Trade Guides
The Builder's Guide to AI
Twelve pages for Australian builders on missed calls, unchased quotes, live-priced materials and the texts that fix them. Free.
A licensed builder charging $95 an hour and doing 21 hours of admin a week is paying himself $2,000 a week to be a bad office manager.
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Where your week goes
| The job that isn't the job | What it actually looks like | Hours a week |
|---|---|---|
| Chasing subbies | Insurances, invoices, availability, are you coming tomorrow | 4 hrs |
| Variations | Client asks for one more thing, you say yes, nobody writes it down until the invoice argument | 3 hrs |
| Client updates | Where are we at, when's the plumber coming, can I pop in Saturday | 3 hrs |
| Progress claims and invoicing | Building the claim, chasing the payment, re-sending the invoice | 2.5 hrs |
| Quoting and estimating | Take-offs, supplier pricing, writing it up, sending it, forgetting to chase it | 5 hrs |
| Site diary and photos | Photos stuck in your camera roll, diary written from memory on Friday | 2 hrs |
| Missed calls | Ringing back the six people who called while you were on a roof | 1.5 hrs |
| Time you are not billing | 21 hrs |
That's 1008 hrs a year, or $47,880 at $95/hr if only half those admin hours became billable time.
These are estimates for a typical 5 to 20 person builder business, not a measurement of yours. Put your own numbers in. Most owners who do this find they were guessing low.
A licensed builder charging $95 an hour and doing 21 hours of admin a week is paying himself $2,000 a week to be a bad office manager.
The short version, if you read nothing else
- You're losing more jobs to a missed call than to a competitor. Switch on missed-call text-back today. It's the cheapest thing in the guide and the biggest.
- The quote you never chased was the job you already paid for. Three follow-ups, written once, sent automatically.
- Price the materials off today's prices, put a validity date on the quote, and stop paying for the difference yourself.
- Your job photos are your marketing. One a day, posted on Friday in 20 minutes. Suburb in the caption.
- Your past customers are your quiet months. A message on the right date, in your name, sent for you.
- AI does the admin. It doesn't do the trade, the judgement or the cashflow. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.
The best builders we've met aren't the best at building. They're the ones whose paperwork is done by Thursday.
Get the Builder's Guide guide
Twelve pages, written for Australian builders. Free.