Episode 243:09October 16, 2026

Jesse Miller built a contractor CRM in six days

Jesse Miller started Solid Value Contracting in Lowry City, Missouri, in November 2023 with a couple hundred dollars and some credit cards. A couple of months ago, a coach told Jesse to put the spreadsheet away. Six days later Jesse had a custom CRM, and AI now drafts the company's quotes overnight from site-visit notes.

Jesse Miller

Owner, Solid Value Contracting · Lowry City, Missouri

YouTubeSpotifyRead the transcript

The short version.

  1. 01

    Later is too late

    The old CRM said AI estimating was coming later in the year. Jesse didn't wait, built the system the business needed, and moved the data out overnight.

  2. 02

    The quote is the bottleneck

    Quotes used to take two to three weeks, not because the work takes that long, but because there were never 12 quiet hours. Now AI drafts them overnight and Jesse reviews them in the morning.

  3. 03

    Check the AI's work

    Jesse learned the business before AI and says that's what makes it work: you have to understand what it gives you, because it will mislead you.

  4. 04

    Own the data, not just the app

    After a stressful export, every contract, photo and note now lives in three places outside the software, and the database is moving to an account Jesse owns.

By the numbers.

Every figure is Jesse's own, from the episode. Tap one to hear it.

6 daysFrom a coach's demo to a working CRM06:49Weeks → overnightTime to get a quote back to a customer22:514Estimates finished in one weekend, from the couch20:053Copies of every contract, photo and note outside the app36:53

Site visit to quote, overnight.

Jesse's estimating loop since handing it to AI, as Jesse walked through it on the show.

Before

Two to three weeks, waiting for a free day at the computer

Now

A draft quote waiting in the morning

  1. 1

    Record the site visit

    A Fieldy wearable records and transcribes the conversation with the customer.

  2. 2

    Hand the AI everything

    ChatGPT or Claude pulls the Fieldy transcript and the customer's email, including anything they attached.

  3. 3

    Draw the plan

    Working in Chrome, the AI draws the outline in SmartDraw, to within about six inches, which is close enough to quote from.

  4. 4

    Write the quote

    It builds the quote in the CRM Jesse built.

  5. 5

    Review it in the morning

    Jesse checks the draft before anything goes to the customer.

Put the spreadsheet away

Jesse had what seemed like a cutting-edge setup: JobNimbus as the CRM, CompanyCam for photos, Zapier tying them together, and a work-in-progress spreadsheet that took two days to build with ChatGPT. Then a new coach looked at the spreadsheet and said to put it away. Six days later Jesse had built a CRM from scratch.

Jesse had asked JobNimbus for AI estimating and was told it was coming later in the year. “Later is not a good time when it comes to AI,” Jesse says. Without help exporting the data before the subscription ran out, Jesse wrote an importer and moved everything overnight.

Quotes overnight

The goal of the whole build was estimating. Jesse used to take two to three weeks to get a quote back to a customer. Putting a house together only takes a day or two of work, but 12 uninterrupted hours were rare with the phone ringing and crews needing an answer on site. Now a Fieldy wearable records the site visit, the AI pulls that transcript and the customer’s email, draws the plan in SmartDraw and writes the quote, and Jesse reviews it in the morning. One weekend Jesse finished four estimates from the couch, in between playing games with family.

The app does more than quotes. A camera button sends photos through an AI review that rotates them and files them to the right job by GPS, and receipts photographed on site feed the job-cost report.

The careful part

Jesse is blunt that AI will mislead you if you don’t understand the work yourself, and that owning your software means owning your data. Every contract, photo and note now lives in three places outside the app, and on the show Jesse and David talk through moving the database to an account Jesse controls, so no vendor can take it away.

Chapters and transcript.

The full conversation, lightly edited for reading. Bracketed text marks a cut or an edit. Pick a chapter or a timestamp to jump there.

00:11

David V. Kimball

Welcome to Retooled, a show where we talk to business leaders about how they've equipped their organizations to adapt to change over time. I'm your host, David, and I'm joined by my co-host, Dylan, and we are here to talk to Jesse Miller. Jesse is the owner of Solid Value Contracting based in Lowry City, Missouri. We're going to dive into how he got a start in the business, learn a bit about how it's evolved to the rapid changes in the marketplace since then. Jesse, thanks for being here.

00:39

Jesse Miller

It's good to be here. Thanks for having me.

00:42

David V. Kimball

We like to start off with just introducing yourself, saying a bit about who you are and how you got your start.

00:48

Jesse Miller

Hi, guys. I'm Jesse Miller. I got my start back in 2023. Well, as far as the business side of it goes, I helped two other companies, and then at one point in 2023, I decided it was time for me to go out on my own. So November 2023, I started my own business with just a couple hundred dollars in the bank, some credit cards, and I spent like a month getting everything set up because I previously set up other companies with CRMs and stuff. So I was able to get my own website set up, get the Google page set up, all the good stuff. So whenever I hit the ground, you know, I had everything I needed to do contracts and all that stuff. And then it was, it's just grinding it out. That first year was 80 to 100 hour weeks. And then at the end of like the first year is when I started hiring people. And that's when I started learning a lot. So, and now it's just been a learning process since then.

01:48

David V. Kimball

Wow. When you, when we connected initially, you said you started in 2023, you started basically with AI right out of the gate. That's like very different from someone we just talked to who's been in the industry for 20 years. Hitting the ground running with it.

02:20

Jesse Miller

Definitely prepared me. Working for a guy. Like, I'd actually gone to school with him years ago in Amish school or Old Order Mennonite school. So I'd gone to school with him, and then he had a job, and I was not – I guess I had been Ubering at the time, and it was – I was, like, done with that. So I was just doing some odds and ends construction jobs, and there was a job in Alabama that they needed help with, and I heard through the grapevine about it. So I went to work for him, and then he needed help with his DOT stuff, and I previously – that my experience in the military, we had arms inspections. So – and that's – it's not for – arms does not stand for weapons. It stands for something else. I don't remember what the acronym is. But anyways, it was a whole bunch of reading policy and knowing how to follow it without having anybody to ask about it. So, like, you have to read the regulations and then figure it out the best you can because everyone else is busy, too. They don't have time to help you go through your manuals. And stuff like that. So I figured out how to read federal government stuff and apply that to documents. And we passed the arms inspection. So whenever my friend said that he actually got an email from the DOT, he had applied for the DOT number. And then about three to six months later, you have an inspection because you get your number right away and then they give you time to get your paperwork in line. And we were in the motel room and he just like lost it when he's like, I don't know how I'd get this done. I was like, show me the email. I'm like, sure, it can't be that hard. So we just went through it step by step. And I said, I can figure this out for you. So that was literally my start in business there. But back then there was no AI. This was like 2021. So we weren't using AI in business yet at that. Or at least I wasn't. I don't know what was available at that point. Just figured it out from there on. Got and then I started working. For his business, because I was able to help him with that. I said, I can help you with more stuff. So I helped him set that up. Was not using AI yet. I don't remember exactly when I started with that. But then a second business that I helped, I was using AI to set up a lot of things. And that turbocharged it. Because, like, I came into these businesses, they were still running on paper. Like, they might have PDF printouts and stuff.

04:43

But they would type it into, like, a one-page form and then take it out to the customer or email it to the customer. No contracts whatsoever. And then for the first one, I just went online. I wrote out the contracts. Because, you know, with a small business, you don't always have the money to hire an attorney to write out the perfect contract. So you find what's out there and piece it together. So it was, like, that step. And then 2023 was whenever I started using AI a lot. So I used AI, which made it a lot faster. Because when I made contracts for them, I just threw all my... My old stuff into it and said, this is what we do here. Read through it. So having the understanding before AI is a crucial point. You have to be able to think, too. You can't just go blindly into it because AI will mislead you. So you have to understand what AI is giving you to make sure it's actually correct. It just does the handwork for you. And then after that, up until about two months ago, I was using AI very basically, just very basically, like Google, you know, like a good Google or like a writer. And I was using a lot of Google Apps Script, which I still love, but I don't have a lot of use for. I was using Zapier for the first two years of my business quite a bit because I could use that to tie all the things together in the background. I had the greatest setup. It was, it was like cutting edge what I thought until I hired a coach about two months ago, two and a half months ago now. And I was showing him a spreadsheet that I use AI. And he offended me because he said, put that away. Let me show you something. And this was like my, I've worked two days with ChatGPT to code this super complex spreadsheet for the work in progress. The only thing you have to do is manually enter the numbers.

06:34

So there's still a lot of manual labor involved. And he just told me, put that away. And I kept my offense to myself. And I said, I'm, you know, I'm here to listen. And then he shows me a couple of different AI things. And then a week later, six days later, I had my own system built how I wanted it. So I use JobNimbus first. That like, that's the, that was the software I had set up two different businesses on. Still think it's a great software for people that need to plug and play. JobNimbus was not. I talked to their customer service a couple of times. They were not giving me the AI that I wanted. I said, I need the AI estimating and I need it now. They said, earlier this year, they told me, oh, we got some great things coming out later this year.

07:23

Later is not a good time when it comes to AI. So, again, about two, two and a half months ago, I built my own CRM. Did like my best to not like copy JobNimbus, but I know there's a couple, there's like a whole bunch of CRMs that use like the board version. So that's not just that software. So I use the boards. I have the boards all like my home screen, but like the whole backend looks way different. One, so six days later, I emailed them and I said, I need help exporting my data from JobNimbus. And they did not respond to me through the day. And I got kind of nervous in the evening because my subscription was expiring that day. So I made my own importer, imported everything overnight. The next day they told me that I still owed for the following month. I said, hear me out. The only reason I didn't have my stuff exported yesterday was you wouldn't help me. So it took me overnight to do it myself. And they considered it and then I didn't have to pay another month, which is like $615. I had the discount from previously, but now it's like $800 a month, which is still a great deal, great software for people. I'm like, I still have a crush on it kind of because that was like my first use. That was what got me going. But now the system that I built has AI running in the background. It has a camera built in because we were using CompanyCam, but you have to connect that with it in the background and then use Zapier to make it talk to each other correctly, which takes a lot of expertise. Now we just have a... Camera button in the app itself that I built, and it's just like a web app, but it still works great. So there's a camera button, it loads the pictures into an AI review, it rotates them if they have like sideways pictures in there, it rotates them properly, and it scans them, it will use GPS locations and put them into the job. If it's like within a thousand feet, it drops the photos right in the job, so you got one app dropping photos right in the job. I have it trained, I trained it a little bit before I just let it loose.

09:46

David V. Kimball

Jesse, you are speaking our language, this is awesome. This is awesome. I have to ask you, I have to ask you, I forgot the name of the CRM you used before, your first crush, what's it called again?

09:55

Jesse Miller

So the first ever CRM I used was JobNimbus.

10:00

David V. Kimball

So were they like, when you were saying, hey, these AI features aren't coming soon enough, they probably just thought, whatever, he's not going to like move. Off of the platform. Like, he's a sitting duck. He's trapped in our system. He's not going to do something. And then they're probably like, wait a second, he was serious.

10:17

Jesse Miller

And the guy that, like, my customer rep, great guy, I think his name was Zach. I hope I didn't get that wrong. But, like, fantastic guy. Like, it's just, he was sitting in front of the IT guys, and I couldn't get to the IT guys. I didn't, they didn't have an ear for people like me, which, if they ever watch this podcast, they need to have an ear for people like me, because I could have made their system like mine is now. I'm just using it as my own right now, but I'm not sure, you know, what the future holds for that. But, yes, I wasn't heard, so I built my own. And then I went to Fable, and I said, go out there. And I went to Astra. Said, go out there. Find every single problem, like, the top 50 problems that people are complaining about, about construction, CRMs, and project management software, and we're going to fix these in this software, and it told me, now, I don't, this is just what it reported to me, it tells me I have some of the best software in the world when it comes to construction management software. AI loves to glaze, it loves to glaze, man. But when you go out, when it goes out and looks for problems that people are complaining about on forums, and then we fix them in it, I think it's, I think it's ranking, I think it would rank pretty high. I don't know, I would love to see where it would actually rank. So, the cameras, you can scan receipts, they go into the work in progress report, I'm still working on that, but as long as it has a job number and a job name, clearly enough on there, it's allowed to auto file. So, you can file that in there. Any kind of costing documents in there, just take a picture of it, and then it'll put it right in the job photos, and then it adds the costs in, like, the work in progress report. And that's still a work in progress itself because we're two months into the software. So it hasn't been perfected yet.

12:24

Dylan Baker

How on earth do you have time to run a business and work on custom software at the same time? So you make time?

12:33

Jesse Miller

You work on it until 11 or midnight. [...] Every 10 or 15 minutes, because sometimes they run faster and sometimes they run slower. So I just tell it to check back every 10 or 15 minutes and then it would always like to repair stuff as it went. So we have like this friendly battle going on. I'm like stacking them in there overnight. They're like, that's the problem that we caused, you know, a week ago. I said, don't care. This is the weekend. We'll, like, work through it. And then, like, Sunday, I'd be, like, griping at it because we got a lot of problems we had to fix before we go live with that version on Monday. And then I found out just the other day, don't do cleanups when there's customers that need to sign it because it was, I had a cleanup running. [...] We're actually using text message right now just because it's still brand new. We have a messaging app. It has chats in there. You can have a chat per job. It has like a company chat and then like a manager chat. I can make any other chats in there. I had this AI bot called ARK and I recently saw there was another one, like an app out there. I think it came out after mine. I don't know if it's like where that came from. But at the time that I started, there was no other ARK AI thing out there. And I got that from ARKWIP and ARKWIP is like the curve of the work in progress. I mean, kind of weird, kind of cheesy, but it sounded good at one in the morning.

14:44

David V. Kimball

That's how a lot of naming goes these days.

14:50

Jesse Miller

So we have a, we have like a camera in it. We have a chat in it. It works decently. Well, I think we're about ready to start using it. And then we have a little circle in the middle that's AI button. Right now it's just me and management that has it because I'm still working on perfecting it and seeing which of the. The LLM works the best for what? Right now, mostly I'm running Opus 5.5 for like estimates because about two and a half weeks ago, I started doing AI estimating, which was the whole goal of this. And I actually have Claude Opus 5.5 working on a house estimate right now off like another computer.

15:39

David V. Kimball

Dude, this is so sick. I love hearing about this. Dylan, I've been asking all the questions so far. Do you have any questions for Jesse right now?

15:44

Dylan Baker

Jesse, I mean, like you just kind of gave us a huge dump on like enterprise level software that you built by yourself. Do you have any idea how many hours you put into everything so far?

15:57

Jesse Miller

You were asking how to run a business and how to code at the same time. And it's not really coding, but you have to still baby it along.

16:09

Dylan Baker

You've got to be putting in 80 hours a week, right? I mean, that's crazy, man.

16:12

Jesse Miller

For the last two months until just the last two weeks, so two months ago, for the first two months of that, I would say I was working 18 to 20 hours, seven days a week, minimum. And then I would have Claude on my phone, so I was feeding in information throughout the day, just like texting somebody. And then I have Whisper, too, and I use that with everything now because it's faster than just a normal speech-to-text. [It cleans up] your ums and everything like that. So it's really cool. So Whisper plus AI has been the game changer. Just last night, I got my Dot set up on ChatGPT, and I've been calling it and stuff, which has been brainstorming. And that's like the next big thing, and I literally just found out about it last night when I was like... I'm on the call with my coach. He's like, have you set your dot up yet? I'm like, what's Dot?

17:13

Like, I've been busy working out on the job site because I have estimators now. Now I can go do what I love again, and I can have the estimators running, come back to the office, check it. Because I used to quote until, like, I used to go out and work a full day and then come back a full day in the office. Like, that was my, and work six to seven days a week. It was just this last year that I finally started taking most of my Sundays off. Still working, like, half a Sunday or whatever. So there's a lot of actual work that goes in it, too. But these last two weeks, I mean, I'm just mind blown. I'm smiling. People don't know what I'm smiling about. The average person doesn't understand this stuff, you know?

18:00

David V. Kimball

That's right. So this coach, this coach that you have, do we get to know who he is? Or is he your secret sauce? What's his name? So...

18:07

Jesse Miller

About two months ago, I hired Ken Walls to be my coach. And yes, so you can go on Facebook, you can find them, follow him. He has ProFlow, which is another kind of CRM. He also has the ProFlow Academy, I believe what it's called, where he has some heavy hitters about AI. He has Joe Ingram on there, if you've ever heard of Joe Ingram. You guys should definitely follow those posts. You should probably reach out to Ken. And like anybody that's interested in AI or whatever that needs a coach, they can definitely reach out to Ken. Obviously, tell them I sent you so I get some kickbacks or whatever. But he was the guy that took me from using AI as just like to help me to actually full on incorporating it into my business. Because when you're working so many hours, the brain does not function as well as it should. And so for me to dream up how to use it, or even know what to ask it, you know, it's just, it kind of gives you back what, like, at the level you're at. So until you know the right things to tell it, like, Claude never told me about Claude in Chrome, because it can't set that up by itself. So, like, you have, I was like, why do you never tell me? It's like, well, you have to set it up for me. I said, it's literally an extension that I put on there. And I think my coach and I, I think I talked with Ken about it. Was it Thursday or Friday? And that weekend, I got to spend the weekend with my son with the laptop on, like, the end of the couch.

19:49

Obviously, I had to have it, like, over the edge so the fan could run properly, because if it's running Claude on the laptop, it takes more. So I was using that, and it was using, like, the, the screen controller in Chrome, and it was doing my estimates for me. I got four estimates done that weekend while I was sitting on the couch. In my sweatpants, and I got to play games with my son. You guys probably understand how great that is, but it's like if you work hard on something, and then all of a sudden, it's like, where have you been all my life? Well, not created yet, obviously, for AI, but it's doing screen control. I mean, you can sit there and tell it, and if you have it set up on your computer, you can use speech-to-text when you're on the go, and keep it running, and then you come back, and you review whatever it's been working on, and it's good to go. Like, just today, I used this software called SmartDraw to draw out, like, the outlines of houses and stuff, like, 15 bucks a month. It saves people from having to get their own blueprints.

20:58

Now, I'm not an architect. It goes right on there. I'm not an architect. We'll get this within six inches. Obviously, we can build a house, like a house wall closer than six inches. I just, these are just basic drawings, but it went on there, it like has the smart draw built, and the only thing I used that was Fieldy. I use Fieldy a lot, but Fieldy will get your conversations into a note form like the transcript, well, ChatGPT can pull that directly, so the transcript can be pulled, you have like an email from the customer, we had a, I think they sent a slideshow to Tracy, the general manager, sent her slideshow, she forwarded that email to me, so I, yesterday morning, I gave it, I said, look in this email, get all the information, look in the Fieldy notes, and I need you to use smart draw, and smart build, and I need you to build the 3D, and I need you to go into ARKWIP, and I need you to make a quote, I came back last night, the quote was done, the smart SmartDraw was not done. Maybe I forgot to tell it correctly how to use it. So I woke up. I've been up since 3:15 this morning. I just woke up. My alarm was set for 4:45. But I woke up and I went in there and I said, oh, we need to, like, I need prints. Do the SmartDraw. And I said, just learn it as you go. So it went in there. And, like, I was on other things about 5:30 because I had to leave at, like, 5:45 or 6 this morning. Before I left, it was, like, almost done with it. But I was like, where's the furniture? Add furniture in there and make it look right. And that's the last thing I did before I walked out the door. And I haven't looked at it since then. But this is the stuff that used to take me two to three weeks to get back to customers. Not because it takes that long to do it. Like, in one or two days, I can get a house put together. But I don't often have, you know, 12 hours to sit on the computer uninterrupted. The phone rings. People need me at the job site. Everything. The only thing I have to do is come back and review it. And it's crazy how accurate it is.

23:18

David V. Kimball

That is amazing. I love that. I think the browser use case is one of the most magical ones for people that have only ever used ChatGPT as a one-off chat tool. People's eyes light up when they see, like, hey, I can just use your browser? This is insane.

23:34

Jesse Miller

The one that I've noticed does really good is ChatGPT Luna 6. It's fast. It's not quite as accurate. But I've been seeing if Luna is enough for quoting. Because Luna, it processes differently. And it'll go through there. Like, if it knows exactly what it's doing, it'll go through there just click. It'll be clicking and, like, screenshotting and reading the screenshots. I'm like, I've never, like, I've actually told it to go read the page. And it's flipping through it. Faster than I can blink. It's going from page to page, reading the whole document. You can't find a human that can read that fast and gather the information and go do what you tell it to do. It's crazy, man.

24:24

Dylan Baker

I don't think I've used Luna yet. Is that a browser extension that OpenAI has?

24:31

Jesse Miller

It's a model. It's a model. So. So, that's like a model. You have to use Co-Work, but I have the, I have the Pro, which is like the account or premium. It's like 125. You pay 25 bucks more per month for the business integration so other people can't use your projects and stuff like that. So, I just switched to premium like two weeks ago, just like after I learned about the Chrome extension. And both of those, like Claude and ChatGPT, will run your screen in Chrome. Claude can also... So you use your computer screen, but that's somewhat restricted right now. Even if you tell it to, they have some rules of what it can and cannot do. Right. Sometimes.

25:25

David V. Kimball

Just, Jesse, I wanted to ask, you mentioned a service or an app called Fieldy. I wasn't familiar with that. Can you explain what that is?

25:30

Jesse Miller

Oh, you're about to have your mind blown.

25:34

Dylan Baker

So what is it? Is it like an always-on recording device?

25:37

Jesse Miller

Give me just one second. So this is, this is the note taker that I take on my job sites. And it transcribes it. And it'll run like two days. So it is an AI note taker. If you don't have one yet, order one like right now. It will help you, like, it, it was made to help people, you know, keep track of all their promises and like everything they need to do. It transcribes it. And it would name like the meeting. So like this meeting, I can go over to Amy because that's my Dot assistant and say, hey, Amy, pull up, like, get that transcript pulled up. Tell me anything that I should do that you heard from this that could help, you know, increase our business. It'll read the transcript and it'll say, hey, well, you guys talked about this. You're not doing this to the fullest extent you could. And I say, hey, Amy, go, like, just go make that happen.

26:38

David V. Kimball

That is awesome. So, Jesse, one thing that we do internally at lilAgents is we just, you know, there's a rule. We record all of our meetings. And since we're remote, that means every time we're interacting or if we're using Slack or Discord or if we're using email, everything essentially is turned into plain text so we can take action on it. What you're describing with Fieldy seems like that solution, but for in-person engagements. Is that right?

27:02

Jesse Miller

Correct. I would say just download the app and order it. Like, it's a, if you're not using it yet, like, you're not at the cutting edge of note-taking yet. Because you can connect that directly with ChatGPT. You might have to set it up as an MCP server, but it, it would do all that through a custom connector for you. And it literally connects in there. Tell it, you might have to go into the app and change the name of the conversation so you know exactly what it's called. And then go into your chat and say, hey, I just had a meeting with John today. I need you to pull that meeting and get me, like, all the bullet points. Get me everything we talked about that I have obligations for, for example. It will pull up that list and then you say, hey, like, add those into my reminders, put those dates into my calendar. It will go to all of that. And especially if you have your Dot set up on ChatGPT, you literally, you can. Call up your ChatGPT when you're on the road and tell it to do all that. It'll end up on your calendar. Crazy. And this is literally a phone call. Like you call your AI assistant and you talk to them like a human being. And it's weird. It gets really weird because I got up at 3:15 this morning and I thought no one told me that the weirdo train was the fast train forward because this road is open. Because I'm here talking to the computer as if it's a human and there are people that would not do that just out of principle. They're not weird. They're not willing to go to go that step and talk to like a machine like it's a human. But I'm here calling this thing and it all it screws with your head because it's like you don't know that it's not like your brain can't hardly tell the difference anymore. And also the thing about Dot is Dot has a desktop. So Amy has her own desktop, and the desktop has Chromium on it, so you can sign in for Amy. She can go do whatever on any website that you want, any sign-in that you want. So as far as that goes, the fieldy, along with Claude and ChatGPT, especially in Chrome, has been the biggest breakthroughs for me as far as getting estimates done faster, which is one of the biggest things because sales fixes most of your problems. But if you're too busy to make sales, then you're struggling on the job, and you're struggling to get your quotes out, and you're tired and grumpy. But when the quotes are getting out, the job problem seems small because you've got more coming in.

29:44

David V. Kimball

I'd like to ask a bit about how you're organized, and I know Dylan might have some questions about this too. So how many people are at your organization, and how are you, like, all these breakthroughs are coming across. How are you disseminating those across the other folks you're working with, or is it kind of like you're testing it and then you're going to give it to them later.

30:01

Jesse Miller

So Tracy, the general manager, I text her at like five something, I think at 540 this morning. I said, have five minutes if you get into the office by that time because the house that she says is like 100 feet away from here. So I said, if you get out to the office right now, I will set your dot up for you. So she got her dot set up and she's already been using it this morning because there was a job that she had to find windows for. And when you have to go Google, you have to go to like Lowe's and Menards and all these different places to try to find them. So anyways, now she just gets like on the phone with Fernando, which is her AI, and say, hey, I need these. Like go into the job, look for these windows, find out where I can buy them right now. And then and then you get off the phone, you go about your day and then it goes out and does the research, sends you a message. So that's the one way I'm doing it. I haven't used it further than that, so I have a superintendent, his name's Ty, and he runs most of operations, and I just kind of supervise them still. And then we have eight employees total, so that would be like five other employees that we have. We have guys that run to job sites. And then like a small crew that does the smaller jobs, and then we have sub crews that do the other stuff. We haven't used any of our stuff with the subs really, you know, far as integrating them into our systems, just because that means that you have to have IT support, and you have to make sure. And then since we're still in like the updating phase, every time the app updates, but then they're screenshotting me like problems with it. So the ones that are not into that, they're like, well, your software stinks. I'm like, I've never built software before. We're in the baby phase of it. Like, you have cutting-edge technology at your fingertips. Screenshot me the problem, and I can feed it in Claude, and Claude will send it over to Lovable, and then, like, we'll have it built. So, and then, but one question I have for you, David, I think it was, was it, I think, so Amy told me that you think that apps that are done in Lovable are not as portable as it should be. Is that correct?

32:35

David V. Kimball

Someone did their research. Yes. So one thing that we did at lilAgents was we compared a lot of these kind of vibe-coding tools. We got Lovable, we did Base44, we did Cursor, a lot of these tools. I think there were about 10 of them. And one of the things that we're sensitive to is ownership. So if we work with someone like you or whoever it is, we build digital properties. We want to make sure that you... You own them, and we don't want to, like, ever take them hostage or anything like that. So we're very aware of those things. Lovable doesn't even let you export your code unless you pay for a pro plan, which is kind of a red flag to me. So when I say it's not very portable on Lovable, I just mean it's not trivial to move off of it on a dime. You have to be subscribed to their ecosystem. You have to kind of be – there's a badge by default on their sites and stuff you have to turn off. Whereas something like OpenCode, a bit easier to be more flexible. That's kind of all I meant.

33:48

Jesse Miller

And he was like, well, I just stopped in the middle of it. I said, I'm not going forward with this right now because he said, well, with your systems – If one of the pieces go down, then your integrations don't work. And I said, if I have only one system, what happens when that one system goes down and I can't access anything? So I got cold feet from that company. I love the guys with them and everything. It was just – and that's why I was okay with starting my own. So I'm going to ask you a question. So Supabase and GitHub, I had it backed up through GitHub, and it runs in Supabase but not through my own Supabase. Does that help? Like if I would switch it over to my Supabase, would that help with the ownership thing?

34:37

David V. Kimball

Yes, it would. I would say – like if you have a – let's say a Lovable project and it's hooked into your own GitHub and your own Supabase, you're in a far better position than if either you're outsourcing to – because Lovable has its own database stack that it wants you to use. And also Replit's very – Replit's probably the most classic example of you don't even have to think about this database stuff. You don't have to think about anything. You don't have to think about file store. Just put everything in our system. So you want to be as averse to that as possible, and it seems like you're already thinking that way. So I would say, if it's your Supabase account, you're in a great spot.

35:13

Jesse Miller

I don't have my own Supabase yet. I have my own GitHub. But I do want to get to the point, because I have thought about that, because I don't want to depend on anything, because they could shut down any of these companies tomorrow. There's always going to be 10 more that come up. So I'm not worried about it, as long as I have the information somewhere that I can just say, hey, take this load of information, build it again in this server, and then in two days, we're up and running again. That would not be a problem. And then I have all the documents and pictures and everything are backed up, and the notes are backed up on a drive folder. So they're saved in Supabase, and then they're also saved in Drive. I can physically go in and look at it. So I have that information saved already. So even if by some crazy reason I lose the software, I will not lose any of my contracts and documents and pictures and notes from the job.

36:11

Dylan Baker

Totally right.

36:11

David V. Kimball

Like, it'd be the same situation you were talking about with the CRM when you're trying to move off of it. You don't want to be in that situation again. You want to be like, no, my data is where I know it is, where I can control it as much as possible. And then to the degree that you're outsourcing or you're renting to another service, you need to make sure it's, like, really easy to export your data on a dime. That's what, like, Dylan and I would say.

36:33

Jesse Miller

And then on my computer, because I have that drive folder actually also on this computer. So I have it in drives. I have that folder synced to this computer. And then I have Microsoft that syncs to this desktop as well. So I also have that stuff saved in Microsoft in, like, OneDrive on this physical computer and in Google Drive. So I have three different copies of it that's out. Outside the system as far as contracts, pictures, and notes. The only thing that I don't have is my whole schema and stuff. I would not know at the drop of a hat. I can figure it out if I ask Amy or whatever. What's the fastest way to get complete ownership of this so I can take this hunk of data that I don't understand myself, give it to you or Claude or whatever, and say, hey, I need this rebuilt now because I need to be up and running overnight. So that's like the best case scenario as far as right now. I don't necessarily need a separate system built because I'm still working on it, but I do need to be able to grab this and give it to somebody else and say, hey, build this and get me up and running.

37:40

David V. Kimball

Jesse, we're almost at time here. So I want to ask Dylan, did you have any other questions or things you wanted to ask Jesse before we kind of close up?

37:55

Dylan Baker

Man. I mean, you've essentially built, you know, software worth probably millions of dollars in a way. Have you ever thought about like white labeling that? Or like doing like a fine tune and having like an engineer come in and clean it up so you can monetize? Or is it something you kind of want to like hold dear to your chest like it's a baby or something?

38:11

Jesse Miller

So that's in the works already. I'm very particular about it because if you get in the business, you got to make sure you get in with the right business partner. So that's that's even more that's even more important than the money itself, because right now I'm making no money off that it's working for me and it's great. But if I went into a business situation that either cost me millions that I don't have right now or turn into a million dollar dispute or I mean, some someone told me it's worth 100 million.

38:50

Obviously, that that was just protection. It's not worth anything right now until it's on the market until it's actually. So that's that's. That's something that I'm working on already as far as getting it to the market because at first I was selfish about it. I was like, this is my baby. I don't want anyone else to have this. This is the best stuff out there. If everyone else has it, then they're going to be competitors with me. But again, if I would sell it, then I could have a construction company for fun because I already went from there. I did the math. I know what JobNimbus charges.

39:24

I know this is way better than JobNimbus whenever it comes to AI. JobNimbus is big. They have to cater to all their customers, which is what they should do. But a different company can come in and there's a whole market slice that JobNimbus cannot serve because they already have a huge slice of the pie. And you can't sometimes you can't get those two slices all together. So there there's a huge market right now for what I have. I just it's just doing it the right way. Doing it now because AI is going too fast. If I don't do it now, somebody is going to do it two months from now.

40:06

David V. Kimball

That's right. Speaking of trusted partners, is there anyone you worked with recently, like a third-party vendor, who you're like, these guys are amazing and you want to give them a shout-out? Anyone that comes to mind?

40:17

Jesse Miller

A third-party vendor? I mean, I would just like to give a shout-out to Ken Walls, my coach. As far as, like, vendors, I don't have a lot of, like, my, I don't have online software anymore, except my own. Like, I use Claude, ChatGPT, and then I do my coding with Lovable again. But other than that, I've just disconnected from all of them because they're great for the common consumer. I'm not the common consumer. Obviously, you guys are not either. You guys are out there making waves right now. It's so, I just, and I wish I did. I wish I had, like, this great shout-out. I don't. I work, you know, 80 to 100 hours a week to pave my own way. And I won't say I'm paving my own way. Like, I have a team of people that are helping me run the company. So I'd like to give a shout out to Tracy Miller, my general manager, and Ty Shepard, who's my superintendent, because they're the main other drivers of this company. They're the ones that are there, like, waking up 5 a.m. In the morning, going out there and helping drive the company forward. So other than that, man, it's me and my brain and maybe at midnight figuring things out.

41:33

David V. Kimball

I love it. Well, your coach seems really incredible. So I would love to meet him. But, I mean, that's really all the time we have for this episode. This has been one of the more technical episodes, which when we set out to do this podcast, we didn't know how in the weeds we would get. And Dylan and I love getting in the weeds. So we loved hearing this from you. It was really inspiring. And thank you so much for being here. Are there any last thoughts, Dylan or Jesse, you want to share before we close?

41:59

Jesse Miller

I would like to hear just a couple minutes from you guys, if you don't mind. I feel like I've been talking a lot and not listening to you guys as much, and I feel like you guys have some great information you can share in a couple minutes.

42:12

Dylan Baker

I would say, I don't know, like, David, what do you think about Cloudflare compared to his current infrastructure setup? Would you recommend Cloudflare, you think, or would you just say, do think Jesse's kind of on the right path?

42:27

David V. Kimball

I mean, really depends on your goals, what you're trying to build, because it seems like you're using, you've got a lot of internal tools, like very agentic tools, like Dots and so on. But then also you mentioned Lovable. So there's a coding component, you have like a web app you're developing. Cloudflare is a great place to host your stuff if you're looking for it, but I would just continue with what you're doing with Lovable and piece by piece retain that ownership. And over time, you'll probably be in a position where you go, wow, I don't even need Lovable anymore. I can just move it over here. And you're going to you're going to learn so much. I mean, you've like the two months you've already. You talked about, it seems like you've gone from, I wish we could continue talking, we really are at time here, but I'd love to kind of dig in more what kind of like, what inspired you to get a coach in the first place.

43:10

Dylan Baker

You probably saw the world of opportunity and went forward.

43:12

David V. Kimball

But anyway, that is all the time we have for today. Thank you guys for listening. Thank you, Jesse, for your time. And thanks, Dylan, as always. And we'll see you guys on the next episode.

What came up.

The tools Jesse mentioned on the show. We don't take money from any of them.

A custom CRMJobs, photos, chat and quotes, built with Lovable on Supabase
ClaudeEstimates, and screen control in Chrome
ChatGPTResearch, calls on the road and quotes
FieldyRecords and transcribes site visits
SmartDrawFloor plan outlines for quotes
WhisperSpeech to text for everything
Google Drive and OneDriveCopies of contracts, photos and notes
JobNimbusMoved offThe first CRM Jesse used
CompanyCamMoved offJob photos
ZapierMoved offHolding the old tools together

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