Pricing for Profit: Guiding Your Concrete Business into 2025
As we turn the page on 2024 and look toward a fresh start, every concrete artisan faces one big question: How do you price your craft so your business truly thrives? In this episode, we’ll clarify the path ahead—examining fair pricing strategies, tackling the quirks of using CementAll for countertops, and understanding the new ICT Fusion Sealer. Along the way, we’ll also share a rare year-end opportunity: buy 2 pallets of Maker Mix or RadMix before December 31st and score a free 5-pad diamond sanding set, a smart move that offsets taxable income and sets you up right. So settle in, take a breath, and let’s ensure your artistry and your balance sheet align as you step confidently into 2025.
Upcoming Workshops:
- RammCrete Workshop: January 11th–12th in Goddard, KS
- Basics Fundamentals Workshop: February 1st–2nd in Goddard, KS. Register now at Concrete Design School!
#ConcretePodcast #SmallBusinessTips #PricingStrategies #ConcreteCrafts #DecorativeConcrete #MakerMix #BusinessEconomics #CraftsmanTools #SelfDevelopment
TRANSCRIPT
Hello, Jon Schuler.
Hello, Brandon Gore.
What do you think about these UFOs?
I don't know, man.
I mean, all the ones that they're finding over New Jersey and all that, lately.
Yeah, New Jersey, North Carolina, all over the place.
The videos are crazy.
Do I think it's the government?
I don't know.
But I saw one yesterday where this drone was going around an orb, and it got close to it, and then it got like zapped, and it dropped out of the sky.
Did you see that video?
I saw one like that, but I also saw where, I guess it was in New York, and man, one of the cops, this drone was the size of a fricking filing cabinet.
It was massive.
Yeah.
It was huge.
I saw that one too.
Yeah, who knows?
So I don't know.
Who knows?
But more crazy than that is this willow chip that Google has unveiled, the quantum computing.
And I think you probably heard about it, that it solved an equation in five minutes.
It would take 25 quadrillion years, longer than the universe has been in existence to solve.
The world's fastest supercomputer.
It would take longer than the universe has been in existence.
And this computer did it in less than five minutes.
And they said that this proves, Google said this, this proves, or at least they theorize, that multiverses exist because it must be drawing energy from parallel universes to do what it did.
Yeah.
It like hurts.
Oh my god.
I mean, yeah.
All this stuff.
I mean, my brain like spins.
When you start thinking about the Hedron Collider and how that made us jump timelines like Berenstain Bears and, you know, Fruit of the Loom, the Cornucopia, like all these things, like we remember them, but now they don't exist.
And people like, this proves like we're jumping timelines and timelines are shifting and, I don't know.
We're living in a crazy time.
That's all I know.
Well, we're always in a crazy time.
Especially right now.
I don't know what the end game is with any of this stuff, because at the end of the day, like, you know, we just got done with an election and, you know, we blah, blah, blah.
You know, at the end of the day, man, I'm just still trying to make sure my mortgage is paid.
You know, car payments made, food on the table.
My kids are happy.
You know, the house is warm.
We're not getting rained on.
That's all my more immediate pressing concerns.
I think in the day, it's all we can really worry about.
We can't worry about, you know, we can't worry about the computers taking over and us becoming extinct.
The next life form being silicon and biologics fade in a way.
It could happen.
Like iRobot.
Well, like Terminator.
Yeah, I mean, that's it was Terminator.
Well, a warning to civilization of what was to come.
Maybe.
I don't know.
But maybe I feel like we're dabbling in things we shouldn't be dabbling in.
And we're opening Pandora's box when the repercussions are completely unknown to humans of what this could cause.
But who knows?
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe it's going to be beautiful.
It's going to it's going to open up this golden age where things are solved and drugs are created that cure cancer and, you know, poverty is erased.
Yeah, I mean, who knows?
This could be the greatest thing ever or could be the worst thing ever.
I think it could go either way right now.
Or like we're at the very real stages that could go left or could go right.
And I think it I think what it's going to come down to is what is going to be the driving force?
Is money going to be the driving force or is the good of humanity going to be the driving force?
That's going to determine which way it goes.
Agreed.
And that's going to be dictated by who's controlling it or in charge of it and what their goals are.
Yeah, I agree.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
But enough about that.
Let's see here.
A couple things.
Let me hit real quick, Jon.
Rammcrete.
Rammcrete!
January 11th and 12th, Goddard, Kansas.
Come join us.
concretedesignschool.com.
I was just talking to Wade about that.
He's excited.
He's coming out.
Yeah.
I was just talking to Wade this morning about Transcendental Meditation.
I'll tell you about that in a minute.
But Rammcrete!
January 11th and 12th, Goddard, Kansas.
It's not just concrete, man.
The conversations we all have are...
All right.
Go ahead.
And then after that, February 11th, sorry, February 1st and 2nd, we have a Basics Fundamentals Workshop, again, here in Goddard.
Go to Concrete Design School.
That's going to be a beginner's class.
That's going to be a good first step.
So if you're interested in concrete, you want to learn the very basics so you get off on the right foot.
You're not making mistakes.
That's the class to come to.
Very cost effective and it's going to get you off in the right direction.
So Concrete Design School.
Yeah, so Wade, he called me this morning.
We were chatting and you know, he's just telling me like he's stressed out.
He's got a lot of stuff going on.
And I know how that is.
And I was telling him, I went to Transcendental Meditation.
It's called TM, Tom Mary for short, Transcendental Meditation class years ago when I lived in Phoenix.
And I used to meditate twice a day, 15 minutes, twice a day for a long time.
And then I just got busy, I got busier and I stopped doing it, which is the worst thing to do.
You shouldn't stop doing it, get busier.
You should keep doing it.
That's when you should be doing it.
But just recently I've gotten back into it and I'm doing it once a day, but 15 minutes once a day.
When I get to my shop, it's quiet.
I don't have any distractions.
And I got a little hourglass 15 minute timer.
So it's a silent timer.
And I meditate for 15 minutes.
So I was telling him about it.
So I think he's gonna sign up for a class and start doing Transcendental Meditation, so.
Right on.
Yeah.
Yep.
I try to do that, but by the time I break out the lotion and...
Dude, meditation, meditation, it's really good.
So Transcendental Meditation, look it up sometime.
It's interesting.
It was a...
I'm actually reading it right now as we're talking.
Yeah.
What I like about Transcendental Meditation, besides some of the stuff, Maharishi, this guy, this yogi, he's the one who brought this around in the 60s or 70s to the United States.
But it's been heavily researched by universities, by medical.
There's a lot of clinical studies on Transcendental Meditation and a lot of science that backs up its benefits and its legitimacy of it's actually doing something, right?
And so what they've done, and it works great with children.
A lot of schools teach Transcendental Meditation to children and the children are able to meditate and it really helps them control their emotions and energy and behavior.
You know, they're much more-
Well, health in general, yeah.
Yeah, they're much more grounded and not bouncing off the walls.
But the best way to describe it, and this is what I was telling Wade, and this is the way they described to me when I went to the class, is, you know, your mind is, your subconscious and your conscious is totally bouncing up and down, up and down.
And think of like a submarine in the ocean.
It comes up and it goes down, and it comes up and it goes down.
And when you meditate, you're trying to sink down to the bottom of the ocean and just sit on the bottom in the submarine.
But then a thought pops up, you know, it's like, hey, I gotta buy groceries.
And you're coming up out of your zen state.
But then you focus back on the meditation, you come back down and you rest on the bottom.
And then you're there, and you know when you're there.
And it's just like, you're just there, like in the void.
And then it's like, did I leave the stove on?
And so, you know, and then you gotta like focus on your meditation, back down again.
And that's what meditation is.
And it's just the constant refocusing on being in the zen neutral, the void of like no thought, nothing.
And they track the brain scans of people.
And so there's all these different brain levels, but REM sleep is typically, you know, deep sleep.
But there's a lower brain wave level, which is trans-adrenaline meditation, which is even a deeper rest than REM sleep.
So, and they can see this on brain waves when people are meditating.
And so your brain actually goes into a deeper rest.
And so that's what's great about it is for people like us, small business owners, is it gives you, you know, if you do it 15 minutes, you're supposed to do it twice a day.
I'm doing it once a day.
But it gives your brain some deep rest that's much needed.
You know, I know you sent me a text that you're running late this morning because you didn't fall asleep before in the morning.
So, you know, if you can get a small little brief window each day where your mind can completely rest just for a minute, I think it's good.
So.
Agreed.
Yep.
All right.
100%.
Well, I got a list of things here.
All kinds of interesting topics to talk about.
The first one, cement all.
Cement all in concrete countertops.
And I guess somebody posted a question somewhere.
I don't know.
You can tell me which form.
I'm not sure which one, but somebody posted a question about issues with CementAll in countertops.
You said that they were having cracking or curling.
What was the issue they're having?
Yeah, I'm going to it right now.
It's actually, this is on Martin's concrete countertops, furniture and artwork.
And someone was asking about cement all, specifically related to they made some countertops, they precast some countertops pieces, and they thought maybe it's because the cold temperature that they were having, the slabs crack.
They had to throw them out, start over, buy some more bags and etc.
So that was kind of the, I'm going to send the general basis of the question.
And then quite a few people came in with various answers related to using, again, cement all and temperatures and whether or not you add some of the retarder which we all know is the salt.
So anyway, but you know what I found interesting is, except for Rich Doud, nobody really came in with the, like again, this isn't about shaming anybody, but for me, my first response, and I ended up just not posting it because I mean, whatever, like why are you using cement all?
And that's a legit question.
It's a legit question, but before we even go there, because I guess my wife saw that post, because she asked me about it, we went to breakfast this morning, and she asked, what is cement all?
I was like, well, it's a rapid set cement that's mainly used for patching, that's its main use.
And she's like, well, somebody asked a question about using it in concrete countertops.
I'm like, yeah, I know some people use it.
And she's like, why is it cheaper?
I'm like, no, it's not cheaper.
And she's like, why did I do it?
I'm like, I don't know.
I mean, I honestly don't know why.
Because unless you're trying to turn a piece in three hours, which nobody is, unless you're trying to do that, there's not a whole lot of benefits, but a whole lot of downsides.
So that's my short answer of what is cement all, but how would you describe cement all and why would somebody use it?
Well, that's funny.
I'm actually on the cement all website.
Because see, I'm along the same path.
And I'll be honest with you, I don't, the only benefit I could possibly come up with is, this would be a product probably readily available at what, a Home Depot or Lowe's or an Ace Hardware or something like that, as opposed to using products that actually have been designed around making countertops, making actual durable surface.
And according to CTS, RapidSet, sorry, go ahead.
I was gonna say, but people, the downside is people don't use it just on its own.
You have to modify it.
So at that point, the thought of I can get it locally, well, you can't get the other ad mixes locally that you need to modify it with.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, so for general and structural concrete repair, dally and anchoring, industrial grouting, formwork.
Anyway, so now I've told this before and I do, I actually talked to these guys with the CTS Rapid Set.
They just kind of shake their heads at it, because they don't really understand it either.
Meaning that, I don't know, it's probably going to upset some people.
I realize that if you add water to this particular product, I do realize that it's going to get hard.
And I do realize if you put it in a form, you could call it whatever you want.
You know what I mean?
You can make a block out of it.
You certainly can put it out flat at an inch thick and use it for whatever your discretion calls for.
But the reality of this is, just based on what it is, it's not really going to give you the durable surfaces that you're looking for.
And that is not a downer to me.
It is just the way it is.
That's like getting pissed off in my opinion that my diesel truck only runs on diesel.
Oh, I can't believe it.
I want to fill it with gas.
Well, it's not made for gas.
I did that once by the way.
It's made for diesel.
I did that once.
I think we've all made that mistake at some point.
I did it when I was working for a company and we stopped by, I'm like, oh yeah, filled the whole damn side tanks up with gas.
You know, you're not going to use, I mean, use the proper tools.
That's what I would say to anybody.
If we haven't all learned that lesson yet, I still believe with some situations, for a lot of people, concrete is concrete, sacri to work, why not cement all, why not it?
But if you look at the people who continue to be successful, we've definitely moved on.
We've moved away from your basic blended GFRC mixes, meaning blending them ourselves and realize that these other additives really do have benefit, increases the total durability of what we're trying to achieve, the color saturation, anyway, the quality, blah, blah, blah.
Density, abrasion resistance, stain resistance.
Overall, we keep learning and learning and learning.
One side of me, that's what I just felt like saying, man.
But again, who knows who knows who convinced them to even run with this?
You know, cement all and that's why you say, hey, I've done it in the past and it seemed to work.
Well, there's lots of things I did in the past and it seemed to work, but that doesn't mean it's right.
You know, as I think I told you the other day, didn't I?
Yeah, I called you.
Remember I was pissed.
We were Costco.
I won't go into that.
But you know, this is one of those situations.
I don't completely understand, but I'm willing anybody, you know, this is not meant to be putting anybody down.
Throw them at me.
Give me the benefits of cement all and what you're gaining by using this product because for guy who's been doing this for 25 years.
And same, I started with SAKRETE.
I get it.
You know, that's what I didn't know any better.
But now, you know, over all these years, there is undeniably an expectation out of product.
And that has to do with durability and etc, etc.
That, you know, these kind of products, first of all, were never intended for.
And just because they can add water and they will get hard, doesn't mean they're going to be durable.
I mean, they're made for patching materials.
So but again, I'll digress, please anybody.
I'm not saying this to put anybody down.
Hit me with the benefits.
Why you think it's amazing to use it.
And you know, and again, maybe you'll open my eyes.
I'm okay with that.
Yeah.
Well, I think time is the only, the only thing in the pro box versus the con box, because the color is inconsistent.
The color is not good.
It's, it's a...
Oh, even CTS rep has said that the guys will all tell that.
Yeah.
They can't, they can't maintain, you know, let's say they have a spec and the spec of that window is huge.
Just so we all know.
Yeah.
It's like a topey, brownish, tannish color.
But it, the people that have used it, that I know of, have consistent curling issues, cracking issues.
They have a lot of issues because again, like the CTS guys have said, this isn't what it's designed for.
It's designed for patching.
It's designed for anchoring.
It's designed for industrial grouting.
It's not designed to cast thin slabs for sinks, countertops, furniture, tile, things like that.
And so the people that I know that use it, we've talked to a few of them on the podcast, at least one of them, I think maybe more, but they're modifying it with Kodiak Pro or some other pozzolans and different things to try to make it work better, right?
But at that point, so to go back to your initial theory of why somebody would want to use cementol is, well, I can get it at Lowe's.
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But the things you're gonna need to buy to modify it, they don't carry them at Lowe's or Ace.
So again, if that's your reasoning, but then you have to order in stuff from who knows where, whether it's us or some other companies, you're still ordering in stuff.
So at that point, why not just order in the correct stuff for the application you're doing and cut out all the issues that you're having, I guess is my thought.
Well, yeah, I guess that's, I'm back.
That would bring me full circle.
As I'm reading some of these posts, you're absolutely right.
Guys are adding, you know, quarts of liquid-based polymers or they're adding dry polymers.
And anyway, they're adding things that you're not going to find at Lowe's.
So if you're going to that end and you're trying to modify this for what you're trying to achieve, I still say at the end of the day, at least in my experience, I have learned just to, then just get the products that were designed for this use.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
I'm not going to try to, on my own, take a piece of coal and turn it into a diamond.
If I really want to get a diamond, I just go get a diamond.
Well.
You know what I mean?
I mean, but people that are patching a parking lot, we wouldn't say use Kodiak Pro.
It's not the right product for that.
If you're going to patch a parking lot, then get some mental.
Like if you got to do a patch, then get this.
If you got to do this, then get the material for the application that was designed for, that the raw ingredients going to it are specified for that use.
Yeah.
Again, I'm just putting out there, anybody listen to this podcast, this is not me or Brandon trying to be negative on anybody using CementAll.
But I am curious to see what the true benefits overall that are achieved in the experience because again, I do know a couple of guys or people which seem to have nice businesses, and that is what they're using.
But I want to hear the pros and cons from everybody, not just, well, I'm using it because it's faster.
Well, okay, because legitimately I saw this, and again, I think what she does, a lot of her stuff is cool.
But I was looking at the sink and using the CementAll, oh my gosh, man, it was so chipped up.
I was like, oh, so to repair that, I was like, what did that cost you in time and energy if you would have just used another product that, you know, that one of these downsides to this particular product, that that wasn't it?
I don't know.
So I guess that's what I'm saying.
That's interesting to me, but in this case, my answer would have been to this person, look, just get after some products that are gonna work much better for what you're trying to achieve, and ultimately you're probably gonna be happier with your end product from both the casting point of view, because now we're just talking about the concrete, all the way through the sealing point of view.
Because that's the other part of this whole equation.
Nobody is just casting the concrete and using the raw concrete as their surfaces.
So that's the next part of the conversation, is the substrate, because now the concrete just becomes the substrate.
And I guess, if you're looking for an epoxy-coated or whatever the case may be, then sure.
But sealing technologies becomes a big part of the conversation when you talk about using whatever you're using as the substrate.
And substrate meaning, I'm saying the concrete mixes.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, we can take this conversation to two places.
So I have a list here.
One of them is Fusion.
You've had a lot of people contacting you, still not 100% certain what Fusion is or why they should use it and when they should use it, when they shouldn't use it.
And then the other thing I have here is pricing.
I think it's something we should hit.
End of the year, we're getting ready to start a new year.
I think it's a good conversation.
And how this kind of ties into that is you're talking about time and how some person you know of, that's the benefit, as they say, you can do it quicker.
And time is definitely a factor.
But at the end of the day, nobody's forming, casting, processing and sealing in one day.
You know, you're going to form maybe casting day, but probably not because if you're going to silicone all your edges, it's going to be the next day.
You need to let the silicone cure overnight.
And then you're going to mix, you're going to cast.
By that time, you're like, yeah, I'm going to call it a day.
I'm not going to sit here for three hours and try to demold this and process it.
You know, I'm going to call it a day, I'm going to let this cure.
And the next day you're going to come in and then you're going to do it.
So, there's a certain cadence to this where, I mean, there's been a few instances in my life, I did this Breezeway Block Project years ago and I worked with you to essentially develop an ingredient to kick the mix.
Yeah, so we could cast three times a day and that was hell, bro.
That was hell as far as just we were exhausted, but we had to do it for that project.
But I would never voluntarily do that.
Like it wasn't something that anybody enjoyed.
It was pure hell, but it had to be done for that project.
But other than that, like there's no benefit to it as far as speed, you know, like demold today or demold tomorrow.
There's very few instances you need to demold the same day.
And if that is the case, in the case of the Breezeway Blocks, it's because this client went with the different concrete company that botched the project, they had a year to do the project, they didn't do anything.
And after a year, when the client finally called them and said, hey, where are these 1,806 Breezeway Blocks?
I said, you know what?
We just gave up, they kept breaking.
We just gave up.
But they didn't feel the need to tell the client.
Yeah, so the client freaked out and they'd originally spec'd me on the plans, but I was too expensive.
And then they called me up and I'm like, well, it's gonna be a lot more expensive now because you need me to do this in six weeks, right?
What you gave this other guy a year to do, you want me to do in six weeks, the price skyrocketed.
And so they paid the original guy his price, he didn't do it, this dude in Arizona.
Then it came to me, my price quadrupled from what originally was, but we got it done, but the cost was way higher.
But I guess my point is, that's very rare.
I've been doing this over two decades.
That's really the only project where we needed speed.
Every other project I've done in two decades has not been that tight of a deadline.
Yeah, I agree.
Again, I'm in the same boat.
For me, and again, I'm willing to hear anybody say different.
The only thing that I've seen where speed or turnaround often became important, at least in what I do, is ceiling.
Meaning, again, I told the story a while back.
I certainly wasn't an expectation, but still do quite a bit of cast in place.
Or the last project I delivered right before the Thanksgiving holiday, knowing within a very short window, like hours, no more than 24 hours, you have a surface going into full use.
And so, sealers become a little bit of an Achilles heel in certain situations, depending on what sealer choice you use.
And that, for me, kind of wraps up the whole, you know, what you're using is the substrate, et cetera, et cetera.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, let's take this conversation pricing first.
Let's talk about pricing.
Then for that, we can talk about Fusion.
Sure.
But pricing.
Okay.
So we're going into 2025.
This might be the last podcast of the year.
I don't know.
We'll see, because next week is Christmas.
So maybe we do a podcast next week, but I know you're taking some time off.
We'll do it from the North Pole.
Yeah, we could.
But this might be the last podcast of the year.
We might do one before the year, we might not.
We'll see.
Depends on schedule.
But I think pricing is something that we're all thinking about.
The economics of concrete is something that we're all thinking about.
This last year, for me personally, has just been a very tough year as far as being a small business.
My experience is talking to other businesses, that's a shared consensus.
This last year for everybody has just been a slog of a year.
Really, the last couple of years have just been a tough economic environment.
Post-COVID, everything has just been much more difficult than it has been pre-COVID.
But I'm hopeful, I think everybody's hopeful, that 2025 is going to, we're going to turn a page and hopefully things will start to shift gears back into construction, starting to take off more like it was and-
More joy, is that what you're saying?
Yeah, joyful warriors.
Joyful warriors.
Turn the page.
Yep, yep.
So I'm hopeful, I'm hopeful.
And I'm feeling it.
I've had clients contact me for some very ambitious projects, which makes me feel like the energy is shifting with architects and designers, where now they're saying, you know, yeah, let's move forward with this.
Before they were sitting on their hands, they're not doing it.
Now it seems like they're starting to move forward.
So pricing is something we should talk about.
I'm just gonna give you some general guidelines.
And this isn't set in stone, but this is just based on my experience.
And again, my experience talking to other companies around the United States of where I think most companies should be to be profitable.
So for concrete sinks, countertops, tile, whatever, $150 to $250 a square foot is what I would say should be the general range per square foot.
And you might say, well, that seems really high.
Yeah, it's not really $150 a square foot.
You know, if a kitchen is 40 square feet, that's $6,000 for 150 square foot.
That's not obscene, right?
$150 a square foot.
If I did this tile project not long ago for this church and I should have charged $150, it was way more work than a countertop, but I was way less than that.
And I was upside down.
I lost my butt on that project.
I ended up working my hands to the bone, getting the stuff done.
And at the end of the day, I essentially did it for free and took money out of my pocket because it cost me money to do it at the end of the day.
It just is what it is.
And it's because I wasn't charging to correct them out.
So $150 to $250 is the range that you should really be aiming for.
The pushback I hear from people, especially people that maybe are one man shop working on the garage or whatever, are like, that seems really, really high and blah, blah, blah.
And I'm like, what's your time worth?
$20 bucks an hour.
We actually had a person we interviewed on this podcast, that their time was worth $20 bucks an hour.
So they told us $20 bucks an hour.
Sure.
Chick-fil-A I think starts at $22.
I don't know.
Something like that, right?
So $20 bucks an hour in 2025 is ridiculous.
I couldn't hire a kid out of high school to work in my shop for $20 bucks an hour now.
Like, it's not going to happen.
So your time as a business owner is worth way more than $20 bucks an hour.
Now, I did this exercise years ago where we looked at our expenses.
We looked at what's the cost of the shop?
What's the cost of utilities?
What's the cost of insurance?
What's the cost that I need to make?
What are my expenses?
My personal expenses?
What's my mortgage?
What's my car payment?
Blah, blah, blah.
What do I need to make a month?
Insurance, yeah.
Exactly.
If I have employees, what is my annual cost on employees?
All those kinds of things.
And then I calculated that if we worked 40 hours a week, we need to make, this was years ago, this is back when I was in Tempe, Arizona, we needed to make $325 an hour every single hour that I'm running to pay the bills and to put a little bit, not a lot, but put a little bit into the profit column, right?
So pay my employees, pay myself, pay for my shop, pay for my insurance, pay for taxes, pay for all the stuff.
And then take a little bit and put it over here in quote unquote profit that's beyond that, that we can actually kind of build a little bit of a fund, you know?
So if there's ever anything that goes sideways or there's a slow period, you have money to survive on.
Those $325 an hour is where I needed to be.
Now, it's gone up since then.
Cost have gone up.
That was many, that was probably, that was at least 10, if not 15 years ago, we did that exercise.
So it's actually longer than that because it was Arizona.
So it's been a long time.
So I would highly recommend that you do that.
Now, there's a book called Profit First for Contractors by Shawn Van Dyke.
Great book, great audio book.
Buy that book, do the exercises.
He goes through this.
He does it much better than I'm doing it.
He's much better at breaking it down, the science of you need to get a handle on your cost, not my cost, not Jon's cost, not Joe Bates cost, your cost.
What are your costs?
You need to get a handle on that.
Because when I say $150, $250 square foot, Joe Bates, if he was at $250, he'd probably go upside down.
Yeah, he'd lose pretty quickly.
Yeah, so $250 for some people is not gonna break even.
So his cost, because he's in Napa, California and the cost of employees there is incredibly high.
The cost of workman's comp is incredibly high.
The cost of everything is incredibly high.
He needs to be more than $250.
So you need to get a handle on your cost.
Do that exercise, get a handle on your cost, understand markup, understand margin, understand how to price your products in such a way that you're not gonna lose money on it.
And that's gonna be the basis.
But I would say most people, if you do that exercise, you buy that book, you go through all the exercises and get your numbers, I'm gonna bet you're gonna be 150 to 250 square foot.
And then the question I get from a lot of people is they'll call me up and say, well, okay, so that's for countertops and things like that.
How about sinks?
Well, sinks, I do the same thing.
I still do in the square footage.
So let's say the sink is six feet by two feet, right?
So 12 square feet.
So I'll do 12 times $150, okay?
But each basin, so there's basins.
If it's a standard sink, I'm $1500 per basin, meaning this is a mold I have on the shelf.
And I have quite a few molds on the shelves of sinks I've made in the past that I have a mold for.
So if they use one of those, it's $1500 per basin.
If it's a custom sink, I'm $3000 per basin, minimum.
If it's a crazy, sometimes I do huge sinks.
I've done sinks that are 15 feet long.
If it's a 15 foot sink, it's way more than $3000 bucks, right?
Because that's a massive sink mold to build.
But if it's just a normal sink, but it's a custom sink, I'm going to spend a week longer working on the form.
It's $3000 per basin on top of the square footage price.
The square footage price is my price for the concrete.
That's my price for the concrete.
That's my price to process the concrete.
That's my price to seal the concrete.
The price for the basin is for the functionalities, for me to spend the time to put that form in and do all that kind of stuff.
So $1500 for standard, $3000 plus for custom per basin.
Okay, so that's how you calculate.
So your concrete plus that.
And then when it comes to furniture, it's going to really come down to time.
With furniture, you're going to need to sit down and you're going to need to be realistic.
We're never realistic.
We're always way more optimistic than we are realistic.
We think, man, I could build that form in, I don't know, 12 hours.
36 is probably more like it.
Man, I could cast that in, I don't know, like three hours.
It's probably going to be like seven.
Man, I think I could get that thing processed and sealed in like two hours.
I literally just went through that exact exercise with that last vanity I did.
Yeah.
Exactly.
It was going to be a ramp sink, but he wanted a totally different design.
In my head, before I even started this thing, I'm like, oh man, that's going to take me maybe two hours and a piece of plywood, I'll have that knocked out, this is going to look amazing.
No, that didn't work.
It never does.
It didn't work at all.
Yeah.
Before I knew it, sorry, I'm hijacking what you're saying.
Before I knew it, in my mind, had this whole thing laid out, this is going to be a quickity dickity melamine, you know what I mean, with four sides, and then wham bam, thank you ma'am.
I'm going to, as we've been talking about, using what the catalyzed varnish, right?
Yeah.
Well, man, I'm going to have this knocked out.
So I gave them a price, and I think the price was $3,300 or something for a six footer.
So I'm like, yeah, I'll have this knocked out, no problem.
But what I found out very quickly is, like all of us, right, is once you started putting it together, like, oh, that's not going to work.
I wanted this to go to a zero taper, or really they did, they didn't want it, okay.
So to pull that off and get that edge the way I wanted, that plywood was all chippy, and oh, okay, well, then, all right.
So ultimately, fabric forms the whole thing, right?
Yeah.
Do the, what do we call those?
The knockouts, where you put the wood down and-
Hey, don't give away all my secrets now.
Sorry.
And then, again, by the time it took to do the resining and the sanding and blah, blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, my point being is, my initial interpretation in my head was maybe two to three hours.
It was like 25 hours.
Right.
It went completely the other way.
It went building the base and this and that and fabric forming, and my brother helped me.
And yeah, so before you know it, and I can't just call up and say, hey man, I guess I could.
It just wouldn't.
Yeah, I know I told you this be about $3200 bucks, but it's 45.
I've had people do that to me.
I don't know how they have the balls to do that.
No, yeah, I just can't do that.
How do you have the balls to give somebody a price, a grip on something, and then you get into it, and you realize you messed up, and now you're going to come back to me and want more money?
Yeah, no.
I've had people do it.
Yeah, it's ridiculous.
So no, like I said, so anybody listen to this, we know we've all experienced it.
And this is what, hang on, let me get my calculator out here.
So even with this one, where was that?
I was at $250.
I know I was around $250, $260, a square foot to begin with.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, but you had brought in that price.
30 hours at $3,300, right?
You know, and then you had your materials and you had your brother and you had your shop.
You lost money on that.
At the amount of time you had into it and the expenses you had into it, you lost money at $3,300.
Yeah, it's a beautiful piece and he loved it.
And for me, it was, you know, as most people know or listen, you know, I use my work also in as a kind of an R&D.
So this was a situation that ran into again, with a sealer point of view, knowing full well that it was going to go into immediate use.
So I was excited.
But yeah, at the end of the day, I, let's say I excelled at my confidence in materials, but I didn't make money.
Yeah.
And that happens.
That's, you can't get down on yourself and it happens.
You just say, lesson learned.
Let me chalk that up to, you know, another tuition payment I made towards the lesson of being a small business owner.
But the lesson going forward is, don't be so confident, optimistic in your abilities.
Because at the end of the day, the amount, when it comes to custom, the amount of unknowns that pop up and crop up and all the little things can double or triple the best laid plans.
Yeah.
So if you think it's gonna take you eight, I would probably double that, and you're still gonna end up putting more time into it than what you think you will.
Well, that's what I should clarify.
I just listened to myself, because we've had some people.
It's not that I didn't make money.
It's that I didn't make any profit.
There was, by the time it was said and done, and I pulled out my time and wages and how long if I really charged myself, because you really should, the time that I spent in the shop and doing all that stuff, and the amount of materials that was used, and then replenish those materials, you know, when it was said and done, it was pretty break even and I probably made $10 an hour.
Well, that tile project, I did the math on it, the one where I made all those tiles for the church, right?
I did the math after the cost of materials.
I didn't even figure out the cost of my shop, and I should have because there was a lot of time in my shop, but just the cost of materials, the molds that I had to make, blah, blah, blah.
I made $13 an hour.
Me personally, $13 an hour.
I don't know what minimum wage is, but it's probably right around there.
I'll take a Carmel, Carmel Macchiato.
Yeah, that's one hour of my life went to paying for that Macchiato.
Yeah, exactly.
It's something that you just have to be very realistic with the value of your time.
What is your time worth as a business owner, and what are your costs?
You don't want to lose money on stuff.
So, you know, you say, why did you charge $3300 for a sink?
Man, it seems like a lot.
A lot went into it.
And realistically, for you to have done that sink the way you did it using the processes you used to get the finish you wanted with the details and everything just right, you should have probably been tripled out.
You should have probably been like 8 or $9,000 for that sink.
And at 8 or $9,000, you would have been profitable.
You would have made money to put money in your account after all your expenses.
But, you know, you were...
Yeah, instead of what was left and what I paid my brother, it just was a small amount, went back into my general fund.
Exactly, you were overly optimistic.
Yeah, totally, totally.
We all are.
It's this weird condition with, you know, a small business owner's brain, where we think, man, we can do this like that.
And then you get in your shop and it's like, oh man, I way underestimated this.
What was I thinking?
Right.
Well, and that goes back kind of full circle where we started, because it's still on my screen, the post with the cemental.
I don't know these people, and clearly they're not doing this for a living, but I would ask them the same thing.
If they had to take all their pieces and start over again and buy more melamine because the piece is cracked and so forth and so on, at the end of the day, I don't know how much cemental they purchased, but let's say, I don't know, $200 worth.
If you took your time in, what did that cost you compared to just ordering some materials that were designed for this kind of use?
That's all, that's all.
Again, that's not a knock on cemental or people using cemental.
I just, for me, I'm not sure how it pencils out.
Yeah, well, rebuilding the molds.
I mean, melamine is like $75 a sheet now for three-quarter inch melamine.
So if you have to buy two or three sheets of melamine, I built some forms recently, not crazy forms for a project.
And just because of the shapes, I had to use five sheets of melamine.
When I thought, when I looked at the plans, I'm like, oh, it's gonna be like two sheets, right?
No, five sheets, because they were like these weird sizes.
So five sheets right there is almost $400 bucks just in melamine before I even did anything, you know?
So that stuff adds up.
And if I had to do that a second time, well, now I'm at $800 bucks in melamine.
These are the sneaky expenses that will sink a ship when it comes to pricing.
So back to where I was going with this is furniture.
That was where I started with this tangent was, you know, I've had people ask about countertops, $150-$250 square foot sinks, my square footage price plus $1500 for standard, $3000 plus for custom per basin.
And when it comes to furniture, it's time.
Time is the only thing you can do, because if somebody wants me to make a custom bench, I'm going to look at it and be like, well, let's say that this is going to be 15 hours of mold time, and then it's going to be three hours of casting, and then two hours of post-process, acid etching and sealing.
So 20 hours, okay?
20 hours.
So 20 hours, I'm just going to do this while we're talking.
20 hours, let's say I'm at $350 hour right now, which I should probably be higher than that, but let's say it's 20 times 350, $7,000.
And then we'll look at the mold material.
So let's say that I'm going to need to do fiberglass, I'm going to need to do some Baltic birch plywood, whatever.
So let's say another $300 in materials, and let's say another $400 in concrete and sealer, okay?
So $7,700.
And then, oh, the base.
I haven't thought about that.
I got to do a steel base, right?
So I need to build a jig, I got to weld it, I got to process it, I got to take it to a powder coater, I got to go pick it up.
Let's say another all in, you know, let's say $3,000 for the base.
Okay, so that bench is $10,700, right?
And I've done a lot of benches that are, that price are higher, I can tell you that, and people don't balk at it.
The people that want that kind of stuff are happy to pay for it.
But even at that, you know, $10,700, you think, man, that's a lot for a bench.
But after you put in all that time into it, and you cash that check, what you've left over is not $10,700.
What you've left over is, you know, $2,000, $2,500 bucks that's actually in your account after all your expenses and everything that went into it.
And that is not unreasonable for what you did to make that.
Somebody, who sent it to me?
Was it Wade?
Somebody sent me a video last night on Instagram of Hermes, the store, and they were like a luxury store, giving an interview, I think it was the 60 Minutes, and they were talking, the interviewers talking to like the president of Hermes, saying if people had to wait five years for Mercedes, they would get some other car, right?
I guess people are waiting five years for Hermes custom bags, like custom purses.
And he was saying that this isn't production, this is craft.
And craft cannot be held to the same mindset as production, like a Mercedes car, right?
That's an assembly line, that's production.
This is handcrafted.
Each one of these is an artisan making it, and there's the amount of time that it takes to do it right, and you can't rush that.
You can't speed it up, because if you speed it up, you're going to lose on quality.
So the people that want this custom bag are happy to wait five years for it.
They're happy to pay the price, Hermes are like $30,000 or $40,000 for a purse.
They're happy to pay $30,000 or $40,000, they're happy to wait five years.
And that's the mindset that we should be adopting.
There was a bike company years ago, I haven't looked at them in many years, called Vanilla Bicycles or Vanilla Bikes.
And Vanilla, way back in the day, had such a long timeline, I think it was like five or six years, maybe 10 years lead time, that they won't even take your money anymore.
Their website, they wouldn't even take your money.
They had so many back orders.
They handcrafted each bike that you couldn't even give them money.
And that drove people crazy.
They wanted to even more, right?
Take my money, I'm not gonna take your money.
You keep your money, we're so busy, we don't need it, right?
We don't need your money.
Yeah, but so back to like Cementol, this whole like, I need to get it done today, I need to cast it today, cure it today, seal it today, deliver it today.
No, bro, you should be like, I got like a five month wait right now, or I got a 10 month wait, or I got a two year wait or whatever.
For the luxury clientele, that is a lot more attractive to them than, oh, you need it?
Yeah, I can get it delivered today.
I can cast it, cure it, seal it and deliver it today.
Huh, that's weird.
It's like the restaurant that doesn't have any cars in a parking lot.
It's a restaurant where you just walk in and sit down.
Hmm, I want to go to the restaurant where there's a line around the block.
It definitely makes you wonder.
No question about it.
Yeah.
The good restaurants have a wait list that's a year long.
You have to really get in and know somebody to get on the list, and that's going to be a year away before you can get into it.
Joe Bates, his grandmother started, what's it called, the French, what am I thinking of?
French?
Yeah, it was a French, not bakery.
Damn it.
The French Laundry.
The French Laundry.
Laundry.
Thank God for Google.
So, Joe Bates' grandmother started the French Laundry, which is considered one of the best restaurants in the world, like the finest restaurant in the world, the French Laundry.
And you have to know somebody to know somebody to get into that restaurant in a year, right?
And people, that is the attraction to that.
That's the attraction to the experience, is the scarcity, that it's not readily available, that it's not immediate, that there's not immediate gratification.
It's not Taco Bell.
You can't just pull through the drive-through and get what you want, right?
And the same thing should be-
Well, there's definitely an expectation, a change in expectation.
And a change in perception of quality and value.
When you go to that restaurant, you get the bill and it's $5,000.
You feel good paying that bill because this was an experience.
It's a level that you came to expect for that.
And the same thing with this.
So I would, again, and this is kind of tied to this, but kind of not, but it's don't be afraid to have high prices and don't be afraid to have longer timelines.
Don't be afraid.
And that gives yourself, I give people longer timelines, even if I don't have six months of work in the queue, I'll still give a six month turnaround time because it gives me the time to do it right.
It gives me the time to do it without being felt that I'm under the gun and I'm rushing.
Because when you rush is when things go sideways.
And when things are, you know, oh, I gotta get this done by Tuesday because they have to get their CFO, that's when the form pops, all the concrete comes out, you know, whatever.
The pigments, the wrong color.
YouTube Live.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So that's when things go sideways.
So what the best thing you can do is give yourself a longer timeframe, lower the stress level on yourself, lower the temperature, you know, and the client, you're in demand, there's a wait.
So they're not, you know, they're not like, oh, this guy, you can get it done next week.
Well, that doesn't seem very good.
Like, and then your price should be reasonable for what you're doing.
Back to Hermes, you know, they're charging 30, $40,000 for a purse.
For a lot of people, that's reasonable.
For a lot of people, they'll pay that happily because of the quality.
So if you're charging whatever it is, just make up a number, $10,000 for this sink.
And there's some guy on Facebook Marketplace that's doing them for $300 bucks.
If you want a $300 sink, I'm not the guy, right?
But if you want the best sink that a human can possibly make, because I sweat every detail, and I'm a true craftsman, and I'm an artist, and I'm gonna make you something beautiful that's one of a kind, that's done at the highest levels possible, it's gonna be $10,000.
And it's gonna be, you know, at least three months before I get to it.
And they're like, great, that's awesome.
That client values that.
The client that lives in a track home that wants a $300 sink, they're not your buyer, and they're not the client you want anyways.
So that's my advice.
Any thoughts?
No, and exactly.
I mean, we use a lot of the people that we know.
I think I've talked to him many times.
I'll bring him up again.
What the guys up in Canada, Sam Wilkins and those guys are doing with their sinks.
Initially, when he had them on Etsy, I'll still tell this story, man.
I'll never forget when he called me, and I was like, oh, but I will do whatever I can to help you guys be successful.
But while I was talking to him, I went to Etsy.
I pulled up vessel sinks and immediately saw anything from a $100 range to maybe a $350 range, and I was just in my head like, bro, that's going to be a rough cut.
I know for me, turning over, let's say $200 sinks, well, shoot, why don't I have a made in Vietnam?
Just turn it into a side hustle that I'm not re...
In other words, it's not my name behind it kind of thing.
Or time.
Okay.
Yeah.
And whatever, whatever, whatever.
But at that price range for me to cast and turn and process and seal and package, and I was like, wow, that's going to be a rough go.
But he went a different direction and took quality materials, and is making a quality product, the kind of product that now when they go to shows and stuff and show up, people are like, they're blown away with the quality.
And what he's offering is four, five, six times the price of what you'll, of what you'll find as someone who may or may not consider themselves a competitor.
And the cool thing is now these other people, this is why he's also been quiet about it, is now they're racing, like we've seen other materials company, racing to try to come up with a product similar because his is so far, it's just creating new levels of quality that people haven't seen before.
And that's a cool thing, man.
That's a cool thing.
I completely respect him for it.
And it's great to be part of that journey.
Yeah, well, my wife, she used to sell high-end tile.
She was a showroom manager in Arizona for this tile place that sold like super high-end tile, like, you know, hand-cut marble from Italy, from some family that's been doing it for five generations, you know, whatever.
And she's always had a great perspective that you either want to be at the top of the market or the bottom of the market.
You never want to be in the middle.
The middle is where everybody dies, right?
Yeah, so either you want to be at the very top end, you want to be the Hermes, the Rolex, you know, the Bugatti, or you want to be the Walmart, the Target.
You want to be down there.
Because if you're going to compete on price, great.
And you know, you're going to do that by lowering quality, lower quality materials, you're going to lower the amount of time you put into it.
You're going to cut expenses where you can to offer the lowest cost you're going to rely on volume to make any money.
And that's a volume game.
And a race to the bottom is a quick one, but if you have the ability to do that, then it's a viable business.
The other side of that is going to be the high end.
And high end is you're going to focus on quality, you're going to focus on design, you're going to focus on exclusivity, you're going to focus on those things that resonate with that market segment.
And so that's the other side of it, and that's where I try to live.
I try to live at the high end of the market, but the people on Etsy, a lot of them are living on the low end of the market where they're fighting over price.
They're trying to be, I'll do it for 150, well, I'll do it for 130, I'll do it for 125, right?
So they're fighting over that.
And the only way they're going to be able to do that is to go to Home Depot and get some mental, right?
And they're going to get paint and use that as their pigment.
They're going to get polyurethane and use that as their sealer, right?
And they're going to do all these things to try to cut costs as much as they can.
But in the days, they're not going to ever be able to build a viable business with the clientele they really want to work with because they're delivering a product that will never resonate with that level of client.
And then the middle zone is the dead zone.
The middle zone is where you're not on the high end, you're not on the low end, you're just fighting in the middle.
And at that place, you're not really defined as either.
And because of that, you're in the no-man's land.
And that's where you 100% do not want to be.
You don't want to be in the middle.
It's a tough spot to be there for at least for very long because you just, it's a slow descent, is what I've seen.
Which reminds me another person, I don't want to escape him either, who's taking quality to new levels, is Seth Taylor.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, he's done some great stuff too.
And he's same idea, he has people who are buying and shipping them to him, but he's followed the same path, or again, they weren't following each other, he started doing his own path, but the same thing.
He brought up pricing, and here we're just talking about price per square foot or price per project.
But the other part of the pricing, again, using him as an example is like, well, how busy do you want to be?
This is where the same thing, you find yourself in the middle or the bottom.
I'm thinking like the old Jeremy French, my God.
That guy was running around like a chicken with his head cut off.
Well, he'd go to High Point, North Carolina and sell like tons of tables to designers, but at a price where you were losing money on, but you're making 100 of them, but you lost tons of money making 100 tables.
Right.
Yeah.
In his head, that's the way, I mean, I remember talking to him and he had this whole thing like, no, this is what it has to, because they have to make this amount.
I'm like, Jeremy, you're forgetting about you.
Yeah.
What do you need to make?
You're making them profitable.
What does your family live?
At your expense.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Everybody's living off you, but you're killing yourself, man.
You're killing yourself.
So, you know, anyway, that along the whole pricing thing.
I hope it makes sense to people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, 2025, do yourself a favor, buy that Profit First for Contractors book, do the exercises, get a handle on your cost.
That's the most important thing you can do as a small business owner is understand your cost, where you need to be, and price yourself in such a way that you're going to be financially profitable on every single project.
You're not guessing, you're not like, well, I think I made money.
I don't know.
You know, I mean, I did that for a lot of years where I just kind of had this arbitrary number in my mind and I would use that.
And sometimes I felt like I made money, sometimes I didn't.
I never really had a good handle on it for a lot of years.
And that's another tough place to be is where you're just kind of throwing darts at a dartboard and you don't know why you're doing it.
So get a handle on your cost and let 2025 be a year that you're profitable is my advice.
Okay, Jon, so last thing is Fusion, Fusion, so...
How much time do we have left?
Well, we don't have, let's do like five minutes.
Let's do, give the cliff notes of why, because the confusion is, and this was the confusion I had in the workshop.
Why use Fusion?
You guys have ICT, why would I want to use Fusion?
Right?
I mean, is that the feedback you're getting from people?
Like, why do you use this?
When do you use this?
No, not necessarily why.
It is, I think people get it, especially the more people, as they get it in their hands, the why becomes obvious.
I mean, like, legitimately obvious.
Fast turnaround, extremely hard, inability to delaminate, et cetera, et cetera.
And my short end of that answer is just this.
Anybody who's been in this game long enough, we more than understand, or I think we do, and we think we make our choices based on what we think we understand.
And that is, what's the ultimate durability of our surface?
Meaning, what does it go in?
Now, here's what I'm going to say.
And I know I'm not the only one.
We all know the shortfalls of topical coatings.
We've maybe we've learned to accept them, but we're not ignorant to them.
Let's say we're not blind and deaf to the way they scratch, the way they don't hold up their ability to, you know, the very difficult repair ability.
And when I mean repair ability, I mean, as one area gets worn down and another area where maybe the toaster sat, you know, never got touched and going in there and trying to repair it all, so it looks brand new again, it's very, very difficult.
And I could keep going on, but I don't want to sound like, oh, Jon, anti-coatings.
And then the other thing is, you know, those people that are standing behind coating technologies, they don't use those coding technologies, they're just selling you a product.
Not long ago, I remember a guy touting, he does it because the amazing margin he gets for keeping it in his store.
So he sells it to you.
Now, I don't want that to mean that somehow he doesn't believe in it, but he also knows he prices at a point that makes him a very nice margin.
But he doesn't use the product himself.
So based on all those downfalls, I've lived through many of them myself, still consult with people making coding technologies.
There's a couple of things that I find humorous.
Number one, if you look at any of these, again, codings, there's some things they really shy away from, and stuff that they really point to.
Number one thing that they point to is stain resistance.
That's always the number one with coding technology, stain resistance.
But the funny thing is, if you go into any project in any kitchen, I mean, look at your own kitchen, we all live with them, how many of us are bathing our tops and leaving vinegar on them?
We know now that your olive oils or even any of your cooking oils should be kept in the pantry and kept in the dark, or they go rancid if they're sitting on your countertops.
I mean, there's a lot of things, none of us are putting swaths of yellow mustard.
I mean, maybe coffee and tea, because we all have coffee makers, those will get spilt.
I can appreciate all that.
But my point is, as using someone else, well, I really focused on stain resistance.
Well, that's funny, man, because your product scratches so easily and it's difficult to repair, that once it starts staining in the scratches, that's your difficulty to repair.
So they're not durable, they don't wear well.
And that's what I've learned over the years.
So what is the whole idea of Fusion?
Fusion is, in my opinion, and it's funny because I've got everything, being told I was clever or ingenious or whatever the case may be, and all that may or may not be true.
Right?
You know it is.
I know it is.
People say I'm the smartest person in the room.
I don't know, but people are saying it.
People are saying it.
Many people say this.
People are saying it, right.
I don't believe that's true.
What I do believe is true is this.
I've lived with these products.
They're in my home.
I put them in people's home.
Over the years, we know the Achilles heel that we've all run into.
To me, this is the next generation.
It is a novel approach.
Thermal activation is a novel.
But once again, what is it for?
Again, as I think I was talking to you, stain resistance to me should be a moot point.
So that's not even in my top 10, the reality when I'm designing product.
It's about wear, resistance, longevity, the surface finish.
These are all the ability for people to touch so they're not touching a big wave of plastic.
I mean, and people could be listening like, whatever, Jon, he's just not going to mean because I'm using XX coating.
Well, no, I'm not.
But I know if we got into that conversation, well, whoever is using that coating, they're not oblivious to the downsides.
You know what I mean?
They know.
They've just made the choice to live with those issues because it is what it is.
Well, this to me is the next move forward in us being able to bring in surfaces that can handle extreme wear.
In other words, extreme accountability for us and the products that we're designing.
So that's what it is.
I'm looking for high durability.
I want repairability wear, scratch resistance, and again, with the moot point of stain resistance.
I mean, of course, it should take coffee.
Okay, so based on what I'm seeing on Facebook, what people are really excited about is, ICT doesn't have the stain issues.
I have a coffee table in here that's sealed with ICT.
I don't have the fusion on it.
I put coffee cups on this every day.
I put food on this every day.
There's not a stain on it.
My boots sit on it, muddy boots, you know, whatever.
It's great, whatever.
But darkening from moisture, which has always been something that we've all known with ICT because it's a reactive, is you put a cup on there, it sweats, water builds up, you pick it up and it's a dark ring until it dries, but there's no stain.
Until it fades away.
Yeah, that's crazy.
How does water darken it, but it doesn't stain?
Well, I don't know.
It's the magic of ICT.
Yeah, it's the magic of ICT, but that always has driven people bananas.
Like it drives them crazy.
It drives clients crazy.
Oh, I see a dark spot.
Until they get used to it.
Yeah, but by using Fusion, you get the stain protection of ICT, but you get this thermally activated layer that you're putting on, quote unquote topical.
Yeah, that has extremely high abrasion resistance, but it also prevents any darkening.
Somebody puts a mug on there.
You know, Gabriel posted a video where he left it overnight, like a slice of lemon and a water mug of water underneath it.
The next day, nothing, zero.
Right.
So that's really where people are excited about it, is it solves that problem that they've had where they weren't having stain issues, they were just having customers freak out or they were freaking out about...
Yeah, because of the cup mark or the dark ring or what we call the vapor marks.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That evaporate, but it freaks them out.
It's a scary thing.
That's undeniable.
Yes, that is...
We're overcoming that significantly.
And I'm not going to say that we're not.
It absolutely is.
But for me, it goes even, I don't know, 10 steps further.
I mean, the hardness of this thermal activation is freaking ridiculous.
I mean, there's nothing that's going to touch it out there.
Nothing.
It is so hard.
It's so awesome.
I'm really pumped about this new technology.
So this adds wear resistance to a whole new level, scratch resistance to a whole new level, the symbiotic relationship with the regular single component type of colloidal with this one thermal activation.
It's undeniably going to take ceiling technologies to an entirely new level that people haven't seen.
Number one, because it's products that other people haven't seen.
But on top of that, there's nothing else that can touch it.
So it gets us away from, how would I say it?
It gets us away from the reasons we might have used the topical, because we think those are a little more turnaround, right?
Even though they stay sticky for a few days, and again, everybody's shop kind of learned how to get around that.
I don't like that, so I can't do that in my shop, in my own shop.
That's what got me away from topicals a long time ago.
Not that I didn't like them, is I can't take three days of tackiness.
I never built a ceiling room.
I didn't do any of that kind of stuff.
Yeah, but the other thing that we're skipping over, which I think is super important, is toxicity.
The toxicity of topicals is undeniable.
I think of, what was his name, Dave Gretsch, when he was using Healer Sealer.
Isothinic sensitivity, yeah.
Yeah, Healer Sealer, which was an epoxy sealer, right?
And he had such a reaction to it, he couldn't even go into his own shop.
He would break out in hives.
So the toxicity of topical sealers is undeniable.
And these sealer resellers, because there's very few actual manufacturers out there, but they sealer resellers will say, oh, it's food safe.
Oh, it's non-toxic.
You know, it's fully cross-linked.
Still the food safe thing just cracks me up.
Oh my God, because it's just made up.
It's just totally made up.
And, but, you know, you put that out into the world and you're preparing food on it, you have children, you have infants, you have people that are immunocompromised, you have people with cancer, whatever, and you're putting stuff in their homes, there is still highly toxic.
And then you're exposing yourself to it.
You're exposing, you have a wife, you have kids, you have a family.
Don't put yourself in that situation where you're working in an environment with these toxic materials day in, day out, when it's unnecessary.
You don't need to do it.
You need to look after your own health, your own well-being for yourself, but also for your family.
And so I would say get that stuff out of your shop because you don't need it in your shop.
Yeah, agreed.
You're right, I don't hit that hard enough.
Now, this is a, I hate to use the word green, but this is absolutely non-toxic.
Zero toxicity, zero.
Not even a little bit.
It's absolutely non-toxic.
But that's also why it's built around the thermal activation.
There's no fumes.
I mean, you can smell it.
There's just none of that stuff, man.
Yeah.
And to me again, that's pretty cool.
I won't design anything around it even though I consult with other people due to it, but I do it under the same premise between agreements and stuff.
But yeah, completely non-toxic.
Yeah.
Non-toxic.
Well, I think that covered that.
So one last-
I'm just going to say, so anybody interested listening, I think he's got it on the Kodiak and the ICT page.
Some pretty cool testing or whatever results that Gabe is showing based on what he did.
That I think was a 2-hour, 7-hour and 24-hour or something like that.
So yeah, go check it out.
Yeah.
Last thing I want to hit, Jon, was we have the promotion going right now, where if you buy two pallets of Maker Mix or RadMix, we'll give you a free set of our new diamond pads.
We have those that fit a 5-inch Festool, a 6-inch Festool, a 6-inch Bosch, 6-inch Merca or 6-inch DynaBraid.
And these diamond pads are ridiculously good, super high quality, not made in China junk.
You know, none of that.
These are the highest quality diamond pads and we've developed them specifically for the use for concrete and stone, specifically for concrete, but there's a lot of stone guys that could benefit from these as well.
Yep.
Yeah, they're starting to pick them up.
Yeah.
Yeah, so, but this promotion is going till December 31st.
We've had a lot of people take advantage of it.
We don't do promotions very often.
So, if this is something you're interested in.
And the other thing is, we're coming up to the end of the year, buy materials now, get that tax write off.
You know, get the, get your, all the expenses you can get for 2024, so you can reduce your taxable income.
So, if cost of goods sold, you can get in a couple of pallets, order in before the end of the year and lower your taxable income.
Do it, smart thing.
So, order two pallets, Maker Mix or RadMix, get a free set of these pads, $225 value.
We're also offering, if you double that, you buy four pallets, we'll give you two sets.
That's $450 value.
But yeah, like I said, a lot of people have taken advantage of it and it's still going on.
If this is the last podcast you do for the year, this is your last chance to hear about it.
So go to kodiakpro.com, place your order.
And if you place an order for two pallets or more, either Jon and I will reach out to you and touch base and find out which pad type you want.
We'll get them out to you.
So there's nothing you need to do.
We'll reach out and get that.
Last thing, Jon, last thing.
Let's wrap this up.
But we talk about things we love sometimes.
We end it with that.
I listened to a podcast series recently, which was phenomenal.
I'm gonna listen to it again.
I'm gonna start it again today.
It's called The Telethope Tapes.
It's a hard thing to say, telethope, the telethope tapes.
It's a podcast series.
Like mental telepathy?
Telethope.
Telethope.
Telethope.
Say that three times fast.
Telethope.
Yeah.
The Telethope Tapes.
It is fascinating.
Fascinating.
It has to do with non-speaking autistic people.
Oh yeah, you were telling me about that.
Dude.
It is, I don't want to ruin it for anybody.
So I'm not going to give you the ins and outs of it, but it's all, it's true.
So this is a documentary podcast series.
This isn't fiction or anything like that.
And the breakthroughs we found of non-verbal autistic adults, people that we, you know, felt that, you know, we're just kind of like locked in and they couldn't communicate.
Well, they can communicate.
They've developed ways to communicate with these like iPad keyboard type things where they can type in stuff, which is kind of a breakthrough with non-verbal autistic people, but it's just insane.
So I would highly recommend, if you like podcasts, you're working in your shop, you got your AirPods in, find the series, The Telethope Tapes, listen to it.
I think it'll blow your mind.
It blew my mind.
I'm going to listen to it a second time.
So that's my little thing.
Anything you want to talk about that you love before we wrap this podcast?
Yeah.
Well, I'm going to say the latest thing.
If anybody...
So I've been watching this...
It's not a...
I guess it is a podcast.
Anyway, anyone want to check out Dave's Garage?
Dave's Garage, it's a shop in Utah, and there's a few other ones popping up too.
I've been kind of checking their shops out.
But anyway, watching Dave's Garage has given me a ton of information related to the diesel pickups.
I have the Ford and a Ram, and the 6.7 liter, the Cummins versus the Power Stroke.
Anyway, I strongly encourage anybody to take a look at a product called OptiLube.
O-P-T-I OptiLube.
It gets the squeaks out.
What's that?
It gets the squeaks out.
That's right.
And add that to your fuel.
I've been doing it now for both of the trucks for a while, and I recently picked up the additive for my wife's car.
But I'll tell you what, over time, they're fantastic for your motors and preventing maintenance-related issues and et cetera, et cetera.
So OptiLube.
I think there's another one called Arch Oil.
Let me ask you this.
Is this the guy that was saying, don't let your diesel idle?
I think he did say, yeah.
He's getting a lot of kickback on that.
Yeah, that I don't know.
I mean, I don't live in Utah, so not to be a jerk.
He may be right because, again, we can talk about this in another podcast.
Let's talk about now.
We got another two hours ago.
Let's do it.
Okay.
Well, I believe what he's discussing is this.
In those cold conditions, and you fire it up without having some version of, it's called lubricity or that's probably just made up the word, lubricity, is that as it sits there in idle, those motors aren't getting that oil up and flush through everything as optimally as one.
I don't have to worry about that so much in California.
You probably a little more in Kansas.
I'm sure you see one or two temperatures lower than what I see on a cold winter's day, right?
I mean, I literally woke up this morning at what I think was 57.
I was in the 20s this morning here.
Yeah.
Right.
I mean, I understand what he's saying and that's where I'm going.
See, I've been running this OptiLube now for six months in both the trucks.
I will say, yeah, startup is very different with both of them now.
My mileage has jumped up, not huge, about two miles.
Two miles a gallon, which that's big enough.
And then what I encourage everybody, if you go look at the site, I picked up the individual containers.
I'm not going to do that anymore.
I'm going to pick up one-gallon containers with the pump, and then it's about half the price.
So it becomes very affordable to put in.
And I just started literally today, starting to put them in the gas vehicles.
But my point being, yes, that is the guy, but that's what he's talking about.
But I don't know who wouldn't do that, man.
I mean, listen, you might be different than me.
Do you go out there and scrape your windshield and the ice and everything, or you just fire the thing up and let the defrost take care of it?
Exactly, well, that's my point.
And so I follow a lot of other diesel guys, and they're just totally ragging on that guy right now for saying that.
Now, maybe they're taking that out of context.
They're taking that sound bite out of context and running with it.
But he said, the worst thing you can do is start your truck and let it idle on a cold day, and all these guys that have these big diesel companies, whether they're excavation companies, whatever, and all they have is diesel trucks and diesel equipment.
It's like, bro, we start the diesels first thing in the morning, and they don't shut off until the end of the day.
All the trucks.
It doesn't matter if they're work trucks, if they're excavators, bulldozers, once we fire those engines up, they run until the end of the day.
They don't shut off.
And that's always the wisdom that I had heard from my grandfather, from everybody that had diesels, is essentially they just let them run.
Once you start them up, they just idle all day long.
Well, and other things have changed over the years.
Like I just switched my Ford, which is a 2003.
I switched it to synthetic oil for this very same reason.
Even for us, that's why I like the new trucks in the app.
I just fire it up, let it run five, ten minutes before I go out and it's nice and toasty warm.
You're so boozy.
You're so boozy.
I know, right?
No, you don't.
Listen, man, I'm actually...
I do it the old school way.
I go out there and I put my key in and I hit start.
Well, I don't put the key in because they don't have keys anymore, but I hit the start button.
Yeah.
You know, hit the valve.
Yeah.
No, no, I actually I literally track down a company and I'm going to put a remote start in my Ford.
Well, here's a crazy thing, Jon.
Here's a crazy thing.
So my truck doesn't have that.
I have a tradesman.
Mine's the lowest level diesel 4x4 I could find, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So but I was looking, I'm not going to trade it in, but I was just looking at trucks, just seeing what they're going for.
And the price is still even with the discounts the dealers are doing, which is like $10,000 off, they're still too high.
I think that I think they've gone nuts.
But I was looking and all it adds for remote start is $220.
That's all it adds.
Right.
$220.
I was like looking on these trucks and it was like a remote start, $220.
Why don't you just do that on every truck?
If that's the cost, $220.
Yeah, everybody would like that.
Oh my God.
Right.
Yeah, it's ridiculous.
You know, if you want a chrome package, that's $1,200.
You want a chrome bumper, that's $1,200.
But remote start is $220.
Dude, do remote start on every damn truck you order.
I have a hard time believing anybody would be upset, even if they didn't use it.
If every vehicle came with a remote start, I want to meet the person that goes, that's stupid.
Yeah.
Well, I guarantee you, my truck has the capability.
It's just a programming thing.
I guarantee it.
I guarantee it because my, I had a GMC Duramax, whatever.
I'm trying to think what the model was.
It was an XLT something.
It was essentially was the Denali without the Denali name.
It had everything on it.
Heated seats, cooled seats, sunroof, blah, blah, blah.
This was a while back.
I had that truck.
And the remote start was just the key fob.
You hit it twice, locked twice, and you held it down, and it would start the truck, right?
And that's the way it worked.
I guarantee it's just in the computer of the truck.
It's just programming.
I guarantee this truck has that capability.
They just don't have it.
Have you tried it with the fob, just to even see if it works?
Yeah, it doesn't do anything.
It doesn't do anything.
But I guarantee it's just the computer setting.
That $220, they didn't do anything.
Because it's still the key fob that's actuating it.
It's just a computer setting.
Yeah, that's all it is.
I guarantee it!
Well, look somewhere.
Maybe there's a YouTube thing on how to activate your remote start on your RAM.
You know, who knows?
Have you heard...
Man, we're going long on this podcast, but that's all right.
Have you heard how BMW is putting all the options on their BMWs, but you have to pay a monthly fee to access them, like heated seats, heated steering wheel?
Oh, that's crazy.
Yeah, so you have to pay a monthly fee to be able to access those features.
They're going to put them on every car.
I don't know why anybody would be buying a BMW after that, then.
No how, no way.
But that's going to be the model that these vehicle companies are going to try to go for is a monthly subscription fee to access the features on the vehicle.
Then someone's going to find a hack to get around it because that's ridiculous, especially with an upper end vehicle like a BMW.
That's crazy.
Nickel and diamond people.
I will buy a $70, $80, $90, $100,000 vehicle and then get locked into a whatever, $50 a month just so I can have my heated seats come on or heated steering wheel.
Come on.
That's crazy.
All right.
All right, Jon.
Let's wrap this up.
All right, buddy.
Okay.
So if we have another podcast for another year, great.
If we don't, I'll see you in 2025.
Yeah.
Merry Christmas.
Happy New Year to everybody, but I'll hit you.
We'll do a short one.
Okay.
Maybe we'll do a short one.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
Even if we just get on and say, you know, Happy New Year, I'll do it while I'm feeding the reindeer.
Okey dokey, bro.
Alright, buddy.
Alright, man.
Adios, amigo.
Adios.