Kitchens, bathrooms, basement conversions, additions … Home Dr Pros has high standards of quality and integrity on a wide range of remodeling projects, as its five-star rating on Houzz attests to. What the company didn’t initially have, however, was a system. And “when you don’t have some type of system to be able to organize your leads, your estimates, your invoices, your measurements, your people, your clock … it’s extremely easy to drop the ball,” owner Steve Welch says. We chatted with Welch to find out how he discovered Houzz Pro and how it has helped him grow his company’s annual revenue into the millions. 

At a Glance

Who: Steve Welch, owner of Home Dr Pros

Industry: Home remodeling

Location: Knoxville, Tennessee

Year company was established: 2020

Annual revenue: $1.5 million

Challenges Before Adopting Houzz Pro

“I’m a contractor. Business admin work doesn't come naturally to me,” says Welch, who has more than 20 years experience in the field. “Before Houzz Pro, I was drowning in paperwork, constantly playing catch-up with leads, estimates and invoices. It was overwhelming, and honestly, it was holding us back from real growth.” 

With just himself and one other person, serving as an operations assistant, when Home Dr Pros was getting off the ground, there were “papers everywhere, and you’re trying to do all this stuff and it’s just overwhelming,” he says.

Finding the Solution

“I had some programs before Houzz that would send out invoices and let you do estimates and things. But they didn’t offer any type of — just really the whole setup,” says Welch. It was kind of grueling.” He adds, “I poured tens of thousands of dollars into all that stuff, [but] I couldn’t ever find a really well-rounded CRM that I could work easily. I just didn’t have too much time to be calling somebody all the time to kind of come help you get things set up. Houzz Pro was relatively easy and gave me a good trial run. And with Houzz, it’s like I’d found everything in one.”  

Favorite Houzz Pro Features

“The first thing that drew me in with Houzz was the 3D scanning, because I’m all the time measuring,” Welch says. “I was like, ‘Whoa! I don’t know if this is just some publicity stuff or something, but I’ve got to see what’s going on here with this 3D scanner.’  “And when the clients would see it rolling out, they were just blown away. I’m sure I got several jobs just because we had that app.

Other favorite features:

Lead generation: “Every lead that I’ve got off of Houzz has been a high-end client,” Welch says. “Every one.”

Estimate tool: “We’ve been able to give a bunch of different variations of a bid,” says Tony Puglisi, who is a sales manager at Home Dr Pros. “Sometimes they want to see it with the extra frills, bells and whistles on it just so they know how much of a cost. And sometimes they want to see the stripped down version of that. So being able to take the same information, duplicate it, and then resend it out with the new variables in, it has been really helpful for us and time-saving.”

QuickBooks integration: “One thing we really like about Houzz with the payment system is that it does integrate with QuickBooks,” Puglisi says. “Our whole business runs through QuickBooks. We have vendors and subcontractors in there. Our payroll gets paid through QuickBooks.”

Saving Money

“Houzz Pro is saving us money,” Welch says. “Time saved is dollars earned. And when you’ve got more time to be doing other, more relevant business activities, whether it’s gathering and activating new leads or it’s following up in the leads you already have, working with your existing client base, really your marketing network, it opens up more doors.”

The company also saves money by not having “to invest in certain things,” Welch adds. “If we didn’t have Houzz, I would probably have to have two people to do the things that Houzz is doing, at least. And that’d be a full-time job,” which for a company like Home Dr. Pros would cost somewhere between 35-50K a year. 

Overall, “Houzz has afforded Steve the option to run his company lean but mean,” Puglisi says. “So he’s not so lean that he’s not able to pay his crew — he keeps everybody well-fed and happy — but he doesn’t have to take on additional overhead to make sure that his company works.”

Landing Many More Clients

Both men point to the fact that Houzz Pro technology has helped them land clients “Somebody will come to us,” Welch says. “Maybe they’re kicking the tires. They’re looking for somebody who can help them with the vision to articulate what they’ve already got on their head, but then also bring that into real dollars. And you have a [3D] scan of what it is — we’re not some Mickey Mouse crew that’s just going to throw a number at you that doesn’t mean anything. We’re going to be able to help you plan out what every step of that looks like. And you can watch us design this as we go.”

He adds, “I’d say three-quarters of the jobs that we get” are because of Houzz Pro, particularly the 3D Floor Plans feature. “You know, any job that we have to come in and scan, every time I make sure that that customer is behind me where they can see that,” Welch says. 

“The Houzz Lidar scan is a neat tool that, on our fist in person contact with our prospects, allows us to showcase how we can use modern technology combined with our trade experience to give them remarkable service,” Puglisi adds.

Less Pressure, More Giving Back

“I’m not pressured so much anymore to have to be in [the office],” Welch says. “I’m in there because I want to be in there, because I can see the growth happening in the company. And it gets exciting when you can see that you’re making something, you’re actually building something, putting the pieces together.”

He adds that it’s also exciting “to think that, ‘Hey, man, you’re about to be able to pull your hands off of this and it’s going to be able to run itself.’ And I’m pretty close to that. I mean, my wife and I can take off and go somewhere if we want to. We’re not just stuck here.”

But having a business that practically runs itself has an even greater purpose beyond time away. Welch wants to have “a machine that is generating profits” to be able to fund community projects. “We want to be able to help our community,” he says. And so we give in certain places; we want to be able to support several different missions. That’s the whole reason that I’m even here right now: to try to build something right here that can be a good thing for the community.” One particular focus: foster care organizations. 

So Welch is now set up with a system that saves him time and money, boosts efficiency, wows clients and allows him to give back to the community. But does he have any regrets about adopting Houzz Pro? Only one: that he didn’t do it sooner. “Now there’s a system built that is, working like a well-oiled machine,” he says, “and to have done that five years ago would have put us, of course, three years ahead.”

Curious to see how Houzz Pro can benefit your own business? Try it free today.