Working with Matt joins the Good Contractor Podcast!

This week, John Talman and Luke Hansen sit down with Matt, the multi-skilled tradesman and content creator behind Working with Matt. From starting as a teenage lawn care entrepreneur to building a thriving full-service landscaping, hardscaping, and irrigation company, Matt shares how his curiosity, adaptability, and pride in doing things right shaped his career. Along the way, his candid stories reveal the challenges of running a business, the power of collaboration over competition, and how a chance move into social media created unexpected opportunities.

Full Episode is HERE

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How are you guys actually getting more reviews?

We’ve been hearing from contractors that getting reviews isn’t as straightforward as people make it sound. Some say they text or email after the job, some add it to their invoice, and some say they’ve tried an app, but the cost wasn’t worth it.

If that’s you, and you’re already using CompanyCam, you’re in luck. We recently launched a feature that lets contractors send review requests to customers right from the app!

Basically, right after the job’s done, you can attach some photos, write a note, and send the request to the customer. Once they leave you a review, the review will automatically post and sync to Google.

I’m curious, has anyone here actually used the reviews tool yet?

If not, what’s your current process for getting reviews? Do you send a message after the job? Add something to the invoice? Ask in person?


More info on the tool if you’re curious: https://companycam.com/resources/blog/how-to-get-more-reviews-for-your-contracting-business

Photos vs. Activity Feed 🤨

Photos say a lot.

But there's a heck of a lot going on at every project. That's why we're testing something new, an Activity feed.

There's so many moving parts and people on a job, so what if you could see not only the photos but when a check list gets finished, comments people are leaving, documents getting signed-off on and more all in one place.

Let us know what you think and which you'd find more useful!

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Ask Luke Anything (yes, anything)

Thanks for the response ! its something I think about however with very little intention of utilizing.
(last question, well , for now. ) what can you say/teach/profess about acquiring companies and would you ever do that ?
Yeah, we've talked about acquiring companies, but we have not acquired any companies up to now.

I've gotten a lot of advice from people who have acquired a lot of companies, and it sounds like it's pretty hit or miss. They say that you really want to make sure that you're aligned with the vision and culture so that if you do bring another company in to be part of yours, that it's all set up to work together, which I think can be pretty tricky.

I really think of companies as just collections of people, so if you're acquiring the company, it's like a mass hiring event. It's a huge decision. And I think it can be done well, but to say I'm not an expert would be an understatement. So I feel like I just don't have much advice to offer here.
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He's just joking...I think

Luke has a tough time asking for help without being snarky.

BUT for the sake of building the best app, we're here again to have you help us design it.

We have 3 options for possible project screens and we'd love it if you'd tell us which one you like the most and why. Heck, you can tell us which one you hate too.

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If you want to get in on the beta, just fill out this form: https://lnkd.in/gKsj9J5U

💸 What’s the Most Expensive Mistake You’ve Ever Made?

Not hiring a fractional CFO sooner. Not growing my skillset as a leader. Not learning how actually communicate through a sale properly.
If you had to pick one of those to tell someone starting out and couldn't list any of the others, which would you say is the most important to do right when you're coming out of the gate to avoid the most pain down the road?
this is an impossible thing to answer but it would have to be the financials first
Upvote 1

💸 What’s the Most Expensive Mistake You’ve Ever Made?

Not hiring a fractional CFO sooner. Not growing my skillset as a leader. Not learning how actually communicate through a sale properly. I could go on. Hahah

If you had to pick one of those to tell someone starting out and couldn't list any of the others, which would you say is the most important to do right when you're coming out of the gate to avoid the most pain down the road?
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Ask Luke Anything (yes, anything)

What have you learned about growing a company utilizing investors.
Well, first I would say that I don't know what the other experience would be like growing a tech company without utilizing investors. So I'll just talk about the experience with investors. We didn't have investors early on, we self-funded it through my family's roofing business (which basically means through my dad). And so I also don't know the experience of someone who had to go raise money right away immediately. But I will say that the investors have helped add a little bit of accountability beyond myself, which is just someone to kind of answer to. You say you're going to do something. You say you're going to try something. You tell people it's going to work. And then they want to know, "Did it work? Did it not work?" Things that you could just kind of move past. We've been able to maintain control of the business to where we control the board, we control the decisions, and we've never had a situation where investors were trying to make us do things that we didn't want to do or make us run this business in a way that we didn't want to run the business. That was something I was worried about the whole time - getting a boss. I didn't want a boss. I wanted money to help grow the business and not a boss. And it actually worked out quite well that way where we got investors who cared a lot about the business who had good information and advice and feedback but didn't try to get us to run the business a different way than we wanted to.

And so yeah, thinking about what I've learned, really what I would say is that cash flow is the blood of a business (just having money in the bank) and often we raised money to grow the business but also to just have cash available so that we could try things and learn and essentially lower the risk of the business. I know sometimes when you raise money it's about spending just every last penny of it into trying to grow and going for broke. You know, like going big or going home type of a thing. And in our case, we did want to grow aggressively and we wanted to be able to spend more money toward growth than we were bringing in at any given time. But we wanted to do that in a way that was responsible - that if if the business stopped working or if something went haywire in the economy that we wouldn't be sunk, that we would be able to push through that because we had money in the bank.

And so, you know, all in all, I guess I've probably learned a lot. I don't know exactly what if that is from you know just investors vs just running a business. I will say this, I've learned a lot about raising money. And that you know having a good business is a great way to be able to raise money but also remembering the fact that like you have to really believe in your business. And you've gotta, if you're trying to convince yourself that it's a good idea while you're trying to convince investors that it's a good idea, that's tough. Like, come to believe like that it's a great idea. Believe it more than the investors do. I would remind our CFO Tullen when we're fundraising that like "Hey, we believe this more than they do. Like we believe in it more than they don't believe in it," and we can still learn from them and we can still they'll they'll know things that we don't know but we don't.

I'm happy to answer more questions about this. That was my long ramble about what I think I've learned so far.
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Ask Luke Anything (yes, anything)

We’re creating an opportunity for everyone—whether you’re already using CompanyCam or just considering it—to ask our CEO Luke anything right here in the community.

We’re still deciding on the format: we might host monthly chat sessions, or we could keep this as one ongoing thread where Luke can drop in regularly to answer questions and keep the conversation flowing.

Feel free to ask Luke questions or share comments about CompanyCam, or dive into any of the other topics he enjoys discussing (which is pretty much anything, trust me, I host a podcast with him, I know).

So go ahead and fire away: ask @hansluke anything. He is ready to hear from you!

August 13 Class Discussion

We had a ton of great questions about Checklists, Pages, and AI from today's class, and we want to keep the discussion going!

Sara covered:
  • How to use AI Walkthrough to create Pages
  • How to create customized photo reports with Pages
  • How to turn Pages into Checklists you can use to ensure you're getting the photos and info you need from the job site
What other questions do you have about Pages (or any of the other features we covered)?

Filter