of state to another state and started his own business and six months into it he gave me a call. He goes hey, I want to bring projects 360 on to my company because I miss it.

Speaker 3: 17:52

And that's coming from a technician, that's coming from a guy in the field. You know there's no sugarcoating that.

Speaker 1: 17:58

That's saying a lot from a technician, because technicians they're geared at, you know, doing technical stuff pulling, terminating, testing cable and stuff like that. Technicians as a general rule not all of them, but technicians as a general rule hate processes and they hate paperwork.

Speaker 3: 18:16

Yep, no, we see it all the time and they, you know, sometimes they get the feeling that you're doing this as a punishment to it, but it's like no, this is, this is to help everybody, it's to help you, it's to help the company, it's to grow, it's to scale and even though there might be some a little more work on the front end, the amount of time and everything it saves on the back end is exponential, you know.

Speaker 1: 18:43

So let's shift the conversation. I want to talk about why small, low voltage shops need structure, right? So my goal here is to kind of, you know, educate those owners without using kind of like a sales pitch, because you really got to shift that mindset, that mind, chef. It's got to go to growth. How can I grow more company? Right, because the majority, like in my audience, is like that. You know, there are companies that are have technicians between 10 and 10 and 50 people within the company and a lot of them are wearing multiple hats. They're wearing the sales hat, they're wearing the billing hat, they're wearing the project management hat. Heck, they might even be wearing the hat to answer the phone call when it comes in, because there's nobody up front, because they're doing a little bit of everything. Right, let's talk about maybe some real world examples. What does chaos look like on a small job site?

Speaker 3: 19:33

Well, the chaos is just not having those processes in the first place. The point of process is really so you can scale and make the project go smoother, both internally and externally, so the customer has a great experience, but also so that your team has a great experience and you have a great experience. So if you really want to, if you're just still you know just a couple of you in the company and you're looking to grow in the future and stuff trust me from experience it's better to start putting those processes in place now, while you're small and you can easily adapt and change. Think of it of a speedboat versus a cruise ship. A speedboat can turn on a dime and move around any way it wants. For a cruise ship, it's like making a slow turn to do something. Well, the bigger your company gets, the more cruise ship ish you become. So while you're small is the best time to start sitting down and putting those processes in place creating, creating the departments, creating SOPs you know all that kind of stuff. Start having team meetings, weekly operations meetings, start having weekly service meetings. You know, the key to anything besides the process too, is the internal communication. Communication is key. You know.

Speaker 3: 20:57

We all keep all this stuff up in our head and, yeah, we know what's going on, but Joe over here doesn't know what's going on. And if you don't want to be on that, you know. Like you might have done this project to start with and did the initial install. But as you want to, like I said earlier, you want to grow your business, so you want to start working on your business, not in your business. Grow your business, so you want to start working on your business, not in your business. Well, all that information that's up here has to get out and onto something that Joe or whoever can see that and see what was done in the past, know what needs to be done. You know, maybe can see the history of, like there's an issue going on with a certain product. Like you can see the history like, hey, I've been, we've been out here now four times in the last seven months for the same thing. Well, this product might, this piece, has got to be bad. You know we need to get it replaced.

Speaker 2: 21:47

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Speaker 1: 22:31

Yeah, the beautiful thing about having standardized processes or SOPs is, you know, if you only have one project manager, that's actually, like you said, the best time to create those standard operating procedures. But they really start to benefit you when you have, you know, two, three, four, five project managers. Because if something should happen, our industry is horrible. The attrition rate in the low-voltage industry is just, it's absolutely horrible. People will job leave the job working with you and go work with a competitor for five cents more an hour.

Speaker 3: 23:03

I mean, it's horrible, it's horrible that grass is always greener on the other side, and my answer to that is is because it has more manure in it. That's why, yeah, yeah exactly right.

Speaker 1: 23:15

That's a good answer, actually. But the beautiful thing about having a standardized process is, if you have a project manager quit, any one of the other project managers can plug in and pick up pretty quickly and move on with that project. If everybody's doing their own kind of thing, it's going to take a project manager a while to scale up and get spun up for a project that somebody else is doing. But if everybody's doing it the exact same way, that's what I was talking about.

Speaker 3: 23:41

That's the thing about the process. It doesn't matter if it's somebody there or if you have to hire a new person. You can insert them If they got the skillset of being a project manager, like you hired them for, and you have processes in place. I'm not saying there's not any kind of learning curve. Of course there's a learning curve for anything, but it's a lot shorter and it's a lot easier to insert that person into that position.

Speaker 1: 24:04

Let me ask you this Do you think that smaller companies should really start thinking like larger companies, because of the process that larger companies may have already?

Speaker 3: 24:14

Yes for sure, Because the question does come up. I talk to people all the time and the smaller companies, and they're like, oh, I'm too small. I'm like, no, you're not, You're not. I mean I go the sooner, like I was saying earlier, you start doing that, even though you might not have all the people to fit those positions you're gonna in the future and it'll happen sooner and also by practicing those processes.

Speaker 1: 24:38

Now is now when you're doing it because you want to be so familiar with your first. You got to create them but you want to be so familiar with them that it decisions, become instinctual. So that way when you do have another project manager come on, you don't have, you don't have to sit there and kind of think in your brain how it works, it's instinctual. You can just can just say oh well, we got to do A plus B plus C, and here's why we do that.

Speaker 3: 25:25

But again, another one of the benefits to having Also, don't be afraid to you know as you're doing them to change, you know if it's not working perfectly like you're going to have to tweak them, and there's nothing wrong with that, that's completely normal. Like when you first lay it all out, you know it always looks great on paper until you try to execute it. But once you start executing, as you're you know, learning this and making changes and stuff, there's nothing. Nothing wrong with that. That's actually normal. You're not failing or anything like that.

Speaker 1: 25:59

So we've really been talking about, you know, standard operating procedures, and we've really been focusing at the, the project management level, but I don't want to forget the techs and the foreman too, because they matter as well, and a lot of those kind of people listening to the show as well. So how can, how can a lead tech or project foreman play a bigger role in project efficiency?

Speaker 3: 26:20

Well, so let me tell you about my company's design. So we have the project managers, but then we work in teams of two. So we'll have a lead tech and then a junior tech. And the lead tech really takes owner of the project they're on. So, yes, the project manager is overseeing it and kind of doing the scheduling and all that kind of good stuff. But in the field, on the job site, the lead tech is the one that's in charge of that. They're overseeing the tech below them. They're doing a lot of the communication with the customer. They're, you know, addressing any issues they come up and in our weekly operations meetings those lead techs are part of that operations meeting.

Speaker 3: 27:01

So we have a weekly we call it a JIP meeting. It stands for jobs in progress and we go through that every Friday morning and in that meeting are the sales team, engineering, inventory management, the project managers and the lead techs and sales and we go through and we have different statuses for our projects. So we do a lot of new construction. So our projects range anywhere from 14 to 24 months, from start to finish. So we'll change the status to like what's happening this week, and when we say this week, because we're doing this on a Friday that what's coming up this coming week and we go through and touch base on each one of those talk about.

Speaker 3: 27:47

If there's any issues, then we go to what's called two weeks out, which might be a couple of weeks out before we're going to go to that. Then we have an in-progress status and what that all that means is that we're between phases. So maybe we did the pre-wire and we're waiting to do the trim, but we're waiting for construction. It's still an active job but we're just not doing anything actively on it because we're waiting for the project to get caught up to the next phase. And then you know we have in warranty and out of warranty, which is a service meeting. That's separate for that. But having them in part and take ownership of those projects go so far because the guys really care and they want to do a great job and it makes them feel good that they're in charge of it.

Speaker 2: 28:33

They have ownership.

Speaker 1: 28:34

Yeah, they have ownership.

Speaker 3: 28:35

We found huge success with that.

Speaker 1: 28:38

Yep, yeah, it's funny because a company I worked for when I lived in the Dallas area, same thing every Friday, but we used to call ours WIP meetings work in progress meetings and there would be a spreadsheet printed out. It would be sorted by project manager and we would go down every single one and the general manager would ask you questions and stuff. He would go down every single one and the general manager would ask you questions and stuff. And one of the things I'll never forget the general manager was a retired Marine colonel and he did IT for the Marine Corps, so he knew low voltage and stuff Right.

Speaker 1: 29:11

And we had a new project manager I don't know where he came from or whatever and he had like three or four projects and and so my boss asked him. My boss asked him are you done? He goes yes, but I could just see the veins starting to pop on the general manager's forehead. Then he got to the next one Is that one done? He goes yes, but Finally the colonel goes. If you have to say, but then you're not done, you're not done. So the answer is no.

Speaker 3: 29:43

Well, it's that famous. You know. The last 5% that hangs out there all the time, you know, I mean, everybody is notorious for that. That last 5% is what kills companies.

Speaker 1: 29:54

you know you got to get it all done, you know and it's and it's, and usually the last 5% is usually not anything technical or installation typically related. It's usually the project closeout stuff like the Asbill drawings, the test results, the final walkthrough, the, the punch list, you know, because the customer's not going to pay you.

Speaker 3: 30:16

Yeah, it's piddly stuff that can easily be done, but it prevents your last payment, which that's all profit to you. And you know it just drags out and then it snowballs because you don't get that one done and you don't get this one done and you don't get that one done. Where you gotta, when you're scheduling, you gotta make sure you're allowing that time to get that last five to 10% completed. I mean, it's so vital.

Speaker 2: 30:42

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Speaker 1: 31:29

And this is. You know, like I said, I've got a strong project management background. I'm not a PMP certified, but several of the companies I've worked for were really strong in project management. And our industry is really bad about project management. We're great at giving people the title project manager, but they're not tracking labor, they're not tracking materials, they're not doing, they're just like the lead person on the job. Well, I'm sorry, that's not a project manager.

Speaker 3: 31:54

No.

Speaker 1: 31:55

Yeah, so we go to these, we have these big projects with, like you know, on a site, with, with a general contractor, with a real project manager, and they would literally hand our. You know what's to us.

Speaker 3: 32:06

And so.

Speaker 1: 32:07

So my one of my bosses kind of said, look, we need to fix this. And he came up with a project manager program, and that's why I said you know, process is the is one answer. That that's. That's's a good foundation, but you also need to have some kind of a mechanism, some kind of a software that's field-driven, so that way the owner, the project manager and even, as we mentioned, the technicians who really do care, know that the future's in their hands. Right, and that's why I really like project management software kind of stuff and that's why I really like the stuff that you showed me at Project 360. So let me ask you this what makes you think that Project 360 sets apart from other off-the-shelf kind of software?

Speaker 3: 32:52

The big thing on that is truly that we're built for this industry. The complete workflow, from the sales process all the way through completion, follows the workflow of this industry. The complete workflow, from the sales process all the way through completion, follows the workflow of this industry. We don't go after any other industry. Actually, it's kind of funny.

Speaker 3: 33:07

Today I had somebody reach out to me and they wanted a demo of Project 360, and I jumped on the call and it ended up being a manufacturer and I'm like well, what do you want to use the software for? And I, right away, I guess you know we're really geared. It's a, it's a different business model and we're not geared towards that. And you know I you know not that I don't want their business or anything like that, but it's less like we're not. We're, we're focused on the integrator and that's what we're focused on and helping integration companies, you know, run their business, manage their processes. We're not going to do the work for you, you know. I mean no software does you know it's. There's no magic software out there that's going to do that, but we're there to manage your processes and our whole workflow. The big thing is we're based on this industry. You know.

Speaker 1: 33:58

That's it thing is we're based on this industry. You know, that's it. Well, see, when you were talking about that, that other customer who was in a different vertical market. You know the, the, the. The challenge is how business owners think, right Cause you know, if you're not a business, you don't typically think this way. A lot of, a lot of low voltage people starting off their own company, they'll, they'll chase anything and everything just to try to make a buck, right? But sometimes you just got to say no, and in the scenario that you just described, you know, I can certainly see. You know what you said. You're fine tuned to the low voltage industry and I'm going to ask you in a minute what are the five best features that you think Project 360 brings to a low voltage business. But let me finish my thought first, because I got ADHD and my brain's going 15.

Speaker 3: 34:39

I business, but let me finish my thought first, because I got ADHD, my brain's going 15.

Speaker 1: 34:41

I'm with you. So the problem is, if you had sold your Projects360 to that other vertical market, you'd have to end up doing surgery on your system. And I don't know. I'm not a programmer, but I've done a tiny bit of programming a long, long time ago and I know one thing beta testing and then making sure that it works in every scenario. That's a huge network, a huge problem. And then what happens is the customer who's buying your software and it's not fine-tuned to their industry. They're not going to be happy, they're going to be bad-mouthing you.

Speaker 3: 35:12

And when it comes to software, when it comes to that, it's not that you can customize it to all these different. I mean there's don't get me wrong, there's big companies that are like generic project managed for the service industry and they do an okay job. But I mean it's not a match for everything. But like, even for that, what happens to us? Why you don't want to waste your time and I'll even elaborate a little more into the industry itself why it's okay to say no sometimes, because if I would have said okay, I would have proceeded with this client today, a I would have wasted an hour of his and my time going through a demo. But let's say he even signed up then and we have a really in-depth onboarding process. So now my onboarding director would have all this time into it and my support team and all this kind of stuff would have then, just for them to find out in a month or two.

Speaker 3: 36:01

This really isn't a fit. And now we wasted all this time on both parties. I'm not even just being selfish on mine. He wasted his time and now he's got to start over, where you sometimes just have to walk away, and I've trained my sales guys on this, even going now to the integration side of things is yes, you made that comment. They see this big number or this big thing just to oh hey, it's a half a million dollars. I want this project. You know I'm like, yeah, it's a half a million, but this client's really difficult. You're seeing warning signs right out of the chute in the sales process and just think about this. You're seeing it in the sales process and just think about this. You're seeing it in the sales process. You're going to be married to this guy for the next couple years. And if you're seeing it now, it's only getting worse.

Speaker 1: 36:48

And that's how a lot of little companies can go bankrupt, even because this big half a million dollar project you wanted ended up bankrupting you because you got nickeled and dimed to death and absolutely especially when you have a a small glue voltage company and you're looking to, you know, come, come up with some kind of project management software whatever and you've been using I don't know whatever system, whatever harmony system you've had before. Once, once the once, the c-suite, the senior management, decides, hey, we're going to go with this new software. There's a period of time where all the project managers are using the old system and the new system at the same time, because they don't quite trust the new system yet, but they're comfortable.

Speaker 3: 37:34

And there's a transition period. I mean there really is. I mean there's definitely a transition period in that.

Speaker 1: 37:40

And that's a lot of extra work for a project manager who's probably already overtasked. So I gave you a prelude earlier. What are keeping the low-voltage companies in mind, the smaller ones you're looking to? What are the five best features that you think Project 360 has that can help make their lives easier?

Speaker 3: 38:02

So, starting from the sales process, we have a really nice light, easy to use sales CRM to track and manage your sales pipeline. So you can see, because the other big thing and I think you touched base on it a little earlier, chuck is when you get a project manager doing both sales and that you know when you start the sales process. The sales process is relatively long and it takes some time and you need to build this up. So you don't want to. I always tell sales guys hey, when you win a nice big job, go celebrate for five minutes and get back out there and sell some more because you got to keep that wheel going. So with the sales feature and the sales pipeline feature of our software, it's easy to see what you have coming, what you're expecting to see closed over the next year, upcoming year, so you can make sure you're again balancing that cash flow, you know, because that's the key to everything.

Speaker 1: 38:51

Now, before we move off to CRM, that's customer resource management, if I remember right.

Speaker 2: 38:56

No, client resource management or something like that. Either way.

Speaker 1: 39:00

I'm known as the acronym king in our industry for some reason. But the beautiful thing about that is, you know, even if that's used by everybody, not just the salesperson if the salesperson always is diligent about putting in his notes in the CRM when the project manager takes over the project he can easily go back and quickly scan those notes and get up to speed.

Speaker 3: 39:20

Well and see what the conversations were. It helps see what the conversations were held during the sales process.

Speaker 1: 39:26

Yes, communications Kind of weird. We work in a communications industry, right. But here's the thing, right. So if the project manager is also diligent about putting stuff in CRM, then the general manager if he decides I wonder how that project's doing over ABC. He doesn't necessarily have to ring up that project manager, who might be on vacation that week or whatever. He can go to CRM just kind of peruse through the CRM.

Speaker 3: 39:51

Well, at that point in our software you can go to the project because it's an actual thing and the project has all the history of what's going on and going on and gone on, you know, on that project. So yeah, no, I mean, that's the whole point of all this stuff. Yes, so CRM, that was one what's your next one.

Speaker 3: 40:08

The next one is the proposal generation. You know you want to generate very professional looking proposals. The first impression is one of the most you know I mean, I can even speak as myself when I just did a big remodel here to my office and one of the things that made me choose that contractor was how he presented his quote to me and it was broken out as easy to read and understand. So we have a really nice proposal tool that you can build proposals quickly but very accurately. So that would be number two. And you can send them electronically. You can save them as PDFs, whatever you want.

Speaker 1: 40:47

And I would assume that in that tool you could use, like maybe boilerplate, templates to kind of help generate that process.

Speaker 3: 40:55

Oh yeah, for sure. You can create templated scopes of work. We integrate with a company called Portal that manages our industry's database, so you don't have to retype in the product. You're just dragging and dropping products into the proposal and it's bringing it there, and then in our proposal tool you can actually add labor phase and labor hours to it, so when that salesperson's bringing that product in it's actually bringing the correct labor in, because that's the number one thing our industry underbids is labor.

Speaker 1: 41:31

It also has the most risk, yeah.

Speaker 3: 41:36

I mean. So that gets it a lot more accurate for you. And then once that sales, you know that proposal is approved is our project management, our core. You know, because that proposal gets pushed and creates a project. All those labor phases and labor hours come into our time tracking feature. So another really cool feature is what we were talking about. Really cool feature is what we were talking about the thing that is always under bid or you don't know if you're doing good on, is labor where we you can see easily right on the dashboard what, what, what's your time tracking is actual versus budgeted, so you can see, you know a phase will turn red if you're going over budget and it's right in your face um, that's the best way to have software like that, right?

Speaker 1: 42:18

because, because, because that way, you know, people visually take stuff in quicker than they do when they read stuff. And so if your budget of cost work performance is not in sync, if it pops up red, that likely tells you, oh my God, I got to go focus.

Speaker 3: 42:35

I got a problem here.

Speaker 1: 42:36

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Speaker 3: 42:40

You know. And then you know our scheduling feature because we have work orders. You can create both service and project. So project work orders are for the work orders created during the build of the project. Then we have service work orders for the lovely service calls after that, because when we're done with the project doesn't mean we're done with it. You know means now we got to warranty it or do service on it. So you can see all that information easily in the project and schedule that.

Speaker 3: 43:06

But then also our inventory tracking is really unique to this industry. So we designed it because most of us don't just buy inventory to have inventory, we're buying inventory for a project and so in our software not only can you order by the project but as that product comes in you can allocate it to that project. So we have this nice called product request page for your purchasing and inventory department that lists all the product that is for that project, basically your BOM bill of materials if people don't know what that is and it shows as you're allocating. It puts a little green check mark to it. So you know you have it, because the biggest other costly thing in this industry is sending your guys out or the techs going out and they don't have everything. Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 43:54

And now you got to go back and make a second, and the quicker you can get that material off the overhead and allocate it to a project that's going to automatically allocate revenue for that as well too.

Speaker 3: 44:06

And it gives you a little cash flow.

Speaker 1: 44:08

Yes, it is. I just did an interview with a guy from distribution. It's going to be airing by the time this airs. It aired right before this and we talked about that. You know those pools of cable in the warehouse, that's money in the bank that could be making money.

Speaker 3: 44:24

That's a liability. That's a liability on your balance sheet, you know. I mean, that's the money that you've spent, that you're sitting on.

Speaker 1: 44:32

So, on the project manager portion, does it have a way, because our industry is notorious for bad specs, bad scope of works, customers changing their minds Does it have a process for change orders?

Speaker 3: 44:42

Oh for sure. So how our change orders work. They're just child proposals of the parent proposal, so they're approved. There's what's called a rolled up view that the project managers or inventory management can look at. That basically consolidates the parent proposal and all the change orders and so if things were removed, it removes it from the list to order, you know, and so you don't get confused like, oh, are we supposed to still order this or not, or was this replaced with this? It does it all for you.

Speaker 1: 45:21

So if it's rolling up to the parent project, to the main project number, is there a way, is there trackability, to find out? If I want to just look at just that one change order, did that change order make a profit?

Speaker 3: 45:34

Yeah, I mean, you can see what you, what that change order was for, and I mean the labor hours and everything, all get consolidated into one, you know. So you can all see. But you can definitely break out the equipment value of what each one is and look at that for sure.

Speaker 1: 45:52

So that was, I think, four. What was the? What was the fifth thing?

Speaker 3: 45:57

Custom reporting. You can build all kinds of custom reporting for any part of the software. We have this project health report that will tell you what the value of the project is. It will break it up by equipment and labor. You can see what's been billed to date, what money has been received to date, what equipment's been installed, what's remaining to be installed, all the labor. So we have all kinds of reporting that you can do. So you can really get a lot of stats and everything of any stage of the project. And another really cool one is installed products. So you can go to a project and a project in our software is considered a location. So like it's a company location, like you might have a parent company that has 50 locations Under that parent company you'll have 50 projects, you know, because each location is a project. But you can go and see at each location all the product that's ever been installed there, when it was installed, the serial number, who installed it, all that kind of good stuff.

Speaker 1: 46:57

My dad used to work for a gas station for many, many years, and then he ended up buying the gas station and became a business owner, and one of the things he said that he absolutely hated as a business owner was chasing invoices chasing invoices getting people to pay, getting customers to pay, cause you know we had, we had accounts and you have to go, you know.

Speaker 1: 47:19

Then you know, it seems like they wouldn't pay unless he actually showed up in the door and knocked on the door and said, hey, you know, you guys have been filling up your company trucks at the gas station. Here's the bill, right. So, and one of the things, one of the things I kind of liked about your system was is it ties in with QuickBooks, so can you kind of go over that just a tiny little bit? Yes, so we have a.

Speaker 3: 47:40

You know, because we're not an accounting platform. So QuickBooks is the most powerful and popular accounting platform, so we integrate with that, where you can sync your clients so they match. You can then push over all their invoices, so that goes to your. Well. We're going to have multiple invoices here shortly. So you know we'll have three types of invoices. We have what's called a request for payment, which that will then sync over to your liability account in QuickBooks. And then we have a delivery invoice which, as you're installing product, you'll create those and that pulls from that liability account and hits your P&L, so it's cost of goods right there.

Speaker 3: 48:26

Then we have our standard invoice that we have today, which is just a regular invoice, you know, like a service call or you know, if you're just creating an invoice for something. So you can do all that. It also pushes all the time tracking over. So if you're using QuickBooks for your payroll, it'll push all the hours right into the timesheet section of QuickBooks so you don't have to enter it separately. You can even push your proposals over and it comes into the estimate section of QuickBooks. So it's a really nice integration.

Speaker 1: 48:59

Let me ask you this so the guy who, or the low voltage company, that's, they only have two people and they're saying we're too small for this software, what would you say to them?

Speaker 3: 49:08

You're not necessarily. If you're looking to scale your business which let me tell everybody that's listening here, other companies in your market are scaling their businesses. So if you're not scaling, you're falling behind. So if you're looking to scale your business, you're not too small for us. And again I'm going to go back to what we were talking about, even for the processes, the sooner you get the processes and the platform that you're going to use whether it's projects 360 or not that in place, the easier it is when you're smaller. So I highly recommend at least start looking and getting that thing in place along as you're doing your processes.

Speaker 1: 49:52

Yeah, no, I agree with that 100%. So if somebody was interested in learning more about Projects360, how would they find more information on that?

Speaker 3: 50:02

You can just go right to our website, which is projectsprojx360.com. So we play a little, do a little, play on the word projects, so projects360.com, and we have all the information there. There's videos on there. We have a sandbox that you can actually play in for a free demo and play in the software itself, and there's also request a demo. And that's with me. It's one-on-one. We'll get on a screen share with whoever you want from your team and I'll walk you through the whole software from sales to completion. Do a Q&A, answer any questions to see if it's something that might be of interest to you.

Speaker 1: 50:42

So let me, let me talk about licensing, right, Is it a? How does the licensing profile look?

Speaker 3: 50:48

It's by seat, so the licenses start at $24 a month per seat and it depends. There's different levels and sections that you'll go to, but that's kind of where it starts.

Speaker 1: 51:00

Gotcha, but it ties in everything with QuickBooks, which probably the small business owners are already using, yep, because they don't have some advanced accounting, you know some type of software.

Speaker 3: 51:10

No, you'd be surprised. Even some good-sized companies use QuickBooks. I mean, I use QuickBooks for both my companies, so it's it's a great tool.

Speaker 1: 51:16

It's a great tool.

Speaker 3: 51:17

It's a great tool.

Speaker 1: 51:18

It's an absolute great tool. So, doug, I appreciate you coming on and I look forward to hearing more about some success stories with Projects360.

Speaker 3: 51:25

Well, I appreciate it, Chuck. It's been so much fun talking to you on this and I look forward to talking again in the future. Thank you, let's talk, let's cable with pride.

Speaker 2: 51:41

In the world of ICT. Let's ride this tide. Thank you for joining us on let's Talk Cable and stay tuned for more episodes filled with innovation. Keep connecting, keep achieving. Until next time.