The discussion centers around John Dudley's innovative AI-driven program, which automates the pricing process for projects on contractors' websites. This program is designed to streamline the estimating and bidding procedures, thereby enabling contractors to engage with potential clients more efficiently. Eric emphasizes that the tool simplifies the process, allowing clients to input project specifications directly on the contractor's website, resulting in accurate estimates generated in real time. By integrating extensive data sources, the program ensures that pricing reflects regional variances and market conditions. Ultimately, John invites contractors to participate as early adopters, highlighting the potential for increased efficiency and revenue through the utilization of this groundbreaking technology. A deep exploration into the innovative world of construction technology unfolds, revealing a groundbreaking tool designed to revolutionize the estimating process for contractors. The discussion centers on the creation of 'Instabid', an intuitive software solution that promises to streamline the bidding process for home improvement projects. Contractors often face significant challenges when it comes to providing timely estimates, which can result in lost opportunities. The host and guest share insights into the extensive development journey that has led to the unveiling of this tool, emphasizing the importance of user experience and accessibility for small to mid-sized contractors. As the episode progresses, we delve into the myriad features that Instabid offers, including the ability to generate accurate estimates based on regional data, integration with existing contractor websites, and the automation of client communications. This episode serves as a clarion call for contractors to embrace technological advancements that not only enhance operational efficiency but also increase their competitive edge in the ever-evolving home improvement market.

Takeaways:

1. In this episode, John Dudley unveils an innovative AI-driven program designed to automate project pricing on contractors' websites, streamlining the estimating process significantly.
2. The automated pricing tool can dramatically reduce the time contractors spend on estimates and enhance their ability to close deals by providing instant quotes.
3. Eric emphasizes that the solution is tailored for small to mid-range contractors, offering an affordable alternative to expensive software tools that often overwhelm users.
4. The program integrates seamlessly into existing websites, allowing potential clients to input project details and receive immediate estimates, which enhances customer engagement.
5. John discusses how this tool not only generates estimates but also creates a comprehensive material list and allows for digital contract signing, facilitating a smooth workflow.
6. Feedback from early adopters is sought to refine the program further, indicating a commitment to continuous improvement and responsiveness to user needs.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

1. House Pro Insider
2. Google
3. Home Depot
4. QuickBooks
5. Stripe
6. Bureau of Labor Statistics

To email John Dudley about the program reach him here: john@sitehypedesigns.com

Mentioned in this episode:

Around the House YouTube

Make sure and Subscribe to our YouTube page!

Around the House Top Products!

Producer Jim shares an insider look at Eric G's hand-curated Top 10 products for 2026. From smart locks and app-controlled garage openers to precision tools and energy-saving water heaters, these are the game-changing items Eric personally recommends to make your home smarter, safer, and more efficient. Head to AroundTheHouseOnline.com/Top-Products to see the full list, click the product links for exclusive Amazon deals, and upgrade your home today!

ATH Top Products

Foreign.

The House Pro Insider.

This is the podcast for trades pros, carpenters, contractors, interior designers and innovators building homes, renovating spaces, or creating the next big thing.

Let's dive in with your host, Eric.

G. Happy New Year, everybody.

You're listening to the around the House Pro Insider where we're talking to you guys out there in the trades.

Design community, architects, remodelers, builders, inventors.

This show is for you.

John Dudley.

Good to see you, my friend.

What's happening, brother?

Good to see you, man.

You have been working on a project that we've been keeping under wraps, but it's time that we pull the curtain back a little bit and see the madman behind the curtain and what you've been building, brother.

Because I think this is something that's really going to change how people look at estimating and closing projects.

I would agree and, and I definitely would consider myself a madman at this point due to lack sleep and over a million lines of code going into this thing.

But, but it's frighteningly easy to do that when you get in that zone and you're excited and you believe in what you're doing and you know it's going to be effective and it's going to solve people's problems.

Yeah, it's been a, it's been a very sleepless couple of months, but I'm super excited about it, man.

I think it's going to help a lot of the people that we talk to out there, a lot of our, a lot of our listening audiences.

This could help.

So before I forget, I want to encourage any of our contractor folks out there listening and please reach out because some early adopters and some great feedback from, from our people would, would be more than welcomed and I'd be super happy to hop on a meeting with anybody and just kind of explain what I'm doing and how I think it's going to help a lot of our small to mid range contractors that don't need to spend $5,000 a year on some giant software tool that's too hard to figure out how to use.

It's just, although I will say the functionality and features are covering most of that stuff in a very simple but very effective and very accurate way and at a very affordable price.

What more do you need to know?

Yeah, guys, and just so you know, I messaged Johnny.

I'm Pacific time and he's more like what central time is, I believe, depending on how daylight saving goes.

But dude, I'll be messaging him in the morning.

Hey man, how you doing?

He go, I'm just going to bed.

He's.

Yep, been up for 24 hours.

Time to go to bed.

I gotta get back at it.

And then we'll chat in the afternoon after you get a few hours sleep.

So you've been just grinding on this.

And let's talk about how this can help people because really, people are like, all right, what are you talking about?

How does this help?

What is it?

Yeah, man, it's.

Yeah.

Even the AIs yelling at me to go to bed the other night.

I know you got a quality argument.

I love it.

Temp name Instabid is legit right now.

Now we've got eight trades that are.

That were super dialed in, planning to expand that.

Obviously this thing will expand for the next forever until we stop running out of stuff we need.

But there's eight solid trades in there.

Electrical, plumbing, painting, roofing, siding, drywall, things like that.

And I'll tell you, in my 30 years of contracting, I hated doing estimates.

I hated running the numbers.

I hated writing out the proposals and the contracts and sending them out to clients.

And I would procrastinate.

I'd rather be out pounding nails and doing my work.

And I lost a lot of jobs because of that.

And the numbers will show you.

Google it.

And it says, first responders win 60 to 70% of bids.

Right.

So as contractors, Sally down the street wants a roof.

And we're like, oh, yeah, it takes us three days to get over there.

We finally take a look at a roof and yeah, we'll get back to you.

Then I gotta go home and procrastinate for a couple of days before I actually write something up for or.

And I'm talking from even when I had preformed, scripted, just put in the numbers kind of bidding systems, I still just never used them.

So with this, we're going to take that estimating time and even the trip to the property time.

So you're not out chasing tire kickers all the time.

Yeah.

Can you come out and look at my roof?

And then nothing happens.

This entire tool embeds right on your site.

People can go onto your site and say, need a roof.

Roof and bid.

They enter in all the project fields that are pertinent.

How big, what size is your roof, what kind of shingles you want, what are we tearing off, how many layers, etc.

Etc.

Chimneys.

Everything's considered down to drip edge and ice shield and it's all being considered.

We've compiled huge databases of regional data points across the country.

Obviously, a roof in New York is a very different cost than a roof in Wyoming or la.

So all that's automatically figured in.

And those.

Those numbers are coming from some of the big box stores, coming from Bureau of Labor Statistics, coming from RS means data, et cetera, et cetera.

So accuracy is our big push here.

And really, basically, if someone has a website and you're a contractor out there, you can put this on your website, and it's going to walk a potential client from start to finish through the bidding process till at least you get out there and get your eyeballs on it.

Yeah, it's exactly going to do that.

And thanks for cutting off my babbling, because I will.

Dude, you are so deep in the forest.

I just want to make sure and get it out to people that this is what this does.

So instead of you having to get on the phone, spend a bunch of time qualifying, you can actually let your clients go through and get like, your name and insta bid to get them in a ballpark.

Because so many times, let's say you're a roofer and you go, yeah, that.

That's about a $30,000 roof.

These people thought it was a $10,000 roof, right?

And so they're like, wow, we're not prepared to pay for a $10,000 roof.

You're not going to close the $30,000 roof if they can't pay for the $10,000 roof?

Barely.

So that's going to get decided in two minutes online versus you driving to 15 different leads.

So, yeah, I tell you, when I started this project, it was meant to be just that, right?

Like a lead generating a lead magnet, basically, to pop onto your site.

So people could.

I'm a guy that wants to know the price.

I'm moving on.

People can come to your site, pop in this info in about one minute.

It instantly generates an estimate that they can see.

Over on the side it says, Labor Materials X Total.

That immediately sends them an email with a PDF attached.

They can download the PDF right there.

After they get that estimate on the site, they can download a boilerplate contract.

All this is editable, by the way, on the back end.

Contractors get a dashboard on your back end.

And if you're like, I get roofing for 45 bucks.

A bundle, not 65.

You can change that.

Yeah.

It bids accurately for your particular business.

You can personalize this thing and you.

Can add in all those forms, too.

Right.

So if you've got.

Oh, man, the state of Washington and the state of Oregon require this.

You can toss that stuff in there to keep yourself in the right eyes.

Of the law, shall we say, contractual stuff.

The quick flow is this.

They go, they generate an estimate.

They download the PDF, they go check their email.

Inside the email is the PDF, the contract, and a stripe button.

They can, if they go, hey, that's a great price, they can get on there.

Or if it takes a phone call with them and then they say, okay, I'll just use the stripe button that's in the email.

They go to stripe, they pay the deposit that redirects them to your calendar that's synced with your Gmail calendar or whatever calendar, HubSpot, whatever you want.

Puts the date on your calendar and you've got a job booked and you've got a deposit paid via stripe, and it's a done deal.

And the whole time, A, all that process took about five minutes.

B, you didn't have to do anything.

You're out working or making sure you guys are working.

It's also, it creates an entire material list in your dashboard back end.

You can literally print a CSV of that list and go, hey, Bill, go buy all this stuff at Home Depot or fax it to Home Depot, have, say, have this on a pallet on Tuesday the 15th.

It's covering a lot of bases, and I'm only scratching the surface because I don't want to talk so damn much.

But again, like that immediate response.

And I won't throw anybody under the bus, but I did plenty of testing, tried to get some bids, tried to get some numbers, reached out on a couple of these larger platforms that charge a heck of a lot more money to be feeding you guys leads.

And I got one response out of every eight to ten that I sent.

And then maybe one more, one more would trickle in three or four days later, be a second one.

But most people didn't respond.

Now, had I gotten an immediate email saying, hey, got your bid three minutes ago.

Here's what it looks like.

I'm in that mode.

I'm looking for that, and I'm ready to make a decision.

That's when you got to get your customer within the first 15 minutes.

And so you're not only are you saving 10, 15 hours a week, depending on how many bids you're doing.

Because now you're not doing that physically.

You're.

You're increasing your revenue because you're landing 50% more jobs, I would bet my leg on it.

Might be an immediate response.

And the prices are accurate.

Like I said, the data points are sick on this thing.

And the cool thing is, I always recommend, whether it's a roof or a painting job, whatever, you go out there, take a look at it, you see what's going on, and then you can finalize the numbers there.

So it's not like you're blindly locking in someone that you haven't put your eyeballs on.

Because, yes, we all fully realize that the homeowner might not know the complexity of the job, and a simple picture or two might not tell you.

But if you get out the job site and go, all right, we have an estimate now let's get it into a contract quote.

Yeah.

Then you're exactly it.

And again, another feature of this on the front end where the client fills in the form can they can attach.

They can go take photos all around the house.

This is the paint peeling off my siding, or this is what my current shingled roofing looks like, or whatever the project is.

They can shoot five photos up there and upload them to you.

Plus, there's a. I've got Google Maps API built into it, so you get a aerial view of the property as well as a street view of the property.

So you can look at their photos, you can look at access to the property, you can literally look at the shape of their home.

All of that right there.

Before you ever have to drive out there and they've got a number in their hand, they're going to want to talk to you.

Get on the phone for five minutes, say, this is interesting.

I see this and this in the photos.

They can sign the contract digitally, online, if everybody's feeling comfortable and the prices seem right.

Or at that point, you decide, okay, let's take a drive out.

There's a bit more complex than just a basic green roof, but I guarantee you'll save 70% of those.

Let's drive out there and take a look.

Tire kicking.

Yep.

You want to get them qualified?

Yeah.

So, you know, again, there's so much time and gas and expense wasted in chasing tire kickers that are like, I want to get a bit on my roof.

Sure you do.

Everybody does.

But I don't have time to drive around all day bidding everybody's roof for free.

And half of them are just planning for next year.

Yeah.

Once they see a Number they.

All right, we're close and that's not too bad.

I think the other thing is with your plan here is you don't.

This isn't somebody that's gonna have to write you a check for $20,000.

You have a monthly subscription model with this, which I'm sure you're gonna come out with.

So this isn't like you have to write a big check.

This is that month to month, like your gym membership.

Yeah, exactly, that's.

And that's again, there's a few things I know there's products out there.

There's the big boys, like I said, that are super corporate and giant.

You get 68 million data points and you pay a thousand bucks a month for it.

And it's this complex software that integrates into everything which we've taken that model, taken everything valuable in it, created it on a smaller, I wouldn't even say smaller, on a more accessible scale as a contractor.

And I won't pick on any of them, just us as contractors.

Like we do stuff with our hands.

You put a spreadsheet in front of me, my eyes glaze over.

We always hate it.

We always.

The user interface of this thing is so simple, a duck can do it.

There is no.

Now you have to connect this with the.

I'm making a point to make it literally just plug and play like so.

You techies out there don't have to be all freaked out about it.

It's pretty easy.

It's doing it all for you.

With the magic of AI, we're able to automate every client that sends you a bid goes into a mini CRM for you.

You've got all their info.

You can set up follow up email sequences.

If they don't get back to you three days later, shoot them an email automatically.

Again, pre written, pre formatted emails that are on a scheduler that go out themselves.

You' not doing any of this.

All this lead gen, you're not doing any of it.

And yeah, the pricing model is going to be cheaper than a tank of gas in, in your Yukon like per month.

Yeah.

And you're not gonna have to drive to 10 jobs.

It's.

It's a no brainer in my opinion.

It's a no brainer.

A little biased.

Not really.

Honestly, I could say if I thought it was crap, I would say it was crap.

Yeah, I was too much years in this one.

You've been testing this for a month.

I bought all those.

I bought Xactimate that integrates with my QuickBooks and it auto sends invoices and this is going to do all that, but you don't have to read a fricking encyclopedia manual to figure out how to use it.

It's already automated.

It just does it for you.

So I like to keep these to 15 minutes.

And I. I know you and I in the future are going to sit here and talk about this for probably a half hour or 45 minutes on a special show, but I thought it was great for us to get this out to people.

And then what we'll do here is just email Johnny.

I'm gonna put his email address down in the show notes here.

So that's what's cool, is it'll just be in the show notes.

So get down there.

If you're interested in chatting with him about it, you can just email him directly right there and he'll be able to walk you through it.

That's the cool part of this.

And so we're looking for people.

What, Johnny.

To help test and roll this thing out.

Absolutely, man.

All trades are welcome.

Like I said, we're adapting.

We've got the formulas and the algorithms and the fancy stuff all.

We can adapt this to anything at this point, which is also exciting for build out.

But love to get some early adopters grabbing onto this thing and going, man, this is great.

Or man, this piece sucks.

Or this really bothers me.

Or this is in the wrong spot.

Or you forgot to consider disposal of tile roofing versus disposal of asphalt shingles.

And we are considering all those things.

I'm just saying, like, getting that feedback from 10 solid contractors out there that, that are in a spot that this would make sense for them.

Love to do it.

Yeah, I'll hand you the keys and you give me your time and your feedback, man, and let's get this thing out there and running and get some people excited about it.

So hit us up.

I'm happy to jump on a zoom and kind of walk you through it.

The install takes nothing.

Like, you'll literally click a couple of buttons.

It's on your website.

Go.

And I'll help you set that up as well.

Now that I'm a web guy, too.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Please reach out, man.

John, man, thanks again, man.

This has been cool, fun to talk about it finally, because you and I have been talking about this for a long time and you've been programming on this for months.

It's nice to see this and get to this benchmark.

Yeah, man.

For sure.

I'm excited.

I'm excited.

All right, guys, if you're interested in that, just reach down at the email address in the bottom down there and send us a message and we'll get back to you and set up a meeting and go from there.

John Dudley, thanks, brother.

I appreciate you.

Have a good Tuesday.

Thanks, brother.

All right, guys, have a great rest of the week and we'll see you next week.

Thanks for tuning in to the around the House Pro Insider.

Thanks for tuning in to the around the House Pro Insider.

We are happy to be back.

Make sure you subscribe so you know to catch the next episode.

We will see you next time.

Man, I need to focus now.

What is that?