Building Your Business Ep. 26: Scaling to Six-Figure Government Contracts with Mike Dunne

CCPIA (00:00)
Welcome Mike. I’m very tickled to have you on here today. Again, we have Mike Dunn here and he is an expert inspector, been a loyal CCPIA member for how long Mike?

Mike Dunne (00:24)
since its inception. I think in the year that it came about,

CCPIA (00:26)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I think you got a pretty low number. And tell everybody where you’re located at, Mike.

Cheyenne Wyoming. So I guess let’s begin with a little bit about your background. You’ve not always been an inspector, have you?

Mike Dunne (00:47)
Correct, no. My background is actually kind of widespread. From the time I was a kid doing, you know, numerous odds and end jobs, whether it was working with remodeling companies, I worked for a construction company briefly, but I had a lot of odds and end jobs until I was 19 when I moved to a ranch, became a cowboy, did that full time for seven years, absolutely loved it.

met my wife, moved away during the railroad. Absolutely hated that. I needed a way off the railroad. We had just bought a house and we had an inspection done. Well, actually we had an inspection done on the previous house we wanted to buy. It fell through as a result of that inspection. Thankfully we had the inspection. Saved us a huge headache. And at our second house, I was actually able to be present at the inspection.

And the inspector told me after going over and reviewing everything with me and understanding that I knew quite a bit about what he was talking about, he said, hey, by the way, I’m bringing everything to you. There’s going to be a spot open around here for an inspector if you have any interest. So while I don’t know anything about the industry, I apologize. This is going to drown me out in a second. So hang on. I forgot when we scheduled for Friday.

So, but anyways, yeah, so I, he kind of opened the door right there with the intro that said, hey, there’s gonna be an opening. I was working on the road for the railroad, had tons of free time, off time, within my camp. So I started studying, started doing some research into InterNACHI ASHE stuff like that, and just started going through classes while I was working full time.

Got that done, got all the training done. went with the ASHE, not InterNACHI. But originally signed up with ASHE, went through ICA and then ASHE school and stuff like that. Switched to InterNACHI not long after, maybe a year after joining ASHE. But started doing inspections on the side. I worked a really convenient schedule, eight on, seven off. So I could schedule up to a week’s worth of full inspections in my off days and then go back to my normal job.

I did that for the first eight or 10 months, I think. It was about a year after I started it that I was able to finally decide, you know what, we’re gonna go full time with this and leave the railroad behind. So I did. And it’s been, we haven’t looked back since we started the company, February 2017. I went full time with it, the beginning of 2018. I haven’t looked back since.

CCPIA (03:39)
have to ask because I’m going to ask everybody that I’ve ever talked to about the railroad. You weren’t a hobo, right? I need to have a conversation with a hobo. What did you do with the railroad?

Mike Dunne (03:48)
Correct.

Oh, well, I’ve never been a hobo. I could tell you that. I was maintenance away. So I did track maintenance. I held a variety of jobs, but the one that I held the longest across numerous gangs that I worked on was track surfacing. I ran a DCAT, or what’s known as a cat tamper. It’s a big 200-foot-long rail car machine that lifts, lines, levels, and stabilizes the track.

CCPIA (04:01)
Okay.

Mike Dunne (04:23)
I did that from California to Chicago for eight years.

CCPIA (04:27)
So it’s a lot of vibration, right?

Mike Dunne (04:30)
Yeah, the stabilizer uses vibration to mimic trains running over it. So it actually uses hydraulic down pressure in addition to its own 77 tons to mimic trains rolling over it. So as you’re lifting, lining, and leveling the track and then squeezing rock underneath it, goes right over it right afterwards and shakes it back into place, but it’s now perfect and shook in place. So it mimics a train going over it so that trains can go back to full speed a lot quicker.

CCPIA (04:52)
Yeah.

So your jump from the railroad to inspections is not unique. I’ve, you know, in all my years, boy, it’s such a common denominator of had an inspection, watched the inspection, realized I could do the inspection better.

Mike Dunne (05:17)
I wouldn’t necessarily say that I thought off the bat that I could do it better. The inspector that I had or that we were lucky enough to have, he was a mechanical engineer and he had an engineering degree in something else too. He had worked for 40 plus years as an engineer and then he decided to do home inspections on the side. The guy was insanely smart. So I don’t know that I’ve ever done an inspection better than what he could have probably done.

CCPIA (05:46)
Well, got your story. Well, your story then is unique because usually usually when I talk to inspectors, it’s like, yeah, I watched it, realized I could do it. could probably, you know, I’ll then I’ll use the word I could probably do it better or as goods. And then in your case, the story is the same.

Mike Dunne (05:47)
Yeah.

CCPIA (06:11)
When the part-time job probably pays more or is it more enjoyable than the full-time job, you make the part-time job the full-time job. You never look back.

Mike Dunne (06:22)
And I had so many people on the railroad that said, you’ll never make as much money as you make on the railroad. you’ll never have as much time off. Well, that part is true for the first however many years you get to until you get to the point where you learn to run a company, not a do-it-yourself job. But, you know, they all said you never make as much money. That’s a lie. And the money isn’t the same.

It’s non-computable. You’re comparing apples to oranges. You’re comparing spending, you know, I spent 200 plus days a year on the road away from my family for seven, eight years. I would exchange a lot of money for the time back that I lost through my kids. So the money doesn’t have to equate to me. It’s the, I’m home every day in my house now. That’s the evidence.

CCPIA (07:12)
Yeah,

and there’s some certain intangible benefits to being self-unemployed.

Mike Dunne (07:23)
Yes, there are.

CCPIA (07:25)
You know,

when you think that I can have a camper, an RV, or a boat in the driveway that’s pointed in the direction to leave, that I can go, kids, I’ll be at every event you ever have, and I’ll never miss one.

Mike Dunne (07:35)
Right.

Exactly. Well, and the way I would put it too is the difference is having a camper in your driveway that never leaves versus the camper in the driveway that leaves when you say so. You know, it’s not when somebody approves your time to take that camper somewhere. It’s if you want to take a little week because you have inspections covered like we do, have inspectors that do the inspections. Then I took last week a bunch of Yellowstone like, know, I mean, we talked about that.

CCPIA (07:55)
Yeah. Yeah.

I love it.

Mike Dunne (08:13)
My wife was hit the week before that, know, T-bone when we were supposed to do this originally. But I mean, I had a week where it was covered. I had an inspector that covered everything for me and no necessity for me to be here. So we went on vacation for a week, you know.

CCPIA (08:28)
So that’s interesting. You say,

it’s a difference when I decided to start running it like a business. What was that transition like?

Mike Dunne (08:39)
That transition came from a lot of audible. I’m a huge fan of audible audio books. I have saved my life on long drives. I can’t tell you how many times, but there was two books really that changed my life. One was the E-Myth Revisited. If you’ve never, and this to anybody out there, if you’ve never read the E-Myth or the E-Myth Revisited, read it. It’ll save your life and business. The second was Who Not How. That book I didn’t even finish.

But the premise of the book is very clear. It’s made clear in the first two chapters. If you’re not good at something, find someone who is and have them do it. And what it teaches you more so than that is it’s not just about business and life, but it teaches you that what’s the, the word just escaped my mind. When you put things off, always putting things off, procrastinate. Procrastination is the best thing for a business owner.

CCPIA (09:31)
of destiny.

Mike Dunne (09:36)
because it will directly point you to what you’re terrible at and what you’re good at because you only procrastinate the things you’re not good at.

CCPIA (09:43)
A couple other

books you’ve probably read or should put on your reading list would be by Jim Collins. And one is good to great.

Mike Dunne (09:53)
I’ve never read that one.

CCPIA (09:55)
And they’re quick reads. And the other one is built to last. So built to good to great, I love. And it really is a wonderful book of why is one company good and one company is great. And built to last is a lot like you just talked about. And it’s not filling your bus with people. It’s putting the right people in the right seats on the bus. Yes.

Mike Dunne (09:59)
I’ve heard of that one.

No, no.

Yeah, because people are expensive. People are very

expensive. So yeah, it’s exactly that. And what I learned and I applied it to this business, plus I also have a pest control company and I apply it to that one every day as well, as well as our life is, you know, again, if you’re going to procrastinate something, I’m great at math. I’m terrible at accounting. So we have an accounting firm and we have a CPA firm. You know, we have two of them. And why?

They’re really good at what they do and not so running the office, you know, there, there became a time when he didn’t want to do it. And I’m not good at it. So we hired a manager, you know, it’s, have to put people in place in my opinion, otherwise you’ll never get that freedom that you all started out looking. You know, we all wanted freedom as a business on the differences. We all start jobs. We don’t start businesses. The tricky part.

goes to when can you make someone else do the business for you, do the work for you so you can enjoy the benefits of the business.

CCPIA (11:20)
Yeah,

I mean, there are certain entrepreneurs, you being a prime example, that will look at their operation and say, I love the job. I love getting in my vehicle and helping people. I hate accounting. And so, or I hate managing people, or I…

I’m not fond of this. I hate might be a strong word. so you could be the lead inspector in a company owner, but not the CEO very easily.

Mike Dunne (11:59)
Correct.

Correct. And to be honest with you, mean, in me five years ago, this was me too. More people are suited to that role than would honestly admit. guess most of us don’t know a darn thing about running a business when we start out as an inspector. For me, that was the way it was for me too. I I started my business as an inspector and I was, it was the inspector. My business was me, that’s my last name.

But what I quickly realized is that that was no different than what I was doing before. It was just on different hours and I had to fill those hours. And what I realized was that to get to the point where I wanted what I actively sought when I left my job, which was freedom of time, to spend more time with my family and independence. I wanted independence from a master, if you want to say. And we’ve achieved that.

You know, we’ve had our ups and downs, but they’re all of it. We’ve persevered with that attitude. Let me say that. But along the way, I fell in love with you talking about what you love, what you’re good at, what you do. I fell in love with the business aspect. The entrepreneurship is what I love. It’s getting them up and going, starting them up with managing employees. I absolutely hate doing the field work. I don’t do inspections anymore myself, unless it’s for expert witness level stuff. Then I do go on.

But all residential and commercial inspections now are handled by inspectors for us. And that’s the way I prefer it. We don’t want to be out there. We want to be in here building the business, not out there doing the business.

CCPIA (13:37)
So what was your first leap that fostered that to you? Was it, have so many calls I can’t keep up? Or was that, want to, like you said, I want to pursue this passion I love and let somebody else have a new passion.

Mike Dunne (14:01)
It started out with just trying to take some time off my or some some work off my plate. So when I went full time with my company, when I left my full time paying job and went out on my own, I didn’t have the inspections because I live in Cheyenne now, which is only population 60,000. I started this company in a town of 6,000. So, I mean, realistically, to try and grow and expand or go full time, it’s not feasible. So.

I had other outlets. did insurance loss control surveys for years. I managed a three state region. And that requires an intense amount of scheduling. So I hired a scheduler. And in hiring a scheduler, I found out that she was really good on the phone and she could also take inbound phone calls for the inspection company. So I started having her do that. And then when she moved on due to pay restrictions, I couldn’t pay her.

much because she was retired and on benefits. So she couldn’t work for me anymore. She was making too much money. So she ended up having to on to a different job. And so once she left and I had to go back to picking up that phone one time, went, never again. Oh, terrible. Never again. Who can we hire now to answer these stupid phones again? And we hired immediately right here. And we’ve never looked back. mean, we are currently in between managers as far as people answering our phones right now.

But we’ve never looked back. We’ve always had someone answer on our phones and from there, COVID hit. So we blew up. So we went to, you know, four inspectors plus myself, full-time managers. You know, we, and then when you scale back after COVID, you find it very hard to put yourself back in the positions that you delegated. And that’s where I’m at. I don’t want to go back to any of those jobs. That’s what I have people for.

CCPIA (15:53)
I was going to ask you about Cheyenne and population and with a multi-inspector firm or I’ll say firms between the inspections and the pest side. It takes a lot of population to run a decent sized company. So how big a breath do you have to have in

geographical size to make what you’re doing work.

Mike Dunne (16:22)
Here.

When I started, it was a lot bigger than it is now. I’ll say that. As we’ve established our name in this region, our service area has shrunk, thankfully. We’ve been able to cut out certain areas. But we used to have a four hour drive time service area. And most people would just, but realistically, for somebody that was ordering an inspection,

CCPIA (16:29)
Okay.

Mike Dunne (16:52)
Let’s say on a specific road, you know, of outside of Douglas, Wyoming, I won’t name it, but there’s a lot of high end homes on that road. We’re the only company that really ever does inspections up there. And to go up there in the winter time when you’re for inspections, you’re a through snow just to get to the gate to go hike a half mile down to the house to do an inspection. These inspections are expensive. We charge for the mileage. We charge accordingly. Nobody bats an eye. I mean, it’s life in a rural environment. I know there’s

CCPIA (17:21)
Yeah.

Mike Dunne (17:22)
you inspectors out there, you call an electrician, they’re going to charge you a trip fee. We basically have the same thing. Our mileage is not the same as IRS mileage. We charge less than that, but we still charge mileage on everything. And there’s also certain areas we used to only service on certain dates. So we would book outlying regions, let’s say only on Thursday.

We booked one two weeks out on that Thursday and we just hold those other slots open until someone else in that area needed one and then we tuck them in there with it. we strategically try and make it advantageous. That’s the hard part though, hiring like a call center, for instance. We’ve never used one and I refuse to because unless, and I don’t use the VAs for this job either. We’ve tried and it was horrendous. Nobody accounts for drive times.

You know, they’re used to drive time in the city. It’s like, well, this house to this house is 20 minutes because it’s two miles. Okay. Is that far in the map? And then you’re sprawled out looking at Wyoming from here. It’s this far on a minute. That’s, you you know, so we had a lot. We’ve we’ve done the VA remote and all that stuff. And what we found is if you’re not hiring somebody local that understands it, you’re not getting it. So we’ve always hired local last manager.

CCPIA (18:19)
no, it’s this far on the map.

Mike Dunne (18:41)
with us for like three years. She was great. She understood the geographical restrictions and but yeah, I we have I have an inspector next Tuesday that’ll be in Colorado for a couple of inspections and then he goes to Sydney, Nebraska. And then he has to drive home after that, which is an hour and half drive home. He’ll probably be done at five thirty that day. He won’t get back till seven. He’s fine with it. But, you know, we we scheduled accordingly.

We work with our inspectors, whatever works for them, you know.

CCPIA (19:12)
I

had that issue in the early 2000s when we switched to a, I’m going to call it overseas. The call center was actually in Canada. But it’s still outside the United States. And that was always our challenge is I’m in Chicago and the call center is answering the phone and they’re pulling it up on whatever map service it is. And it’s a 10 o’clock inspection. No.

Mike Dunne (19:23)
Okay.

CCPIA (19:42)
That 22 miles is an hour and 15 minutes.

Mike Dunne (19:47)
Yeah, exactly. And they don’t get it. I know there’s a lot of people that use call centers, right? It must take a lot of onboarding and a lot of training. I don’t know how they’ve gone through those headaches, but we found that hiring locally, here’s the thing. Here’s the one biggest thing. mean, look, I use what resources are out there like any other business owner will do. But when it comes to hiring employees, I’ve always had this

Reservation against hiring out of country for one reason, out of city even, for one reason and one reason only. We all claim to be a local business. We all claim to support local stuff and we all want people to support us. And then we hire people out of the country for five bucks and I get it, I’ve done it, it makes sense. I actually currently employ people in my pest control company out of country. They’re only for marketing purposes though. If I’m gonna hire somebody that’s gonna answer my phone here or do this stuff,

They’re going to be here. They’re going to, and the reason why is when I show up my face at my booth at these places, they know my employees or they see my employees in me. They don’t see a picture of a person from the Philippines on there. The person’s there. They can talk to them. They’re real. They’re in, I just, again, it’s providing a job in my community. And that’s a big thing of pride for me, I guess, as a business owner in my community. It’s the employee.

CCPIA (21:13)
Going back to your travel, what was that leap or was it always there that said, I can actually charge for this travel because the consumer will pay for it? Or was that scary for you at the beginning going, boy, if I add this, they’re not going to hire me.

Mike Dunne (21:33)
It was, yeah.

It was scary at the first, yes, and I’ve always charged mileage, always from day one, but it used to be ridiculously cheap. I would charge somebody 25 bucks to drive an hour, you know, and that’s one way and then I got to drive that hour back and now it’s, you want us to drive an hour, it’s probably going to be a hundred bucks for mileage, you know.

CCPIA (22:00)
You

got to think it’s not the gas, the fuel, and it’s not the wear and tear. It’s where so many entrepreneurs forget, I think, is the loss of opportunity.

Mike Dunne (22:08)
you

Yes. well, I forget what book I think it was who not how or he talks about the power of hiring a driver, just driver to do nothing else but drive your own and the power of that. I wish I could afford a driver. I would hire a driver just to drive your car because the freedom that you get. that’s again, when you hire you, I have jumped past that point now, but yeah, when I was first doing it, yeah, you, you have to calculate.

CCPIA (22:22)
Yeah.

Mike Dunne (22:43)
Like that’s all the time you could have spent calling agents or calling businesses or doing this, doing that. It’s all the time you gave up, not to mention the time that you spent driving. You know, if you’re going to compound that over by three and what you lost in productivity capability, not to mention you’re wearing tar and fuel and everything else in that vehicle. yeah, you’re.

CCPIA (23:04)
My old rickety sore body just exploded with that mic. I’m thinking to myself, if I was back at this age in the field again, which could be fun, I love being in the field, but if I had a driver, even if I hired a 20 year old to drive me all day long to jobs, I could be on the phone, you’re right, marketing.

I could be writing inspection reports through the Wi-Fi in my vehicle so that I could be doing proposals. And that driver’s also my betta, no, my sherpa.

Mike Dunne (23:45)
and easier to assist.

CCPIA (23:47)
Yeah.

Mike Dunne (23:49)
He’s your assistant. Yes.

CCPIA (23:50)
Yeah, carrying

ladders and setting things up and putting the drop and thinking, know, anticipating my next step so I’m ready and holy moly.

Mike Dunne (24:01)
And push

it one further because we did this during COVID when I had four inspectors, that was just two teams. We ran teams and this is something that nobody else was doing. But we were doing them because the demand was so high. So I had two teams run three a day. And you’re like, how do you do three a day in your region, Mike? Well, the inspection assistant.

That’s what they were paid for. They were paid at a lower scale than the inspector who was actually trained up through InterNACHI. Our assistants, we put them through InterNACHI too, but at slower pace and they had the option to grade them. But the assistant’s job was to set up ladders, drive, know, A, drive, but B, set up ladders, open accesses, open electrical panels if they were, if that person could.

But not only that, their job was to test every door, window, electrical fixture, appliance, blah, blah, blah, all the menial crap that ties up the inspector’s time. And then the inspector only had to do one thing. Look at the five key components. Once they look at the five key components, all the ancillary stuff’s filled in with flags or whatever, they could go do a review with the assistant. But then the inspector, that your time, our time was cut in half. We were doing three hour inspections, we went to an hour and a half, they were published before the next inspection.

because the assistant was driving to the next inspection. The inspector sitting there finalizing everything on his phone or his tablet, whatever they were using. And yeah, by the time they got to the next one, reports out and they’re on to number two, same process on to number three. We had two teams doing that. It was great. So yeah, I mean, for not just hiring a driver, but even just putting in work on the inspection site too, they can do all the menial stuff without any training. It’s not hard. Tell me if it.

Go around and plug this outlet tester into every outlet. Tell me if it comes back with anything other than this yellow light.

CCPIA (25:47)
And I

was always using the nine-year-olds that were bothering me at the inspection to do that.

Mike Dunne (25:53)
That’s free, that’s free, that’s a better way of doing it. Yeah.

CCPIA (25:55)
Yeah. I turn to mom and dad and say, do you trust your child to plug something in? yeah, here.

Tell me if there’s anything other than this light.

Mike Dunne (26:07)
Yep, exactly if they can do it your chauffeur can do it, too

CCPIA (26:12)
Yes,

I love it, Mike. mean, what a way to A, bring employment, but to take your utilization table, your opportunity table, and expand that in such a way that you can take the big thinkers, the inspectors, that are juggling and eliminate that mundane task, but engage them in a more

Mike Dunne (26:34)
Right.

CCPIA (26:42)
I guess I’ll say profit centric or client centric side of the process. Well, then that brings me to the next leap. What was your foster that made you think, well, let’s move from residential to commercial?

Mike Dunne (27:04)
demand, demand. I’m in such an obscure area. There was nobody out here doing them. There’s one other company doing them now. There’s a lot of Colorado companies that will come up here and stuff, you know, whatever. But at the time I was the only one. Like I had so many realtors that would come to me and say, hey, would you consider like looking at this commercial building? I’m like, I already do that stuff. And they’re like, oh, we didn’t know anybody around here did that. And it’s still not that big of a thing here. You know,

CCPIA (27:06)
Okay.

Mike Dunne (27:34)
Not to segway or sidetrack too much off of this conversation, but it’s a unique environment here in Cheyenne. And I know people, everybody says they have a unique environment until I ask them this. What’s your main competition as an inspection company? And to a T, 99.9 % of inspectors are going to say other inspection companies. When you come to Cheyenne, Wyoming as an inspector, you’re not competing against inspection companies like mine. You’re competing against

an electric company, roughing company, you’re competing against the plumbing company, the HVAC company, because all four of them formed a compact trio packed. And they now say that they’re doing home inspections, even though they only look at three components of a house. And that is accepted here. So I don’t compete against home inspectors. I compete against people that are using licensed contractors to do inspections. And they do the same on commercial. So it’s a really unique situation here where

Everybody is used to just calling up the roofer when they want the rough inspected, the electrician when they want the, it’s a different battle here. They don’t go to inspectors around here. It’s been an uphill battle trying to show them like, Hey, we do a whole of that in one service at one time and we give you like five times more value than that on top of this. And it’s less than what you paid all of them combined. And it blows. Yeah. And they were going to sell you something. I’m not even going to sell you anything. Yeah.

CCPIA (28:55)
We’re not gonna sell you a roof.

Mike Dunne (29:01)
Actually, here’s a sad story. we, I have paid partnerships with companies. There’s companies that pay us to be in the reports for the referrals and stuff. And I’m not going to go into the people’s opinions on it, but I’ll give you an example. was doing a commercial inspection on a building here in town. The roof is trashed, completely trashed. TPO roof, it was shot, had been shot for a long time. I could tell. I told my client, called him from the roof. I said, Hey, your roof is shot. He goes, what do you mean? My dad had got an insurance claim on that seven years ago. What do mean it’s shot?

So, well, I don’t know to do with the money, but it’s trashed. I said, if you’d like, I have a roofing partner I’ll bring in and they just give you an opinion on it. There’s no contract shit, nothing like that. They’re not going to try sell you anything, blah, blah. They did end up landing the $350,000 contract, which the roofing company is very grateful to me for, because we’re not on a commission basis. They paid me a flat rate fee to make my reports and I just had, that was just a phone call. But here’s the back to the hiring thing. I wanted to go into that real quick about this aspect.

The thing about hiring locally that you lose when you hire out of local is you lose all the contacts that that person brings to you anyways. It could be a kid. I had a 17 year old kid working for me last summer in my pest control company. That kid brought me so much business because of who his family knew. Once they found out that he was working for me, the contact referrals that you can get from hiring locally because everybody knows people. So I, again, back to that.

getting people that know people, builds your network. It massively expands your network by hiring local.

CCPIA (30:34)
I did the same thing you did in the Chicago market. While I never exchanged a marketing fee, the particular specialty consultant, I’m going to use rofer, that I was friends with on a business relationship, he would go anywhere in 100 miles of Chicago for $250.

do a roof car, a full inspection, and a cost to remedy at the same time. Because he knew he could sell a million dollars of a roof.

Mike Dunne (31:06)
There you go.

Exactly. it’s all, but that’s all relationship building. It’s not about trying to get rich quick or trying to make money off their backs. It’s relationship building. You provided invaluable service to that client because they had a much easier path to getting that work replaced or repaired or whatever. Like I say, I don’t care about people’s opinions about it one way or the other. mean, the way that we did it, we only have three referral partners, three, and it’s only because I know and implicitly trust them.

CCPIA (31:14)
Yes.

Mike Dunne (31:41)
I refuse to put anybody else into our partnership program that I haven’t seen physically do their work.

CCPIA (31:47)
I did the same

thing with my environmental, with ETS environmental, that a lot of inspectors are getting to know now. They were very close friends of mine because I would say, hey, I’ll give your name out. And if somebody calls you before me, know that I’m a commercial inspector, and I’m going to take that work, and I’m going to show you respect.

Mike Dunne (32:10)
Exactly. Yeah, it’s a mutual respective relationship. That’s what you have to have. Yeah. And it takes time to build them, but they’re worth it.

CCPIA (32:14)
Yes.

good grief. mean, the more people that you can have carry your banner high, looks, looks, is the best marketing you could ever have. Whether it’s that 17 year old kid that’s out there spraying for ants and taking down wasp nests or whether it’s your roofer. You’re right. Everybody knows somebody and

Mike Dunne (32:21)
Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yep.

CCPIA (32:49)
and

you know what was the country song everybody’s famous in their small or in their small town or yep I mean I grew up in a town of 18,000 people and it was 18,000 people when I was there it’s 18,000 people today it’s never changed it was 18,000 when my father was born and and everybody knows everybody and and I’ve tried

Mike Dunne (32:55)
Yeah, famous and small.

Sorry.

CCPIA (33:15)
I’m trying to go back there and do inspections. And no, you moved. You’re up in the big city. We don’t need your type around here. No, no, your brother is. I think I’ll call him. But you’re not local.

Mike Dunne (33:21)
Yeah, right. Yeah, you’re not.

You’re not local anymore. That’s right.

We moved to Cheyenne and my wife still licenses her truck in the lives town we lived in because it’s cheaper. And when my renewal came up, she goes, do you want me to just renew yours up there too? I said, no, I want local plates. And she goes, I said, because it’s a company. if people look at my plates, if they see seven county, they know you’re not from here. If they see two county, they know you’re local. So no, I want local plates, sorry.

CCPIA (33:48)
No.

That’s

funny. Well, I guess it’s about, yeah, I want to transition a little bit. So you started doing commercial inspections. And I remember meeting you back in 18 or 19 the first time. And you’ve taken your commercial business, though, and you’ve got a

a referral stream that so many inspectors are trying to figure out and that’s doing work for the government. Was that done purposefully or just like everything else, accidentally?

Mike Dunne (34:43)
Definitely purposefully. And it took time to come to fruition. I will say that it was definitely purposefully though. So the way that I got into it was actually incidental contact, I’ll say at first with the government contract just coming down the pipes of an asbestos project and I knew an asbestos contractor and we were actually on another project together and he was just telling me about it. And I was like, man, how’d you get involved in that?

CCPIA (34:45)
Good.

Mike Dunne (35:11)
Do you registered on Sam.gov? It’s counter. I’ve never heard of that before. He’s like, you’re in your, in your NAICS code, your, you know, your industry, you’re not going to find much, but he goes, you really should be registered anyways, just in case you never know. Okay. So we went through the process. It wasn’t that painful of a process originally to get into it. I mean, it took, I want to say a month, month and a half of back and forth emails, stuff like that. Just getting everything done. They have a accelerator program.

that will help you on board with all of this, it’s excellent. So yeah, I just, I went out and registered literally a month or two after he told me about that. And it wasn’t until 2019, 2020, no, it would be 2020 or 2021 when we got our first contract. And that was a good two year, three year period where I didn’t see anything from it. And it wasn’t even a direct hit.

that got us our first contract, because we’re not a prime. We’re not a prime contractor. And most government contracting is prime, prime level. That’s your big time, Hansel Phelps, stuff like that. You know, the big time contractors that are built bidding in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in projects. These are the ones that go after a lot of the stuff that applies to what we do. So I was registered for several years as a government contractor. I was monitoring the bid line. I would put in, you know,

I would put in things here and there that I thought I was interested in doing the best that I could. But it wasn’t until I really sat down with Janine from the Apex program and we really dialed in the NAICS codes and search parameters and stuff like that, which they’ve all gone away with now because there’s some website grievance. And so they’re rebuilding a website that’s not live yet. So you can’t actively get your search results sent to you now.

Um, or at least last I knew you couldn’t, I still don’t see them come in. So I assume they haven’t fixed it, but, um, you can still go out there and search yourself. I was just searching them. Two hours before this call, actually, there’s one I was uniquely interested in because it pertains exactly to one of my contracts. It’s kind of funny. Um, surfing these, um, bid sites will also give you insight into the projects that are going on in your area that you might not have a clue about. Um, just going through sam.gov, um,

you know, and looking up their bids for your state. I tell you what, it’ll open people’s eyes to stuff that’s going on around them and what you might have other avenues of opportunities for. You might see a bid coming up that, you know, you have no possible chance of being involved in, but you might know people that are and you might say, hey, I can provide this service or that service and they can bring you in as a subcontractor. That’s everything we’ve done is as a sub under primes and stuff like that. So, I mean, it’s still a good idea to be there. Now,

Being there was what led to our first contract. We weren’t in consideration for the contract because it was such a huge contract. But when the prime got it and then allocated down from there, because we were listed on there, we were a phone call from an engineering firm that was awarded a contract under the prime. And they said, hey, we jumped on and found that you do sewer line inspections. And I said, yeah, do sewer inspections. Yeah, what do you need?

we need like 20,000 feet of sewer mains videoed on Air Force Base. Like, okay, cool. Yeah, I can probably do that. Let me make some phone calls. I’ll get back to you. No idea what they were talking about. So I got off the phone and started making phone calls seeing how I could rent a pipe crawler. Turns out it’s not that hard. And so once I found out that you could rent them, I called the guy back said, hey, what, what licensing do I need? What certifications do I need? He goes, nothing. you even

And then put a camera down a pipe and provide a video of it. I said, yeah. He goes, OK, cool. Contracts yours. We just need to figure out pricing. I went, what? OK. And so from there, they were really gracious. They actually really helped us in the process. The engineering firm has been doing it for a long time. their employees know the process really well. So they were really helpful. And I have found that everybody in the contracting world is really helpful. They all want you.

to get the job. Everybody wants you to get the work. It’s nuts. It’s the opposite of the private world where everybody is like, I want you to get it. Now there’s people in this process that are, they’re literally paid to make sure that people like you get the job. mean, especially when these bids go to a priority small business owner. A priority small business owner award will only go to a small business less than 10 million a year revenue, less than this many employees, stuff like that.

count as that, which all of us inspectors do, you’re going to be in that consideration versus that engineering firm that has 150 employees, does 50 million a year revenue. They aren’t even a consideration. They can put a proposal in on it. They won’t even be considered. So there are advantageous aspects and disadvantageous aspects. But being on there and at least making people understand, again, drilling down into your NAICS codes on what you’re comfortable with doing.

putting it out there that you’re open and available for bidding on these NAICS codes. It might be building inspections. It might be sewer surveys. It might be environmental surveys. I’ve done phase ones and phase twos on government property under environmental firms that didn’t want to send somebody out here from San Francisco or whatever, wherever they were from, Texas or whatever. Here’s a unique one too, one that we just wrapped up last year.

We have multiple contracts going on on base, but we wrapped up one contract that came across my desk out of the blue. Have you ever heard of a UPV inspection?

CCPIA (41:09)
No, I have not.

Mike Dunne (41:10)
Okay, a UPV is an unfired pressure vessel. Do know what that is? It’s propane tanks. It’s propane tanks, people. Air compressor cylinders, air compressor tanks, propane cylinders, oxyacetylene, so those are all unfired pressure vessels, UPVs. So this, the Air Force needed all these propane tanks inspected and air compressor tanks inspected on base.

CCPIA (41:19)
good golly.

Yeah.

Mike Dunne (41:38)
I was like you, I’d never even heard of UPV. But let me make some phone calls, see what I can do. Turns out there’s companies out there that do exactly this business. What were we talking about earlier? Who knows how I’ll find who’s good at it, figure out how to do it. I just find the people that are good at it. I do what every other government contractor does. I find the next person in line to do things. I have projects on base that I have never thought on base for.

Um, have projects on VA facilities in the asbestos world that I’ve never even like, I just sub everything out as much as I can. The sewer survey stuff we got into that really heavy run. We just wrapped up the third phase of a minimum five phase contract. So for that one, I actually went out and bought a pipe crawler last year. You may have bought an Aries Pathfinder too. So it paid a rebate.

CCPIA (42:26)
Okay, what’d you buy?

Mike Dunne (42:34)
ridiculously low amount of money for a $70,000 bank program that now works phenomenal.

CCPIA (42:38)
I,

I spent a year writing manuals for rehabilitation. And so all of our trucks had the German Schwalm. It’s a million dollar robot with brass wheels. It could crawl through a pipe as small as four inches, but as large as, I don’t know.

Mike Dunne (42:49)
never heard of that.

And ours will

be down to a line six. So like a zip line six, ours will do it. But that’s on running the smallest wheel. That’s just the crawler dimensions. You know, it can’t fit much smaller than that. we were using pipe trekker out of Canada. So the first two phases of our project, we just rented the crawlers. And pipe trekker out of Canada has some really good rental rates. can rent. It’s like

30,000 for the month for one crawler or it’s like, I think it’s thousand a day or something like that. that’s actually, believe it or not, that’s actually a really good rate. I know it sounds high, but it’s really not, but when we got.

CCPIA (43:42)
But if

you’re billing $10,000 a day, OK.

Mike Dunne (43:47)
Exactly. Yeah. And I mean, we weren’t building 10,000 a day, we were built because ours were built at per linear foot. That’s the way the way that they needed it is like, it was much easier for us to just come up with the price because they kept adding into tracking stuff constantly. mean, anybody that’s ever dealt with any sort of government contract knows that it only changes a hundred times before it’s done. Maybe you’re lucky if it changes only 125, but we just went the route of buying a home because

Honestly, I got sick of other people’s crap breaking down on me. I was renting these crawlers and then they break down and you have to ship it back and ship it back. It’s a $500 shipment every time. I just bought one. Somebody actually posted in a Facebook group that they had one for sale down here in Denver. I messaged him that night. I was like, are you serious? That’s that cheap? I only paid 20 for it. So you’ll probably understand. Yeah, 20 on the pipe crawler. It needed 25 grand in worth.

We sent it into Aries, they did 25 grand in work that we had to pay for and all that stuff, but we now have a $70,000 credit proler for $50,000 into it. So, and we only.

CCPIA (44:55)
With what

you’re saying of, you know, so that intimidation factor of venturing into government had to be huge.

Mike Dunne (44:59)
Thank

Nerve wracking,

very nerve wracking.

CCPIA (45:09)
And that month

it took you to go through the SAM site, to get your SAM number, to get listed, and then to spend a couple of years, let’s just even say striking out.

Yeah. And so I find it brilliant and perfect that your listing had the primes coming down to you. And then you going, yeah, yeah. OK, let me get another sub. So it’s a sub of a sub of a sub. It reminds me one of my college jobs in the summer.

was EEOC work on federal contracts of a major road build. So every day I had to go out and count workers and say, there’s this many female, there’s this many male, there’s this many of this ethnic origin, there’s this many of this ethnic origin, because in order for this contractor to get properly paid for this federal work,

they had to make sure they had the right ratios and the right ratios of ownership in prime versus sub versus small business versus it could be minority or women owned. So all of these become, I guess I’ll use the term tick boxes for the primes.

Mike Dunne (46:26)
Yep. Yep.

Yes, they do.

And the more ticks you have, the better. 100%. If you have the ability and the good fortune to be woman owned or minority owned, yes, absolutely. mean, especially when those bids come up for those specific allocations. those are, we tried to do that during COVID. It’s not as easy to go to woman owned as you would imagine. My wife tried to take ownership of it. Like we wanted her to.

CCPIA (46:50)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Dunne (47:14)
because it does favor you in certain government bid situations and stuff. It’s not that easy to transition to a female-owned or a woman-owned company from where we both own 50 % of it now. It’s not a year of just going 51, 49. It was a long process, so we didn’t do it. But yes, the more boxes you check off, and not only that, just your willingness to do the work.

If somebody calls you and says, hey, you we’ve got this project coming up and really just need someone to do this one aspect, do it. Even if it takes you a little bit of time to go out and research it to make sure that you’re doing it right, do it. You know, I mean, there’s, there’s classes you can take for sewer line surveys. And I was going to field a truck in the field. My guys would have it. We don’t need it at this point, but there’s, mean, it, opens doors too.

I mean, we never imagined that we’d have a pipe crawler sitting in our shop, you know, if doors open from this stuff, we now have two of the state’s largest construction companies that are using us for municipal projects. They’re redoing the entire sewer and water main infrastructure upgrade on a town. And they just found out two months ago that we do the sewer line surveys and they told us, great, we wish we’d known about you on this project.

They had us come in and do the cleanup on the project and then told us, we’ll use you on everything from here on out on stage. Just, they saw me on the listing. That’s it. They just saw me on a listing and called me directly. So it’s worth it.

CCPIA (48:51)
So to sprinkle

a little happy dust or magic dust on all this and I’m not going to ask you any specifics because it’s none of my business. In any of these government contracts have they involved six figures?

Mike Dunne (49:07)
Yeah, yes. Yeah, we’re in the six years on the one already. Yeah. Like I say, it’s we’re over six already and we’re only done with three of the five phases and there might be a phase. It depends on how they break it. Originally, it’s only going to be a four phase project and then I might do a six days project and five days. You know, yeah. So but we’re well.

CCPIA (49:09)
There you go.

No.

Isn’t that something? Yeah, you know, and it’s just, it’s just

being listed. So you talked about, you did it yourself and you worked really hard. SAM. So SAM stands for System Award Management System, Management.

Mike Dunne (49:43)
I

did a lot of the things, but I did have Janine, our local Apex Accelerator, help me on it a lot. Like I said at the beginning of talking about that, the Apex program is available nationally. It is everywhere you are. I guarantee it. There is someone local to you in your Apex program and they will help you onboard and get all set up. They know everything about it. So if you want the magic dust to how this stuff works for you,

CCPIA (49:51)
Okay.

Mike Dunne (50:13)
Tolmanet program.

CCPIA (50:15)
And

that’s that’s sam.gov, which is truly a federal website. Then there’s also USFCR, which is the US Federal Contractors Registration or USFCR.gov. I mean, I’m sorry, dot com. They’re a private company that will help you do all these things. But that’s at a fee. My understanding is Apex is no, there’s no fee for that.

Mike Dunne (50:39)
Yeah.

It’s a government program. It’s free. Yeah, it’s got these are these are government employees paid to help small businesses get into the government contracting work. That’s the only purpose of the program. So yeah, and there’s there’s companies like that at the state level too. So I’m subscribed to all of our state level and city level bids as well. Through it’s a different program for state level stuff. But there are programs or there are people for those as well. But there are companies for those

CCPIA (50:45)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Dunne (51:13)
that will charge you an exorbitant amount of money to do everything that I just said, but you have the resources out there for free.

CCPIA (51:20)
There was a company out when I was running my operation that had an online governmental contract service where they would put out the RFPs and they would put out jobs that were going out for bid all the time. They were listed. And I subscribed to it. It was an inordinate amount of money. And as you said, so much of that work I wasn’t directly qualified for.

indirectly, I had all the knowledge and I know I could do it. And so I was always scrambling for, okay, I’ll be the sub, but you’ll be the prime. You know, because you have the first credentialing they needed. Maybe that credentialing was P.E.

Mike Dunne (51:52)
Exactly. Yes.

Right, exactly,

exactly. Could have been that, Well, and that’s like, like I said, even on the asbestos stuff that I do, I let my asbestos license go two years ago. I stopped doing all these best as surveys myself. just, because I found a really, really good subcontractor just south of me in Colorado. Actually, I think they’re in Boulder. But anyway, they do all my work in both states of care because…

Nebraska and Wyoming are way different Colorado when it comes to asbestos. We don’t have reggae up here like you guys do but I once I realized that they were so adept at doing what I was not and I was like I knew everything they knew they were just quicker at it than me and so they could do exactly what I could do and Half the time and I could make money on the top end just by up up charging them just a touch sure I don’t even have to leave my desk

And a lot of that stuff I never would have considered until I got into government. And then I realized how many subs there are in any project. mean, anytime you go out on a government contract, you’re not even looking at the prime. You’re looking at a general or one of the 17 subs underneath them.

CCPIA (53:21)
You meet the prime on Letting Day, the day the job is let to the public, and you meet the prime on Walkthrough Day. Otherwise, the prime never shows up to a project until the last day of the party.

Mike Dunne (53:37)
And I will say this, the primes all have their own requirements too, that you’re gonna have to meet as their sub. We’ve had to increase our insurance coverage since we started our first project on the Air Force base because most of the primes had two mil minimums and we just had one mil minimums. So, I mean, it’s not that big of a deal to change it to two mil anyways, but yeah, I mean, we’ve had to change certain things and the way that we do delivery on certain goods is way different.

The one I wanted to make, to go back a little bit on something you said, I wanted to clarify the point. Make sure when you guys are doing this or when anybody’s doing this that you get, go look up the NAICS codes and go read through them sometime. Don’t just Google what your NAICS code is for inspector or whatever, because that’s one NAICS code. There should be a minimum of three or four NAICS codes that really apply to your business, really. And if you have less than that,

You’re not going to ping on many search results. Again, back to the tick boxes. Think outside the box. The sewer, they don’t call things inspections in this world. They’re surveys. So if you want to look up a, if you want to find a place for your camera head on your sewer scope to go down, go look up a pipe survey or go look up a sewer survey or a stormwater survey. Those are the ones that are going to be looking for guys with cameras that can go down pipes. They’re not looking for inspectors.

or inspections. They’re looking for surveys. So make sure you go through and find the NAICS codes that apply to all of those things in a unique way. I think we have like six or seven NAICS codes. yeah, it’s dive in and go deep. Make sure you tick all the boxes you can for sure.

CCPIA (55:22)
Just to make sure

we circle this, what does NICS code stand for?

Mike Dunne (55:30)
gosh, national something identification. I don’t even know. I’d have to Google it. I don’t even have a man.

CCPIA (55:35)
All

right. So again, let’s kind of circle this wagon here a little bit. Okay, thank you. So what our viewers are gonna get out of this is there is a nice transition. You can transition out of the field. It works.

Mike Dunne (55:43)
There it is, North American Engine Classification System. There you go.

Yeah.

CCPIA (56:00)
And

it works in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It can work in Boca Raton, Florida. It can work in Bangor, Maine. It can work in Orange County, California. If you have an entrepreneurial mindset, I love the idea of hiring a driving assistant. But the real thing I wanted to talk with you, Mike, was this government stuff.

for our, when we think of, let’s just think of practicality. The large portion of our individual earnings that goes to the federal government and then the federal government’s apportioning out to keep their infrastructure churning, there’s a lot of money there.

Mike Dunne (56:53)
Yeah, ton of money, yes.

CCPIA (56:56)
And

right or wrong, spent wisely or not wisely, that’s not for this debate. Our conversation is we have a unique ability, and correct me if I’m wrong, to fulfill a need for other contractors or ourselves. And there is a way we can go after it.

Mike Dunne (57:18)
A hundred

Yes, 100%. And there’s avenues to go after those that are a lot easier than people think. It’s not as daunting like we’re talking about.

CCPIA (57:28)
So using the programs available, the Apex program, which has a government employee help you get government work by listing you properly, the SAM registration, which if you can solve the Rubik’s Cube, you can probably muster going through those steps. And then going and hiring somebody like USFCR and have them help you through that process.

Mike Dunne (57:46)
Yeah, you can. You totally can.

CCPIA (57:59)
Going, even transitioning your commercial avenues into unique positioned opportunities is a good way to enhance your portfolio.

Mike Dunne (58:14)
It definitely is. mean, best case that I can give people as a reference, and I don’t know the details of it. So it’s a really fuzzy case to tell you, but a lot of people that are listening to this or whatever, it might recall just a year or two ago, there was a really large contract awarded for inspecting like 5,000 houses across the bases across the country and a prime got that. And they hired an inspection company.

of where were they out of? I forget. Let’s say we’re a beast, but they hired an inspection company to put all this together. You guys, this is not something that’s abnormal or rare or whatever. This is just normal government contracting, prime grabs it, finds them a sub to fulfill it, and then the sub finds somebody else. And that’s exactly what that inspection company was doing, was calling everybody saying, hey, are you willing to go do this? Who will do that? They’re looking for subs. That’s all it is.

CCPIA (59:10)
And what’s the proper answer? Yes.

Mike Dunne (59:14)
The proper answer is yes, yes. For us, it was a hard no on that opportunity because they couldn’t even come close to meeting what we needed to replace our inspectors with. And we were tied up in the middle of a project on a base ourselves. But for a lot of other inspectors out there, that opportunity would have been huge for anybody to jump on because not just getting involved in it, but just seeing the process.

CCPIA (59:15)
And I’ll figure it out.

Mike Dunne (59:40)
seeing what’s involved at what aspects you can see and then seeing what happens when you’re on base. Seeing what happens when you’re out on these government properties is nowhere near as crazy as people think. It’s really late. It’s really like, honestly, but that opportunity could have opened the doors for a ton of inspectors because the inspectors, a lot of them were subbing out. They’re doing the bases locally. These are people on base that are doing business in your town. They’re building houses in your town. They need sewers go, they need turbines. You know, they need all this stuff.

is networking, networking, networking constantly making money.

CCPIA (1:00:13)
I did 300

Super 8 motels without leaving my office. By just picking up the phone and going to my Rolodex back in those days, because I don’t even know if the internet was around. It was all done by fax of me just calling. Can you do five in Colorado? Can you do 10 in Las Vegas? Can you do eight in California?

Mike Dunne (1:00:17)
I love that.

Yeah.

Yep. Yeah, sure thing. When do need them done by? Okay, not a problem.

CCPIA (1:00:37)
It’s not tough.

Yeah, yeah, yep, yep.

And if it’s the end of the day, they’ll give you a free room.

Mike Dunne (1:00:48)
Yeah. And then you figure it out from there. That’s when you figure it out. I got done. This is a pest control one, but I got done playing around the golf at a local golf course the other day. And one of the groundskeepers was riding by me. So I just waved him down and I was like, Hey, I noticed you guys have a ton of rodents, like a ton of prairie dogs and moles on hole number one on the right side. And I was like, I know they’re all over the golf course and stuff. He’s like, yeah, I know they’re getting really bad.

CCPIA (1:00:51)
Yeah.

Mike Dunne (1:01:16)
He’s like, nobody takes care of them, blah, blah, blah. I like, I do. I own a company for that. he’s like, sweet, submit a proposal. So I did. Without even looking at the property, I just blindly submitted a proposal that I know will make me money on the job. I know I’ll make money on it. Now I just have to figure it out if they accept it. That’s it. The money’s there. If they accept it, the money’s there. I know I can make it work for the amount that I bid it. I don’t know how I’m going to make it work. That’s because I don’t have the contract yet.

CCPIA (1:01:35)
There you go.

Mike Dunne (1:01:44)
When the content comes across your desk, then you figure it out. Don’t figure it out at any time.

CCPIA (1:01:48)
And

that’s exactly what we did with the motels is, okay, how are gonna do this? Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. And we’re gonna do it this way. And I had every one of my subs take a roll of film. Again, it’s old, of each property. They were required and here’s the photos. I threw the rolls of film away five years ago, undeveloped, because I never needed them.

Mike Dunne (1:01:53)
Thank

Yeah. Yeah.

Wow, narrative.

CCPIA (1:02:16)
because there was never a callback. But I thought, that’s going to be my SOP. It’s a simple roll of 35 millimeter film. Costs you, at that time, probably $4.

Mike Dunne (1:02:26)
Exactly. Yeah. And now, well, now you’d probably be twice that much.

CCPIA (1:02:31)
If I could even get it. But it doesn’t matter. The comedy was, just like you said, yes, I can do it. Let me figure out how. Because I already know I want to make money. But now I’ve got to figure out how to do it to make the money. Because if I had to travel to every one of those super eights, you know who makes money? Southwest Airlines and Enterprise rental.

Mike Dunne (1:02:34)
Thank

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. And the fuel companies.

CCPIA (1:02:59)
Yes, where

if I’m sending out local, they’ll make it money.

Mike Dunne (1:03:05)
I 100 % agree. I outsourcing, that’s, I’ll put it this way, even when I look at bids now, even before I even consider whether or not it’s something that I would take on, or as I’m looking at them as whether or not it would take them on, I don’t look at them as, hmm, is that something I do? I look at every bid now, do I know anybody that?

CCPIA (1:03:26)
There you go.

Mike Dunne (1:03:27)
Literally don’t I look like I said, I just looked at the bid line like two hours ago on Sam and I’m scrolling through the states that I that were in Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado that we scroll and I was like, do I know anybody that does this? Do I know anybody that is this? I literally did jobs before where I didn’t know a dang thing about it. And I’m done them. UPD inspection. I got that bid. I got that contract and I just upbid my sub by three grand and I never left my office. It was great. I loved it.

CCPIA (1:03:57)
That’s fantastic, Mike. Mike, thank you so much for taking your time today. We’re rolling up here on the hour, and I want to be very respectful of your time and plus our listeners. Again, I think government work is an opportunity. It’s an opportunity. think it’s being, residential inspectors could do it, but I think it’s a different mindset. I think.

Mike Dunne (1:03:57)
You know?

CCPIA (1:04:24)
Having that commercial mindset is critical because you’re not just transactional. You’re actually thinking to yourself, every client is different. Every client has a different need. Every job here as you’re looking at is different. And you’re going to fulfill that need. So thank you, Mike.

Mike Dunne (1:04:44)
remember this.

CCPIA (1:04:48)
Yes.

Mike Dunne (1:04:51)
We all talk crap on contractors remember you get in this world you are the contract

CCPIA (1:04:54)
You are one. If you look in the mirror, you’re seeing one.

Mike Dunne (1:04:58)
Yep, that’s right.

CCPIA (1:05:00)
Thanks, Mike,

so much for taking your time. Stay safe.

Mike Dunne (1:05:04)
Absolutely, thanks Rob, you too.