Episode 1: Wendy Rogers eSUB

Power To The Trades Wendy Rogers eSUB

The eSUB team is proud to announce the launch of our new eSUB construction podcast, Power to the Trades. This new show will feature weekly interviews with construction professionals in the Trade Contractor World. The show is hosted by our very own Rob McKinney (aka the ConAppGuru), who is no stranger to podcasting, as he is one of the co-founders of the ConTechCrew podcast.

This first episode features eSUB founder, Wendy Rogers. Rob and Wendy dive into the world of specialty contractors and how they use technology to power their businesses and protect their profits.

First Episode Recap:

Rob starts off by asking Wendy about her background and the inception of eSUB. Wendy has been an advocate for the trades for many, many years. She started as a consultant, running a company and working with skilled trade contractors.Here, She found consistency with the issue of trades not getting paid equitably; documentation.

2:30 “Sometimes it’s difficult to document while you are building, but it is important to do so because we don’t get paid for the work we do; we get paid for the work we document.” -Rogers 

She started by teaching best practices from a paper standpoint but then created a software platform to connect the office and the field. This enabled the work done without sacrificing the documentation, and in turn, the payment.

#PowerToTheTrades

When asked about the #PowerToTheTrades hashtag and what it means, Rogers explained “it seemed like a natural phrase to rally around… because the skilled trades are the true builders of everything in this country. We are advocating for them to have power in the industry, and it presents itself in so many different ways. For instance, as a platform built specifically for trade contractors, that gives them the power to own their information” 5:42. Not only that, but the information lasts forever.

Diving into the nitty-gritty, Rob turned the conversation to discuss the use of technology that helps power operations at the trade level. He asked the age-old question: is it possible to manage a company on excel alone at a project level? Wendy brought up how skilled trades are brilliant with excel spreadsheets because of the technicalities of tracking costs, but then the challenge becomes… “how do we update that?”

Ultimately while the software in excel is built and available, there’s no easy, streamlined way to update our excel sheets in real-time and share the data back to the team. When you take a glance at a platform that is purpose-built for the trades, it captures what actually happened in the field, highlighting what needs to be done in the office and track items in a structured database. This gives actual insights into what we need to do to stay on top of our projects. To wrap it up, Wendy explained that eSUB is careful not to overcomplicate a project while keeping track of all the necessary information.

Let’s continue to bring #PowerToTheTrades!