Automated House Painting? Andrew McGilly’s AI Startup Could Change Everything

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Show Summary

In this conversation, Andrew McGilly discusses his innovative home services business that leverages AI to streamline the painting process. He explains how the business model works, the advantages it offers to homeowners and subcontractors, and the potential for expansion into other home services. A SWOT analysis reveals the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated with the business, highlighting the significant market potential and the challenges of scaling. Andrew shares his vision for the future and the steps he plans to take to grow the business.

Resources and Links from this show:

• • • Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
    • Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
    • Mike on Facebook
    • Mike on Instagram
    • Mike on LinkedIn
    • Andrew McGilly’s Website
    • Andrew McGilly on LinkedIn
    • Andrew McGilly’s Email: [email protected]
    • For investment or licensing opportunities with Prime Logic, please reach out to [email protected]

  Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

  Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

  Andrew McGilly (00:00)
  it’s funny, some people might think that, well, it might not work, but I remember about 15 years ago you were told not to get in cars with strangers, but now cars pull up to your house with a thing called Uber or Lyft and people readily hop in. So I see the same exact opportunity and being that they were the first to the wall, make it a lot easier for us to ⁓ garner that trust with customers.

  Skyler (01:53)
  Hey everybody, welcome to the Investor Fuel Podcast. I’m your host today, Skyler Byrd. And today I’m joined by Andrew McGilly. Andrew is ⁓ really doing some big things with AI and, and, painting again, something I’m not familiar with at all. So I’m, I’m going to get a lot out of this conversation. Certainly hope all of you do as well. So Andrew, thank you very much for joining us today. Absolutely. Absolutely. So Andrew, before we get into.

  Andrew McGilly (02:16)
  Thanks for having me, Skyler.

  Skyler (02:21)
  exactly what you’re doing now. Can you give us a little bit about your background? Yeah.

  Andrew McGilly (02:25)
  Sure.

  So I have been in the home services business for about seven years. Prior to that, I was selling wine and spirits. And then before that, I was in the military.

  Skyler (02:41)
  Excellent. Okay. All right. And please tell everybody a little bit about your world now and your new venture.

  Andrew McGilly (02:48)
  Sure. So a few years back I started a painting company, Sargent Painters, and we did really well and we were doing well with sales. And then things with the economy just kind of tightening up a little bit, sales started to slow down and I tried to think to myself, how can I make every single sale? And normally the practical answer is you can’t. And no matter how you do it, I won’t be able to. But I figured, how can I make what I do better and make it more efficient and make it better for the customer? So I came up.

  I realized that the only reason why I’m more expensive than other painting companies is because I’m involved in it. ⁓ I have to take a decent chunk of it for overhead and everything. So I was thought to myself, what if I could remove myself from the situation and what would that look like? So I came up with my idea for my company, Logic, which will be launching soon here in Florida. And essentially what it is, it’s a complete end to end… ⁓

  AI assisted company where you go to our website, you answer a few questions, you’ll get an instant good, better and best estimate. And from there, ⁓ everything is handled seamlessly on the backend. You get matched up with ⁓ vetted subcontractors and the paint is ordered, delivered. The contractor comes to your house, they paint your home. And then when the contractor indicates that the job is finished, you’ll instantly get emailed a ⁓ worksheet for you to walk around with them. And once you

  see that the job is done to your satisfaction, you sign off and the final payment is made.

  Skyler (04:20)
  Okay, all right. So basically with your company here, I don’t have to wait to hear back from, you know, or at least myself go out to like three, four different companies, wait for them to get back to me with their quotes and, you know, and sit down with my wife and make sure we make a decision on that together. This is going to streamline everything.

  Andrew McGilly (04:40)
  Absolutely, it soothes every pain point that you and your wife might have.

  Skyler (04:43)
  Okay, all right. So you said you’re just getting that done. How did you come into using AI with this? Did you have a background in it? Did you seek out some help for it?

  Andrew McGilly (04:55)
  Yeah, so I sought out some help with regards to having developers develop this for me, but I’ve always been kind of a tech forward type person. So I sought chat bots on websites and then I got involved with this company that makes custom chat bots with chat flows and things like that.

  That’s how I came up with the idea of Prime Logic. So we could get rid of the actual estimation process, do it all online. So this way it’s nice and seamless and simple for you. have to, no pressure, no sales, all the stuff that I dislike doing.

  it takes care of.

  Skyler (06:14)
  Okay, all right. basically your service is going to handle everything from the cost of the pay to hooking people up with actual contractors in their area. How do you typically do that? Is that something that happens on the back end with the contractors? Do they put in like a private bid? What does that look like?

  Andrew McGilly (06:33)
  So what happens is through the estimate, we figure out how much money, how long the job will take, what the price of materials will be. And then from there, we calculate a labor factor, what we’re going to pay a subcontractor. And the great thing about this is because, like I said, I remove myself from the equation, that affords me to lower my prices for the homeowners and also allows me to

  raise ⁓ the price for subcontractors. So I have a whole pool of subcontractors that I get in touch with. We do background checks on them. We vet them to make sure that they are who they are. And we go out and we see their work and see if they’re the real deal or not. If they’re not, unfortunately, I don’t get to work with us. But if they are who they say they are and the proof is in the pudding, then they’re welcome aboard.

  Skyler (07:27)
  Awesome. All right. So with what you envision this to be, how long can you go from, I’m on your website filling out, wanting to get the good, better, best quote to having somebody at my door ready to start working?

  Andrew McGilly (07:46)
  That’s a good question. if you want somebody, we have contractors that indicate they’re available tomorrow, well maybe not tomorrow because we have to get the paint to you, but say today is Tuesday, say Thursday, we can have it to you on Thursday, have somebody there on Thursday, provided we have the pool of contractors available.

  Skyler (08:03)
  Okay, all right, so all this can happen very quickly then. That’s awesome, I love it. Okay, and you said you’re gonna be actually ⁓ launching this in Florida, so are you gonna cover the entire state? Is it only certain counties?

  Andrew McGilly (08:07)
  Yes, sir.

  So we’re gonna do soft launch here in Southwest Florida and Lee County, which is Fort Myers area. And then we’re gonna expand into Collier and Charlotte. And then the more we work on things and smooth and refine the process, then we’ll slowly move further and further out from that epicenter.

  Skyler (08:33)
  Okay, all right. And as you refine the process and start moving out, what does it look like for you moving forward? Are you going into other states? Are you getting into different, ⁓ kind of different verticals? How does that look?

  Andrew McGilly (08:46)
  So that’s a great question. It’ll be a mixture of both. We’re going to move into epoxy flooring by December, ⁓ pavement ceiling as well for people in the south. And then eventually we’d like to move into flooring, roofing. And then as far as moving out from there, we’re going to be offering licenses to other counties throughout the country. So it’ll be also as a platform.

  Skyler (09:10)
  Nice, all right, excellent. So yeah, you definitely got some very good goals with this. I was gonna say, you’re the first one that I’ve heard using AI ⁓ to kind of coordinate all of this. So I’m really interested to see how it all works out. It seems like an excellent idea. ⁓ How exactly did you actually come up with this? And was it something that you just saw in your own painting business? Like, hey, there’s gotta be a better way.

  Andrew McGilly (09:37)
  Yeah, I just figured that there’s got to be a better way. And being that such a fractured and siloed industry, especially all of home services are pretty much fractured, that ⁓ I saw an opportunity to unify it and bring it together while also, again, lowering the prices for customers and also raising the ⁓ labor rate for the contractors. So being that, I figured we could soothe all that, try to unify as best as possible

  these fractured and siloed industries.

  the better it be for the homeowner because ultimately with AI I believe that the homeowner will win.

  Skyler (10:47)
  Absolutely, absolutely. And you were telling me as well, like the actual size of the home painting business, what was the size of it?

  Andrew McGilly (10:55)
  The residential painting market in United States of America is $28 billion a year annual.

  Skyler (11:00)
  Wow, okay. So yeah, so there is a ton of opportunity for you to hit the ground running and get a lot of growth. That’s pretty awesome. Excellent.

  Andrew McGilly (11:05)
  Yes sir.

  it’s funny, some people might think that, well, it might not work, but I remember about 15 years ago you were told not to get in cars with strangers, but now cars pull up to your house with a thing called Uber or Lyft and people readily hop in. So I see the same exact opportunity and being that they were the first to the wall, make it a lot easier for us to ⁓ garner that trust with customers.

  Skyler (11:29)
  Absolutely, absolutely. Actually, that’s a good point. Have you in your research out there, is there anybody out there that’s doing something like this already? Or are you pretty much the first, at least in Florida? What does that look like for you?

  Andrew McGilly (11:45)
  As far as I know, I’m the first completely. But I know once an idea is out there, it’s out there and then there’ll be copycats everywhere. But, Prime Logic is the first.

  Skyler (11:54)
  Yeah.

  There you go. Get first to market, build that, you know, build that trust with people. Absolutely. I like it. All right. So in, in the state of Florida, so you’re going to launch it in, in what was it? Southwest Florida in the Fort Myers area, right? Okay. So how, how are people able to, to start, you know, go into your website and, ⁓ and start using you? What does that, what does that look like? What does that timeframe look like?

  Andrew McGilly (12:01)
  Yes,

  It should be ready to launch, there’s just a couple more bugs we’re working out. But I would say no later than hopefully this Friday, but the absolute latest would be the following Friday, which is the…

  26th. The absolute latest to 26th, hopefully 19th.

  Skyler (12:42)
  Okay.

  Okay, excellent. So yeah, so you’re right on the the precipice of getting this thing really out and going. We’re not waiting, you know, two or three months. It’s it’s right here. That’s awesome. Okay. ⁓

  Andrew McGilly (12:53)
  Yep. And then another

  thing I forgot to mention, when we do have those good, better, best estimates, they’re based on pricing because they’re different tiers, but the tiers are set by the level of paint that they want. So if somebody is a landlord and they just want to put some lipstick on it so we can get the next person in the door, then we can use A100 on the home for the exterior or Promar for the interior. And they go all the way up to Emerald, which is all Sherman Williams products, which is…

  Top of their line is Emerald.

  Skyler (13:25)
  Got it. All right. And actually, yeah, that’s a good point. I mean, at first, who do you think is going to be your main customer? it going to be, like you said, of like landlords, property managers, just ⁓ single families? What does that look like? What do you think?

  Andrew McGilly (13:42)
  I imagine single families at first and then the more the word gets out there to bring people from all walks of life and backgrounds for it as far as professions, landlords and whatnot, property managers.

  Skyler (13:54)
  Okay, absolutely. And is this something you’re just going to stick to the residential painting? Can I get into any kind commercial buildings? Can it work with that?

  Andrew McGilly (14:05)
  At the moment we’re starting off with ⁓ exteriors and then by the end of probably around Thanksgiving we should have interiors dialed in. I’m not so sure about exteriors at the moment, sorry, commercial at the moment only because it’s such a different animal and the exterior buildings they just vary so much and it’s a little bit harder to quantify but with leaps and bounds and AI I imagine that’ll be coming around with sometime probably the second or third quarter of next year.

  Skyler (14:31)
  Okay, absolutely. All right, no, I mean, I think this is really interesting. I think it’s gonna be a business model that will absolutely start catching fire when you can make things ⁓ that much easier for somebody right now, especially I’ve been through it myself, maybe not on the painting side, but with other services, you have to call up, get a quote, ⁓ you wait for somebody to call you back if they ever do.

  And then if you’re doing what you’re supposed to, it’s like you got to do this with three or four different companies and it can be a huge pain. So,

  yeah, if you can really shorten that timeframe down and make things that much more convenient, I think that’s going to bode really well for you, 100%.

  Andrew McGilly (15:52)
  Thank you. Me too.

  Skyler (15:54)
  Yeah, absolutely. And Andrew, yeah, can you tell us what is your website? How can people get a hold of you once everything’s live and want to try your service? How can they do that?

  Andrew McGilly (16:06)
  So if you’d like to reach out to me, you can either reach out to me at mynameandrew at getprimelogic.com or hello at primelogic.com works as well. And the website is getprimelogic.com, but it’s not up and running 100 % yet, but in the next couple of weeks it will be.

  Skyler (16:21)
  Okay, excellent. Well, again, I think ⁓ this is great. I can’t wait to follow back up with you and see how everything’s going. I love making everything as convenient as possible. everybody, you’re in that, especially that Southwest Florida area here in the next few weeks and you’re getting some panning done, reach out to Andrew ⁓ and see what you can get done. I’m sure you’re going to have a good experience there. ⁓ absolutely. No, Andrew, thanks for hopping on with us.

  Andrew McGilly (16:47)
  Thanks.

  Skyler (16:51)
  Again, think this is an excellent idea here. I know I got a lot out of this conversation. This was ⁓ definitely something I have not thought of before. And for all of our listeners out there, if you’ve gotten anything of value from this conversation, please hit that Subscribe button. We’ve got more conversations like this coming down the pipe all the time. And we will see you all on the next episode.