Shed Geek Podcast

STEEL KINGS: Order Management Made Easy With CAL

• Shed Geek Podcast • Season 5 • Episode 96

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Ready to turn slow season into rocket fuel for spring? We dig into the single biggest lever for shed and steel pros—process—and show how a smarter system can unlock more sales, faster delivery, and fewer headaches. With Tristan from CAL, we walk through a clean, unified workflow that pulls orders from Idea Room or Shed Pro, covers cash or RTO in one checkout, and tracks each building from production to delivery in real time.

We talk straight about the real pain: corrupted spreadsheets, double entry, dealers guessing at status, and RTO that drags for days while customers cool off. CAL compresses that chaos into minutes—select the RTO partner, surface 24/36/48/60-month payments, auto-generate contracts, and send for e-sign without leaving the dashboard. It’s built for how buyers actually decide, and it keeps your team in sync whether you’re on the lot, in the shop, or checking in from the road.

Inventory visibility and dealer-manufacturer alignment are the quiet superpowers here. With one source of truth, your customer service team can answer “where is my building?” instantly, dealers can move deals forward without waiting on callbacks, and owners can see the day’s pipeline at a glance. Pricing stays practical too: plans starting around $300 per month with a simple $10 per deal, a cost you can pass through, absorb, or treat as the price of speed and accuracy.

If you sell sheds, steel buildings, playsets, or mixed lines, this conversation lays out a proven path to scale without adding office staff. Replace spreadsheets with a system that actually sells. Subscribe, share this with your team, and leave a review with your biggest bottleneck—we’ll tackle it in a future episode.

For more information or to know more about the Shed Geek Podcast visit us at our website.

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This episodes Sponsors:
Studio Sponsor: J Money LLC

Identigrow
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Jared:

What's going on, guys? This is the Steel Kings Podcast. I'm Jared. This is Eric, and we are the Steel Kings. Back at you with another episode of the podcast today. We are sponsored by the good folks over at J Money. If you guys need any good help with financing your skill building, sheds, groups, tools, whatever it is the team at J Money can help you out. Check out the team at Cold Spring Enterprises, the creators of the Versabend. If you have anything that you need in the steel bending game, you definitely need a Versabend. Check the team out at Cold Spring Enterprises. Eric, my brother, what's going on, man? How are you today? Pretty good.

Eric:

We've got the it follows here. And uh November. Good time to stay inside. I've been I'm loving the new song. I'm loving the new song. I'm loving the YouTube. Yeah, man. Um, and I know we'll probably get into that, but man, big thanks. I uh it's funny how we started. If you watch I watched the first episode the other day, 35 yeah and um yeah, we've come a long way set eight months ago, so yeah, we've come we've come a long way.

Jared:

Welcome to the Steel Kings podcast.

Eric:

Yeah, literally the future of the of the construction industry, basically.

Jared:

We're getting shot out of a cannon, we're getting shot out of a cannon constantly on the Steel Kings podcast. Um, we are having a good time, we are meeting new people.

Eric:

Our website's bad website is beautiful.

Jared:

I can tell you guys, you guys have been waiting for this. Come check out thesteelkings.com. If you guys are followers of us and followers of the program, you will want to check out the content at thesteelkings.com. We are on Spotify, we are on Apple Podcasts, we are on every major podcasting network now on our own. Um, we're still working with the guys at the Shed Geek Podcast. So big shout out to Shannon. You guys will hear the episodes first through the Shed Geek Network, and then there'll be back episodes available as a curated list through the Steel Kings podcast on all your major platforms, YouTube. We really want you guys to check us out on YouTube. If you guys are listening to us and you've never seen an episode, we shoot all of these live, and you can watch us do it. You can watch the outtakes and the fun times that we have. Um, so we're super excited about that, man. We've got uh the NFBA show, the National Frame Builders Association show coming up in February. Big shout out to those guys. We're looking forward to seeing them uh coming up soon. And a big shout out to our friends at Graber Post for helping us out on some things. Um, if you are in need of anything in the post frame industry, give the team over at Graber a call. We love those guys. Um, bro, what a time to be alive. All right, November the 5th. It's November the 5th, man. And I'm telling you, I'm telling you right now, so we sell steel buildings, we sell wood sheds, we sell pole barns, and I know what you're thinking right now. If you're doing that, it's the slow time of the year, and I'm getting a little bit of seasonal depression. What I'm telling you is to stay motivated and get ready for 2026 because Eric said something earlier today. We'll be putting shorts back on before you know it. March first.

Eric:

I know I said I was like March 1st. We're gonna blink, it'll be March 1st. I'm telling you, you know what? I feel like I've set like part of the Eric Olsen brand has always been around this time. I start saying March, March, March. It's almost like you grip tight to the fall, and then and then once you let it go, you're just thinking about March. And yeah, that's right. What you can do as a business to build and set yourself up for next year. Um, thankful for that. Thankful, you know, and got some partners that we brought on that we're doing websites for too as well, and that's exciting. Um preparation for March. So yeah, um, man, just I'm thankful.

Jared:

Hit us up if you need help. Hit us up if you need help with SEO and marketing. We can still help you out with that. We'll give you some insider baseball, if you will. Let me throw some numbers. Yeah, go ahead. What are you gonna say? You like what? I like that we're talking about what we can do for 2026 to prep for a big year. Oh, yeah, we've got a really good special guest. I want you to finish your thought, and then I'm gonna introduce our special guest and get him in here because he's been on the phone with us for like two hours.

Eric:

Great guy. Uh awesome guy, right? Guys, we are T minus 50 days to Christmas. Man, bro, someone from the church I go to texted me a picture yesterday of the Christmas trees up, bro. With like, you know, his like wife was I'm telling you, dude. But I'm telling you, what are you doing?

Jared:

I'm telling you, dude. I'm telling you, dude. Come on, man. Oh boy, we just we're getting the trees up a little early, folks. Come on, let the turkey let the turkey come before we get the Christmas trees up. I know I'm probably in the minor minority here these days, but I'm just I'm boring. I don't like fireworks. You all heard me go on about July the 4th. I'm not a holiday guy, it doesn't do it for me. All right. I like to enjoy time with friends and family all the time. I don't need an excuse to see them once or twice a year and eat a bunch of food and get you know bloated, so and sit around and watch football all day. I don't know, it's just not my thing. But hey, if it's your thing, great. Have a happy holidays and a happy Merry Christmas and uh and a happy Thanksgiving. But man, if you're putting your Christmas tree up before Halloween, come on now. Come on now, come on. Somebody's got to give me a reason why. Drop me, drop me a reasonable.

Eric:

And it can't be because I just want to get it out the way.

Jared:

Yeah, it can't be. It's been sitting in storage all year, and I gotta get it out there before Halloween. I think it's a status thing. I think it's a status thing. I, you know, again, don't like Halloween either, but I had to take the kids trigger treating. And the thing about it is, it's like, you know how many Christmas trees I saw up in people's windows? And it's like, are they just trying to show off, Eric? I feel like they're just trying to show off. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. I could be wrong. I don't know. I don't know. 2026 is right around the corner. The time now is to get motivated and look at your processes. What worked in 2025, what didn't work in 2025. What I can tell you is we were at the Shed Expo and we met a guy. And you guys have heard me say this before. We met a guy, and this guy has something that is very unique to the industry and ties together things that we love, like Idea Room and Shed Pro and Easy Pay and Smart Pay. You guys know we love everybody. We're even Steven here at the Steel Kings podcast. If you're hearing me and you want to be featured, give Jared or Eric a call. But I can tell you, anybody who's working at this level with Idea Room gets my full undivided attention. I have been on the phone now with Tristan for almost two hours to the minute. Um, we've demoed the product, we've been through the process. I can tell you it is buttoned up and it is serious business. If you're looking for an order management system to streamline your process, the guys at CAL, Tristan, and his team will do what they can to get you right for 2026. Lots of cool things. We're gonna bring him into the studio.

Eric:

Tristan ain't got a wild business partner.

Jared:

Man, he brought the fire, he brought the fire to the Steel Kings. It's very rare, it's very rare that we meet someone that has our energy level. And Tristan, you have an energy level, but you brought with you an energy level that was even superior to mine, and I'm pretty crazy, right? I've got the podcast energy, but I can tell you, man, Tristan, welcome to the Steel Kings podcast. We are super honored and blessed to have you. And I can tell you, man, you've got a product now. You've got something, you've got something that you need to share with people, and uh I'm impressed, man. I mean you get my honest feedback. I'm impressed. I'm impressed. I uh everybody knows here. I am a huge mark for idea room. Okay, I love the guys at Idea Room, Dan, his team over there. We love Idea Room at Dayton Barns, we love it at Five Rivers Pole Barns. We think that they are the premium 3D configurator in the steel building and post-frame space for sure. But you have something that hooks up to idea room and almost like adding jet fuel. Tell us about it, man. Tell us what CAL does, tell us how order management works with CAL.

Tristan:

Yeah, great. Well, I'll go back to those Christmas trees for a second. You were talking about yeah, man. They're clearly not cutting them down in their yard because they're in the Christmas tree lot open within miles around me right now. So they got some plastic thing they're pulling out of the box picking up. It's yeah, that's you nailed it. It's tough. Tough to compete with. I mean, but anyway, it's a little early for you know Christmas tree, and the leaves are still hanging on the trees. Let them fall. Let them fall, you know. There you go. But then Eric, you know, I'm thinking about you. March, March. I'm like, I talked to these guys that I sell shed, you know, I sell my software to, and they're like, it's hunting season. They're like, they can't hardly wait for November to roll around and be out there chasing bucks and does and waterfowl. And so I think they want to wait, wait for March. Like, no, hold off, let me get my hunting in first before we take care of that stuff.

Jared:

Uh it's okay to take a vacation. It's okay to go on vacation. I don't hunt, so let's add that to a list of things Jared doesn't do. Jared doesn't hunt because you got to get up really early in the morning. It's usually pretty cold, and I just frankly just don't want to go, to be completely honest.

Tristan:

Yeah, I mean, if it's I pause the hunting too. My boys hunt, you know, and I just don't want to set up 200 snow geese decoys at five in the morning to lay around until they show up.

Jared:

Uh I sleep, I sleep at five in the morning. I'm a I'm a up at seven guy. I don't know. I can tell you, man, I am I can't say this enough. The demo that we got, so and Tristan and his team can give you a demo, they'll walk you through what they can offer, and I'll let Tristan get into that. Yeah, but I can tell you if you are using Idea Room or Shed Pro, let's just leave it at that. Okay, idea room and shed pro plug into this thing like right now. It is a one-to-one seamless integration. That's number one. What I can also tell you is if you're working with easy pay or smart pay, and Tristan can jump into the more of the integrations, if you're having problems with keeping your orders together, and I can tell you, Eric and I came from nothing, right? We came, Eric started it. Eric started on a shed lot, a single shed lot in the middle of a you know a small suburban town and built this business into what it is today, and we're building it together. I can tell you if we would have had an order or an order management system like this five, six years ago, we could have done more at that time. And I want you to really pay attention to what Tristan's gonna say on this, on this, on this podcast today, because it's very rare. Well, we bring you all kinds of offerings, right? We've talked to other manufacturers, we've talked uh people that are advertising goodness, trade shows, other products. We love the guys at J Money and Versabend, right? J Money serves a certain clientele, Versabend serves a certain clientele, idea room does. This, if you are selling sheds or metal buildings, you need to pay attention because your processes is what's lacking. Yeah, I mean your processes is what is what lacks here. I can't tell you enough. If you streamline your process, you will create more revenue for yourself every time. If you can make your time work for you and be more efficient with it, you will create more revenue for yourself, and that's what everybody wants. Tristan, tell us how Cal works.

Tristan:

All right, CAL, um, you know, way back in the day, back in 1998, um, we were farming and delivering fruits and vegetables to homes all over the Seattle market. And so we, you know, we had a spreadsheet, and heaven help us if somebody messed with A Week and B week. Oh my word, if somebody changed a formula, we were in trouble. Oh my goodness. Then we got to a little database, you know, we thought it was a cat's meow. And now, you know, we built our own databases because somebody wanted to charge us like $5,000 a month. And this is back in 2012. I'm like, oh, for $5,000 a month, I'll just own it myself, you know, and we built our own systems. And then the testimony to building your own system or building a really good order management solution for the industry is it scales. And so, you know, everybody remembers the pandemic, you know, and how sales took off. And we were already delivering and using online tools. And so we went from like 1,000 deliveries one week to 3,000 deliveries in two weeks. And we didn't have to hire a single office person. We had to get more drivers, more packers, but the system, you know, onboarded them, placed their orders, mapped their deliveries, and rolled their order forward the next week, took their payments. And so when we were, you know, doing a thousand with three people in the office, we were now doing 3,000 with three people in the office, you know, and which was like, I gotta turn this into a product. And of course, you know, as a servant of servants, like I constantly like, I just started a food bank at our church. Like there's a need, I want to help. Right. And so, so you know, I said, let's turn this into a product. And we were selling to some food companies, bagels, um, you know, malt companies, juice companies, but they were so squirrely and everywhere. And then I had a friend from Dave Ramsey, and I've shared this before. Um, but he's like, Can you help me? Because he's basically, you know, grandpa's system from 76, pull off an invoice. Whoever has the nicest handwriting writes the next 50 best numbers on the invoices, you know, and sells the building, you know, and he's got everywhere, right? He's like, he's doing steel and he's doing sheds and he's doing um, you know, community buildings at churches, so he's got a whole municipality side of his business. And so we just said, yeah, we can help. And I didn't realize when I said we could help, that I didn't know what I was offering to help with. This industry is not simple, you know. The relationships are super important, but it there's a lot of moving pieces to sell one building. I was selling a thousand boxes a week and delivering them all, you know, and I was struggling to get one building out the door. Like it was just mind-blowing to me that it was so competent. But that customer said, I want to get idea room, you know, and so what did I do? I met Dan. And I called Dan. Dan doing this, and Dan's like rolling his eyes. He's like, Oh, great, another company wants us to integrate for him. Like, we're gonna be doing all the software for Tristan and his team, whoever Tristan is. But we disappeared for a month and we showed up and we had a full blood system. Dan's like, that is the first time that somebody has ever not bothered me, you know, and we were integrated. And back then that was pretty rudimentary integration, you know, and they come a long way in five years, we come a long way in five years. Um but that initial relationship has you know and the foundation of our business, and we'll we have like Shed Pro integration that's really solid, we know D room integration really solid. If there's a new configure on our market and you're working with them, we're happy to integrate. Because what's really important to me is that I bring your network to your business. I don't want to make you switch the way you're doing things. If you're using ID room grid, if you're using ShedPro Grid, if you're using JMAG or you know, um SmartPay or Easy Pay or RTO Management or Shed Geek Rentals, I don't care. Like talk to us, you know, and then we will integrate them into our system so you can have one consistent checkout flow from drawings or inventory sales all the way through to RTO or cash sales because you make less mistakes. If you can do all of your sales inside one unified system, your training's easier, your double entries doesn't exist any longer, everything tracks through there. Um, you can go and you can just, you know, like one of Eric's passions is preaching the gospel. Like as a business owner, he could log into CAL when he's in Romania or Nicaragua or you know, Dayton, Ohio, and he can see what's going on that day for two minutes and he can check back out, you know, because the system is also online. And so it gives you this flexibility to run your business from the hunting blind. Like my son during the pandemic was you know out in the blind during school, and the teacher's like, Hey, can you mute that gun, Steven, while you're shooting those ducks? You know, like he could check into school and school online while he's laying in his layoff line. It's the same with everyone. He's over there preaching, he could take five minutes, pause, you know, for a metal break, check in on the business, you know, unfit something, move forward and move on. And those kind of tools are so valuable. And so we created CAL, you know, initially to serve a home delivery company doing, you know, several produce boxes. And then we shifted now exclusively into the shed and steel space. One, we love the people. Um, two, they they're underserved by technology. Um, and really technology should serve, like it should just serve people. But when you when you're working with a marketing company or a configurator or a management company, really it's all about helping you sell a building because without a sale, none of us have anything to do. You know, we need to have a really easy way to get a transaction. And so um what I like. So that's gonna be our passion.

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Jared:

What I like about it, so let's talk to our plain community friends for just a hot minute.

Eric:

Yeah.

Jared:

Most of the plain community people that we know have some person on their staff or team that run the technology side of things to communicate with people like Eric and I who are not in the plain community who use the tech to sell their product. This to me is a very high-level tool. If you're using a spreadsheet to calculate anything anymore as far as an order management or when I say order management, I'm talking about once the order is placed, pipelining that sale from delivery to work or you know, work invoice. So when that order is placed, it goes into production, from production to delivery, from delivery to satisfied customer. This walks you through every step of that process, keeps the process clean, neat, and organized and ready on a dime. You can pull up the data in 30 seconds, you can see where a building's at in the process. If you've got someone that's answering the phone, who's a customer service rep for your team, if you've got a sales rep who needs to check in on the status of a building, you can do that in real time with CAL. That's what I love about it. I absolutely love the fact that it's a streamlined process, and you're not asking for, you know, again, we featured Velocity 360 on a previous call. You're not asking for the moon and stars. This is a process that can cost thousands of dollars. Lots of businesses pay infrastructure bills thousands of dollars deep for something like Cal does, and you're charging a few hundred dollars, right? You're charging a few hundred dollars and then a transaction a per transaction fee. And we want to be we want to be very we want to be very open and conversational about that because you use the reference of if you had to put an extra gallon of gas in your tank to deliver a twenty thousand dollar building, you definitely put that extra gallon of gas in the tank to deliver that twenty thousand dollar building. And to me, I'm just gonna be the first one to tell you we charge a processing fee on all of our buildings because we offer financing. That's just what we do here. Now you could choose to take that transaction fee, which in this case is ten dollars a transaction, and you could put ten dollars extra on every one of your deals. You could charge a processing fee, you could wash that, or you could just say that's a cost of goods sold, and it's gonna cost me ten dollars for this process and making it streamlined, period. And to me, uh as someone who has seen small to mid-level shed manufacturers specifically struggle with order management. Eric and I have sold for those small and mid-level tier guys, and we've tried to help them stay organized. The dealers become the organizers. That's what I'm trying to stress to you guys on the end of this call. Is that we the dealers, Jared and Eric, and every other dealer that's dealing for your shed company, because you're listening to the Steel Kings podcast and you're doing that because probably because you like Shannon and the Shed Geek show. But these dealers are the ones who are selling your product. It's your job as the manufacturer to give them the tools necessary to be successful. For somebody like me, I can't be successful if the order process is janky, is messed up, right? Isn't functional, right? If I have a customer call me, can I give them better service if I know exactly in the process where their shed is? Well, of course I can. They're gonna love me that much more. Hey, Mr. Customer, it looks like we placed your order. Yeah, we placed it two weeks ago, it's in production currently. Looks like production's estimated to be finished in another week or so. Then we'll get you scheduled for delivery. You'll hear from your manufacturing partner in about a week or two to schedule delivery time. How's that sound? Sounds great, right? And again, a few hundred dollars a month, ten dollars per transaction. This is not something that's gonna break your bank, it's something that should save you time and make you more efficient, make you smarter, working smarter, not harder. I love it. I mean, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, very few things around here get like a two thumbs up from me because there's question marks, you know, with every product out there. But if you are seriously using like an Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheets or some sort of antiquated way of tracking orders, forget about it. There is nothing out there that I have seen and I've looked at a lot, and it would be one thing if it was just an order management system. That's what a lot of you guys have out there, right? You're sitting there and you're thinking, I've got an order management system, it works just fine for me. Well, what's it do with your idea room? What's it do with your shed pro? I forgot it doesn't work. You've got to manually upload that. So now you're looking at a process where if you give it to a dealer, and correct me if I'm wrong, Tristan. If you have if you're a manufacturer, you can give this product to your dealers, they can utilize it, and they will start using the product. And it's not going to cost the dealers any money, right? It doesn't cost the dealers a dime. So, if you're a dealer listening to this, if you're a dealer listening to this and your manufacturer is not using cow, call your manufacturer, have the manufacturer reach out to the Steel Kings, have them call Tristan direct. You call me direct, email me, I'll give you Tristan's contact information. I can tell you there are very few products that come in front of the Steel Kings that I think can really revolutionize and change your business. If you are a small mid-level manufacturer of wood sheds specifically, not that it doesn't work for metal buildings, not that it doesn't work for other products, but if you are a small to mid-level manufacturer of wood sheds, this is the product that you want to listen to and really hear my voice and say, this will help you build to 2026. Tristan, tell us about the dealer connection. Tell us how that works.

Tristan:

Well, you know, as I mentioned earlier, you know, everything starts with a sale, right? Yep. And CAL is really focused on the point of sale and order management piece. And so, wherever you get your leads from, you know, then drop them into CAL, we continue the process from that. So, we are like the rest of the story. And so, CAL's great at absorbing your ID room or Shed Pro orders, walking them through. Um, and that's good at you know, getting your RTO contract signed, right? And we have, you know, Heartland as well. I didn't mention them earlier, but we have integrations with major players. But we we'll integrate with any RTO company that wants to do that. So if you have a if you do in-house RTO, it's still fine. So we're gonna be able to give you multiple RTO companies potentially if you have two or three, because let's face it, some RTO companies do steel and some do sheds and some do play sets and some don't want to do all of them. You know, so you might need two or three RTO companies based on what you're repping um or selling. And so, where CAL starts to really shine is um we can do sheds really well, and we can do steel. Okay, it's a different kind of process, it's a different product we have. But when you are a reseller, you know, or if you're selling more you're selling sheds and steel and playsets or trailers, CAL can do all that inside one engine. Um, because not every configurator also does play sets or steel or sheds, and so you might need multiple configurators to cover multiple parts of your business, or you might need the ability to say add a product like a gazebo, you know, and be able to sell it through your system. So, CAL allows you to take advantage of the configurators, but also add in the non-configurator products at this point, and then also add in your RTO piece or your cash.

Jared:

So we're talking, we're also talking about inventory management at the same time because we can upload inventory. So again, small mid-level manufacturers. I know you're listening to me. I know it. I have been asked by you multiple times. Uh, can I please get an updated list of the products that you have on your on your lot? Well, don't you know what products that well? Actually, our Excel spreadsheet got corrupted, and we're gonna need you to upload that. We're gonna need you to get that uploaded immediately.

Tristan:

And it's like, no, it's painful, it is painful. I totally appreciate that.

Jared:

I'm telling you, I'm telling you, I've been there. I have been there, been there, been there. I have tried to sell an inventory unit that nobody knew existed. What building are you talking about? I don't have any information on it. Well, it's the white and black shed that's been sitting on my lot for four and a half months with an inventory tag number of XYZ123. Well, I don't see it here. Well, it's here. You want a picture? You want me to send you a video of it? You want me to stand inside of it? Like, I'm telling you from a dealer perspective, let me just be the dealer to the manufacturer, let me really talk to you guys from a dealer to manufacturer relationship. That relationship has to be one-to-one. If you're a manufacturer and you've lost a dealer this year, think about why. Remember what I said at the beginning of this show, process builds revenue. Dealers don't have the luxury of waiting more often than not. When they have a sale, they've got a sale and they want to strike on it. You should see Eric when he gets a deal. When he gets a deal, it's like a shark with blood in the water. It's like right now. We're getting the deal right now, today. He's smiling. He's smiling because he knows it's true. He knows it's true. And I can't tell you how many times a manufacturer has let me down, or Eric, or one of my teammates, on the metal or the woodside. Go ahead, bro.

Eric:

Well, one of the one of the things I really like about it that I'm thinking about because we've done an uh an RTO metal building deal recently. Um where um Jared's laughing because he's got to deal with it, not me. Um, but I'm like, what is the monthly cost? Can someone just tell me the answer?

Jared:

You know, and RTO companies that are listening to me ease up on the process. My goodness.

Eric:

Mike from Easy Pay, great job connecting with CAL. Because here's here here's my favorite part. Here's my favorite part about the uh about this program is that if the person's buying the payment, not the cost of the building. And so if you're a rent-to-owned company and you don't have cow, you're foolish. Because for not that much money per deal, I think it's 10 bucks, you said, I will pay someone 10 bucks to tell to like literally, here's the building, confirm it, and then and then you move over, and it's got the actual documentation from the easy pay contract, the actual contract from uh I can't remember the other one, it wasn't RTO National is the other one. But regardless, it's not it's not relevant, it tells you the cost, like right, like right there, and then and it gives you a new place. And more importantly, the customer is not looking at you like. Like, bro, they're like, I'm can't just buy the building yet. And you're like, hold on, I gotta wait 72 hours at three business days. I can tell you, if you're listening to this, if you're listening to this comically bad, you know, the guy's like, I like 200 bucks a month, but it takes four business days to get the deal going. Okay. I'm just gonna do it.

Jared:

It takes longer, it takes longer to do the RTO contract than to build the building.

Eric:

You need Tristan.

Jared:

I can tell you makes it easy. I can tell you this. I was blown away by the RTO process because you can you can upload the idea room configurator into CAL and it gives you your RTO docs and your prices.

Eric:

I mean, it's like that guy is like, can I can you guys tell me what the cost is of an AK? Like getting the same message three times in a row and not being able to get the freaking answer is just I I can tell you, a motive to be. Tristan's like he's shaking his head, like, yeah, bro, I got the solution. Okay, okay.

Jared:

Well, see, we do a really good job. We do a really good job almost next level, if you will. We don't shy away from problems that we've had because we don't want others to have the same problems we had.

Eric:

I know everybody's laughing in their shops right now. They are laughing. It's true.

Jared:

It is absolutely nobody wants to know RTO companies. I love it. Okay, I love the guys at JMAG, I love EasyPay, Heartland, you name them. I don't I don't have any beef with RTO companies. What I can tell you is make the process easier. You RTO companies need to be pushing your manufacturers and dealers to adopt CAL. If you're listening to what I'm saying, that's it. It makes RTO life so much easier. That might be that that might be the that might be the bread and butter for how the sales process works. Because at the end of the day, RTO companies adopt CAL. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Your processes are antiquated, they stink like garbage. There's just not one. There's just not one. No, they stink. They stink. They have a process, they stink. Here's the here's the here's the problem. Here's the problem. There's nobody out there doing it that's easy. I'm just sorry.

Eric:

The problem is okay. I gotta geek up myself. I gotta geek myself up. Yeah, no, all right, all right. He's asking again. Okay, I gotta I gotta figure out the call. I just gotta commit. And you don't know what you're committing to. Like an hour and a half, maybe. At least. I don't know. Maybe if someone answers the and it's not, it's not a knock on RTO companies, it's just it's not you no, everybody does it the same way. You created a funnel for finance, RTO, and you pull it right up off of a builder, right into your program. And then you've got the cost of the building in cash, and then you've got if it's an RTO, it's a drop-down, you pick your vendor, literally. I know you're visualizing as I'm saying, and then you click your vendor, and then you click your money. It literally has the payments 24, 36, 48, 60. Whatever you click on it, and then it literally generates the contract on the next page, literally, and then you can send it for an e sign document, or you know, the right through there.

Jared:

You're not jumping in here and I'm not joking.

Eric:

What I just said, I'm not joking because I saw it.

Jared:

I mean, I honestly, honestly, we're gonna do a better job hyping up CAL than Tristan is because I think we were both blown away. What we left the conversation with, and I'm gonna be transparent. What we left the conversation with on our side was that Dayton Barns is so far down the rabbit hole in processes that we've built that it might not be the exact right product for Dayton Barns today. That doesn't mean that I'm not building a process to fit CAL in three months from now. That's a fact, and I can tell you the first thing I said to Tristan was we've got to get this in front of people in a way that makes sense. It has to be fun, right? Right. This isn't just some other, this just isn't every other tech piece. It'd be different if he was charging $5k, which it's probably worth, but isn't it? It's $300, right? $300 a month.

Tristan:

It just depends on the on the subscription you want to sign up with, right?

Jared:

Starting at $300 a month. Is that fair? Yep. So starting at $300 a month with all the unlimited options you can probably think of in your mind. Now, there's complicated things, and he told me what I appreciated about Tristan, right? If there's something they can't do, they're gonna be honest with you. And I know a lot of our friends in the community have been taken down a rabbit hole after rabbit hole after rabbit hole. They've been sold a bill of bad goods and snake oil from every single tech company there is. What I can tell you, I know that Tristan will get on the phone with you. He will be honest and transparent in his dealings, he will tell you exactly what to expect from him and his team, and he will show you the process from start to finish. He just did it for us. That's why Tristan was trying to be nice and he said, Hey, you know, if you need to reschedule the podcast for a different day, we can do it a different time. Like, I know I've taken a lot of your time up, and I'm thinking we were the one asking the questions. We were like, holy, holy smokes, we couldn't believe what we were seeing because we're used to clicking on seven different boxes and waiting two and a half weeks to get an R an RTO quote going.

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Jared:

This was crazy. It was crazy good, man. Seriously. Seriously. It is a very impressive product. And I can tell you, as always, anything that plugs into Idea Room, it makes my life easier. If it runs through Idea Room or with Idea Room or Locked Arms with Idea Room, I love it because I love Idea Room. If you're looking for a 3D configurator, contact Idea Room. I'm telling you, you won't be disappointed, especially in the steel building space or pole barn space. I know we love the guys at Shed Pro too. Okay. You guys can make your own decisions on the wood sheds. We, you know, it is what it is. Go with who you love. But I can tell you from the team at Dayton Barns and Five Rivers Pole Barns, we love Idea Room. It just is what it is. We've used Shed Pro in the past and we just don't do our own sheds anymore. We already had the configurator with Idea Room. And I would I would tell anybody contact James at Shed Pro, he's a great guy. He'll do a great job for you. Contact Dan and his team over at Idea Room, they also do a great job. They just do. And what I love about it is if you're already using those programs, those platforms, those builders, it plugs in. And I can tell you, man, you're doing yourself a disservice. If you're using spreadsheets, stop it right now. Stop it. You can do better. You can do better. I'm telling you. I think back. I think I'm serious. I Tristan, I'm telling I'm serious. I think back. We had a great relationship with the manufacturer. Still love the man. I wish him all the best in the world. But it came down to process was broken. We tried, man, if we would have had cow back in the day, I probably could have saved that thing. That manufacturer would have been so much further along had he had cow at that. I mean, Eric, you know what I'm talking about, right? I mean, come on. That would have been, I mean, he he's thinking how much money we could have made with that particular manufacturer. Because we've gone down the road with shed guys. We try awfully hard for our shed. I mean, we really have. There's disappointment in his voice, isn't it, Tristan? Yeah, yeah.

Tristan:

We these relationships are super important, Jared. And you know, everything you really have to give, you know, a ton of effort before you walk away from something because you have built time, right? Um and relationships. And even in our business here, you know, if we're not the right load, we just want to help you find the right fit, you know, because in the end, saddling up to the right horse, harnessing the right horse, those that's super important, you know. I mean, if you want that little pony to pull that plow, you've got the wrong the wrong thing. You know, you gotta go get the Belgian or maybe a Clyde or a sh. You know, but and I used to farm with Belgians actually. I love my horses, they were a lot of fun, but I realized that I was always on my cell phone and they were waiting for me all the time. So I finally got a tractor and called it good. Um but I can tell you, man.

Jared:

I can tell you, man. I think we're gonna have you back. We want to just tell you right now, I think we want to bring you back. We're at our we're at our breaking point, we're at our we're at our you know, we're at our time. I want to tell you something in closing. Really appreciate you today. You were patient with me. I missed a couple of appointments. I don't normally do that. I was dealing with a couple of sick kids. I also don't do much without text messages. I know the world and the way it works now with scheduling Google meets and everything. I'm a text message guy. If you ever need me, my phone number is on the website. I'll just give you that hint. Okay, go check out the website, send me a text message. Emails are not always gonna come through. Tristan was super patient with me, he was beyond patient. We actually canceled this twice, just so you guys are transparent about this. So I want you to give them a chance if you're even remote. Yeah, rescheduled. Rescheduled. Um, I was on top of it, I just couldn't get on at the time. So I appreciate that patience and that and that grace that you granted me and still came on the podcast, still did the demo for us. No hard feelings. That was great. Um, I can tell you, man, check out the team at CAL. What's the website?

Tristan:

Um, cal can help.com.

Jared:

CalCanHelp.com. Check them out. Message Tristan@ Cal Can Help.com It's right on the screen here for those of you that are watching along. I can tell you, Tristan, we're gonna have you back. I'd like to do a demo, man. I think it's worth it. I think it's worth bringing you back. Let's see what kind of shakeout we get from this. Let's see how many people call. If you got a question about CAL, hit up Jared or Eric, Steel Kings. We'll help you out. We'll get you connected with Tristan. Contact him directly. Eric, you got anything for us as we're checking out this week, brother?

Eric:

Yeah, you got okay. So that it's November 5th, and March 1st is the okay. This is phase one. Phase two is spring rush, March 1st. You have literally T minus 117 days to build to build that doesn't even sound man. Build pro you got to go to bed 117 times and then you're gonna be busy again. So build and structure and put some vision on what you're trying to do next year.

Tristan:

And we're a couple of week turnaround. We're not like take forever. Like it's a pretty quick turnaround.

Jared:

Love it, love it, man. I'm Jared, he's Eric. We were with Tristan from CAL today. Check us out the steelkings.com, Spotify, Apple Podcast, YouTube. Hit us up, check out the folks at J Money, the folks over at Cold Spring Enterprises with the Versa Bend. We'll be back at you next week with another episode of the Steel Kings Podcast. We'll talk at you later, guys. Bye-bye.