Episode 852:00November 10, 2026

Jonathan Klemm on why saying no is a contractor's superpower

Jonathan Klemm is the CEO and founder of Quality Builders, a general contractor in Chicago that specializes in two- to four-unit buildings. After ten years on mega projects at Walsh Construction, he got fired twice in one month and started his own company. Jonathan explains why saying no can be a superpower, how organic search became most of his leads, and why he built his own project management platform with Claude Code.

Jonathan Klemm

CEO and Founder, Quality Builders · Chicago, Illinois

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The short version.

  1. 01

    Fill the funnel so you can say no

    Early on, Jonathan took any job he could get, and three or four of them turned into battles. His advice is to spend some money on marketing early, so enough leads come in that you can say no to the clients who aren't a fit.

  2. 02

    Plan before you sign

    Quality Builders now runs four clear stages: pre-sale, pre-con, active and post-con. A walkthrough produces a feasibility report with a price range, then a full takeoff, and only then the contract.

  3. 03

    Pay for the right people on site

    Jonathan first thought a GC could run much of the work virtually. He learned that having the right people on the ground every day is what keeps a job on schedule, and that it's worth paying for.

  4. 04

    Show up in person, every month

    Since about 2021, Quality Builders has hosted a monthly networking event and a monthly virtual walkthrough of an active project. Both build trust and bring in solid leads.

  5. 05

    Build the tool you need

    Frustrated with Buildertrend, Jonathan spent six months of late nights building Foundation, his own platform, with Claude Code. It takes a job from the site walk to the feasibility report, the estimate, the contract and daily reports.

By the numbers.

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

$900MHis largest project at Walsh Construction02:3165 to 70%Leads that now come from organic search17:184Stages every job goes through11:49$6,000What he paid for the qualitybuilders.com domain51:03

How Quality Builders takes a job from walkthrough to contract.

Jonathan's four-stage process, as he described it on the show.

Before

Pre-construction done on the fly, with a price guessed up front

Now

A signed scope, budget and finishes before work starts

  1. 1

    Walk the property

    Jonathan records the visit and takes the measurements, or works from plans, and the system produces a feasibility report with a price range.

  2. 2

    Do the full takeoff

    Once the client moves forward on the range, the team counts every toilet and every linear foot of tile, and the takeoff codes flow straight into the estimate.

  3. 3

    Get every piece approved

    The client signs off on the scope of work, the budget review, and the selections and finishes, with elevations and a reflected ceiling plan.

  4. 4

    Then sign, then build

    The contract comes out of those approvals, and the job moves into the active stage with daily reports, job costing and change orders.

From mega projects to Chicago rehabs

Jonathan studied construction engineering at Iowa State and spent about ten years at Walsh Construction on tunnels, highways, bridges and a U.S. embassy, with projects from about $50 million to close to $900 million. He left for a tech company, got fired twice in one month, and started Quality Builders, which now specializes in the two- to four-unit buildings that fill Chicago’s neighborhoods.

Saying no, and planning first

The first years were about surviving: taking any job, subbing it out on numbers that weren’t right, and going through four or five project managers. Jonathan’s fixes were more leads, so he could say no, and a four-stage process that does the planning before the contract. Today 65 to 70% of his leads come from organic search, and a monthly networking event and virtual walkthrough bring in more.

Building Foundation

Jonathan spent six months of late nights building Foundation with Claude Code to replace Buildertrend, and he sees it becoming a service other general contractors could use for the parts they like least: marketing, sales and estimating.

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.

00:10

David V. Kimball

Welcome to Retooled, a show where we talk to business leaders about how they've equipped their organization to adapt to change over time. I'm your host David, joined by my co-host Dylan Thanks, Dylan, as always, and we're here to talk to Jonathan Klemm. Jonathan is the CEO and founder of Qual... Builders based in Chicago, Illinois. We're going to dive into how Jonathan got started in business and how it's evolved to... Work with the rapid changes that have occurred in the marketplace. So thank you so much, Jonathan. I'd love to hear a bit about you if you want to introduce yourself.

00:42

Jonathan Klemm

Yeah, Dylan, David, first of all, I love the name of the podcast, Retooled. That intro is really good, especially for an industry like ours, where I look at it as one of the most antiquated industries, you know, which also makes it one of the industries that is slowest to change. But I think with everything that's happening now with like technology and AI, it's just like very interesting and fascinating time to kind of be in the construction industry. Because yeah, from the time we started our business six years ago till now, like what's changed has been significant, at least on our and on the business side. You know, we can't replace Swing hammers and screwing nails. But from the business side, things have changed very, very substantially. So that wasn't really an introduction, but it was my opinion on your name and what you guys are doing because I think it's a really good platform for us to talk about what's happening, what's changing, how people are doing it.

01:43

David V. Kimball

Thank you for that. Yeah, no, we're really excited to dig into the changes you're talking about. So love to hear who you are and so we can dig into the material.

01:51

Jonathan Klemm

Yeah, so answering your first question again. So yeah, like you said, my name is Jonathan. So I actually started in the construction industry straight out of college. I went to Iowa State as a construction engineer and went to work for Walsh Construction, which is just a massive multi-billion dollar conglomerate, probably one of the top two or three contractors in the country, and then worked on like anything you can think of for about 10 years straight for them. So, I worked on tunnels, highways, bridges, wastewater treatment plants, hotels, underground utilities, a U.S. embassy, and got to experience what mega construction is like. My largest project was close to $900 million, and the lowest, smallest project was about $50 million. So, I just got a very diverse background on processes, systems from that macro level. And then I really wanted to get a lot of money and that's why I went into my business initially and got my engineering because I was like man I got bullied when I was in high school and thought okay if I get the money that gives me like that that that confidence power that thing that power yeah that thing I was missing in high school you know yeah exactly and then yeah I feel like once you kind of like take that trajectory you like slowly realize like that's not like the ultimate goal here and so I left Walsh, went to work for a tech company and worked for them, like sponged off so much information. Our CEO was a CTO of a small travel company named Expedia. So also multi-billion dollar travel company. So I just like would sit down in his basement, just like. You know, sponging off as much information as possible. And I worked there for two years, got fired twice in one month. And that was probably the best thing to happen because that's when we started our business Quality Builders. And yeah, we started here in Chicago. And we started off more with some of my projects because I was getting into the real estate space myself, realize like how Very complicated and challenging it was working with contractors in kind of like the smaller residential space. And yeah, six years later, like we survived is how I would, you know, describe like the first five years in business. But you know, like, like you said, we've continued to change. And that's one of our core values is embrace constant change. And so by doing that, we survived and we've continued to start to thrive kind of in the year of 2026.

04:28

David V. Kimball

Congratulations. That's awesome.

04:30

Dylan Baker

So awesome. Are you? So you're in Metro Chicago now? Or are you more like the outskirts?

04:36

Jonathan Klemm

Yeah, so I used to live Metro Metro Chicago. Now I have a little bit on the outskirts. But yeah, majority of our business is in on the north northwest side of Chicago right now.

04:47

Dylan Baker

Nice. I, I think Chicago is my favorite city in the US. I've lived it. Like I grew up in the Midwest, I grew up in Ohio, and I grew up going to Chicago a lot when I was a teenager in my early 20s and stuff. And I think that's a great place to have, you know, like a contract near construction business, especially if you're into the more larger builds, because you're in one of the biggest cities in the United States. Do you do you work on projects like that, like the skyscrapers and such? Or is it more of like of the smaller, like the medium scale stuff?

05:20

Jonathan Klemm

Yeah, we're definitely on the smaller to medium residential side. So, you know, I think one reason we love Chicago, I love Chicago, there's just a plethora of inventory of this like two to four unit multifamily houses that need rehab, you know, majority of the houses were built 100 years ago. And so there's just, you know, What I like to describe is just an unlimited supply of inventory for houses that need renovation. And then additionally, because we're in such a big metro area in each of the different, you know, 30 plus neighborhoods, there's also a price point for anyone looking to buy at any level. So you could buy something for $50,000 on the south side of Chicago, or you could spend, you know, $5 million on some of the north side properties. And so it's a great place for a contractor who's, you know, looking to grow and kind of like. Specialize in those like two to four unit buildings, which is what we tend to gravitate to.

06:17

David V. Kimball

Got it. I want to make a quick comment about your, you said you were bullied when you were younger. I was also bullied when I was younger. There's a couple of kids that would bully me. And I remember one time my dad said, you know what? One day they are going to work for you. Now, none of that was true, but it was what I needed to hear at the time and it was like really encouraging. And then later I would think, I would never hire them. Like, no way.

06:42

Jonathan Klemm

Yeah, one of the guys I went to high school with actually just reached out to me and he's an electrician. So, I was a plumber. So, not to say those were the bullies, but I mean, I think the interesting thing about like that time too is like... You also don't know that you're getting bullied when you're getting bullied sometimes. I spend a lot of time just like introspecting and going back into my life to figure out what happened before to figure out like where I want to go now. Like I feel like that's a very important place in people's lives if they have that transition of like realizing like who they were and then figuring out who they want to be. It took me a long time to... Get rid of a lot of my like narcissistic, you know, self serving traits, but and I'm still working on it like daily. But, you know, once I realized like how I was acting, I could, you know, have a huge transformation and where I want to go and who I want to be. Yeah.

07:33

David V. Kimball

And part of that process was, yeah, just when you make your own business, you like have to do that even more, I feel like. So I'm interested. You started off, you know, you know, at Walsh, some of the places you mentioned with these massive, massive projects, like you mentioned. So how do you translate? And I guess a little bit of tech industry experience you've got. How do you translate those things and then scale it down to the more small, medium sized projects now? How much of that transfer is over?

07:59

Jonathan Klemm

Yeah, I mean, I think the general principles transfer perfectly, but the execution feels a lot tougher. You know, I think general contracting and property management, two of the industries I'd probably like never recommend anyone to go into. And you're just You know, always, it feels like on someone's bad side, you know, you never hear like the tenants calling their property manager and say like, oh, the heat's working great today. You know, I think one thing I've realized, like, almost always, like, you know, things cost more and end up taking longer than we think. Like, I don't try to like sugarcoat things. I just try to like solve problems as fast as we can. But from like a macro level, like all the systems and processes we did use at Walsh, you know, with Payment applications with quality control, like all that stuff, like translate, like that was the vision is take that macro level system process, bring it into this micro level where there's not as many, you know, for lack of better words, like sophisticated tech forward thinking general contractors. And, you know, we've slowly, slowly. Got those systems in place, but it's just been, you know, ridiculously challenging. You're ultimately relying and putting your name on a lot of other people, a lot of other trades to like execute the way you want things executed. And that's just not always the case, right? My definition of quality and our plumbers definition might be two different things and like getting that translation from, you know. The business to the field has been the biggest challenge.

09:34

David V. Kimball

Yeah, I want to learn more about that because if my math served me correctly, you got started around the pandemic. And so you're I mean, you mentioned that you've put a lot of effort in that change part where you've tried to adapt to what's new. And that's like one of your core values. Can you say more about that? How did things start during the COVID stuff? And then how what changes have you seen since then in your business?

09:55

Jonathan Klemm

Yeah, that's a perfect question. You know, originally. Originally... We called ourselves a GC tech company. I'm still going to trademark that because I don't think anyone's trademarked it yet. But what I thought that meant is like, hey, we're going to do so much of what we do virtually and be able to scale that, you know, quickly. And I just totally underestimated how important it is to be out in the field, you know. And I think that was our biggest shortcoming early on. You know, if you talk to any of our early on clients, you know, there was definitely controlled chaos happening on a regular basis. We thought we could do, or at least I thought, I'll take that full ownership, right? I thought we could do a lot more virtually, but not having the right people on the ground, on the projects daily is just like detrimental to the business. You know, so there's a lot of projects where we just could not quite get on schedule early on. And, and, you know, now, you know, We realized, hey, we have to pay the people to be on site, the right people. I think that's, you know, early on, you're taking any job you can get, you know, and I think like, you know, saying no can also be your superpower early on, because when you take on those jobs with when you haven't vetted the client properly, and then you're, you know, for some of the jobs when you're subbing it out to subs who are giving you a number that They're agreeing to, but may not be the right number. Like it's a recipe for disaster. And we like learned that the hard way on at least three to four jobs where we're just like battling to get done. And, you know, having to switch, you know, different subs at different points. And just like when you have that stop in the project, it's just so hard to get the momentum going again. And so now it's like. We didn't do nearly as much pre-planning as we do now. And that's now really our main focus is now we have four clear stages in our process. We have a pre-sale, we have pre-con, we have active and we have post-con. And so the pre-sale, we actually put, we'll come out, walk the property, we'll put together a feasibility report that has a range on it. We don't try to pretend like we can say okay that job is going to be 350,215 cents because we just like don't know right like even after doing this most of my life i just can't always figure out what the price is going to be we can get a range pretty accurate and we get that range and then after they move forward in from that range then we go into the details we do like the full takeoff every toilet, total linear feet of the floor, the tile, all that stuff. And then after that is when we actually execute the contract. So that pre-planning was something we just weren't doing. We were doing that pre-con on the fly. That mixed with not the right team, created a lot of chaos. And so now we spend a lot more time upfront. We make sure the team we have on site takes that plan and really executes Thank you. To a T, you know, so we try and make it as clear as possible for them to know exactly where everything's going without them having to ask what

13:02

David V. Kimball

how many months or years did it take for you to learn that lesson? You said the beginning, at least three or four really painful lessons. How long did that take you to go? Okay, let's actually reprioritize to make sure we have the right people on site.

13:14

Jonathan Klemm

Yeah, I mean. We tried a lot to have the right people, I would say, right? But like, we probably went through four or five different project managers. It's not like a, you know, it's not like there's a line of people, at least that I found that just love being project managers. Like it's a super detailed position. It's a super, you know. You're demanding position from the clients, right? You're the one who's usually taking all the bad calls from the clients. You're the one having to solve all the problems for the subs. And so like making sure that you have the right thing set up for them is what I found to be, you know, the reason why we couldn't keep more people at the time. Now, we have the right system up front. You know, we're setting them up for a much better, you know, active project process. So I would lightly say three to four years. And, a lot of it was still, again, bad estimates, taking on bad jobs that ultimately, you know, are hard to recover from until you kind of close it out. And having such a long. sales process and long you know product process you know you know most people sell product and they're done right like our product takes six months to build and when it's not going right it takes eight months and so that's just treacherous eight months of life to get through things when they're not going right well

14:37

David V. Kimball

you said you said yes to everybody in the beginning i don't even think that's the wrong thing to do i think anyone that started their own business would go yeah you kind of have to say yes to every project in the beginning so rather than try to uh You know, look at things in retrospect and say, yeah, I just sort of, you know, maybe you can afford to say no eventually to your point where it becomes a superpower. But in the beginning, you can't, you have no business really saying no. So while you're saying yes, maybe even if there are signals, you're like, this might be a bad fit. How can you best help? What advice would you give to business owners who can at least learn from the process? So if you go into something where you go, hey, I'm in a tight spot, I need to say yes to this deal, it might not be the right fit. How can they be proactively learning on the fly and protect themselves? So that The next time they have a more informed know when they can afford it.

15:22

Jonathan Klemm

I mean, sometimes you just don't know what you don't know, first of all, right? So if you haven't dealt with a bad client, you know, you don't know what that's like. And so that's hard to identify until you you figure it out. And I think, you know, everyone is is happy and sunshine and rainbows at the beginning, you know, and you don't see people's true colors until the stress happens, you know. It's hard to read. But I think the bigger thing that anyone can do and we could have done is like, you need to stockpile the top of the funnel. You know, if you have a lot of leads coming in, you can say no to more people. But if you're just going off of what's coming in organically or off referrals or whatnot, and you're not Plummeting money, you're not plummeting, but like putting a decent amount of money into your marketing to generate those leads to vet out those clients, like you're gonna have to take what you get. And that's what we did. You know, I'm coming from a super scarcity minded background. And so like spending money on ads was like extremely scary to me even still is, if you couldn't track, you know, how those are converting, you know, and that's a hard thing to put together at the beginning of the business. But at the same time, at least if you had more coming in, you would be able to say, No to more people. And so that'd be my advice is to be confident, you know, spending some money on the ads early on so that you have the ability to say no. And because if you don't, then you do just have to kind of take what you can get to survive until you have enough organic growth to kind of pick and choose your clients.

16:51

Dylan Baker

I'm curious to... What's your acquisition funnels currently look like? Because we talked to a lot of business owners and, you know, a majority of them, you know, 50 or 60% of their leads are from like referrals or, you know, family, friends and whatnot. Are you are you currently running ads or running any content online to get more leads?

17:12

Jonathan Klemm

Yeah, so we just started a Google local services ads that just started. And, you know, I'd say. 65 to 70% roughly is from Google organic search now. We spent a lot of time, I spent a lot of time on our website early on and building that out, working really hard to get positive Google reviews, all that type of stuff. And it wasn't honestly until this year where all of a sudden we had more consultations than we've ever had and 65 to 70% of them are coming through. A organic search. You know, we still get a good amount of referrals. We got a lot of stuff early on from Bigger Pockets, which is just a real estate kind of forum website that I was pretty heavily involved in here in Chicago. And then just a lot of local networking. You know, we're finally getting to the point where we want to start spending more money on ads. But at this point, like the Google SEO stuff is just so powerful that right now, like we're getting so many leads in that we're able to kind of filter them out as they come in.

18:19

Dylan Baker

We're in our industry in general, David and I are pretty proactive about doing like in person events and we're finding that that is like a great way to, you know, generate more revenue. Have you ever thought about attending any like conferences or anything like that in Chicago?

18:36

Jonathan Klemm

Yes. So when I built the ground up new construction house, that was our first project. It was also my own personal development and one of the more affluent areas here in Chicago and Bucktown. When we got that built, we actually hosted a networking event there. And that was in 2022 or 2021. And we've held basically a monthly networking event every month since then. And so the third Saturday of the month, we host that event. And then on the first Saturday of every month, we'll do a virtual walkthrough. So we'll take... Basically a walkthrough of one of our projects and we'll have, you know, anywhere from like 10 to 20 people that join in on Zoom and we'll just walk through the project, talk to some of the challenges, some of the numbers, the schedule and just, you know, share what's working and what isn't working on an active project. So like, again, like those two things, not only the like strong brand building and trust building activities, but like you said, they've also generated a fair amount of solid leads for us.

19:48

David V. Kimball

So that's incredible. That's a great idea. How do you come up with the idea?

19:52

Jonathan Klemm

There's, there's a lot of, so because I was focused on the real estate first, you know, flipping rentals, things like that. There's a lot of those type of real estate networking events. And so that's how we set it up. It's actually called Cashflow Breakfast Club. And so it's still kind of geared a little bit more towards the real estate investors. But you know, there's several of them around Chicago. They kind of come and go, but like being consistent at it.

20:16

Dylan Baker

I actually mentioned something along those lines to David last month at one point. I was like, man, like, you know, if we ever get in the position where we just want like some easy clients, like we should just start taking people out to dinner or like taking them out to lunch and just like chatting with them about what they have going on with their lives rather than just trying to like sell my service or whatever. But it seems like a great acquisition channel for sure.

20:44

Jonathan Klemm

Yeah, it's been super strong. And yeah, like you mentioned, I mean, there's nothing like breaking bread and sitting down with people. I think, you know, eventually the limiting factor on that is just you, right? Or you need to hire some other salespeople because I could only go out to so many dinners in one week before I'm going to get slapped on my hand and my baby's not going to be happy. So yeah, how old's your baby? So she's 15 months now.

21:08

David V. Kimball

So congratulations. That is a challenging time.

21:12

Jonathan Klemm

Yes. Yes, it is.

21:13

David V. Kimball

My son's almost two and then I have a daughter who's five months. So.

21:17

Jonathan Klemm

Oh, nice. Yeah. You're in the heat of it.

21:20

David V. Kimball

Oh, yeah. But it's amazing. It's great. Kids are kids are such a such a blessing. Yeah, that's great. So okay, then a bit back to what you're saying. On the change side, I feel like we got a sense of, like some of the earlier lessons, you needed kind of a better process, you kind of outlined that what you do now, but now I'm interested in like the parts in between. So okay, we're a little post pandemic. Now, you're got your your feet under you a bit more. What are the actual processes and like the tech stack that you started to grow into that you still go that was the right move? This is what we use now.

21:55

Jonathan Klemm

Yeah, that was really good. So Yeah. Early on, we wanted to be super tech heavy. I knew we wanted to have some type of project management software. At the very beginning, we were kind of Google Suite, Excel type of stuff. Eventually, we migrated to Buildertrend, you know, which is, I don't know, flagship project management software out there, but also In my opinion, also very like archaic in its own times, like there's a lot of things about BuilderTrend that I just like despised, but there was a lot of really good things, you know, and so we got on BuilderTrend early on. And we were very, very, very close to switch into JobTrend. And so I really liked the way like their layout, their estimating kind of table was BuilderTrend actually just incorporate a new feature that adds that. But we are actually transitioning off of BuilderTrend now. We actually built our own. In-house management software that I've probably spent the last six months of my like night life doing late at night. And it's it's really, really, really good. And I'm not like, you know, someone who would talk so highly of something that I wasn't actually really confident and proud of, you know, it really lays out our sales process really well, you know, so it has the I can automate the presale part of it. So I go on site. Like we said, I actually record on site. I use Fireflies AI, record while I'm on site. I'll take any measurements we need. If we don't need measurements, we have plans. We upload all that into the system. Pretty much generates that feasibility report instantly, you know. And then it has the pre-con stage where we're uploading the quantity takeoff. It can pretty much. You know, our quantity takeoff codes align directly into the estimate. It generates a project summary for us. Was it just a scope of work that we get the client to sign off on? Then it has a budget review that they review. Then it goes into the selections and finishes process where we lay out all the elevations for them for the bathroom, the kitchen, reflected ceiling plan. So we know where all the lights and everything are going. And then it goes instantly. Once they approve that, they approve the budget, they approve the scope of work, they approve the finishes. It then can generate the contract from there. Boom, they sign the contract and then it goes into the active stage. And then you're kind of in like the core project management software with daily reports, job costing, client change orders, all that type of stuff. And then obviously once the project finished, it goes into that. Post-con stage. And there's where I think we still have a lot of work to do where we can start figuring out ways to generate revenue on reoccurring services for maintenance and things like that. But I'm so far away from that that I can't even think about it because we're like in the midst of transitioning like today from BuilderTrend over to this, the platform that we call Foundation. And there's clearly like another Business there too, right? So, you know, I think the thing that a lot of contractors struggle with most is the marketing, the sales, the estimating, which is what we do really well. And so if we can execute on that really well, we'll be able to hopefully sell that as some type of service down the road where we're going on the walkthroughs or and generating these reports. It's kind of like a done for you. Service for the general contractors. Not necessarily just as like a SaaS business. I feel like that's like the market disruption that's already coming, right? Like I literally built something that took Buildertrend like, you know. 10 years to build and I did in six months and I think it's better than what they have, you know, personally, or at least better suited to exactly what we're doing, I'd say, right? Like they have such a huge platform. But I think when you can sell it in a way that you're not just selling the service or the technical side of the service, but the real boots on the ground type of service, you know. I think the interesting thing, like, I listen to a lot of Alex Hormozi podcasts. And the first thing he did with gym launch is he literally Went to people's gyms and launched them in the actual physical gym. So it's like the thought process would be like, well, what if we went and did the we have initial consultation, it's over video just like this. And then we go into the walkthrough. And then we come with the with the estimate. So if it was like a done for you, for general contractors, most of them don't like like that side of the business right they don't want to have to deal with the this the marketing the sales estimating they're actually a lot better at the operational side you know and so if we can kind of like combine that into a service where we're out there you know doing those hard parts for them and then letting them excel what they excel at i think there's like a very very High potential for a very awesome, scalable business.

26:56

David V. Kimball

That is awesome. What are you using to build it?

26:59

Jonathan Klemm

Claude Code.

27:01

David V. Kimball

Yeah. Incredible.

27:03

Jonathan Klemm

Yeah. It's like every time I look at it, it just like blows my mind. You know, we just had our like team training on it and it's like, okay, write me the SOP manual for accounting. And it's just like 10 minutes. And it was okay, please add screenshots takes everything down so fast. And it's just like, yeah, what took, you know, people like years and years and years to code. Someone who has little to no knowledge of coding is able to do it. And it's just, you know, too easy. You know, I'm technology literate, of course, like guide it through. But literally, I'm like, Claude, what's screenshot this. What's the next step? I'm lost here. Oh, go to this tab, open this, go to the upper right, go three things down and click this button. And it's just like so like fast and amazing and intuitive. And that just gets so much smarter, right? Like if you look at it, it's like, wow, it's totally matching everything that we've already built with everything it's building on top of. And it's just. Yeah, it's powerful. That's why I think like SaaS business, like, you know, there's, there's a lot of them that are not going to be able to keep up because people can build stuff so fast. So it's like, in my mind, it's like, so what's safer is doing kind of what I'm outlining for you guys is like, hey, go help them physically with their business, because there's going to be so many other people. I'll just go back to like we're in the general contracts and construction space, right? Like there's not too many people vibe coding their own project management software either. So like there is that right there that we are in an antiquated industry, but there will be a leader, you know, that comes out, you know, and kind of starts dominating more of the renovation space. Like I've always had the vision of being like a nationwide. um uh renovator like there's no one who's accomplished that probably because it's so freaking hard and people never love their contractors but i still believe it can be done and potentially like through foundation you know slowly working with other businesses i think that could be the path

29:01

Dylan Baker

yeah it's like you you could sell the service as you do the you know the initial 10 or 15 percent of the work you take in the lead you go in you do the estimate you build out the whole deal And then you make it to where you can just hand it off to a team of contractors to just do everything. And then from there, you just hand it off, you make your, you know, 15 or 20% off the top, and then that's it. Like, you walk away. It's awesome.

29:29

Jonathan Klemm

I'm waiting. It's been a long wait.

29:32

Dylan Baker

I mean, it sounds awesome in my opinion. I feel like I remind myself right now. What's your idea for like going to market with it? I mean, if you don't mind me asking, I don't want you to give away like all the secret sauce, but.

29:47

Jonathan Klemm

No, I'm an open book, right? Like if someone, I don't think there's anyone who beats you to it at this point, like things are meant to be. So if something happens, but like, yeah, go to market. It's like one completely integrate our own business into it. Right. You know, let that soak for, you know, at least, you know, six months or so. And then like somehow. I have to take myself out of our construction business you know I can't be going to job sites you know every other day and really trying to build that so that would be like the next step is getting myself out of like the day-to-day type of sales marketing active project stuff and then you know figure out you know what that sales process really looks like with another general contractor right so find a couple two to three local people and say hey if I could do this for you like Would you be interested in that and kind of see what the market tells me as far as that goes and then figure out what the next steps are from there? Like, I still think there's like a high ability for like acquisition through that model. You know, so many, so many of these older, awesome contractors, like they don't really have a, that's the word I'm thinking of, a succession plan, you know? So how do we help them with that succession plan by taking over the business for them, paying them out, you know? I know whatever it is, yearly basis and help them retire. Like there's like that impact aspect of it that's more important to me than like going to market and making tons of millions of billions of dollars, which I still hope to be true. But I feel like if I can have a better impact and like helping people like transition from the space that I'll, you know, sleep better and feel better with myself at the end of the day.

31:28

David V. Kimball

Yeah, there's that term dogfooding. Are you familiar with it?

31:32

Jonathan Klemm

No, please tell me

31:33

David V. Kimball

dog fooding is the process of using the thing that you built. So if you built this great platform, and you're not using it yourself, you know, that that's a little suspicious. So when you dog food it, you're like, completely trying it, you completely integrate yourself. And it's a really great way to really, you know, test drive it really, really stress tested, obviously. But I always found the dog fooding term so helpful, because if you ever if you ever work with someone who's built something, but they don't use it themselves, then you go, well, if you're not going to use it, then why am I supposed to? How are you expecting me to use it?

32:03

Jonathan Klemm

Yeah, I mean, if they're not in the space, it's hard for them to understand, right? Because vibe coding is cool. But like, if you don't have the vision, like, you don't really have anything, right? Like, you can only go as fast as the vision is, is there, you know, so if you have 30 developers, but you can't, you know, have them produce what you need to produce fast enough, like it just, it's not going to happen. You know what I mean?

32:24

Dylan Baker

Yes. Yeah, it's, it's, uh, what David and I see like in our industry just in general is a lot of like the vibe coded like indie hacker software stuff, it's going to end up dying, you know, within a few months because you know distribution is everything like if you're not using it yourself and bringing in people to help you like pilot test it, it's eventually going to fizzle out so like you got to like keep like the fire going by just like innovating and using it and bringing more people on rather than try to like use it to make money right away. That's just what we're seeing at least. I don't know if that's something you've thought about or not, but I think you have an awesome idea. And I would say like working with the local businesses to help you pilot test, it would be the first step, I would say, after you have already, you know, done like the six months or whatever yourself to validate the thesis and, you know, make sure everything works, of course.

33:19

Jonathan Klemm

Yeah, there's this, I just can't get over how much, how much room there is for growth and change, you know, like, I mean, especially with construction, like it's just so like interconnected, you know, like the way you can start a project and have the code, like the cost codes that translate to the cost items that translate to the schedule that translate to the money is just like, so how do you take all of that? And then systematize it on like an Uber level, right? Where you're matching up, you know, different plumbers from different sites and, oh, that plumber called in work today, so then his rating goes down. And how do you get all the material there for them? Like, there's just so many avenues, you know, to like, create such a better process. You know, there's just so much waste and productivity and material that if you can just help. Figure out how to make people more productive and eliminate waste. Like it's just a multi billion dollar, you know, industry that is it makes me sick, right? I just hate going on my own job sites and seeing like, okay, well, it's probably less expensive for us to trash this stuff than it is to move it somewhere else. But how do we make sure we don't order to this much the next time, you know, and how do we partner with different vendors to make the delivery easier? And there's this I just can't wait to keep going on it. But yeah, because it's like an endless ceiling that never, never hits your head. You never hit your head on.

34:50

David V. Kimball

Whoa, I'm getting I'm feeling the energy from you. I like this. Yeah, it's funny. You say you expect the older industry to not have a lot of. People building their own solutions. We've actually talked to a couple people that are doing that. And so that was kind of our operating assumption as well. Because one of our goals with the show is to interview people and say, hey, you know, where are opportunities where you can really improve your operations and really digitize a lot of the stuff that you're doing. And to our great surprise, there are pretty competent people that are messing with these tools. Now, of course, they solve the problem where they go, yeah, you know, I want to like white label this and sell it and you go, well, Is it secure? Like just because it works for you? Is it gonna like is it you know, is there a lawsuit on your hands? And one other reoccurring thing we keep seeing is people talking about the importance of understanding the law and even people that have gotten law degrees in the construction industry and like similar things because of all the insurance involved and the liability and stuff. So there's a lot of little things and And so anyway, we just we've loved hearing what you're doing is incredible. I don't think anyone has that we've talked to is handling your specific problem yet. But it is always fun to hear about. It was always fun to hear about people's side projects and honestly, how we've been surprised through this so far.

36:00

Jonathan Klemm

Yeah, you guys are still probably talking to like, you know, a unique, you know, one to 2% of people, right? You're the people you want to talk to are probably doing those types of things, you know, compared to how many Contractors out there aren't doing that, right? Like the minority of people, like they haven't even thought of it. I don't even know what AI is still somehow, but...

36:21

Dylan Baker

Yeah, there's, you know, like when I was doing the outreach, like I was pretty selective with who I wanted to, you know, talk with because I run like the, I guess like the sales side of things. This is more of just like a marketing thing for us. But, you know, there's, you know, hundreds of thousands of contractors just within the US and it's like, Man, it would take us months to hit all those people. But we were pretty selective with picking like businesses that had like good Google reviews and like major cities and such. So, you know, we've, we've talked to people, though, who aren't using any sort of AI at all. And they're like, they're just all about, you know, hammers and nails, like One of our guests said recently, but it's really cool that you've built out, I mean, pretty much an entire operations platform, right? I mean, it's like a CRM too, as well.

37:11

Jonathan Klemm

Yeah, it's like, it morphs into that eventually, right? You know, we use HubSpot currently right now, which, which I love, you know, but eventually it's like, okay, you know, it has almost too many features for us at the same time, you know, where eventually, okay, you know, we're still just a general contractor. But, you know, you know, for the average person, like they don't need a HubSpot to track their leads. But eventually, the ERP aspect of it, where you can actually see where all the money is. I would say that was probably one of our single biggest challenges early on. I could never tell you what our exact cash position was. Right this second, because we had so much money out, so much money owed. We had the line of credit. We had these different bank accounts. We had three or four different credit cards. And we're at different spots on six or seven different projects, you know. And without everything like tying back into one place, I couldn't tell you, you know, and even so I'm still working on it in foundation to figure out what it is. But I see a number that says, here's your cash position. We have all of your. The financials here, we have each project at a certain stage with its current cash position, and then boom, you have that number. But until it's all tied together, like, that was like the horrible thing about Buildertrend, right? I mean, it was just so closed box that I, you know, you could barely link QuickBooks to it, you know, and then the idea of like exporting your project data. You know, to figure out some of those like cash positions, it just wasn't there. Like the reporting just was not what we needed, you know, so.

38:55

Dylan Baker

We use internally, obviously without giving up too much information, we use Mercury as our bank and they're like a fintech bank. They're relatively new. But they have full API access and an MCP. So like, dude, like they have like webhooks and everything. So if you have some sort of like knowledge base that you have built with your operations platform, you can connect it like through Mercury via API and you could literally track everything. It's amazing. I don't know if you've ever looked into it or not before, but a lot of like legacy banks, I think are behind the curve on the API access stuff. Uh, but if I had to recommend a bank to like be able to track all the stuff you're wanting to track, you should look into Mercury for sure.

39:42

Jonathan Klemm

That might be the next move is sell the banking side of it too.

39:46

Dylan Baker

There you go, man.

39:48

Jonathan Klemm

Okay, cool. Yeah, I mean, it used to be really, really, really hard, right? Yeah. Now it's easier if you kind of can figure it out, but it's only going to get easier, but. Yes. I mean, especially when you had just like so many, I mean, I bet we had like, I don't know, freaking 10, 12, 15 different like little subscriptions, like Loom and the Quo and the HubSpot and it's just like Asana and it's like, yeah, this is like, yeah, we're going to get rid of Asana, we get rid of, you know, BuilderTrend. I'm just like so happy just to like consolidate and see things in one place and I'm like, [bleep] like it's just. It's crazy. Yeah. When I, I just built like the, the, the, that company like dashboard that I was telling you about and I haven't even like released it yet, but I'm just like, Holy smokes. Like this is just, it's really fun. It's like breathtaking legally on unexplainable. Like how crazy it is that I built something like that with no. No understanding of what I'm really doing at the end of the day.

40:54

David V. Kimball

And lots of other owners are in your boat, but they actually don't have a technical background like you. So they really don't understand what they're doing. And then what they're building actually does go nowhere. So part of our goal is assessing how technical they are and to go, hey, you need to run your business. You're spending your time on this is fun, but you probably shouldn't be spending your time doing this. You need a bunch of nerds to do it for you. And that's what we say.

41:14

Dylan Baker

Yeah, we we we had a call with a gentleman last week.

41:19

Jonathan Klemm

And. In a similar position as you, but way less technical. I could, I mean, like, I could just tell, you know, from like your backgrounds, but he had built an operating system kind of like what you have built. And the way he was describing it, what he built and stuff, not to like talk down on him, but he's, he just sounded very novice. And David and I were like, man, like, we should help this guy because like, he's Putting himself in a position to where like if he's storing like client data and stuff and something, you know, there's gaps and whatever he's built, he could be liable for, you know, some stuff down the road that could, you know, be like a pain in [bleep] But, you know, we're, you know, I'm sure we're going to end up talking to more people who are in similar situations and hopefully we can. Help them out to where they don't have to, you know, stay up for 18 hours to raise a family, go to work and build an enterprise level software platform. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, again, yeah, I just go back to like, if you don't know what you need, like, you don't know, you know, like, most of these guys, they don't even have a clue, you know, like, they're just fricking They're trying to get the guys to the job site let alone freaking you know figure out how much money they're spending you know and you guys just search the people you could find online right like even probably 80 percent of contractors don't aren't even online they don't even know what a google business page is so it's like right that might be the question too is like how do you reach those people you know who have no presence right like Facebook groups, you know, that's where I see a lot like, yeah, you know, contractor Facebook groups, you know, but like, yeah, and then like getting them on the phone trying to talk to them, even getting it's hard for them to talk to you. And you could tell them, Oh, you did this, this and this, we're gonna be able to help you grow. But they're like, they don't have a head right there. The body's just running around. So yeah, yeah, it's hard.

43:12

David V. Kimball

Totally hard. That's why the in person stuff is so important for us to

43:16

Jonathan Klemm

for sure. Yeah, I met with another guy the other day who was just like, he was building something to kind of aimed more like an ERP. What's it called? Graceful GMS, graceful management solutions. And similar type of thing to me, like he gave me some passion, but he kind of also like poo pooed my vibe coding at the same time. But he he'd been working on like launching the product since. What did he say? 2021 or 2022.

43:45

David V. Kimball

So is he like a traditional software developer and he was like trying

43:49

Jonathan Klemm

to... He's a traditional salesperson, but has a traditional CTO who has a master's in AI and this and that. And I'm like, yeah, I mean, I don't think mine is the best, but like... So you're just getting the market now, 2026, and you start in 2021. Like, part of me is like, oh man, like I said earlier, you guys like, oh, I wouldn't mind jumping on that team and getting paid $100,000 again. You know, like that sounds nice. Instead of my freaking $75,000 salary, I paid myself and next to nothing for five years. But then the other part of me is like. Wait, so if it took him that long to do that and it took me this long by myself and he has three developers, you're not as far ahead as you think, dude. Yeah, you are totally right. His deck was so good and I loved it and I'm going to talk to him again and see if I can just somehow get it because it was like he was starting with roofing, but everything he said was stuff I started reiterating. Like he used the. Like the analogy of like GPS, right? Like, and how there's like a network effect of GPS, like when there's a crash, you know about it, because there's so many other people in that effect. And you can have that create that same network effect in the renovation space. Once you have so many people in the network, and that plumber does this and that, I'm like, Oh, you're 100% agree. You know, like, I want to get on your team. The other part of me is like, No, I think I'm kind of because he was only going to one sector. It's like, Okay, if I go to one sector, first. So that's like the way so I can figure out all the trades and their costs and all that. And I don't disagree. I just happen to already be in this lane of the general contracting. So then how do I disseminate to the other trades to get all those materials and bottlenecks and stuff like that? But yeah,

45:44

David V. Kimball

did you did you hear about the guy who like had like? Like a hundred phones in his car and he turned Google Maps onto all of them and he made he artificially created a slowdown because he just like drove really slowly and had all the phones on and so everyone thought there was a yeah so he influenced what you said and he influenced the Google Maps to think there was a slowdown because it's one car with the 100 phones.

46:09

Jonathan Klemm

No way. Yeah, that's crazy. But yeah, I mean, I love everything you said, but I'm like, oh, man, it's just crazy because I don't like I don't really like the general contracting either. You know, the more I've done it, the more I'm like, man, [bleep] You know, like people are never happy. You're relying on subs. You don't show up even today. He's like, I was like, dude, we told him tomorrow. He's like, oh, it's not going to be till Monday. I'm like, dude, you could have told me that on Monday. But now we told the client today. Now we look like idiots again. Yeah. But. Because yeah, when you, when you, that's like the hardest part is like when you're not the guy doing the work, right? I was like, I worked for a carpenter and know what quality work is, but like I never started my business swinging a hammer, right? And so when you scale out of that, and then you're allowing other people to have that same like impact and it's just super, super hard.

47:00

David V. Kimball

Yeah, well, we're almost the time here. Just a couple more questions before we close up. Is there a partner vendor or is there like another company you work with you want to name drop that you just want to give a shout out to a project you've done recently?

47:15

Jonathan Klemm

I always recommend the same person every time someone asks me that is a guy named Prashant Makahali. A development business. He's probably done over 100 plus single family houses here in Chicago. And he has an architecture firm called PMPC Architects. And he's just more so been a mentor for me, more than anything else through, you know, all the stuff I didn't share that's happened during the first four years of general contracting, which I feel like more has happened to us than your average general contractor has happened for them their entire life. But he'd be the person I always like. Think of when someone asked me like who I would want to name drop just because he's always been there when I'm like crying, actually physically crying about the situation. I'm like, I just don't want to do this anymore. But so yeah, he's helped me continue to stay motivated.

48:06

David V. Kimball

That is awesome. Awesome. Thank you for that. Any other questions, Dylan, before we wrap up?

48:11

Dylan Baker

Yeah, John, if you if you weren't running your business now and you weren't in the, you know, the general contracting space, what would you be doing, you think? Not as like, it doesn't necessarily have to be for like a career, but for like, what would you be doing with your life rather than running the business?

48:28

Jonathan Klemm

Yeah, well, I guess I could answer in two parts. Well, one, one, if I wasn't doing this for work, I actually think about that often. Or I thought about it quite a bit often, probably a year ago or a year and a half ago. And I was like, I just can't, I'm going to give it. There was a point at the end of 2025 where I was like, okay, I'm going to give it to the end of 2026. And if like things cannot. Get going in the right direction quick enough. I just, I'm not happy enough doing this that I want to keep doing it. And so yeah, I think the tides have turned. And that's it. And so I thought about it a lot. I was like, man, it would almost be fun to like, try and get a job, you know, like, it'd be interesting. I think I would probably be doing something in tech. But I just don't even know, like my skill set is just More unique. And I think once you've started your own business, especially like something like this, it's not a clear path on what you could go do. Like I could go get a project manager job like all day long, you know, but like, would that make me happy getting on site at like 7am and leaving at 5.30am and working, you know, 50 to 60 hours a week, not being home and seeing my baby every morning? Like probably not. So I think I'd probably do something in the tech space that was somewhat like remote and some type of operational facet, or finding someone else's big vision that I could, like, fit within as, like, you know, some type of, like, operations leader, something like that, you know? But I know the side I would just be, like, figuring out on, like, the philanthropy side of something, right? My dad started a 5013c, is that the right term? 501c3, yeah. Yeah, 5013c for, like, um… Yeah. In Kenya, he got a well drilled in Kenya for some village that my old soccer trainer was from, but that we met at the soup kitchen after like 20 years of not seeing him. So I'd probably like dig into like that type of stuff trying to figure out like how to solve those type of cool, unique problems and help that get off the ground more.

50:26

Dylan Baker

Cool. That's awesome, dude. Awesome. Well, that's all. I mean, I'm all good on my end, David. I don't know if you have any more questions for Jonathan or not.

50:35

David V. Kimball

No, just if people want to get in touch with you, Jonathan, what's the best way for them to do that?

50:40

Jonathan Klemm

Yeah, it's always going online. So if you go to qualitybuilders.com, that's the easiest and best place to find us. You can set up a free consultation or use our cool instant estimate feature to get a quick snapshot of what it might cost for a kitchen bath, whole house remodel or multifamily rehab.

50:57

David V. Kimball

Great. Qualitybuilders.com. That's a great domain name.

51:00

Jonathan Klemm

That was one of the smartest things I did when I was like, man, I remember I paid six grand for it. And it's probably the best six grand ever spent because it's like even someone just types in, right? Quality Builders Chicago. It's like, boom, we're top of the list. Like, I can't, you know, that was very important to me early on. Like, I've always been a big person on names and grammar and things like that when I was actually probably the worst English student ever. But eventually, I think I got over my dyslexia and started simplifying everything. And so, like, you know, the words I say and choose and think are just, like, super important. Quality Builders was probably one of the best choices I made.

51:35

David V. Kimball

Thanks for your time, Jonathan, and thanks for everyone for listening, and I'll see you guys next time.

51:43

Jonathan Klemm

All right. Thanks, gentlemen.

What came up.

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

FoundationThe project management platform he built himself, from pre-sale to post-con
Claude CodeWhat he used to build Foundation
HubSpotWhere the company tracks its leads today
Google Local Services AdsJust started, on top of organic search
BuildertrendMoved offThe project management software Quality Builders is moving off

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Jesse MillerSolid Value ContractingJesse Miller built a contractor CRM in six daysEpisode 2 · 43:09WatchCody WeightSolitude HomesHow Cody Weight made 100 homes feel like 20Episode 1 · 35:03WatchIsaac LeBaronLeBaron ExteriorsIsaac LeBaron on why over-promising is roofing's biggest problemEpisode 7 · 47:02Watch

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