- Business: Daniel’s Tile, LLC.
- Location: Denver, CO.
- One Interesting Fact about Daniel Alvizo: He has played baseball since he was a kid in Mexico and recently coached a recreational team.
- One interesting Fact about Daniel’s Tile: The business is expanding, with plans to open a retail store in Denver and then expand from there.
When Daniel Alvizo first started his own tiling and flooring business, he struggled to turn a decent profit. Over time, he was able to learn the ins and outs of running his business. Now, he has gone from just getting by to thriving. And with the help of ezClocker, Daniel has switched to a more fair payment strategy for his employees. This has allowed him to save time, stay organized, and scale his business up to build a future for his family.
Investing in a future
In 2016, Daniel Alvizo was working construction in Denver, Colorado, doing first remodeling jobs and then tile. One day he got the news that the work had dried up and he would be out of a job. He thought about going back to restaurant work. He had worked in restaurants for eight years, working first as a cook and later as a kitchen manager. However, he knew that the money he would make couldn’t compare to the money he made in construction.
“In restaurants, even if you’re 20 years in your position you can never build something for you,” Daniel says.
Daniel was the father of three young sons, and he wanted to create something that his family could rely on. He decided to start his own business in tiling and flooring.
“It was hard the first couple of years because I was just surviving, just having enough,” Daniel says. “But still it was better than being in a restaurant. So I kept doing it because I felt like it was a better future.”
Daniel began comparing his prices to those of his competitors. He realized that he could increase his prices while still remaining competitive.
From surviving to thriving
When Daniel started his business, he initially worked only as a subcontractor. The contractors he worked for offered very low pay for the work he was doing. After a couple of years of owning his business, he was making just enough to get buy. He realized that to improve his profits he needed to start winning his own jobs and sourcing his own material.
In his third year of running his business, Daniel got a warehouse and created a showroom so that customers could see his work firsthand. He also started opening up his own accounts with manufacturing companies to source the materials he needed. He continued to subcontract for commercial jobs but started to bid residential jobs independently.
Not knowing how to appropriately price his work, Daniel initially bid jobs much lower than the market rate. He won a lot of jobs, but his business still wasn’t making a profit that satisfied him. He began comparing his prices to those of his competitors. Daniel realized that he could increase his prices while still remaining competitive. Finally, he was able to make enough profit off of each job to begin to build the future that he had envisioned for his now four children – three sons and a brand new baby girl.
Because jobs would often be rescheduled at the last minute, Daniel would have to contact each of his employees before work to let them know where they had to be that day.
Scheduling and payment challenges
Daniel was finally turning a good profit, but he was paying his employees by the day rather than by the hour. While this is common in the construction industry, he didn’t feel it was fair to his employees or to his company.
“Sometimes they work late, staying until seven or eight o’clock at night,” Daniel says. “If you pay daily, they never make that money back. They never make extra. But there are days when we’re finished around 12, so it was not fair for anybody – not for the company or for the employees. I needed to get hourly tracking to be fair for both sides.”
Daniel was also facing scheduling challenges. Because jobs would often be rescheduled at the last minute, he would have to contact each of his employees before work to let them know where they had to be that day. With as many as eight or nine employees at once, this could be a time-consuming process.
“In construction, it’s really hard to know where you’re going to be every day,” Daniel says. “So it’s hard when you have to call your employees every morning.”
ezClocker has made scheduling a breeze. “You can change everything in less than one minute,” he says. “You just put it in the app, and in the morning when your employees wake up they see it.”
One app to schedule jobs and track time
When Daniel discovered ezClocker, he was able to switch from paying his employees by the day to paying by the hour. He felt this system was more fair to both himself and his employees. And with the GPS feature, he’s able to see what time his employees are arriving to work even when he’s not on site.
“Let’s say they have to be there at 10, and before they were there at 11 but I don’t know because I was busy somewhere else,” Daniel says. “Now the app tells me – we have their location clocking in and clocking out.”
ezClocker has also made scheduling a breeze.
“When you do construction there are a lot of changes every day – customers, materials, things like that,” Daniel says. “So at night it’s really nice when you’re already in bed and a customer cancels, you can change everything in less than one minute. You don’t have to call your employees. You just put it in the app, and in the morning when they wake up they see it.”
ezClocker helps Daniel keep track of his employees and streamline his business. “You save a lot of time, and you make a lot of things easier for your employees,” he says.
Staying organized to save time and money
One of the biggest benefits that Daniel has seen from using ezClocker is that he isn’t losing money on paying employees for hours that aren’t worked. He also loves that the app saves him time and headaches by allowing him to control his job schedules and notify employees all in one place.
“When you have a lot of employees, you have to be more organized,” Daniel says. He believes ezClocker is a great organizational tool.
Daniel’s advice for anyone starting a new business is to use a tool like ezClocker from the very beginning because it helps keep track of your employees and streamline your business.
“You save a lot of time, and you make a lot of things easier for your employees,” Daniel says.
And best of all, he can continue to grow his business. Daniel plans to open a tiling and flooring retail store in early 2022, furthering his dream to build a solid future for his family.
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