5 FREE Contracting Apps You Should Be Using In 2022

what’s up future legacy makers in this

video we teamed up with our team of

contractors in our community and we

compiled a list of five contracting apps

that not only help you stay on the

cutting edge of the contracting industry

they also simplify your business and

allow you to spend more time with your

family while also putting money in your

pocket let’s get right into it first on

the list is going to be next door so if

you haven’t heard of nextdoor before

nextdoor is a social networking platform

based around communities the whole thing

is incredible for networking especially

for small businesses they’ve taken on

this whole new angle next door for local

business the best place to reach

neighborhoods that matter to your

business this is fantastic because

recently i’ve had a lot of conversations

with contractors and what i kept hearing

over and over is

i want quality leads

but i don’t want to drive very far to

get there i don’t i don’t want to have

to put aside family time for travel time

and that makes sense the problem isn’t

going outside of your area it’s finding

the good leads in your area so this app

will help you with that you can come in

here claim your free business page

work through all this create your own

account and it’s all entirely free from

there you can post and you can engage

with the community

the idea being that next door is not

your saving grace but having the mindset

shift from i’m paying for leads from

somebody else to no no i’m doing this

myself i’m self-reliant my business is

going to be run by me

and taking ownership of your business

and taking control of your leads

that’s the mindset shift that will

happen once you start to get into

communities and create your own leads

rather than buying them the next app

that we have came highly recommended

from contractors is joist joist is an

awesome little app mainly built around

estimating and invoicing clients so this

is a really cool way to do it it’s all

powered through paypal if we go into the

pricing here you’ll see the free version

along with a couple of upgrades as well

so you’ll have these down the line but

right off the bat with the starter pack

you get unlimited estimates invoices and

clients this is awesome this is a good

way to just get your feet wet with this

kind of stuff if if you’re going through

and you have no idea how to price your

jobs this at least gives you some

consistency because what you don’t want

to be doing is just guessing every

single time it’s not replicable it’s it

does not make sense it’s not a firm way

to do your business

also just aesthetically it’s it’s a much

cleaner way to do this when you’re going

for consultations and that kind of thing

it it makes your business look a lot

more professional

it can be used for estimating invoices

payments homeowner financing client

management and quickbooks sync

one thing that i think often gets

skipped over with this is the client

management side of things

as you get bigger you’re going to want

to get a crm and we have a couple

recommendations for those but when

you’re smaller it sometimes can be hard

to justify that cost but you should have

all your stuff tracked if you are not

following up with clients like you

should be these are leads that are going

cold just because you aren’t nurturing

them a crm is a great way for you to be

stress free and kind of keep it a little

bit of an organization there so i love

the fact that joyce has a client

management aspect to it as well

all for

free like that’s an incredible package

now this video has been helpful to you

so far go ahead and like that thing

because really what we’re trying to do

is upload the entire contracting

industry and you liking it tells youtube

it’s a good video it spreads out to more

contractors let’s do this thing together

okay back to it number three

facebook now i know what you’re thinking

i’m not an idiot i know you know about

facebook the problem is you aren’t using

facebook right

let me show you an example here i’m

going to use ryan kelly from khb i just

happen to have his facebook pulled up

right now and i know this dude’s solid

so he’s gonna have all this stuff right

so on his personal we see a lot of

friendly stuff um stuff business related

he’s posting stuff from the company this

is really cool he’s making his own

content posting it then we go to his

business account and what we see we have

uh

we have a design inspiration post nine

comments ten shares before and after

post

kitchen update so when a client comes in

they see that you’re active and they get

a vibe for who you are this is perfect

this is what you want to see

it may seem like a small thing but

really truly when you think about how

people buy and you think about how you

decide to buy you want somebody who’s

trustworthy you want somebody who’s who

you would naturally get along with you

like to buy from people who are people

facebook gives us this incredible

opportunity to show that remember

you are not appealing to yourself a lot

of times your ideal client

is

moms

they eat this stuff up truly

the second thing you need to be doing is

you need to be joining contractor groups

community is everything a lot of

contractors i talk to they say well i’m

kind of trying to

to move up and to market myself in

advance and like i don’t want to be

stuck at this forever but everybody

around me seems like they’re very

complacent they say well i’m just going

to do things the old way i don’t really

care for any of that marketing stuff

it’s all a scam i like to keep it old

school

if you are in that toxic environment

where everybody’s just trying to keep

you at a certain level nobody rising

above everybody let’s let’s all just

stay at mediocre race to the bottom

that seriously will affect you you need

to find yourself a community of

like-minded contractors who will

continue to challenge you to be better

we have two recommendations for that

the first recommendation is the shinfu

sales mastermind this is awesome this is

a group of contractors talking about how

learning how to sell the right way to

learning how to sell so it’s not scammy

or weird or awkward but just really

trying to problem solve with clients and

figure out like what really is the

motivation and when you can connect with

somebody like that

then you can really start to

sell while we’re shooting the vid bro

sorry guys won’t happen again

great chris what do you have to say

about the importance of community okay

go ahead all right so simply put the

value of community is huge

entrepreneurship is very mental as well

and if you are surrounding yourselves or

you get jaded by bad experiences this

gives you a good like

sounding board to get back to where you

want to be

also you’re not alone and so you can

recognize hey that this problem that

you’re dealing with right now someone

has also dealt with it beforehand and

the problems that you you know just got

out of someone is gonna be dealing with

in the future and you feel a lot of

sense of pride being able to help people

out and give them some guidance to get

them out of their rut that they’re

currently in you know there’s an african

proverb that says if you want to travel

fast

travel you know uh alone if you want to

travel far

travel together and i think that that’s

a huge part of it all right sorry about

breaking up your video i apologize that

was awesome you’re natural

okay number four we kind of have a combo

here it’s the google workspace so this

includes drive sheets calendar

everything like that

is all part of your google workspace

this is exactly what we have set up here

at cgn and a lot of our clients use it

as well the point is to make

communication between your team

incredibly easy and give yourself a firm

footing to build on

right off the bat for free just with a

google account you get 15 gigabytes of

free storage to share with your team if

you’re a one-person team and you and you

don’t have a big team to share with you

can still use this for centralizing all

of your docs and files and everything

keep it all in one spot keep yourself

organized and then if you if there are

other contractors you want to share this

with or something like that it makes it

super easy

this is a no brainer seriously if you do

not have this set up for your company

right now you need to be google sheets

alone will help you so much because

you’ve got to be tracking your numbers

you need to know your numbers if you’re

going to set this up the right way and

the very simplest form of this is google

sheets

another thing about this that a lot of

people do not utilize

is that because it’s free and a lot of

people use this you can often find

crowdsourced templates or google sheet

templates like if you just google pnr

google sheets template

you’ll find a bunch of different

examples here that you can use for your

own sheet that’s somebody else who’s way

better at sheets made and that’s true

for all of their stuff all the

everything in here but sheets especially

find yourself a template get your stuff

done right track those numbers because

what gets tracked improves okay and last

on the list i guarantee you have not

seen this on another contracting apps

list

it is grammarly

grammarly is a free extension that you

can download to your computer and it

will help you when writing emails

sending facebook messages everything

like that to make sure that any spelling

errors are telling apart there and there

and there you’re you’re you’re

wait how many of yours are there just

two an apostrophe after the s or

apostrophe before the us and sometimes

it’s possessive or all that stuff don’t

worry about grammarly’s got you covered

this isn’t so important because it not

only cleans up your image but it

literally changes your value in the

client’s eyes the idea is to not get

nitpicky with all your stuff you say

well my clients don’t care about all

that if your intention is to charge 50

gross profit margin

the only way that happens is if your

client views you

as somebody who’s worth that much or a

company that’s professional enough to be

worth that much

that does not align with spelling errors

simple comma things

but at the same time i don’t think you

should have to be worried about those as

well

grammarly makes it incredibly simple you

just download it and then naturally

let’s say if i’m going to write an email

right now

i’ll come to your

i’ll come to your house around

10.

grammarly immediately recognizes it

gives you the easy button to switch it

don’t let yourself be worried about that

stuff or immediately after you send a

proposal over as soon as you hit send

you’re like oh shoot i messed up that

one thing

get yourself grammarly and just

forget about it honestly put it on your

browser forget about it it will

highlight the stuff for you just go

through make sure you review it before

you hit that send button

and that’s just one of the ways to help

you with this 50 gross profit if you are

still having trouble with getting 50

gross profit jobs check out this video

there are tons of other things that we

can get you with started with but just

start here this video right here is

going to be incredibly helpful for every

time you hear those words of can you

lower your price

check this out