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Most contractors turn down bids they do not have time to put together. Brad Strawbridge used to do the same thing. Then he built a system that produces a full commercial sealed bid package in a day instead of the seven to ten days his old estimating team needed, and now he bids work he used to politely decline.

Brad founded Capital City Roofing in May 2024 and scaled it to a multimillion-dollar operation in about a year. He co-founded BuilderLync, an AI-driven contractor CRM, sits on the board of the Roofing Technology Think Tank, and was just accepted into the Forbes Business Council. On this show he does not talk in generalities. He shares his actual screen and builds a real bid live while an RFP sits in his inbox.

In this episode you'll learn:

• Why the first step is feeding the AI your own pricing data, your labor, your equipment, your dumpsters and lifts, so the bids come out accurate to how you actually do business instead of guessing off market averages

• How Brad turned a repeatable estimating process into a reusable skill, a detailed instruction file the AI follows the same way every single time

• The reason he tested a bid against a baseline until it scored 13 out of 13 before he ever saved it as a skill, and why an untested version only scored 7 out of 13

• How giving the AI permission to challenge him paid off when it overrode his pricing decision to protect his margin

• Why he organizes his AI workspace like a company, with a project for each department, so the AI always pulls the right context

• The moment the system caught that a set of plans was a permit set, not a sealed-bid RFP, and warned it would otherwise create compliance documents that do not exist

• How speed to proposal became his single biggest competitive edge in commercial work

• Why a brand new sales rep with zero roofing background can run appointments on day one when the scripts and objection handling are built into the system

This one is for any home service contractor who is leaving money on the table because there are not enough hours in the day to quote every opportunity.

Mentioned in this episode:

Mauricio's Calendar

Mauricio's Calendar

0:00: I recognize I was leaving a lot of opportunity on the table for a small business.

0:03: You don't make a bankrupt accuracy is the number one priority don't fabricate things the amount of time that is saved is amazing.

0:10: I wouldn't have the time to do all this it's gonna save them money and it's going to save them headaches what separates us from our competition.

0:21: This is AI and marketing for home service pros.

0:26: The show for contractors who wanna grow without wasting time or money.

0:30: If you're in roofing HVAC, plumbing or any home service business, we break down how AI and modern marketing can help you book more jobs, close more leads and build a business that runs without babysitting every task.

0:49: What's up everyone is the show home service here with the show to have you back on a couple months and excited to talk to you again the reason why I want to bring you back on speaker.

1:12: and one of the things that you talked about was AI and the importance of how to use it in their business but one of the things that you mentioned was how to how to create these tools that can help you streamline sales and operations and I wanna in this podcast I wanna get tactical and more like you see inside look of how an actual operator like Brad is using AI in his business so you can use it yourself for your business because it's very.

1:45: important to understand because people talk in generalities and this should be doing this and that but if you actually show somebody the value of this it's very important since we talked about this first time I had on the podcast we talked about how we use AI to generate a proposal and he got a deal for two months ago and a lot more advanced and done a lot of cool things since then.

2:13: Yeah let me start by saying that event that it was fantastic and it was your first event so I mean I can't imagine as they think they might be industry industry leading type of you know you already attracted some really good talent.

2:34: in that room really great conversations and things like that and you know I think you know after I presented several people came up to me and very interested, which is really encouraging for me because quite frankly the adoption of AI in the contractor space isn't where it needs to be.

2:55: but it's encouraging to see that people are starting to not fear as much maybe and realize that it can it can just help amplify the humans around you like I I don't want to replace humans the people are the best thing about my business.

3:17: I want to equip them with tools that make them more efficient, make them more productive and quite frankly give them a better work life balance and give them less stress because now they can focus on doing the things that humans can only do like build relationships and things like that so what I wanna do is walk through in real time because.

3:45: hit my inbox and so this would be perfect for any contractor and I'm a roofing contractor specifically, but this this could be universally for any trade, right?

4:00: So I mean if if you're like me and you're busy and you're running a really lean operation.

4:07: obviously you can't say yes to every opportunity you can't even entertain every opportunity and what I mean by that is I'm constantly getting you know RFP request for proposals constantly all the time.

4:23: and doing jobs like that or bidding jobs like that the numbers game right majority the lowest bidder, so you're not going to win as often if it was you know a retail job or an insurance job or or something of that nature but the more estimates you can get out there.

4:45: Right?

4:45: Even if you win a small percentage of them.

4:49: It's huge from a volume standpoint, the margin is going to be a little bit lower but it's a volume play and I recognize I was leaving a lot of opportunity on the table and so what I've done is I've used cowork specifically.

5:05: and I've come up with tools that I can very quickly estimate these projects and send in this in this bid and I kind of walk through that.

5:18: So let me let me share my screen and I will get started.

5:24: Alright, so what you should see here I've got split in the middle on the on the right is my browser and then on the left is my desktop version of cloud right?

5:35: So we go to my email and see I think it was it was a Dunkin Donuts.

5:42: So Jennifer said hey, we've had trouble having people bid on this job.

5:50: Would you like to bid on and normally.

5:54: I would probably polite I send an email you know I'm really really busy right now keep me in mind for the next one or whatever the case may be but now I can I can bid this and so and there's a lot of different platforms like this but this is called building connected right and when you make your profile on here there's a free version to make a profile when you make your profile on here as you know what trades you do all that.

6:23: And then General Contractors.

6:26: will come on here cause you know general contractor either they are bidding a job and they need subs to bid so they know where to price or once they get awarded a project they'll come on here to find their subcontractors are gonna be right and even with roofing commercial roofing that's an important thing is for commercial roofing.

6:54: for commercial roofing most commercial awards are awarded to a prime contractor right so you have to have an unlimited GC license because a lot of these jobs are you know in the millions of dollars.

7:10: I doubt is going to be you know so yeah so you make a profile on here they have your information and they'll send you emails and then once you connect with them a few times in here then they'll just email you directly and that's a good sign that you've got more of an opportunity.

7:29: building a relationship outside of just how many people so I just I just did this system started with residential commercial and I said you know what I need something for the RFP process because here's the thing.

7:55: I'm about to build to build a packet because you have to deliver most of the time.

8:02: so you literally it's old school you get you get a manila envelope.

8:07: There is specific things that you write on there you have to have a company you you get two copies of the bid which is several pages.

8:17: This is only a portion of it and you put it in here and you hand it to a deadline hand it to you sit in a room everybody opens up.

8:29: And and and and it's very interesting, , experience really if you if you haven't done it before, .

8:36: But yeah, I, I mean, I wasn't doing that many of them, but now I've got.

8:41: I've got three due next week.

8:44: , two of which are in North Carolina, .

8:49: I'm in Georgia but so so I mean one's gonna be like a million dollar roof on a prison in North Carolina and in the ring that not because you know most of the time they go with the lowest bidder as long as you meet certain criteria that in.

9:16: So what I've done is built the system to where I have let me just show me show you my Google Drive as a point of reference on how I utilize my own data to make sure.

9:35: that this is the last thing you wanna do is a commercial job.

9:40: For a for a small business it it it will make you go bankrupt so knowledge base, so this is all connected to my cloud cowork.

9:51: each little area codes had this for me.

10:06: You know we were just talking about recently you don't have to be to use these tools you can be.

10:27: So I told Hey look, this is what I want to I want to build a knowledge base of all of my customer data customer data historic pricing just go through all of my company files and get the information that you need.

11:06: it has all of the SOPs.

11:34: And so so what it's producing is accurate to how I do business right?

11:49: so once you do that that's the first steps a little bit of work setting up the context for what you want to do but they can help you set it up and that's what we've done here honestly.

12:13: I have it on a schedule to clean it up if there's where it goes, make sure there's no duplicate, etc.

12:25: So when I have a file and I don't want to figure out where I put it in inbox and then comes in here like this here.

13:07: etc.

13:27: put that there.

13:31: So I'm cowork and I go to the appropriate project right so as a business when you are using these tools like a business and think like a business and this is my opinion of a project as a department of your company right so this is a low slope roof so I'm gonna go to the division low slope commercial right here.

14:22: So you just tell it exactly what it is, right?

14:31: executive proposals interactive proposals no dollar limit warranty bids presentations for TPD, PVC modified, etc.

14:45: you'll have another area here where you kinda tell.

14:52: What are they doing?

15:07: Who you are to me?

15:11: Who I tell him who I my company?

15:17: What are we good at?

15:22: What's our strategic position?

15:27: Why are we why are we the best roofing company, right?

15:48: give you a quick and you can actually ask to do that for you and obviously give the context for you and I love you giving.

16:09: I love that I haven't heard that before it makes total sense so you are thinking about running a business if you have you know operation sales marketing you know and in this case it's commercial commercial rent whatever it is you are giving the context, the instructions and then the next thing is memory which is something separate.

16:43: without proper context it give you information but it might be just junk it might sound great maybe it's accurate maybe it's not I don't know do you know you're not sure when you set it up.

17:42: in every opportunity I can for a context area whether it's a memory or an instruction or anywhere else or I have a giant read me mark down at the root of where this lives that is a bootstrap so every time it starts it has to get that context and that's a little more advanced.

18:25: So now they've got a collaborative space.

18:38: if you set that up correctly for your coworking spaces if you make a project and then import you have three options from scratch from a folder or import if you import it from a chat project and then attach the corresponding Google Drive folder that you operate your company out of it that's a workaround for having coworking projects that people can collaborate in because now they collaborating inside of the departmental folder that's a little bit more high level for different conversation anyway my point is this is a great easy relatively easy system to use and teach people as long as it set up correctly so let's get into this thing what I do.

19:38: For the blueprint here for the Dunkin' Donuts.

19:51: I think a lot of people do at this point, but Hey buddy, here's what I wanna do.

20:03: Most likely I'm not sure I have not even read the plans yet but I have attached here.

20:25: So now I'm going to find my skill.

20:52: This is not an RFP is like for a normal you know.

21:05: This is gonna be really cool whenever I perfect it, but it's it's essentially an interactive HTML that's gonna be hosted as a subdomain on my domain and then a customer portal so I'll just be able to send a customer login link to the portal and then they will be able to pull an interactive proposal be amazing done with it but anyway.

21:40: explain what a skill.

22:21: And yeah, so it's like it's like a it's like a really really good SOP SOP for the AI so that way it does something consistently each time right recipe to following giving the AI recipe instructions.

22:52: you know I'm sure he tested it before to give the information that he wanted.

23:26: So I was just chatting and trying to come up with an idea or something or like what what's the time zone difference between here in California you know something I would use the road everyday stuff like this I found I use it a lot more often and sometimes it gets to the point where it can't compact and then and then I gotta start over so I use this one uses quite a bit more, but I think that's fine and go with the default on it.

24:23: so while that's working I'll show.

24:31: So I just did.

24:38: But this is one that I just did this is due this coming Tuesday.

24:49: the complying item so this is everything that it did.

25:15: So the amount of time that it saves is is amazing, .

25:31: You know all the all the stuff that that kind of goes along that kind of goes along with that right?

25:41: And this this one so this is where.

26:02: It would have done it would have done a 7 out of 13 so.

26:10: But then after working on it now it's so specific measurables things like that it does compliance checks local code.

26:30: and this was from a you can see laboring iteration you know I read these files and build a proposal package and I said the city hall as an example because I had it for another one which did pretty good.

27:00: I have I have trained in its memory when it ask me a question instead of just putting it in the transcript I have it ask me if you don't specifically to do it every time it only does it sometimes ask me important questions one by one in multiple choice format.

27:55: So now it can produce it, , yeah, see all this like it needed all of this.

28:09: is amazing anyway so.

28:16: Because he always comes back with a path forward a suggested path forward or next step or whatever whatever it is.

28:32: so he got a question so there are construction plans with a manual.

28:55: Que son bueno.

29:02: Is there a separate email that I do have one I could ask just to check my Gmail I'll just copy.

29:35: So dramatic.

29:46: compliance documents which are a series of very important rules that every time I say accuracy no no one in my list.

30:18: What should I typically typically stuff it's a relationship that I'm trying to I'm trying to win.

31:06: find the master price list and the customer job folder.

31:32: So it's interesting to see the logic because it sound it sound logic like the price now I'm gonna find the estimate which I exist, right?

31:58: If you look at the personality is way more agreeable you have to you have to really kind of make it not agreeable and agreeable, but you can have it more personalized can be more challenging.

32:34: What kind of taught me faster about how to use these things is is reading this right?

32:58: information and what that logic looks like on the AI side so that way you know.

33:23: The small small roof, I guess Dunkin' Donuts are small though, yeah.

34:00: Yeah, it's great.

34:04: You have to use intelligent to save time that's the main talk about the event of the main things that you improving your bottom line in terms of cost labor cost per unit per employee you have a smaller company revenue I mean especially in commercial roofing a really good estimator.

34:45: somewhere between and yeah, I mean think about it if you could.

35:05: you go measure specific things count the number of penetration things like that but you can just pay a data collector you know a much lower salary more entry level position having several.

35:36: estimator for I don't know 5 million in revenue all I did was estimate I could it could be more than I mean I could I could do one of these.

36:15: That's right, that's right and it should.

36:42: they are equipped to know exactly what to say how to overcome objections and it's up to them to memorize it, but they know exactly what to do like I I got my leadership team directors and they came from.

37:36: and I could have him selling a million to 2 million his first year just by running appointments because he's gonna have exactly what to say right anyways I'm super excited about what we're building, so we got the email right now.

38:17: Alright, so make sure that the right stuff.

38:46: Ya.

38:52: Now we're gonna look here.

39:05: GC estimator her contact info, project location, it assigns a proposal number for for my company so that way we can track it, but more importantly that that can track it summary scope of work.

39:59: the proposal important I think any type of important thing and then the second most important because this is this is like my edge, right?

40:41: and decent looking I think it's pretty good looking like holy moly how did you get this to me that fast and then that's a conversation starter and then now I can tell them who I what I involved in that I just got appointed to the board of directors for the technology and I also own a technology company and this is what we do.

41:27: it's not always about the money with them if they don't explicitly say this is low bidders then they can take they choose and they're gonna wanna choose somebody that they know is competent and is fast because if you can be competent and you can be fast it's gonna save them money and it's going to save them headaches which any service we have you have pain and I can stop you from having pain you're gonna get you know that's just the way it works in home services so so super important so there we go.

42:15: hasta son.

42:23: Que eso es un cool.

42:46: a es.

42:59: this is what I've been working on residential for residential I can put in a like a measurement whether it's a measurement or eagle or for us now builder link cause we went we went live one earlier this month so builder is live.

43:44: to the point where I'm able to use builder as just a wrapper around the data that I that I create inside inside of cloud so alright so here this is an interactive HTML and so my plan for this is every customer will get their own kind of web page right instead of sending them a PDF I'll send them a link that says log in to your custom site right they'll log in and now they've got a website that's their proposal so we grade the roof right all of that based on the same type of data engines.

44:34: Thanks for let me give you a price on the roof you know company story that's me and my lovely wife Tiffany, my business partner.

44:56: point inspection that's our inspection process.

45:11: They can talk on and off.

45:43: I don't you get it replaced creates that sense of urgency.

46:12: pricing right so I always highlights the middle of the road and then they can pick here.

46:40: If they go there it's integrated into our service finance service finance is our favorite financing company.

47:03: Industry partnerships.

47:27: it's got this really great thing that says Hey, we did all these neighbors around you don't take our word for it and take a look at look at our work right and then this will be as as they do this.

48:13: and review the contract like the terms our lifetime warranty price protection everything that they need to make a decision right then and there and they can.

48:48: another decision maker.

49:16: Hope you guys see the value of this basically what you are doing is speeding up your sales process also improving assuming you closing at the important in your business doing this.

49:54: what he did is he actually did this several times before like I don't know several times perfect and then and then basically he did that to create the skill that's all it is not that complicated guys to learn but basically once you've done this process a few times right you you create the skill based on what output you are looking for and then based on what you are looking for you can actually make changes.

50:29: Yeah that's that's basically the only thing that was missing but you see the output, right?

50:48: Yeah and here this is the skill file for the for the residential version so it tells it exactly what to do it tells them what deliverables to produce it's always the speaker scripts right that that's super cool tell where to save it content rules.

51:21: Ah.

51:28: The the workflows this is how.

51:36: Audit the output before iteration, audit the layout deliver scope of work, locked steps.

52:12: CRM do much more to go.

53:30: and then capital city roofing we have a licensing platform right so if you are interested in starting a roofing company you don't know how we help you will give you all the tools, all the technology all the resources all the credentials will answer your phone will book your appointments will do your accounting and your bookkeeping and all that because we own an accounting agency and we own a staffing agency and we own a marketing agency so we do all the stuff in house for you.

54:24: Thanks for listening to AI and marketing for home service pros.

54:32: Follow the show, share it with the contractor friend and leave a quick review help using AI or smarter marketing to grow your business.