Improving work culture with Rob Carlisle: Carlisle Classic Homes

Tom Houghton:

You’re listening to “The Building Code,” I’m Tom Houghton.

Paul Wurth:

I’m Paul Wurth.

Tom Houghton:

We’ll get started with our guest in just a second but first want to tell you about the last opportunity to attend Buildertrend University in 2019. Our last 2019 BTU is scheduled for December 11th and 12th in Omaha, Nebraska at Buildertrend headquarters. This two-day onsite event is a great way to get out of your business to work on your business. All meals are included while you’re here and it’s a great opportunity to increase your knowledge and usage of Buildertrend to maximize your business for 2020. You can find out more and register today at buildertrendu.com.

Tom Houghton:

And joining us on today’s episode is Rob Carlisle from Carlisle Classic Homes, based in Seattle, Washington that is. There’s a lot of Seattle’s out there.

Paul Wurth:

I don’t think there is.

Tom Houghton:

Just the one.

Paul Wurth:

Just the one.

Tom Houghton:

Just the famous one.

Paul Wurth:

Are you in Seattle, Rob? Where exactly are you in Seattle?

Rob Carlisle:

We’re in Seattle proper.

Paul Wurth:

As the listeners may know, I just spent a weekend in Seattle. That’s true. Didn’t we show them on the show notes? I went to a Vampire Weekend concert there, stayed downtown, love Seattle.

Tom Houghton:

It’s a great city.

Paul Wurth:

It’s great. It’s big. So, what would you say-

Rob Carlisle:

Did you have a vampire costume on? That’s what I want to know.

Paul Wurth:

No. Vampire Weekend’s a band from the East Coast. They don’t require… I don’t think they do. I didn’t have one, I’ll just say that.

Tom Houghton:

He didn’t have but maybe other people there did have.

Paul Wurth:

I’m sure during their Halloween season.

Rob Carlisle:

Well, if were walking among you, you might not recognize them, right?

Paul Wurth:

That’s true.

Tom Houghton:

That’s true.

Paul Wurth:

I am boned up on actual vampires.

Tom Houghton:

Not a big Twilight fan.

Paul Wurth:

No. No, I’m not. That wasn’t that area, that was Oregon. Okay, we’re digressing. All right. So, what is Seattle proper? What is your working area, typically?

Rob Carlisle:

So, when clients ask, we basically say we work in the greater Seattle area. So, Seattle is a metropolitan center around it, Microsoft is right across Lake Washington in Redmond. So, we’ll work in Redmond, we’ll work in Woodinville, basically outlined cities within say, a 20 to 25 mile radius of Seattle. But we operate out of Seattle, the city itself. And definitely, it affects the demographic. If you were to go, the demographic of our clients, the type of clients we do, the type of projects that they do, if you were to go 40 miles North and hit Everett, it changes the project landscape to some degree.

Paul Wurth:

That’s really interesting. Would it be too obvious to say that your demographic then is younger because of the tech there? Amazon’s headquarters are there-

Tom Houghton:

Boeing.

Paul Wurth:

Like you say Microsoft. Do young people work on planes?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. Aerospace.

Paul Wurth:

Oh, okay. So, those are smart young people.

Rob Carlisle:

So, we definitely have a younger demographic. I would say, one of the defining characteristics is, the majority of our demographic are very tech savvy, whether they’re older and have been in it for a long time but with their business backgrounds, they come from different worlds of project management. And although we’re managing the project that builds them a home, and they might be managing projects that build technical components or apps or other things, they have a certain expectation of what that should be like and how it should be run.

Paul Wurth:

So, have you seen a bigger call or request for something like Buildertrend? You’ve been using us since 2015 or ’14, has there been a change since you started, with, “Hey, I’d like my builder-remodeler to have this type of tech stack or this type of organization.”

Rob Carlisle:

The desire, at least in the Seattle area, that desire has been there for some time, over a decade. I think the hard part is, clients don’t know to ask for it, they don’t know what to ask for their homes, it’s a very hard area to get educated on. HGTV still leaves them wanting. But I think once we’ve been able to show it to a client, all of a sudden they realize what they want. And we’ve, literally, won project because of, basically, our ability to have a platform that they feel will help their project be contained in one place and help them interact with it and have faith that it’s going in the direction that they want or that they’ll have some insight if it’s not heading in the direction. If we start falling off schedule or something, that they’d be able to see that in a digital way, rather than just walking through a job site.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome. So, give us a little bit more background too, on your company. How many homes are you guys working on a year? What’s your team demographic look like? And then, let’s talk about your culture. But let’s start with the first one, more metrics.

Rob Carlisle:

So, this is our 17th year in business. There’s, basically, about 30 people on staff. We have three people in the office, including myself an administrator, administrative assistant. We have six project managers and then the rest is split equally between superintendents that would manage a particular project from the day-to-day construction activities and then carpenters that would help execute those projects. We run about somewhere between 15 to 18 projects at any given time and in a given year we’ll finish about 70 projects, our average project size being a little over $110,000. And then, the projects that we do range anywhere from a smaller bathroom remodel up to a whole house additions and then include full-scale new construction.

Rob Carlisle:

So, there’s no one particular niche job that we’re in, rather than our niche tends to be clients that have a discerning view of the particular process, right? They want to trust that they’re going to enjoy the process of construction or remodeling because they’re spending so much money that they should, right? If you’re going to go buy a nice car, it should be a nice process. A Lexus dealer’s going to treat you different than if you walk into a used car sales lot. And so, our process is geared around clients that want to enjoy the actual process and the relationship building that can happen inside construction itself.

Tom Houghton:

I really like that. Instead of just saying, “oh yeah, we do this or that.” You’re really looking at the whole process as the selling point. It’s not just, “oh yeah, we remodeled kitchens,” or “oh yeah, we’ll build you a new home.” No. Come to us and we’re going to give you a great process of doing whatever you want to do.

Paul Wurth:

I actually keyed in on something else, which is an enjoyable. There’s a lot that guys like Rob, when he comes to Buildertrend, we talk in classes about how it’s going to be up and down, it’s going to be rocky or all construction projects are rocky and it’s a tough moment. But nobody really sells the enjoyableness on the frontend. Like, “hey, you might pay a little bit more but you’re sure going to maybe live a little bit longer.”

Tom Houghton:

And have less gray hairs at the end of the job.

Paul Wurth:

I think that’s a great sales point.

Tom Houghton:

That is, for sure. So, that’s a great distinguishing factor of you but let’s talk about your culture a little bit because you were voted in the top 100 best companies to work for by Seattle Business Magazine. What would you say is the thing that sets you apart in that?

Rob Carlisle:

Whether it sounds cheesy or not, I tend to try and look at the company as a family. As that, if I treat everyone that works here as an owner, right? That they have the ability to speak into the company’s direction, our policies, what type of projects we’re going to do, what type of clients we’re going to work for, what type of benefits we’re going to have and that they feel their voices heard, that in the end, that creates a better experience for our clients and that experience for our clients is what sells our company. It’s just like contractors can get in a downward spiral really quickly. You’re going to pay people as little as you can and then, you’re going to have subs that underperform and people that underperform and clients are going to see that and they’re going to be hesitant to trust you with their money. And then, you have less money to pay subs and your employees what they’re worth. And you can just see this spiral go down into oblivion.

Rob Carlisle:

Whereas, we’re trying to build it in the other direction, right? Take really good care of our people, build this culture of something that they want to be a part of and then, they’re going to take great care of our clients, they’re going to interact well with our subs and treat our subs well and then too, have policies that pay your subs promptly and treat them well and treat them fairly. And you’re going to create an environment that people want to be a part of, whether they’re the employees, whether they’re the subcontractors and then that in turn attracts clients that wants that. And so, it’s been something that we’ve been working on since day one and it was really fun to be noticed and recognized for that effort.

Rob Carlisle:

We do a few things out of the box. One of the things we have, it’s called read for reviews. So, every year when it comes time to sit down and do the yearly employee review, they have to read from a select list of books. And so, the first year they have to read “Good to Great,” there’s no choice. And then, the next year they can read different books like “Boys in the Boat,” “Outliers,” “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and the list goes on and on, with more books that are in there. And a huge part of it is just personal development, right? And if you read the studies, people often leave, the number one thing they say is, “oh, I’m leaving because I’m not paid enough.” But if you actually have studies that dive into the reason they left, it usually has very little to do with pay, it really means I’m leaving because I’m not being paid enough to put up with your BS.

Rob Carlisle:

And so, once you bring them in and you start treating them with an owner mentality and then you start helping them in terms of, let’s work on personal development. What are these books bringing out of you? And when you tell a carpenter, who’s been doing it for 15 years and he’s like, “I hardly even have reviews every year with past companies I’ve worked for, let alone had to sit down and read a book for it.” It starts to help really set a stage of what we expect is that, we’re all working towards bettering this process for our clients, bettering the outcome of the projects both in terms of longevity, as well as quality. And one small example but I think the ripple effect that something like that has and it says it’s about the culture and the amount of effort you’re putting into that culture.

Tom Houghton:

That’s fantastic. We’ve talked about this before, about trying to make your employees see themselves as owners because you’re going to have a better buy-in. I think that reading program is fantastic, we’ll make sure we put a link in the show notes to some of those books that you mentioned. And if you want to send us some more, we’ll add those to the list as well. Because I’m sure, definitely, the listeners will want to see or check those out.

Paul Wurth:

I have a question. That’s all really great and I think it’s revolutionary for this business and this vertical. One thing I think other business owners would be interested in, from you Rob is, so how many employees do you have? Did I count 20 to 30?

Rob Carlisle:

So, there’s about 30 of us right now.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. So, if I’m in a business owner’s shoes in construction, A, if I have 30 employees, I’d be interested this and B, if I want to get to 30. How is your organization reporting structure working? When do they get face time with the owner Rob? Who do they directly report to? if I’m a field guy, to a superintendent, to a project manager. Can you give us an idea about how you set up your org?

Rob Carlisle:

Yeah. So, I think first one that’s most important is, I’m adamant, I have an open door policy. If you have any issue, I want to hear about it, right? If you have anything that you think is not getting addressed or that you think is important or you have some idea that you want to implement, let’s talk about it. It’s amazed me how much you have to talk about it and show it, to have people actually believe you because I feel like a lot of people have come from companies that talk about, oh, we have an open door policy, but every time they try to go talk to the boss, they have no time for them or they don’t feel heard. The general structure of the company is, if you’re a carpenter, apprentice carpenter, your direct report’s going to be your superintendent of the site you’re on. If you’re a superintendent, your direct report’s going to be your project manager for that particular project that you’re running. And if you’re a project manager, your direct report would be me. So, we try to keep the company pretty flat.

Rob Carlisle:

Construction’s not, I think in a lot of ways, not very deserving of a large hierarchy and I don’t necessarily like the term hierarchy, but everything has a structure. And so, hierarchy sometimes might mean that someone can’t solve their own problem and even they have their own solution.

Rob Carlisle:

What’s an example of culture? So an example in our company of culture, supporting that we believe that the person that is there seeing the problem is the person that should be most able to come up with a good solution for it. And so, if we get a call and you’re the project manager and your superintendent’s calling you, our expectation is that the superintendent is able to cite the problem and then also say, “I’ve put a little bit of thought into this and this is the course of action I think we should take to solve this problem. Do you have any advice or help in a direction?” It takes very little effort to disempower someone who really is and should be your best asset, right?

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. The people who are seeing the actual problem, right? You want to empower them to talk about it, say there’s a problem but also offer a solution, not just the same solution you’ve been doing over and over that might recreate that problem. Because things are moving, in terms of processes. I just think of it like a checklist, right? A lot of the people at Buildertrend, users, they create checklists, a post framing checklist. And if we don’t have a culture of adding to that checklist when we see the next problem, then those 10 things that we think about always checking are never… Become 15 things that eliminate the next problem.

Rob Carlisle:

Yes. Very much so.

Paul Wurth:

And you got to create that in your culture. That’s great.

Tom Houghton:

So, I know Rob, you came to one of the very first, in fact, I think it was the first Buildertrend University back in March, that would’ve been March, 2018. That’s crazy, that feels like it was just yesterday. We had a great time meeting you when you were here and for our listeners, who obviously don’t get the chance to meet you in person, I can personally attest to, I think, what makes your company work, Rob, so well is you personally. You’re such a genuine person and you can tell you really care about people. It’s one thing, like we’ve just said with the open door policy, it’s one thing to say it, it’s another thing to put into practice. And I think spending 15 minutes with you in person is the best way to really understand that you actually mean what you say. So, I guarantee your employees and your customers see that through those interactions that you have with them.

Tom Houghton:

But circling back to Buildertrend University, I want to talk about your experience and then we’d love to hear maybe one or two takeaways that you got and then have implemented since and that trajectory that you had from that visit.

Rob Carlisle:

Yeah. So first, nice of you to say that.

Paul Wurth:

Very flattering. Geez.

Tom Houghton:

I’m not just saying it because he’s on the podcast, I’m saying it because I really believe it.

Rob Carlisle:

We’ve been fortunate with the quality person that’s been able to come into our company. And so, I think as you met other people in the company, you’d feel that genuine sincerity of their desire to really reach out and solve problems and help people and enjoy the people they work with. In terms of coming to Buildertrend University, I loved the idea when I saw it come across and that’s probably why I was at the first one. And first, a compliment to you guys just in the way of, I think I was expecting because it was the first, that there’d be a ton of issues or things not quite worked out. And it was one of, I’ve been doing a lot of conferences, and it was one of the best conferences I’ve been to, in terms of you guys were so on top of one and really identified what was the intention of getting the people and helping them and then putting all the people in place to really make that happen.

Rob Carlisle:

And so, I really left feeling like it was a great value to have come and been a part of it and learned. It was also just a great value to meet other Buildertrend users and get a sense how they were using it in their company and what were the different things they were doing and what their experiences had been. One of the more impactful things for me was, realizing how much support because when you hear, oh yeah, what you paid per month is all inclusive, includes all technical support and help. I think at that point, you don’t really understand the value of it. And if I’m doing something, I want to struggle through it myself and that’s how I learn it, I don’t need to ask for help. And when I was there and meeting everybody, I got a really good sense of how much support is actually available and that we were so underutilizing your guys’ ability to help train people inside our company, to help our clients out with their questions.

Rob Carlisle:

And so, one of the things we’ve started doing is, now when our clients are having problems with something or there’s something we don’t quite answer or a new superintendent’s trying to learn something, if we don’t know the immediate answer or one place to lead them to learn, we just set up an email that connects them with our support lead at Buildertrend and then, connects the client or the employee and restate the problem. And I feel like your guys’ responses… they’re for sure within 24 hours, if not literally within the next couple hours and the lengths that I’ve seen your team go to, to answer those questions and to follow-up, to make sure they’ve learned and then helped, it definitely opened up another section of value that Buildertrend was providing that I hadn’t had the opportunity to really experience to that breadth before. So, one of the great takeaways for it.

Rob Carlisle:

I think the other takeaway was, it was really, really neat for me to see how much intention there was behind Buildertrend’s desire to really continue to be a top-tier product and solve the problems of the actual users that are on it. And I don’t know how to say this. When I was originally researching whether to join with Buildertrend or someone else, there were two competing products and I didn’t quite make a decision right away, which was a bad choice for me. And then, I came back to it 10 months later and I was looking at my notes and I was like, “okay, well, I’ll call each company again.”

Rob Carlisle:

And so, I called up the first one and they were right where they were 10 months earlier, I was like, “okay.” And then I called you guys and a few of the things that I had down as hot questions or something, you guys had already released something, you had made the program better just in the 10 months that it was there. And that was the thing that really solidified me joining Buildertrend originally, was this concept of continuing to better itself. And off the head or anything I could think of the ability to pay online, RFIs, a number of things that we use every day now that weren’t even an idea of Buildertrend when I first joined or not a visible idea to the customer.

Paul Wurth:

We got all the ideas. We just need to deliver on them. Well, that’s a testament…

Tom Houghton:

It takes a village.

Paul Wurth:

That’s a testament to our engineering team and all the different pieces there. We’ve got technical services managers and PA people and QA people and probably something else A-people.

Tom Houghton:

Lots of people. We have lots of people now.

Paul Wurth:

And it’s also a testament to Rob and the product influencer group too. Rob, you’re a part of what we call our product influencers and I think you have been since beginning. You want to talk a little bit about that and your experience with being a part of that elite group inside the Buildertrend users.

Rob Carlisle:

It makes it sound like I’m a Navy Seal or something.

Paul Wurth:

That’s awesome.

Tom Houghton:

You are a Navy Seal, actually.

Rob Carlisle:

This elite group. There is no Hell Week that I know of at this point. I’m looking forward to that.

Paul Wurth:

It’s year two anniversary.

Rob Carlisle:

Okay. Well, hopefully you have some ideas for that.

Paul Wurth:

It’s just a week at Omaha in the winter. We just pick the dead of winter and you just come here.

Rob Carlisle:

So, the product influencers group, when I first got the opportunity to be a part of it, I was excited because I liked the concept of it, which is, “Hey, we have a lot of intentionality about the way in which we do things, day in and day out with our clients and with our employees. And the more that Buildertrend has flexibility and the way that it’s set up, the more that it has intentionality or changes or shifts things, that better aligns with what we do.” I was like, “Well, if I’m at least the voice at the table, then they’ll at least have heard why I think it should be a certain way.” I was also a little concerned because I feel like you can sometimes be invited to speak into something and feel like you’re at a city town hall meeting, where they’re having the town hall meetings so that everybody can feel heard but no one actually is listening.

Rob Carlisle:

And I think it was fantastic to actually be able to sit in on some of the two and I’ve been on it long enough to see the topics and questions and try and have people understand the reasons behind something should be a certain way or the questions or the types of products that were vetted against us, to see those actually come out and be released and then get to experience them on the platform. It’s been great to see the follow-up with feedback, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the geeking out of how cool something could be if it only did this. And then, also the grounding of, well, it needs to do that and it needs to do it, if you were to look at it from three different ways, as the next three contractors would. And so, it’s been fun to see everything come to fruition.

Tom Houghton:

That’s good. We’re delivering on that promise of continually getting better that you saw in that 10 month gap. That’s how we do it is, we listened to our customers.

Paul Wurth:

That product influencer group is a vital part of our evaluating upgrades and functionality and feedback. And hopefully, there’s a tight loop of feedback, back and forth because that’s what we want it to be. So, if you’re out there and you’re listening and you want to be a part of it and you think you qualify for this elite group, shoot us an email, we’ll get you the right people.

Tom Houghton:

That’s right. You can check that out in the show notes. Rob, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and sharing your experience with Buildertrend University, with yourself and your company and all that you guys are doing to better yourselves and then, also about the influencer program. That was a great little tag there at the end. So, we hope you have enjoyed listening to our conversation with Rob. Make sure you check out the show notes for more information, we’ll make sure we put in links to Rob’s website, your social media accounts, you can follow them there. See all the cool stuff they’re doing up in sunny, Seattle.

Paul Wurth:

Hey, fun fact for Rob and the group. Seattle is our top four market.

Tom Houghton:

Really?

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. So, maybe we’ll take our little road show we call BTU, on the road. We’ll take it to you in 2020.

Tom Houghton:

There you go.

Rob Carlisle:

We’ll be here.

Tom Houghton:

One other fun fact about Seattle, just to close this, put a pin on it for the Aerospace fans. So, I don’t know if you know this Rob, but Seattle has one of the Conchords from Boeing, they’re at an aviation museum.

Rob Carlisle:

The Boeing Flight Museum.

Tom Houghton:

Exactly. Yes.

Paul Wurth:

What is that?

Tom Houghton:

So, the Concorde is the only supersonic commercial jet to live in existence. So, it used to fly from New York to London and New York to Paris. You’d actually leave New York and land before you left, time-wise because… Well, actually it worked the other way around because of how the timezones work.

Paul Wurth:

I stopped listening but I’m sure it’s cool. I’m kidding.

Tom Houghton:

On that note.

Paul Wurth:

All right.

Tom Houghton:

We’ll wrap this up. Thanks so much Rob for joining us on the podcast.

Paul Wurth:

Thanks Rob, really appreciate everything you do and how great it’s been to be in working with you. We call Buildertrend, sometimes, a non-equity business partner. So, I hope you feel that way as well.

Rob Carlisle:

Very much so. It’s been fantastic. And just keep doing what you guys do and look forward to seeing you guys in Seattle.

Paul Wurth:

All right. We’ll see you soon. Thanks Rob.

Rob Carlisle:

All right.

Tom Houghton:

Want to share a suggestion for a future guest? Have a question about Buildertrend that you’d like us to discuss? Or a topic that you’d want us to cover on the podcast? Let us know by calling and leaving us a message at (402) 596-6437, that’s (402) 596-6437. And who knows, you’ll maybe hear yourself on the podcast. Love what you heard? Don’t forget to rate and subscribe to our podcast so you can hear from more guests that will benefit your business. Also, please check out our show notes page for more information on what we discussed on this episode, you can find it at buildertrend.com/podcast. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time on “The Building Code.”

Paul Wurth:

Appreciate you.