100 episodes strong: A throwback to our favorite podcast moments

Paul Wurth:

Hello, everybody. Welcome to a very special episode of “The Building Code.” This is episode 100. I feel like we should have a round of applause sound go right in there. Thank you all so much for you being our listeners. You are the reason that we’re at episode 100. 100 episodes ago, this was just a small idea here inside the Buildertrend walls that as, for long time listeners know, myself and my co-host, Tom Houghton, brought into the world, and we’re very proud of it. So, thank you so much for listening over these 100 episodes and giving your feedback, giving your files and sharing our channel. It’s been really, really important to us.

If you haven’t yet, this is a call to keep doing that. So, follow us on social media, follow Buildertrend, follow @thepaulwurth. We will be posting impactful things about the construction industry for you. And then follow our specific podcast Facebook group, The Building Code Crew. Just head out to Facebook, search for The Building Code Crew, producer Danielle will monitor, post our episodes every Thursday, and then we will comment back to you if you comment on our episodes. So, thank you so much. Our idea for this episode was just a recap. So, what I thought about was some of my favorite episodes of the last 100 episodes of “The Building Code.”

What I’ll do is just tee up a few of those episodes, and we’ll insert some audio clips in there for you guys can hear what I think is important about those episodes. Before I do that, I do want to give you some stats of what you’ve been a part of. Within the last 100 episodes, we have had 120,000 all-time downloads. Those were within three countries. So, as many of you know, Buildertrend has about 16,000 plus clients at this time, mainly in North America, in U.S. and Canada, but we have a great presence in Australia and New Zealand. Some of our favorite clients are down there. So, we appreciate all the listeners that are down under. We have more than 100K, 100,000 listeners in the US.

Our top three episodes were episode number one, which I do highlight here, it will be our first one, episode number 11 with Chris Anderson from Monthend. And if you don’t know about Monthend, you need to check them out. They will help you get your books together in your construction industry, they will help you get your cost codes, and your budgeting, and your job cost into place. They’ll make you understand exactly how much you’re making per job. So, check out Monthend. You can find it through the Marketplace because they’re a partner of ours, or you can just search them on Google, Monthend. Chris Anderson out of Minnesota, a friend of the program and the company.

And then episode 20 with Matt Reisenger. As you very well know, Matt is … you could probably say a celebrity in the industry. You can find Matt Reisenger Co. Reisenger Co. is the company. You can find Matt Reisenger on all different platforms. He’s got 100s of thousands of followers, so check him out. He’s a friend of the Buildertrend family. We really appreciate that episode.

And finally, which states are where we find our audience? Number one is Nebraska, of course, that’s where we’re located. So, shout out to all the moms and dads and employees of Buildertrend who listen to “The Building Code.” I know my parents do from time to time. So, thank you. California, Texas, Florida and North Carolina. So, that’s an interesting one, California, Texas and Florida, obviously, very populated states. We’ve got a great user base there, but shout out to our North Carolina listeners and our users. Thanks very much for that.

Let’s just get into it. We’ve handpicked a handful of episodes here, and obviously, not the whole thing, but to highlight over these last 100 and it obviously starts with episode number one. So, this one’s pretty easy for me to pick as one of my favorite and one of the more popular episodes we have. It’s the story of Buildertrend. As many of you know, I was the first employee of Buildertrend 14 years ago. All 550 employees today are based out of Omaha, Neb. It’s something that we’re very proud of, being inside the construction industry for 14 years, being a local Nebraska, Omaha-born tech company.

And then we’re very proud of our three business owners. We call them the Bobs, which they’ll get into inside this episode to understand where that nickname came from. Some of you who are our age might know the movie where that comes from. But it’s a term of endearment inside Buildertrend. They are our fearless leaders. They talk about, again, the story of Buildertrend, how we got into this, why we love the construction industry and what the goal and the story of Buildertrend is. That story is 14 and some months old, but we have plans to make that a very long successful story. So, have a listen to this episode. It’s a great story behind Buildertrend.

Tom Houghton:

You’re listening to “The Building Code.” And in this podcast, we’re going to talk about all things Buildertrend.

Paul Wurth:

Product and company because a lot of our clients want to know about our company.

Tom Houghton:

Industry trends. We’re going to talk to some of the best builders in the nation right now that are building unique properties.

Paul Wurth:

Homes, remodels, renovations. Let’s hear about your business in your location. What’s the market like? How is your business set up? What are your challenges? Because I think a lot of people who’ll be listening to this are fellow business owners, right?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Hopefully, the common tie is Buildertrend, whether you’re a user, or a client, or even an employee of our company, there should be a little bit of everything in there.

Tom Houghton:

I’m going to go a step further and say the common ties should be better, period. We want to be better at ourselves, our company, your business. So if you want to be better, you’re listening to this podcast.

Paul Wurth:

Better. It’s a good marketing. I like that.

Tom Houghton:

Thanks.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. You’re good. Alright, so what’s today look like?

Tom Houghton:

First episode here, we’re taking a look back in the history of Buildertrend with the co-owners Steve Dugger, Jeff Dugger and Dan Houghton. And we have a great conversation with them just to recap the history, but also talk about the rapid growth and success of the company, challenges they’ve faced along the way and just the positive outlook for the future here. Well, let’s go back, let’s hop in the time machine and go back to the very beginning.

Steve, tell us, where did you first come up with the idea for Buildertrend?

Steve Dugger:

So, I came up with it by myself after a couple of beers. No, but actually, it did start after a couple of beers. And this story goes back to 2004, actually. So, we had a separate software company before Buildertrend called Dimension Technology. And if you think back to that time, most websites were just like a brochure online. And what we did with Dimension was take people’s … if you also think about that time, people use paper forms, pen and paper was for pretty much everything. So, what we did with Dimension is, we took people’s paper forms and business and turned those into business processes online.

That’s the first part of the story. If you fast forward then to ’06, construction was hot, there were a lot of contractors that were coming to us and asking for us to help them with those processes. We developed a prototype that was very basic compared to what we have today. We had change orders, we had scheduling, we had photos. And we thought we could sell that in Omaha. Enter Dan into the picture. We’ve been friends with Dan since high school, known him forever. We were always looking at what each other was doing in our lives at that time. And Dan was selling software for an insurance company.

So, Dan took a look at what we had for the prototype of … it wasn’t even called Buildertrend at the time. And he said, no, we can’t sell this in Omaha. We can sell this all over the U.S. And we said, well, let’s do it. And we quit our day jobs.

Tom Houghton:

Just like that?

Jeff Dugger:

Well, we quit our day jobs after somebody gave us a $4,000 check. It was the first deal …

Steve Dugger:

It was the first meeting I went to, it was the first deal. I remember it was before I went to work. I had to start work at 8:30 a.m., and Steve and I went to this gentleman’s house. And the guy, literally, we were there for half hour, wrote us a check for $4,000. You have to have a company to have a bank account, so we incorporated that day or the next day.

Jeff Dugger:

Yeah. We couldn’t deposit the check.

Steve Dugger:

And I think that was like June 28th-ish. There’s like a stub of the check somewhere, 2006.

Dan Houghton:

Yeah, it’s framed somewhere in the office.

Jeff Dugger:

I quit my job right before the 4th of July, and we started. That was fun.

Tom Houghton:

That was it?

Jeff Dugger:

Yeah. It was it. It happened really fast, probably a week.

Tom Houghton:

Do you remember the name, the prototype name? Did it have a name?

Jeff Dugger:

I think we called it …

Steve Dugger:

Hometracker.

Jeff Dugger:

Hometracker.

Tom Houghton:

Hometracker?

Jeff Dugger:

Yeah.

Steve Dugger:

Okay, well, trying to find the name of this company is a great story. We were literally … it wasn’t GoDaddy. Do you remember what site we were using to find the name of it?

Jeff Dugger:

No, it was …

Dan Houghton:

It was.

Steve Dugger:

Was it GoDaddy? So, we’re just peppering through these different names, Builder Pro, Pro Builder, Builder 10, I don’t know what we came up with. Then Buildertrend popped up. We’re like, alright, we’ll take that one.

Paul Wurth:

Again, great clip from episode number one, the story of Buildertrend. Again, with any of these, feel free to just head back to the full episode and give it a listen. We’d appreciate that.

Alright. Moving on. So again, we picked out a handful of these. One that stood out for me was episode number four. This is a theme that apparently I liked, which was, we were live for this episode. So, this was live from the International Builders’ Show, the IBS, as everybody knows, it’s called inside the construction industry. This is Matt Shroyer from Emergent Construction in Indiana.

Matt is a long-time client of Buildertrend and a friend of the program. Within all interviews like this, we talk about the story of how a company gets started making the leap from what you were doing to starting your own company. Matt’s got a great story about that. And he also utilizes social media in a really great way. So, give it a listen. You’re going to love the information he gives you in these clips.

Matt Shroyer:

We knew we’d hit a limit with our paper … it wasn’t paper, but manual systems. The goal is to grow, so it wasn’t scalable that way.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, that’s a good point. Because a lot of people’s goals are different. Not everyone wants to grow.

Matt Shroyer:

Nope.

Paul Wurth:

A lot of people would love if they could just sit in the pocket of like eight or nine high-end. And systems can get you there too, but growth is a big trigger.

Matt Shroyer:

Yeah. So, we were a little bit diverse. We’re a general contractor builder, but we also do buy and sell real estate rental properties as well.

Paul Wurth:

Right on.

Matt Shroyer:

So, we set up our own rental properties as a job in Buildertrend, and it links to a different company in QuickBooks. And then that way we can manage our rental properties, the financials of that for maintenance and all that through Buildertrend, separate of the construction projects.

Tom Houghton:

Let’s talk about … you’ve got a pretty sizable Instagram following, inquiring minds want to know, what’s going on there? Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Matt Shroyer:

Yeah, it’s been great. Now, there’s been a lot of meetups here with you guys and a lot of big time Instagram players here at the booth. It’s been a great network for us. I was at IBS last year in Orlando, and I talked to your team as well there, too. And just the meetups and the social get-togethers and connecting with other builders and people that are doing the same things we’re doing, and they’re just … we can get together and talk about stuff because we’re not competitors in our local market. We’ve had some really great open sharing with guys across the country that have been really helpful.

Paul Wurth:

That’s interesting. I never thought about it like that. I thought it was always like, hey, I want to build my social media following, so I can get more leads or more exposure.

Matt Shroyer:

It definitely does both. And I think it’s how you use it. And I would attest that we have … so, we’re just shy of 5,000. We’re getting close to 5,000 followers which is getting up there, and it’s been great. I’ve noticed how that gives us a little bit new respect with our clients that we meet, that they see that as like, oh wow, they’ve got a little bit of a presence here. Maybe that helps push people over the edge to go with us.

Paul Wurth:

For sure.

Matt Shroyer:

And then we’re probably … I’d say at least 50% of our clients come from Instagram, so.

Tom Houghton:

Wow.

Paul Wurth:

Wow.

Matt Shroyer:

A lot of our retail business is from that.

Paul Wurth:

And when did you really start ramping up Instagram?

Matt Shroyer:

I’ve been doing it for, I don’t know, three or four years, but I’d say in the last … we’ve probably doubled our following last year, so it’s definitely helped connect with all the … a lot of the other presence of …

Paul Wurth:

That’s now 50% of your leads.

Matt Shroyer:

Yeah. I’d say at least it’s around that number.

Paul Wurth:

That’s basically organic. You’re not paying, right?

Matt Shroyer:

Yeah, don’t pay. Every now and then we’ll boost …

Paul Wurth:

Let’s rewind that for all the listeners, and who’s got their own businesses right there.

Matt Shroyer:

You don’t have to pay for that marketing.

Paul Wurth:

Holy moly. That’s awesome.

Matt Shroyer:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

That’s really cool.

Matt Shroyer:

Well, you’ve got two more followers today, I bet. Are you doing it? Are you smashing the follow button right now?

Tom Houghton:

Of course, I am.

Paul Wurth:

I’m going to smash it.

Tom Houghton:

I mean, there’s some really good pictures on here.

Matt Shroyer:

Thank you.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

You’ve got some great photos.

Tom Houghton:

It’s great to see what you’re doing. You can see your work and just see what else is out there. So, if you’re not following them, make sure you follow, it’s Emergent Indie, but it looks like @emergentindy …

Matt Shroyer:

I’ll probably put a space in there, a hyphen, maybe we should but …

Tom Houghton:

No, this is better. This is better.

Paul Wurth:

Tom’s an expert …

Tom Houghton:

It’s in the shownotes. So, if you don’t have any idea what we’re talking about, check out the show notes and you can find a link to follow @emergentindy on Instagram.

Paul Wurth:

Getting good stuff from Matt there. Shout out Matt, again, a friend of the program, we’ll have him on soon here in one of the next 100 episodes. That’s my promise to you.

Episode seven is the next highlight we have here, again this is live. This is live from Buildertrend University. So, for those who don’t know, previous to COVID-19 and the pandemic one of the things that literally everybody from Buildertrend loved once a month is when we had our clients out visiting Omaha, Neb. for Buildertrend University, it was hosted, and it will be hosted here at our campus in Omaha, Neb. Typically we had about 50 to 100 individuals from different companies here. It’s two days deep dive learning about Buildertrend, not only the functionality and features we have, but learning more about our business and our people. A couple of great happy hours where we all emerged as friends, not just vendor and client.

And we actually created really cool communities, each individual month’s worth of Buildertrend University. They made connections and kept those connections. So, be on the lookout for that. In this episode seven, we have Trunk Bay, a company out of Illinois. Wes Trunk is a young business owner with his father. Wes is a really dynamic great, young guy, friend of the program, friend of mine. And he’s got some good stories about how they started their business, but also some really neat marketing ideas specifically around referrals. I don’t think enough of our construction companies ask for referrals, not only at the end of a job, but during the jobs. So, have a listen, Wes will give you some tips on that.

So, how do you guys market, what are those decisions? Are you out there advertising in papers and video or buying stuff? What do you do?

Wes Trunk:

So, our biggest marketing tool is word of mouth. So, we try to deliver excellent homes and excellent customer service. We always put our clients first. Obviously, that’s true of a lot of people, but even as personal as our company is with each individual homeowner, we might only be building for five people, so we have to have that relationship first, pre-solds are difficult for a reason, it’s because you have to deal with the people. So, we try to make that relationship as easy as possible. So, word of mouth, we’re not in newspapers, billboards really, so we do a lot of Facebook, Instagram, photos of our houses and get a lot of activity. Because obviously the design element of Trunk Bay is one of its best features.

Tom Houghton:

So, tell us about this video you did. You did a marketing video, was it about your team? A product?

Wes Trunk:

We did one segment, maybe last summer when we closed a house, we closed a really nice custom house that we did. So, we actually got in there the week that it was clean and really nice, and it let us shoot some different angles. We did some introductions to our team. And then earlier this spring we had a couple of our subcontractors and actually a homeowner come in and talk about how we run our sales process, a little bit about Buildertrend and how they get to engage with the software and watch their house being built. So, shout out to you guys …

Paul Wurth:

Shout out.

Wes Trunk:

Got to plug you guys a little bit, but we’re hoping to be able to use this for like, who is Trunk Bay? Who are you going to work with? Who are you going to see? What’s the house going to look like? We’re hoping to be able to replicate this for years to come.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, that’s good.

Paul Wurth:

And people expect that. Honestly, people expect to be able to go to a website. Obviously, if you’re not on a website, that’s a must. But when you get there, like you said, you don’t need pages of content just, you want visuals, like show me your work.

Wes Trunk:

I know you build houses, show me what the house looks like.

Paul Wurth:

Right. And show me something about you, I want to get to know.

Tom Houghton:

Tell me about the process.

Paul Wurth:

Because like you said, especially in your volume, it is a relationship.

Wes Trunk:

Absolutely.

Paul Wurth:

And a long one, and ups and downs the whole time. So, you feel good about who you’re in the foxhole with, that was a callback.

Tom Houghton:

That was.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Wes Trunk:

The level of relationship that we get with these people, we just know there’s going to be stressful times coming along in the process, people are going to freak out about the way this looks, the things that we’re comfortable with, they won’t be, and they want somebody who would be able to stand there with them, say, hey, it’s going to be all right, don’t worry, give it a little bit of time, or whatever, but they need somebody they can trust.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. Next episode I have for you is episode 26. Again, feel free to go back to any of these episodes for the full clip. But this episode is again, one of my favorites. It’s another live. This was live from a local tech conference we had here in Omaha, Neb. We brought on a local nonprofit company, the Abide Network. This is one of my personal favorite nonprofits here in Omaha. It’s a nonprofit that is a company Buildertrend does some work with because it’s got a great message and a great mission.

Josh Dotzler is the CEO and the spokesperson for Abide. He’s a very dynamic person as you’re going to be able to tell from the clip, you may want to reach out to him for some motivational speaking because we were definitely motivated by his message. So, have a listen about a nonprofit that Buildertrend really wants to be a part of and a bigger part of, and also maybe inspire you to get involved with a nonprofit in your area that your construction company can give back to. Josh, for sure, has a great story with Abide.

Tom Houghton:

Let’s start off first, Josh, give us a rundown of Abide’s mission. What are you guys all about?

Josh Dotzler:

Yeah. So, our mission is to revitalize the inner city one neighborhood at a time. And my parents, 30 years ago, my dad was a chemical engineer and felt like he wanted to be a part of building a better future. Didn’t know where it was, moved into North Omaha. He’s a white guy from Iowa. Any white guys from … no, I’m just kidding. My mom’s an African American from Washington DC. And so, he moves into this predominantly African American community, experienced crime, violence.

He’s from this small town, had never seen it before, and he knew that he wanted to be a part of the solution in some way, and saw tons of overwhelming problems, but started to just take action in the neighborhood that we lived in and started to see change. And we said, if we can see it one neighborhood, man, we can see it in more neighborhoods.

Tom Houghton:

That’s awesome. That’s an incredible mission.

Josh Dotzler:

And it really started off like this, really started through projects. It was a mission of mobilizing people to the North Omaha community. We would find abandoned houses. We would find people who needed their houses fixed up. And so we would literally mobilize people to do work projects. I literally grew up doing work projects.

Tom Houghton:

That was it.

Josh Dotzler:

Swinging a hammer.

Tom Houghton:

That was you.

Josh Dotzler:

We got paid five cents to pull nails out of boards.

Tom Houghton:

Five cents per nail?

Josh Dotzler:

Five cents per two by four.

Tom Houghton:

Okay.

Paul Wurth:

Okay.

Tom Houghton:

You can make a …

Paul Wurth:

Is that a good trade off?

Josh Dotzler:

No, I guess it depends on how many nails are on the two by four …

Tom Houghton:

Is that child labor?

Paul Wurth:

It’s not a good trade off, but probably built character.

Josh Dotzler:

It built a lot of character, that’s right.

Paul Wurth:

There you go. So, where did your parents go find people in the early, early days? Just neighbors?

Josh Dotzler:

So, my dad was a part of church, part of a pretty big church in the city and just felt like, specifically, at his church, and people of faith felt like man, people of faith are called to take action where there is need, and so started to mobilize people there. But over the years, businesses and individuals from all over have joined.

Paul Wurth:

That’s great.

Tom Houghton:

Tell us about the progress you’ve made in this journey. So, obviously, starting off small, you guys build things called lighthouses. Is that right?

Josh Dotzler:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

You want to talk a little about the lighthouses? Give a little more context there?

Josh Dotzler:

Yeah. That’s one of the things that we do. Yeah, started small. I’m one of 14 kids, and so, we don’t start too small because there’s a lot of us.

Tom Houghton:

You’ve got a team right there.

Josh Dotzler:

But definitely 30 years ago started pretty small, and then over the years in 2007, our family lived in a neighborhood not too far away from here, that the police red lined as one of the most violent. And there was an old abandoned building that in the 1800s was a horse and buggy fire station. And my dad drove by it one day, saw this old abandoned building that the city was getting ready to tear down, and he said, I think that could be a place for good things to happen one day. And he went back to his board, like a good leader does, asked his board, and everybody on his board said no way.

My dad being the entrepreneur that he was, decided to do it anyway, found one person. So, he purchased this building for hardly nothing. The police said they found dead bodies in this building at one point in time, it’s a 15,000 square foot facility, and with mostly volunteers and donated materials, refurbished this place, that’s a $1.5 million project for less than $50,000. And that became our model for what a lighthouse is. It’s taking these old, dilapidated houses in neighborhoods, refurbishing them. And then our family moved into that neighborhood and started to intentionally become a part of the solution in that community.

Paul Wurth:

Next, we have episode 50, now episode 20 was one of our most listened to episodes and the common theme it has with episode 50 is they both featured Matt Reisenger. Matt, again, is a friend of Buildertrend, has been on the podcast a few different times. He has a company out of Austin, Texas that does some amazing things that relate to custom home building and remodeling. He also has a mission within building science to promote building science. But also, what I love about Matt, is he’s not afraid to give some insider tips and tricks of how he built his business and really lift the entire construction industry.

It’s a collective thing for him. He loves building community inside of construction. And so, kudos to Matt for that. Have a listen. This is going to be all about how Matt builds with science and his green, healthy building initiatives he has done in Austin.

Tom Houghton:

In the building science world, what are you excited about right now?

Matt Reisinger:

Oh man, that’s a great question, Tom. I haven’t seen any breakthrough this year. I was here two or three years ago and this is super nerdy, but have you ever heard of AeroBarrier?

Tom Houghton:

Mm-hmm. We talked about it actually on our last podcast.

Matt Reisinger:

Did we?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Matt Reisinger:

AeroBarrier is a relatively new product that’s like, an aerosolized calk that fills all the cracks and crevices in your house and really air tightens your house. And I saw it here first at a show. They were in the junkiest, cheapest booth in the back that I happened to walk by one day and was like, what is this? And it’s a total game changer. And they’ve blown up in the two or years since then.

When I started my blog, which was before YouTube even, like 2007, I called myself Matt Reisenger and the Green Building Blog. And if you came to IBS in like, ’05 to ’08, every manufacturer was talking about how green they were. There was a bunch of green booths, a bunch of pictures of the planet on there. So, I started this blog, Matt Reisenger and the Green Building Blog, and I … and green building is basically high-performance building, but, oh, by the way, we’re also doing things in a sustainable way, in a smart way, in a healthier way.

But the word, “Green,” is totally dead in my mind. People won’t pay for green. They never did. That’s why we transitioned out of it. It’s a buzzword that means nothing now. So, then we transitioned to high-performance houses, and we’re still in that phase right now where a lot of us talk about ourselves as high-performance builders. But I think the new thing that we’re going to start talking about more and more is actually healthy builders. Builders are build healthy.

I heard somebody quote yesterday, and I’m sure I can’t tell you who attributes the quote too, but they basically said, our houses are basically sheds for families to store families. If you’re going to store your family somewhere, wouldn’t you want to store them somewhere that’s healthy?

Tom Houghton:

Sure.

Matt Reisinger:

And of our days on earth, like 40% of them or something or spent in our bed. So, how healthy would you want your bedroom air quality? If you’re going to spend 40% of your life’s hours there?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Wow.

Matt Reisinger:

So, if you keep those things in mind, I think there’s a lot to be said about building a healthier, smarter house with really good indoor air quality, that’s going to be a place that your kids, whether they have asthma or not are really healthy and thriving.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. Moving from one influencer in the industry to another, we’ve got an episode here, 51. So, back to bat with Brad Leavitt, Brad has a company out of Arizona, the Phoenix, Scottsdale area in Arizona, AFT Construction. Like I said, much like Matt, and the next clip you will hear with Nick from NS builders, these guys have built a social media following and become true thought leaders and industry influencers. And so, we’re proud to have all of them clients of Buildertrend. That’s something that’s really cool for us, but also people that we can call on to talk about important industry topics and updates as they’re happening.

So, check out this episode, Brad talks about his company and update to what’s going on in his business and net zero building.

So, what’s happened with your business in a year?

Brad Leavitt:

Wow. It’s really changed a lot. We’ve been very blessed, very fortunate. We’ve increased our size, we’ve had a few great hires, some super skilled project managers and supers, and then we’ve been awarded some amazing projects. We have some really fun stuff coming up from a building science side, we’re going to be doing a net zero home in Scottsdale off the grid where we have some ICF projects, which I know Tom flew out. He got to see that. And we’re going to be doing a few more ICF homes there in town.

We have a couple of really signature homes that we haven’t released a lot about it, but one of them is 15,000 square feet, super detailed, amazing design, just incredible. And then another one that’s on 12 acres of a hillside up in Scottsdale that we were just awarded a couple of weeks ago. So, it’s really exciting. We have some really flagship projects coming that we’re excited to start marketing.

Paul Wurth:

That’s awesome.

Tom Houghton:

That’s incredible.

Paul Wurth:

Are those incredible celebrity homes? Tell us who they are.

Brad Leavitt:

In their own world, they’re celebrities. Yeah, for sure. But no, very successful, good people, good clients. So, we’re fortunate to be working with them.

Tom Houghton:

That’s awesome.

Paul Wurth:

You know me, I don’t know much about science and building science, whoopsy daisy, that’s my industry. What do you say at net zero. What does that mean?

Brad Leavitt:

So, net zero is a term that’s used for homes that are off the grid. So, it only uses as much energy as it consumes. So, it’s homes that are designed from an energy efficiency just to optimize the energy in the home, to maintain the energy of the home and then utilize solar power and other things to help it function on a day-to-day basis.

Paul Wurth:

Okay, cool. That’s something you’d be into.

Tom Houghton:

I love it. Yeah. Completely off grid that way. Fantastic.

Paul Wurth:

Cool, so business is growing by employee size, projects, volume, number of projects but also size of projects is going up.

Brad Leavitt:

Yeah, absolutely. And we continue to do residential, commercial, that’s our portfolio there. And so, we have some fun commercial ones, we’re doing some land development, which is our first one, so, joint venture there. And for any of the followers that are seeing what we’re doing, we post about that, so that’s been fun. Some retail spaces, we’re doing some off-sites, on-sites and underground construction. So, a little bit different when you’re working with the horizontal construction, we call it, when it’s underground, as opposed to the vertical, which a lot of us know here at IBS.

Paul Wurth:

Wait, so you said, follow. I follow you. I watch all of your stories, they’re really great. So, what’s your handle on Instagram?

Brad Leavitt:

So, handle is AFT_construction. So, it stands for A Finer Touch. So, @AFT_construction is pretty much our handle on all the social media channels.

Paul Wurth:

Okay, and that was Brad from AFT Builders. Again, that’s two of three episodes in a row that we talked to, essentially, celebrities inside the building industry. And so, NS Builders, Nick Schiffer is our last one. Nick’s out of Boston area. He, again, has been a Buildertrend client for a few years and is an advocate of what we do inside the industry. And we are definitely in turn an advocate of him and his team that’s ever growing.

We met up with Nick down at the International Builders’ Show, an event that we all love going to every year. Unfortunately, as you all know 2021 has been canceled, but let’s just all make it a big point to come together again in 2022, and make it one of the biggest International Builders’ Shows we have. Nick does a great job of talking about his story about his business, but mainly what we want to highlight in this episode is how he talks about attracting top talent.

As we all know, there is a labor shortage in construction, and Nick does a really good job of thinking about how to attract top talent and doing that through some different avenues. So, have a listen to Nick.

Tom Houghton:

But bringing that background of the customer experience and bringing it around to the people of this. We talked a little bit about talent earlier. You’ve got great talent. You’ve got Molly, you got Nick, you’ve got Doug, here. What’s your advice to those listening, on how they can attract top talent?

Nick Schiffer:

Attracting top talent. There’s a lot to it, but simply put, the culture in which you promote … well, first off, it should be real. You shouldn’t be promoting fake culture, and I think that’s where people are promoting a culture and then living up to a lesser …

Paul Wurth:

100%.

Nick Schiffer:

… a lesser thing, right? The really understanding what brings people value. I’m going to talk personally about what we do. So, one thing I realized is the work/life balance and separating work and life, and I realized that when I had kids. We talked about this recently on one of our episodes is that one thing I implemented is, I get rid of my work phone when I get home. My work phone stays in my work bag, off. Not on the counter, so I walk by and touch the screen to see if I have a notification. Off, away.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, we talked about that a little when I was there, that you have two separate phones.

Nick Schiffer:

Yeah. And so, that was huge. And that was one of the first steps. And I really told my guys, I’m like, everyone gets a phone allowance because you’re expected to answer the phone when I call, or when anyone calls, and you all have emails, but the phone allowance is to pay for that phone, and if you want a personal phone, I would encourage you to get your own phone.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, makes sense.

Nick Schiffer:

And separate it. But the culture within the company is that, you know, for our time off, we take Christmas Eve all the way to New Year’s Day off.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Mandatory.

Nick Schiffer:

Mandatory.

Paul Wurth:

I love that.

Nick Schiffer:

Mandatory around the week of July 4th. And then their accruing vacation on top of it because that’s time to recharge. That has to be the case, having the opportunity to do your very best work, but when you mess up, it’s alright, but it’s not okay if you keep messing up and doing the same thing, but let’s work through this and figure out why, why did you mess up? Did we do something wrong? And being okay with the understanding that the investment in those mistakes will net a better result. Totally. But I think really just promoting the positivity behind all of that, there is a lot of negative in this industry. There’s a lot of hard things that we deal with.

What construction is, is organization of 100s of humans with all their baggage and issues, to net a product that people expect to be perfect.

Paul Wurth:

Yep. Yeah. That’s a really good summary of that.

Nick Schiffer:

And it’s like, well, first off …

Paul Wurth:

Mission impossible.

Nick Schiffer:

… it’s not going to be perfect. We have a lot of things working against us, never mind the human aspect of it.

Paul Wurth:

Alright, those were three great episodes in a row from Matt, Brad, and Nick. I think again, if you haven’t listened to those full clips or those full episodes, I encourage you to go do that. It’s great to hear how these three companies and these three gentlemen have built their businesses and built their following. If that’s something that you’re into, I highly recommend going back and listening to those.

We’re shifting gears here. And it would be probably a big miss if we didn’t look at the last 100 episodes and talk about the pandemic and probably the biggest thing that’s happened in all of our lifetimes as it relates to the entire world. So, as with everybody back when the pandemic was hitting North America, and the US, we were shaken and trying to find our place and how we could help our clients.

I thought episode 60, which is titled, “Tips for your business during COVID-19,” was our effort to just do what we could to inform our clients about what they could do during that very uncertain time. It obviously may not resonate right now and be relevant to where we’re at, but I think it might be really cool for everybody to listen to this episode, think about where they were at during that time. And maybe be appreciative of where we’re at in the industry right now, as it seems like everything’s going really well. So, have a quick listen.

Tom Houghton:

So, let’s talk about what’s happening. I’m sure everybody’s aware of this situation, but maybe where we stand right now and any updates that we have for our listeners.

Nick Knihnisky:

Yeah, and to go to the earlier disclaimer, I also want to caution that this isn’t legal advice, your situation is going to be different than what mine might be, but we want to encourage you to be informed. So, I know President Trump has a news conference later this afternoon. I think the expectation, at least around here, is they’re planning for a nationwide lockdown and what that looks like, who knows? I know New York shut down restaurants and bars. Chicago did the same, LA, I believe, did the same as well. So, hectic times.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. And just so our listeners have a context as well, we’re recording this on Monday the 16th, this will go live on Tuesday, the 17th, we’re doing a special release. And normally we release the podcast on Thursdays. If you’ve been subscribing, we appreciate that. You’ll know that we normally release on Thursdays, but because of this data and because we’re trying to get it out as quickly as possible for you, we’re releasing this 24 hours after we recorded it here on Monday.

Who knows what will happen by the time it reaches our listeners’ ears, but still, I think we can talk about the situation and just options for our listeners as well.

Nick Knihnisky:

Yeah, absolutely. So, I think there’s three main things that you want to be looking at. First and foremost, communication. Second, it’s going to be potential scheduling impacts because like I said, if we’re going on a nationwide lockdown for two, three weeks it’s going to be difficult to build homes during that time or really assist your customers.

And then, third, is the insurance aspect. You want to know how you can protect yourself from any potential interruptions.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely.

Nick Knihnisky:

So, just to get started with that, obviously unprecedented situation, I wanted to distinguish between the legal protections and the realities, but communicating with everyone involved, all of your stakeholders is going to be the key throughout this entire process. Your employees, your vendors, your suppliers, your homeowners, your various clients, include them in your preparation and planning. If you haven’t already reached out to them said you’re tracking the situation and you’re trying to prepare as best as you possibly can for any negative impacts, I think that’d be really helpful. And at least just saying, hey, look, it’s on my radar. We’re doing as much as we can behind the scenes.

If we go into a large-scale interruption, obviously you’re going to want to communicate that everybody’s aware of what’s happening. It’s almost impossible to avoid this news. And so, reaching out and just saying, look, we’re aware of it. We’re tracking, we’re doing everything that we can, you don’t need to throw out … I’m sure you’ve had the same exact situation with your email inbox where every single brand is telling you exactly what they’re doing.

And I don’t know why the Marriott CEO felt it was necessary to reach out to every single individual, regardless of whether or not they had a hotel stay coming up. But obviously, your work is going to be much more pertinent to the day-to-day lives of your clients as well as your suppliers and employees. So, I encourage you to reach out to them.

Paul Wurth:

My next episode was a highlight from the first 100 episodes, was episode 66 with Tim Brown from the Hook Agency. We actually just had Tim back a couple episodes ago, as you may know if you’re an avid listener. The reason why I like having Tim Brown on is because he talks about marketing inside construction. And I think it’s a place where some of us as construction companies who listened to Buildertrend may not be very familiar with, may have hesitated to go down that road. But it’s also very, very important as we all know on how to consistently drive new leads and business to your company to continue to grow.

And Tim has a really straightforward look at how to do marketing. So, in this episode, I thought what really struck me was when we started talking about using Google and organic Google trafficing, and then this term, “SEO,” I think he talks a little bit about that and tries to break that down for us all to understand. So, have listened to this, these two clips here.

It’s really great for our listeners is just to hear a little bit about who you are, how you started your business, and of course, what your focus is. Do you want to give us a quick rundown?

Tim Brown:

Yeah, so, I started in digital marketing in web design and I have grown in that over time. I got into getting leads from Google. So, search engine optimization is a big piece of that. And I figured out early on in my business that I could actually drive my business significantly just from free Google traffic, which to be honest, as a person getting into this seemed pretty amazing. And I wasn’t yet selling that to clients, but I was pretty excited about it because as you can imagine, somebody two, three years in their business able to get regular, consistent leads from Google, that’s pretty cool.

I’m not super extroverted, so I wasn’t necessarily going out to events all the time and drumming up business that way. So, I literally grew my business entirely on Google. And then I slowly started to offer that as a service for clients about five years ago. And now the biggest part of our business is, two thirds is driving qualified leads and unqualified leads. We drive a lot of leads organic Google traffic. So, we’ve gotten heavily into that. A lot of it is around content marketing. So, figuring out ways to get regular, consistent content on your site. And then also just making sure that your website is set up well and persuasive and stuff like that.

Tom Houghton:

I think maybe for our listeners, you might need to clarify the difference between paid versus organic and what you’re doing there.

Tim Brown:

Yeah, so we’ve got the little ads up at the top. They usually have some call-out that says, ad, at the top of the Google search results. So, if you Google, let’s say, home remodeler, Albuquerque. You see those first couple, those are usually ads, there’s organic search results. There’s the map. And then there’s just the regular listing, and the map and the regular listing. You can manipulate that, and Google doesn’t want you to know, but you can manipulate those search results. And frankly you should, you should take every advantage possible in your business and your small business.

And a lot of these guys that we’re talking with and rooting for, they’ve taken massive risks of bringing their company out on their own. They’re building a team in these communities. They’re the heroes of these communities, they’re small business, growth minded businesses in these communities. And they have taken big risks. You should take every opportunity on your marketing front that you can, and organic search traffic.

You can work with a company like ours, but you can also do a lot on your own. There’s a lot of things that you can do on your own. You can blog, you can answer questions that your ideal prospects are asking on the phone. You can do a blog about that topic. And literally people don’t realize, but blogging for stuff where there really is people searching for that, that helps your search rankings go up for the other things, like I said, for home remodeler, Albuquerque, if you were the company that was blogging about things that homeowners are really looking for, it’s good to also do stuff that’s anchored in your area. So, stuff that would relate to the local people, and that stuff really does help you get higher in Google search results.

There’s all kinds of tricks, and things to do on that, but you can look into it. So, just look up SEO. And there’s a lot of really good tips and things that you could do out there,  especially if you’re in a smaller market, you can own that.

Paul Wurth:

Okay, again, that was Tim Brown from the Hook Agency, recurring guests. We’ll have him on again sometime in 2021 to further talk about marketing inside construction.

Episode 73, we actually have a series inside “The Building Code” called a feature spotlight. It’s one of my favorite, and I think our listeners favorite because it really talks about Buildertrend as a product. Most of our clients are in some way users of Buildertrend. Again, probably some of those are our parents and friends and family, but the bulk are users of Buildertrend. So, we like to really serve content that helps drive more value to you using Buildertrend.

These feature spotlights are perfect for this. I also liked this because it … for two more reasons. One, it is a feature that has probably been requested or reported to have been requested since I began here at Buildertrend many, many years ago. And secondly, it highlights one of our favorite employees, Scott Vonderharr. Scott has been with us since the early team at Buildertrend. He has a unique experience of really being in all three of our big parts of Buildertrend sales support and our product engineering team. So, he’s got a wide array of experience. He talks very eloquently about our update, which is called our work in progress report or our WIP report. So, have a listen.

Tom Houghton:

So, we’re going to talk about work in progress reports, or we’re going to call them WIP reports from here on out, just because that’s a little easier. No comments from the peanut gallery, apparently.

Scott Vonderharr:

WIP reports it is.

Tom Houghton:

WIP reports.

Paul Wurth:

I’ve heard this term ever since I started here at Buildertrend 13 years and some change ago. Yeah. Scott, actually, a little sidebar. He was on the sales team for a while. Scott’s been in all three …

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. He’s been in all three major departments.

Paul Wurth:

Maybe the only person?

Scott Vonderharr:

I think so. Yeah. So, I started here about eight years ago in our customer success department, spent about a year there, moved to the sales floor for a while. We ended up having an opportunity to open up over on our engineering side to really get a product team up and running. So, been doing that for about the last six years.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. So, would you say you’ve heard this concept of WIP reports or Work in Progress reports as long as you’ve been here as well?

Scott Vonderharr:

Pretty much. Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

So, I don’t it’s necessarily specific to construction, is it? Or is it?

Scott Vonderharr:

The version we’re doing is, yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Right, but I think the concept of a work in progress report is probably more global than that, but let’s start there. Explain to us … I don’t know if this is … is this the next question?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, this is …

Paul Wurth:

Usually keep it on the …

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, you’re just going off the rails, so.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. So, explain to the crowd, what is a work in progress report?

Scott Vonderharr:

Yeah, so it lets a builder know where they stand financially on a job and helps really remove surprises.

Paul Wurth:

Sounds important.

Scott Vonderharr:

I think so. Yeah. So, if a builder has questions like which of my jobs are getting ready to wrap up and are giving me the best profit margin? Or, which of my jobs need extra attention because they’re over budget? This report is going to help you move forward and make decisions before it’s too late.

Tom Houghton:

That’s smart.

Paul Wurth:

So, today we have a budget in Buildertrend, a budget view, essentially. And what we allow you to do is import all your estimated costs and then track all your actual costs. How is this different?

Scott Vonderharr:

Well, I think our budget does a great job for job costing. And at the end of the job, it’s pretty much telling you the full story.

Paul Wurth:

So, at the end you know the deal.

Scott Vonderharr:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Okay.

Scott Vonderharr:

But what this is going to help with is identify problems while the job’s in flight. So, while we’re in progress, what cash flow are we looking at? Are we profitable up to this point? Are we drawing enough cash to make sure we’re going to be able to pay our subs?

Paul Wurth:

Oh, cool.

Tom Houghton:

That’s hence the “in progress” part of the name, right? The work in progress.

Paul Wurth:

Right. I just didn’t know … if you’re entering bills in real time, you’re just not realizing all your costs yet, right? So, that’s probably the process. So, it’s just filling that gap that we don’t have today?

Scott Vonderharr:

Yeah. So, which ones are completed? Are we making sure we’re invoicing our clients?

Paul Wurth:

Alright, thanks, Scott, for enlightening us of the Work in Progress report. If you had just found out about that because of this clip and this episode, feel free to go to our reports tab or our chat button inside Buildertrend and request more information. You’re going to really love that report and what it brings to the table.

So, we’re on our final episode. Again, this was tough to pick just a handful of these. I encourage all of you to listen to all 100 of these because I think they’ll have some value. The last one I liked for a few different reasons. Number one, it talked a lot about a subject that we always talk about, which is unique marketing for construction businesses. It’s a place where you can really set yourself apart from other companies in your area, but also it highlights one of a great user base of ours, which is our companies that use Buildertrend from Australia and New Zealand.

So, we brought on Ryan Jenkins from Task Construction Group in Sydney, Australia. He talks about the industry in Australia and construction there, how it might be a little different from here in the U.S., but more importantly, he talks about the importance of relationships with the neighbors of the construction site that you’re on. So, many times, many of us are working inside neighborhoods, and I don’t think maybe we realize how disruptive us working on a home could be. All the different trucks, noises, different disturbances that could happen. Ryan gives you some really good tips on how his company gets ahead of that issue and turns that into a referral and marketing tool for them. I thought it was really great. So, we’ll have a great listen here.

Tom Houghton:

Obviously, you focus a lot on the client experience and building those relationships, the great relationships that you have with your clients. Obviously, that extends if you’re doing a larger project to the neighbors or the neighborhoods. So, can you talk about how you guys approach that and why you think it’s important in your process, obviously, to do that?

Ryan Jenkins:

Yeah. So, me being the supervisor, I’m the supervisor, and I go around and I run all the sites and each site has its own foreman and the foreman has his own crew of carpenters. So, my job is to keep the clients happy and to keep the neighbors happy. And I think if I do that, it shows that we’ve delivered a good project, but we’ve also delivered a good service. Now, that service being that we’ve engaged the neighbors, we’ve kept them happy, we’ve kept them involved. We’ve kept them up to date. We know how intimidating it can be having a bunch of subcontractors and tradesmen in your street, just prancing around with it, their big utes and all their heavy machinery and all their power source. It’s a massive inconvenience for them, some projects can go up to 12 months.

You’ve got to put yourself in their shoes, some people can be shift workers and then they’re having to sleep. And all of a sudden they got power tools running all day. So, that’s just being friendly with the neighbors and being personable. I’ll go around there probably on a weekly basis and just check in, making sure everything is all right, if they need anything. And all that does, is it builds a relationship with the neighbors. Yes, sometimes they might be angry and it’s not ideal for them, but at the same time they feel like they can actually come to me with any problems. And all you’ve got to do is listen to them. And if they do have a request, say they say, hey, look, I’ve had a really rough night. I just need to get two hours of sleep. Can you just keep it quiet for the next two hours? Then we can look at doing stuff that’s not going to produce that much noise for the next two hours, then we’ve kept them happy.

And then the rest of the build, we’re going to have a really good relationship with them. It’s going to make things so much easier. I think there’d be a lot of contractors out there that know, that have a story where the neighbors have pushed back on a lot of things or have had arguments or there’s been disputes on site. It’s about breaking that barrier. We want to break that stigma of the big, intimidating builder, we want to be able to rock up and want to be like, hello, how are you? We’re going to be building here for the next so-and-so months. If there is any dramas, I just want you to know you can come see me with anything at all.

Tom Houghton:

I love that you’re doing that for your clients, but then also just delivering that great service to the neighborhood. And I’m assuming, I’m going to go out on a limb here. I’m assuming that has led to some increase in business because if I’m a neighbor and I’m being approached by a construction company who’s already gone out of their way to do this, and then even following up with like a thank you note, like, thank you for letting us come into your neighborhood and help make this home better. And the first person I’m calling is that company when I need something done.

Paul Wurth:

For sure.

Ryan Jenkins:

Yeah. Well, we actually … it’s funny you say that, we just completed a job in a suburb, in the Inner West in Sydney. And after we completed that job, we ended up working on the next four neighbors’ houses in that street, just to do small jobs, like a new garage. Some letterbox works and another new carport and another new garage, just because we’re so friendly with them. They just trusted us straight away. It’s building that trust. It’s not only just to get those small jobs from them, but if they can have a friend that will go, hey, look, we’re looking for a builder. And then they can say, hey, look, we didn’t get these works done to our house, but this builder was great. They did some work in our street. We highly recommend that.

We know that a recommendation goes so far, so much better than just seeing a builder on Instagram or on the socials or seeing an ad on TV, a recommendation from someone that you know, you’re likely to go with that person.

Paul Wurth:

So, there you go. Those are some of my favorite episodes from the first 100 episodes of the building code. I can’t say this enough, but I want to thank each and every one of our listeners, again, we’ve had over 120,000 downloads, 100,000 listeners in the U.S. and North America. And from the bottom of my heart and the company of Buildertrend, we really appreciate you guys listening and tuning into our content.

Again, tell your friends, tell your family, give us your ideas. There’s a lot of different ways you could do that. One of the easiest ones is going to our Facebook. Everybody’s got Facebook, go to your groups, look for The Building Code Crew. Every week, we’ll launch our episodes in a post and then you can comment on your opinion of those episodes. Or if you want to give us tips and tricks and suggested guests, we are all ears. Thank you very much. And as always, I appreciate you.

All right, everyone. Thanks again for listening to this episode of “The Building Code.” Remember to rate, review and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, help us grow this community of listeners. Tell your friends, tell your family. We do appreciate it. And if you’ve heard anything that you want to learn more about on today’s episode, head out to the show notes website, buildertrend.com/podcast. As always, we appreciate you.