How to utilize YouTube with Jesse Lane: J. Lane Construction

Tom Houghton:

You are listening to the Building Code. I’m Tom Houghton.

Paul Wurth:

I’m Paul Wurth.

Jesse Lane:

And I’m Jesse Lane.

Tom Houghton:

Boom.

Paul Wurth:

There’s a first.

Tom Houghton:

That is a first, jumping in with our guest. Jesse Lane is joining us from J. Lane Construction. You’re based in Florida?

Jesse Lane:

Correct.

Tom Houghton:

Where in Florida exactly?

Jesse Lane:

Jacksonville, Florida.

Tom Houghton:

Jacksonville,

Jesse Lane:

North East of Jacksonville.

Tom Houghton:

Jacksonville, Jaguars.

Jesse Lane:

That’s it. I’m not a huge sports fan. So you won’t be able to connect with me on that level because I know nothing.

Tom Houghton:

That’s okay.

Paul Wurth:

Tom’s not either. He just pretends to be on podcast.

Tom Houghton:

Former QB, Blake Bortles.

Paul Wurth:

Very good.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. Went to the Rams.

Paul Wurth:

Yep. [crosstalk].

Jesse Lane:

You lost me, but.

Tom Houghton:

There we go. Awesome. Jesse, thanks for joining us on the podcast today. We would love to talk to you about a whole list of things, but let’s first start off with just kind of why you’re on the podcast today. We want to talk about YouTube, of course, but we also know you use Buildertrend and we want to hear your experience with that as well.

Jesse Lane:

I’m on the podcast because I love Buildertrend. I’ve been with Buildertrend since 2012 or 13. I was one of the first early adopters. Paul, you might’ve even been the one that signed me up. I don’t quite remember, but I was-

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, quite possibly back then. Yeah.

Jesse Lane:

I was a young buck back in the day and I started my company. I was searching all the, I won’t say the competitors, but, no I’m just kidding. All the different, Procode. All these different things, don’t get the wrong, Procode’s awesome. But Buildertrend is so user-friendly and all these beautiful things that I just decided to hop on board. Been using it ever since. Been in business six years and yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, it’s been great. I mean, I think that we have like, sort of levels of clients and we love them all. And one of the things that we’ve been really proud of is our younger business owners, like Jesse, who sort of grew up in technology. Who are really open and honest with their feedback about our functionality and are also really, really big fans of us. So we appreciate that so much because.

Jesse Lane:

I can call and talk to you guys, and you’re just, boom, like, “Yeah, we’ll put that on the list, put it in the forums.” Whatever you got to do. Actually listen to me.

Paul Wurth:

Yep. That’s exactly right.

Jesse Lane:

Us, as builders.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Before we. Yeah, go ahead.

Jesse Lane:

I’m a commercial general contractor. And what scared me at first was on your website, it said home builders, re-modelers, and that’s everything I was trying to get away from was the residential remodeling. Of course, no offense, if you’re, that’s what you do, but it wasn’t a good fit for me. It’s very low margin, a very high emotion. Vice-versa with commercial. And so, they want to get into their space and get into business. There’s way less emotion. And there’s a lot of margin. And so I’ve creatively learned how to kind of make Buildertrend work for my commercial general contracting company J. Lane Construction.

Jesse Lane:

The letter J, L-A-N-E is the business name. And we have really, like majorly, our number one selling point is the fact that we have this special cloud-based software. The client gets their own app. They get their own login. They come in, we pay our subs through there. The clients are comfortable because the subs need to sign the Lane waiver. I mean, Buildertrend users know all this, but the subs need to sign the lien waiver before they get paid. With the clients, their eyes get wide and they’re like, “Whoa, like this company actually is on top of things. They’re organized.”

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. We talk a lot about using it in the sales process. And I think some people think that is, hey, when you meet with a residential homeowner, show them that they’re going to have a portal. But honestly, no matter who you’re meeting with, if you show them that you have a process as a business, that gives people a lot of confidence in yourself. Because unfortunately this industry is, we know a lot has a bad reputation for flying by the seat of the pants. There’s also a dirty side of it. Like you think you’re getting screwed by your contractor. Not a lot of business acumen with contractors. And quite honestly, we all know that that’s not the truth of the industry, but that is definitely our perception. And I think, if you’re using Buildertrend or whatever system right to promote the systems you have, give people confidence-

Jesse Lane:

It’s true.

Paul Wurth:

And you do have to manifest that. You have to show them something. You can’t just say you have systems. Right.

Jesse Lane:

And the construction industry is the second slowest to evolve industry. The first being the educational system, the school system. It’s 100 or 80 year evolution of new ideas versus the construction industry, maybe 50 to 75, something like that. Where it’s like, it really takes a long time for things to catch on. And so that’s why, don’t get me started on school, but that’s why in construction, you still see a lot of these people that are 55 years old or whatever and they’re stuck on paper. And they’re going to fall behind. So it’s been interesting being myself millennial, I’m 28 years old, been doing this since I was 22, in business with my company, and really kind of being at the beginning. We just got iPhones like 15 years ago or less. Like, whatever it was. 2008.

Tom Houghton:

12.

Paul Wurth:

2008.

Jesse Lane:

Yeah, okay. So, yeah. And it’s just been this interesting evolution of technology and being on the forefront of it with you guys has been a great experience.

Paul Wurth:

Yes. I was listening to a, I think another podcast or maybe some somebody’s keynote, and they said 10 years ago, if you wanted to get a ride somewhere, you’d have to go down to the corner and wave for a taxi. If you wanted to rent a movie or watch a movie at home, you’d have to go rent one from the store. Same thing with music. It’s really, if you wanted food, you’d have to go out and like go get take out instead of like getting brought to you, like it’s. I think people sometimes forget how fast things have moved in a short amount of time. And if you apply that to business. Yeah.

Jesse Lane:

I was sitting at a coffee shop with a friend and they were like, “What are you thinking about?” Because I was kind of staring out the window and I was like, just for a second. And I was like, “I look back and I’m like, I’m so filled with gratitude right now.” Like, “About what?” I’m like, “I literally had this device in my pocket. We just got here on an Uber. You can order Uber Eats. Like everything you’ve just said, we can do everything right here, pay for this, pay for that, Apple Pay. Boom, boom, boom. I can free my mind up to think about so many more important things to grow my business and do this and that and not get stuck in the menial tasks.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s an interesting way to say it. The challenge we’ve always had at Buildertrend and especially the marketing of like explaining to the market, what is Buildertrend? Where’s our value prop. A lot of it is, as Jesse said, a 55-year-old or anybody’s age can come to me and go, “Yeah, I run a successful building business.” And that is true, right. By them doing it off paper and sort of their mindset of you are successful. And I want to make sure people understand, we’re not saying you’re not successful, making a change to Buildertrend. We’re just saying there may be an easier way for you. And it’s actually not even the person I’m speaking to. Typically, the system’s for the employees to do their job more efficiently and understand where to put things and where to find things. And also, as we just talked about, the client and the subs. It’s more for everybody else because we know the business owner knows how to run a business because they’re still in business in 2019.

Tom Houghton:

Right. There’s a better way to do it.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. There’s a better way. There’s a tagline there.

Tom Houghton:

There is. Yeah. We should just superimpose that.

Paul Wurth:

One thing I wanted to actually touch on with you, Jesse, is this idea, not this idea, this comparison between commercial work and residential work. Because I think you had something on the head there, you had a phrase that I thought was really something.

Jesse Lane:

Yeah. Margin and emotion. Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s really cool. So you’re 22 and you’re deciding to get into the construction industry. Did you dabble in residential and sort of say, “Hey, this isn’t for me, this sort of drama.” But then, the other thing I want you to expand on. So, let’s hear about that, kind of go farther with your philosophy of commercial versus residential. But we talk a lot about businesses diversified. Especially we know a downturn in some sorts coming. So how would a general contractor who is specifically in residents right now, like what are the first steps they could do to get into a light commercial?

Jesse Lane:

Tenant improvements. Start with TI and then go from there. That’s exactly what I did. At my first permit I ever pulled, at 22 years, old was a 6,000 square foot TI. Full gut rehab. It was a waxing center. So out of all of things and it turned out to be a great project. Like a six figure project. And it was, I learned so much. And then from there I’ve just slowly built out. Then we did an iPhone repair store, then we did a doctor’s office and then we did a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And now we’re doing a 40,000-square-foot auto dealership, which we’re wrapping up this week or the next. The company who hired us is a 17 and a half billion dollar company. And they’re now talking to us about going down to Tampa and doing Punta Gorda or whatever the, doing a ground up auto dealership there.

Jesse Lane:

And so that’s cool. We just did an animal clinic and a signature flight private jet facility. So the type of projects that we do are… I’m only six years in business as of 2019. But going into 2020, I mean, we want to kind of develop into a $10 million company, which would turn into a 50 then 100 million dollar company over the next five to 10 years is kind of my goal right now. We’re only doing less than 2.5 or so. Just at my 27, 28 year old of myself, Mark. But if someone wants to get, yeah, to answer your question into commercial, I would definitely start with tenant improvements and then kind of work your way into maybe the ground up.

Jesse Lane:

Whataburger recently contacted us, and the guy flew in all the way from Texas to meet with us at our office and do the Northeast Florida, ground-ups and renovations. And so, we get those calls all the time. We’re the No. 1 rated general contractor in Jacksonville, Florida on Google. Only because no one else is doing it. I mean, we’re above Castro and Summit. And like all these people that are huge. Cornerstone, I mean they’re a $40 million, the business, but Haskell is a $900 million business and they call us and they’re like, “Hey, can we sub little things too.” Like, whatever little things. All 10 million, but anyway.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, bigger things.

Tom Houghton:

Little, but [crosstalk].

Paul Wurth:

That’s really cool. So that’s really interesting. So one of the benefits of getting into commercial is like you got that honeypot of a large owner who wants you to do multiple projects for them. Like a car dealership owner, but also like those franchises too. I mean get [crosstalk 00:10:26].

Jesse Lane:

Yeah. We’re doing the Stavros Pizza right now in a mall.

Paul Wurth:

That’s awesome. So you do a good job and maybe you get like, then national, or regional.

Jesse Lane:

Yeah. That’s essentially our goal. Regional, yeah. I’m Florida licensed. Yeah. And by the way, if you’re listening to this, you can, quick plug, I mean Jesse lane on YouTube and then Jesse Lane TV, J-E-S-S-E-L-A-N-E TV on Instagram. And I really share a lot of insight. One of my main goals and I didn’t let you ask, it was just jumping into it, but is giving back what I learned over the years that I have. My whole YouTube channel’s dedicated to other contractors who want to learn more about general contract and getting into commercial work, learning about systems or procedures and like that kind of thing.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s one of the reasons Tom kind of launched with why you’re on the podcast. That’s probably why beyond being a loyal Buildertrend client, which we love and a young guy who gives great feedback to us and congratulations on being at the two and a half million you are. I mean, that’s an awesome accomplishment in six years. But beyond that, you do have a great sort of presence on video and you understand the value of that. We talk about this a lot. Social media is important. It’s a very inexpensive or in a lot of ways free, besides your time, way to build your network and advertise. And YouTube is one of the ones that has been forgotten about. Even though it was one of the first ones. People are focused on Facebook and Instagram, but they’re forgetting about YouTube has this great network or channel.

Jesse Lane:

It’s a goldmine.

Paul Wurth:

We have friend of the program, Matt Risinger, he’s been on a couple of times, he’s got what, like 500,000 followers, subscribers.

Jesse Lane:

He leaves me on seen all the time, by the way, in the DMs. Matt, I’m coming for you, dude. I’m like, I want to collaborate. I want to fly out to Austin and be like, “Dude.” But he’s like, so I’m working on it.

Paul Wurth:

Good. You just keep working on that.

Tom Houghton:

Stay tuned. That’s a teaser.

Paul Wurth:

We can help you out.

Jesse Lane:

I’m Jesse Lane. Okay.

Tom Houghton:

We know. We know.

Paul Wurth:

We’re friends.

Tom Houghton:

We’ll give him a call.

Jesse Lane:

Okay, cool.

Paul Wurth:

But, what’s crazy is that, depending on who you talk to, there’s close to 1 million contractors in North America. And there’s like five or six that I know of that have even 1,000 followers on YouTube. So like, even in that couple of 1,000 followers you have, I don’t know what your number is. You gain three more here with our producer and Tom and I.

Tom Houghton:

It’s true.

Paul Wurth:

And all the listeners, hit the subscribe button.

Jesse Lane:

Subscribe to Jesse Lane.

Paul Wurth:

But you’re up there still like even with a couple 1,000, so that’s just speaks to how it’s just there and nobody is really using it.

Jesse Lane:

Yeah. And I grew another channel, sorry, Tom, as you’re about to start talking. But, I grew another channel to like 16,000 subscribers and had millions of views. But it was on another topic of my life, like giving guitar lessons. And so that channel is just sitting there. I haven’t posted in like three years because I ran out of time. Then I started this other Jesse Lane channel just a couple of years ago or less. And yeah, it’s getting close to 5,000 subscribers. And I get about 30 to 50,000 views a month just like across the channel. Because I told my whole story and those videos get more views. Like I want to touch on maybe some tips if you want to start YouTube would be just start. That’s my number one thing. The second-

Tom Houghton:

That’s a good place to start. Just do it.

Jesse Lane:

Just do it and be yourself. And then the third would be, don’t be afraid to share some of your struggles. Because I’ve done that. And people connect so hard with your struggles as well as your story. So story and struggles, don’t sit there and struggle bus or like all your videos. I’m just saying there’s like one video that you’re like, it could help somebody. But really the fourth thing, the biggest thing would be on every single post provide massive value. People are interested. I used to blog on that other channel for a couple of times, kind of try that out. And about just myself and this is, no one gives a crap, especially in 2019, maybe in 2013, people were like, “Oh, like what’s this video thing.” 2014, 2015. Okay. All right. Everyone’s vlogging. There’s Sam Kolder. There’s all these people who are traveling. Then there’s like Logan Paul who pops off and he’s like all about his life, but his life is epic. You know what I’m saying?

Paul Wurth:

Who’s that?

Jesse Lane:

Like the Paul brothers.

Paul Wurth:

Okay.

Jesse Lane:

Yeah. YouTube. 20 million subscribers, that kind of thing.

Paul Wurth:

I’ll check on him later. Yeah.

Jesse Lane:

But, I’ve resonated with him and his story, but anyway. But for me, I decided to double back and be like, “All right, I get the fact that I need to provide massive value. That’s what I’m going to focus on.” And so I write notes. Like I say, here’s how to estimate a project. And I did this, I made a, and I’ll stop talking here in a second, like just some questions, but estimating spreadsheet, how do I use it? Something I built. I made a video about it, got like it’s up to like six or 7,000 views right now it’s climbing. But I sold like 65 spreadsheets just in the last couple of months. And they’re $97 each on my jesselaneconsulting.com.

Paul Wurth:

Another plug. [crosstalk]. Couple of spreadsheets, take the wife out to dinner. That’s nice.

Jesse Lane:

That’s kind of my goal is like I have a proposal template up there and that’s 197, but it’s like something I’ve built for years and years. But like, that’s kind of one aspect of maybe how you as a listener could think about a YouTube channel as well as the ad revenue. Which on my CPM is super high. So if I got 10 million views say in a month, I’d make over $100,000 based on my CPM. I haven’t gotten 10 million views in a month, but anyway.

Paul Wurth:

We’re working on it.

Jesse Lane:

There’s options there for making income. At least maybe break even just start, which is kind of what I’m doing right now is kind of breaking even on my 20 bucks an hour for some help, kind of mindset.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, yeah. Those are really good tips. Couple of follow ups. So I think authenticity is really the key to everything on social media. Right. And I think that when you go all the way to like the Kardashians, like people get mad about their perfectness. Like they don’t want to hear just how amazing you are. They want to hear some of your struggles. We’ve applied that to Buildertrend as a management technique for many years. We talk, first, on every one of our meetings in our departments and for the whole company is where’d we screw up over the last three or four months. Like employees want to hear and fellow business owners, they want to hear you screw up for what you said, just to connect with that because everybody screws up. Nobody’s perfect. Besides maybe you, Tom.

Jesse Lane:

Besides Tom.

Tom Houghton:

It’s not true.

Paul Wurth:

Widely known.

Tom Houghton:

There you go. Well, I’m going to widely unknown that. See, not perfect.

Paul Wurth:

We’ll cut that. Actually, I’ll keep that in. Not perfect. Good job. We’ll talk about later in your review. But no, I think it’s important as a business owner to your employees, to your point on video, to talk about your mistakes and because people connect with that. But the one thing I do want you to follow up with, which I think people would struggle with and I would too, is like this idea of bring massive value. That seems very intimidating to me. Like in one sense you say, “Hey, be yourself on video and just talk about your business and then like bring massive value.” I think that’s going to be scary for people.

Jesse Lane:

Like how do actually do that.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Or like, what do you know what is valuable? Yeah, you had some good examples with estimating the proposal template, but, I think in a of ways you’re bringing value by just kind of talking about your business.

Jesse Lane:

Right. Well, as a content creator of sorts, I have an inner gut feeling of when something’s good, when something’s bad and you have to learn that for yourself.

Paul Wurth:

Right. So you just have to kind of get in there and do it?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Jesse Lane:

Then you get feedback and then that’s how you learn for yourself.

Paul Wurth:

Yep. Absolutely.

Jesse Lane:

Over five years.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. The only thing I think is so interesting with people like you and the other guys we’ve talked to that are so prominent on social media, is this new idea about not like hoarding like industry secrets. When I started, I’ve been working with contractors for 13 years. And I’m telling you, when you first talk to contractors about Buildertrend or anything else, it was like, “Well, just make sure nobody knows I’m using Buildertrend.”

Jesse Lane:

Really? Why did they say that?

Paul Wurth:

Back then, and I feel this shift happening in the industry, which I love, is like people didn’t want to share secrets or what they thought were secrets or business strategies. I guess my point is, is that’s really changed. A lot of people are just like, let’s all just elevate the industry in general.

Tom Houghton:

And I think the internet actually is partly probably the catalyst to this, because information is just at everybody’s fingertips now. And you have things like YouTube where anybody can go learn how to tile a shower or do any kind of home improvement project. So you can bring value in a lot of different ways, but, teaching somebody to do it versus actually being able to do it at an expert level, that’s where the value difference is. And I think that’s what people had to disconnect. They had to think like me sharing this is going to make everybody an expert, which it’s not.

Jesse Lane:

People are like, “How did you get so far at.” When I was like 25, 26, 27, 28, how do you get so far? The internet dude, I can sit there and watch GaryVee and Grant Cardone, all these people like business owners and learn. Not just like information, but I can watch Gary go to these conferences and speak and talk inner personally with his team. And like the way he blogs is like my, like I want to be GaryVee in like 10 years, you know what I mean? Like I really do. I want to be traveling and speaking and have a huge… He has a $200 million company and six actually like 900 employees now. But, what’s grown me so much is the opportunity. And like I said, I go back to that gratitude mindset. It’s huge.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, for sure.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. I’m 38, I often think to myself, like when I don’t know how to do something at home, which is quite often. Like down to like an intricate way, like a chandelier that I don’t know how to change the light bulb, not chandelier, but like the fixture. Like what do you do before you to like, ask your dad?

Tom Houghton:

Pull up the encyclopedia? I don’t know.

Paul Wurth:

I’m dead serious. Sometimes it’s just really hard for me to figure things and I just YouTube everything.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely.

Jesse Lane:

That brings me to an interesting point about how I’ve built internal systems-

Paul Wurth:

Good transition.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Jesse Lane:

Yeah. Thanks. If an employee doesn’t know how to do, how to set up a project or how to create a purchase order or blah, blah, blah. They go, I’m not going to tell you what it is. This is no plug this time. But a website that I built, it’s a password protected. And I literally just bullet points, screen, share videos, this and that, organized per position in my company of training. It’s like my operations manual online.

Paul Wurth:

That’s a really good idea.

Jesse Lane:

Yes. Yes.

Paul Wurth:

How did you do that without like get into it, like for a business owner? And I will say it’s probably around Buildertrend because again, you can’t screen-share yourself like looking at spreadsheets. So like you have to have a platform.

Jesse Lane:

Within Buildertrend.

Paul Wurth:

Right. So you’re recording yourself. Like this is where you do a PO and like this is how you do it. So you can probably do that somehow, if you’re a business owner? Like find yourself like a password protected website and like post videos. Is that what you’re saying?

Jesse Lane:

Right. Yeah. Go into Squarespace or Wix, whatever. I use Squarespace and then choose a template and just go with it. I have one internally. Of course I have one externally for the clients, Jlaneconstruction.com. And then I have another one, which I’m not going to tell you what it is, just for the subcontractors. And there’s also one for the employees, like I was just talking about. But, there’s another one. So there’s three, it’s like a trifecta. So I have these three different websites and I send the subcontractors, like if I’m onboarding a sub and it has how to sign a purchase order in Buildertrend, how to get your money, how to do the WePay thing, how to sign up, give us your paperwork. This is what we expect from you. So it’s just like, boom, right in their face. There’s videos of me just like on Loom, L-O-O-M, as in Mary .com and they’re awesome for just screen recording. So that’s what I’ve done.

Paul Wurth:

That’s a really cool idea. Skobel Homes, which is one of our first podcasts, they do the same thing as relates to subcontractors. They have this whole like onboarding of subs as it relates to how we work with you. But mainly it’s in the vehicle of Buildertrend. Because like one of the keys of using Buildertrend as a home builder or RGC, especially in commercial is like you really want to push your subs and vendors to get them onboard for their own sake. Like you want to make, like don’t call me.

Jesse Lane:

I give them like two times, and they’re out.

Paul Wurth:

That’s the same thing with Skobel.

Jesse Lane:

Like if you’re not going to sign up, yeah, I don’t want to work with you.

Paul Wurth:

For everybody’s sake too. Yeah. That’s good.

Jesse Lane:

And they love it.

Paul Wurth:

Once you show them the basics.

Jesse Lane:

No more truck tag at the gas station with checks to pay them.

Paul Wurth:

What’s truck tag?

Tom Houghton:

That’s a game.

Paul Wurth:

You guys meet at a gas station for checks. I’ve never heard that one.

Jesse Lane:

I was just saying no more of that.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, absolutely. We talk about that all the time. Yeah. You’re utilizing one of the, what we call value or value what do?

Tom Houghton:

Pro services.

Paul Wurth:

One of the pro services we have. You’ll have to cut that.

Tom Houghton:

Because that’ll be on your review.

Paul Wurth:

Well, we talked about like on this episode, like you screw up sometimes.

Tom Houghton:

Its true.

Paul Wurth:

Don’t cut anything. This is the real deal.

Jesse Lane:

We got to hold people’s attention. Are you guys still with us?

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Who is with us?

Jesse Lane:

I don’t know. I didn’t hear anything. So hopefully.

Paul Wurth:

Subscribe, we’re putting this on YouTube. So hit the like the like button if you’re still with us. So we have pro services here. One of those is the ability to accept and send payments electronically through WePay, which is a chase company. And so you’ve been utilizing that for a while. And so a lot of it is for you, the value of the communication of the subcontractors, paying them, lien waivers, things like that?

Jesse Lane:

It’s our number one favorite. It’s my number one favorite. Can’t live without it.

Paul Wurth:

What are some of the value to you then? Is it just that time-saving or is it just everybody’s being aware of like what’s been signed off on, what’s been paid, what’s been not been paid kind of thing?

Jesse Lane:

It’s both of those things intertwined. So the fact that it just goes, I could go bills and POs, pull up everything that I owe everyone. I can filter just bills and POs. I’m sorry. I can filter just purchase orders and then I can see how much money I owe the subs just in a second on that particular job and what I’ve paid them so far. And you can do that with a check and you just do the offline payment thing, which is fine. But, I just love not having to sit there and write a check, stamp it, address it, put it in the mail, blah, blah, blah.

Jesse Lane:

And then it takes time. Then you’re putting your account number out there. They can just see that and your routing number. We all know that. And they get lost in the mail, then it’s like, it takes extra time. Do you know what? I literally just do it in five seconds. And then the lien waiver. The lien waiver. You know what I mean? That’s huge because I need those. I can’t spent my monthly pay applications to the owner without always these lien waivers. That’s great. And all done right there for me.

Paul Wurth:

That’s awesome. Good.

Tom Houghton:

I love the lien waver feature.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s one of the hidden features that not a lot of people really utilize.

Jesse Lane:

I found it guys.

Tom Houghton:

Nice.

Paul Wurth:

And then they check that out. [crosstalk].

Jesse Lane:

We just pounded it over the internet. Just everyone listening.

Tom Houghton:

Case intimidating. Not watching, had no idea what was just happening there.

Paul Wurth:

Just watch the YouTube.

Tom Houghton:

Just watch the YouTube.

Jesse Lane:

All right. Pull over and then.

Tom Houghton:

Safety first and then.

Jesse Lane:

What’s next?

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. So Jesse, you’re on top of technology, right? And so you’re a young GC. So you tell us like, what’s next in line for your business. Like, you talked a little about your goals. I think everybody needs to have goals. So what are your short and long-term goals?

Jesse Lane:

HGTV.

Paul Wurth:

Is that what it is? Well, that’s good. We should bring that out there. But also what do you see next in the industry, trends, downturn, things like that?

Jesse Lane:

Okay. Things like that. Yeah. Well, that’s fascinating. Who knows about like elections and I’m not a politics guy, just really. I mean, I probably should be as a business owner, but pretty much no clue. I just got to see what happens. I’m just kind of, there’s slow seasons and hot seasons and you just make the hay when the sunshines and you pray for the best and plan for the worst and all these kind of things. I am just building everything I possibly can including projects and including relationships and including employees that I’m developing into amazing people. And that they’re helping me develop into an amazing leader. So leadership has been a huge thing I’ve recently. And, yeah, a trend would be like, I wish there would be more leaders, good leaders. Read “EntreLeadership” by Dave Ramsey, and also read On Leadership by John Maxwell. It’s like, Oh, it’s huge, these concepts. But, it’s all about them, not about you. It’s about them looking good in front of the client, not you and all these different things that go into it. So yeah. Florida’s booming.

Tom Houghton:

That’s good. I love the leadership angle.

Paul Wurth:

Florida’s booming. Yeah. That’s good.

Jesse Lane:

Yeah. It is.

Paul Wurth:

So what part of Florida are you in? Sorry, Jacksonville. Is that the Atlanta side?

Jesse Lane:

Yeah, it’s near Georgia. Yeah, it is. On the Atlantic side. No, no, on the Atlantic side.

Paul Wurth:

What? [crosstalk]. Nobody said gulf but you, so why did you bring it in the conversation. We were on the same page here.

Jesse Lane:

No, he was testing my geography.

Tom Houghton:

[crosstalk] other side. Can you name the bodies of water?

Jesse Lane:

It’s in the Caspian ocean.

Paul Wurth:

So not the Pacific. Got it. Thanks for bringing that into the conversation.

Jesse Lane:

Right. It’s not the Pacific.

Paul Wurth:

All right. So Florida is good. And commercial has been good for, for many years. And so we expect-

Jesse Lane:

Part of Multifamily.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Multifamily is getting bigger too all over the US. Cool. So what are some of your business goals? You said there’s a revenue goal for you. Do you plan on adding employees next year?

Jesse Lane:

Yeah, I thought it a lot this year. I have a team of about eight. I have a senior project manager, three superintendents, a couple office staff. And then of course, just a slew of subcontractors that actually do our work. We don’t self-perform really anything. The superintendents will punch, like we’re punching out the auto dealership right now and doing the vinyl base, whatever it takes. So yeah. I want to hit 10 million in the next two years, by the time I’m 30. Which I hope to do. We’ve had some $20 million opportunities for one project type of thing. And so we’ll see. I’ll go take it from there. But, one topic, one aspect, mindset of this for me to get to 10 million, what I’m doing to get there is building $10 million systems. And I tell my people this, and they resonated with it so much. It’s, then get to 10 million and then we treat ourselves like we are a $50 million company and we built $50 million systems. And we have $50 million people and processes and all these different things. And then at that point we were $100 million dollar mindset.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s a great takeaway because, especially in construction, like you just said, you could get something dropped in your lap for, I mean, I’m sure you worked hard at it, but you can get something dropped in your lap, which is above your, over your skills as a business. And so if you’re not ready with processes, you’re going to be running around and you’re going to fail and they’re going to be right back down to the one million processes with a bad reputation.

Jesse Lane:

I think that’s where people get stuck. Correct. And Paul you’re exactly right, man. It’s just like, if you’re not prepared because when everything, when the going is good, that’s when you’re not making more progress and checking up and like, okay. Communicating. Like I’ve learned that recently in a project, I had to tell my people, I was like, “No, when it’s good, you need to talk more.” At least talk to saying, like, “Everything good today. Like this, that checking on details.” So yeah. I think it’s imperative to build systems that are above your head.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s really important. So a part of that, and there’s two final questions I’m going to ask you about your culture. So do you feel like you guys have a culture at J. Lane Construction and if so, sort of, how do you build that as a business owner or more importantly, how do you keep that? Like, what are some of the events you do or some of the things you talk about with your employees?

Jesse Lane:

Five days ago, we actually had our like monthly culture meeting at the office. Round table, all seven or eight of us, boom, one spot. Casey, my senior superintendent actually led it and because he’s a huge, he studied clinical psychology. He really understands the way the mind works and he understands people and he’s a people person and a communicator and a perceiver and empathetic and all these things. So it was cool to hear him talk for like literally an hour and 10 minutes until the Whataburger guy walked in for a meeting. And so it was amazing about just all these different things. That’s how we build culture. As well as me just doing the best I can be to just be awesome and provide and take care of their failing vehicle, if it’s their personal, whatever it takes. You can’t always bend over backwards, but you could be extremely flexible. And that’s what I always say is even with our clients as well, like I’ll never bend all the way over, but I will flex to the max to make you happy. And you know what I’m saying?

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, absolutely. That’s awesome.

Jesse Lane:

That’s the culture between the employees and client.

Paul Wurth:

Do you apply that same, I guess effort or idea to your relationship with your subs and vendors? Like, do you have quarterly or yearly or whatever, like events or lunches or meetings?

Jesse Lane:

We’re doing more and more of that. Like we’re being invited to go play golf and I’m horrible at golf. We go to these events and yeah, like we’re going to do a Christmas thing. Get like everyone together. So there’s that bonding. It’s like man, J. Lane, they’re awesome. Like we want to work with them. We have subs that say, “We don’t want to work with anyone other JC. Like literally give us all your work.” Because we pay so fast. That’s one thing, people pay on 30, 60, 90, whatever it may be. Give me your invoice, it’s a three to five day turnaround or less because we care and it’s online and.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. I think that’s important. There’s definitely things you can do business wise, like paying on time, paying every time, having good systems. But, especially the labor shortage, it’s really important to create good relationships with your subs and vendors and in gosh, it’s as easy as a couple $1,000 a quarter, right. Just for a social outing or. And in the grand scheme of things, when you’re doing two and a half million, couple of $1,000 call it, $8,000 a year for sub vendor relationships, probably a good investment. Right?

Jesse Lane:

Huge investment.

Tom Houghton:

I want to ask one question to everybody out there who’s thinking, okay, he’s got a YouTube channel, he’s got a successful business growing. What came first out of these two, in your opinion?

Jesse Lane:

I was literally born with a camera on me, so that came first. But my-

Paul Wurth:

So were you a Disney star or? I’m confused.

Jesse Lane:

No. I almost was a Gap model, but my parents were like, “No.” I’ve always loved making videos. As a kid, grew up snowboarding, skateboarding in actually Pennsylvania. And we would just make videos all the time. And I was staying up till 3 a.m. editing these things on iMovie with my buddy Lawrence. Going from there to, I actually moved to Texas, that’s Waco, Texas. I grew up with the guys that I taught how to hold a nail gun. Like my buddy, like Ethan and Travis, nice people. Like now, they build for Chip and Joanna, like they sold Magnolia and their greenhouse and work on the show and build and remodel. That’s cool. But, that’s really where I learned all of my construction background came from there. And so from that point I moved to Jacksonville when I was 19. So I lived there for about five years, but. Then I really kind of got into the video thing. It’s just who I am. So it’s not one chicken or egg thing. It’s just like, boom, all altogether. I do construction. I love making videos.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. I’m thinking because again, you have an important role of running your business and then also the YouTube stuff. And as a video creator, I know how much time it takes. Like you said, you’re staying up till three o’clock in the morning editing videos years ago. So I think that’s probably a part of the intimidation for a lot of listeners would be, I don’t have time to commit to this. But there is value obviously, as we’ve mentioned here, there’s a ton of value to be had. So how do you go about scheduling out, if you don’t mind me asking, how do you go about scheduling out like, okay, I’m going to spend Monday on a video or Tuesday, like what does that look like for you?

Jesse Lane:

Well, what’s the ROI is the question. Like the percentage of time you’re going to put in versus get out and what if I don’t get out for three or four years or five. Or if it takes two years, 18 months even to get 1,000 subscribers or 500 or 100, you know what I mean? That’s where people bail. And I am still tempted at under 5,000 subscribers on this new channel to bail. But, it’s every single time I post a video, it’s like, dang, like this one only got like, not even 500 views or 200. Most of my videos don’t really get that many like 100s of views, but some have 40,000 or whatever. I mean, of course the other guitar ones have 1,000,000 or like hundreds of thousands. But anyway, so I’m like always jealous of that, but less people want to know how to start a construction company on the tactical approach.

Jesse Lane:

It’s less like, “Oh, this is so cool to watch.” I mean, it’s cool. It’s fun. Like I try to do like drone shots and cool stuff, but. Yeah, so my ROI. And it’s interesting, it’s more of a discipling or mentoring others versus clients finding me on my YouTube channel. It’s always been a mind baffle for me to figure out really what it’s for. All I knew is that I love doing it. I think if you don’t have that inner passion, I don’t want to discourage you, but like don’t, maybe it’s not for you. Maybe you do something more simple. And that’s totally fine. Just grab your phone and just do a one-take thing, slap it up on Instagram or Facebook and run an ad, whatever. And you probably reach some commercial brokers or whoever your home building clients may be.

Jesse Lane:

I don’t know, because I figured out that like on our website, that’s where our commercial clients really come from. They’re not really like the 60 year old, Whataburger dudes and stuff, they’re not on Instagram, necessarily. Some of them come from Facebook. LinkedIn is another huge thing. Which I still don’t necessarily understand because I post things I get like under like 10 or 20 likes or like not even it’s like put on here. But anyway, so that’s kind of my mindset on Instagram versus Facebook versus YouTube. My personal Facebook has actually been the most influential. Which is interesting because what I’ll do, this is huge. Listen to this.

Jesse Lane:

I will go and, it’s like what comes first? The video where they find you or the in-person relationship? To me it might be 70/30 or 30/70, or even 50/50. I don’t know. Every situation is different. But, commercial brokers say that’s like, or a real estate agent. I meet him in person, lo and behold, we find each other on Facebook. And then I’m sharing like a video of me walking around my auto dealership project and he likes it. You know what I’m saying? And then he calls me, “Hey, I see you. How about this $20 million project?” And it’s potential still. You know what I’m saying? And he’s passing my name out. Then it’s this relationship of even if you’re not meeting with them in person every two weeks, they’re seeing you every week online.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s a really good takeaway. So a really good tactical strategy moving forward to somebody is, hey, if you meet somebody in these networking things that you always do, HPAS and everything you do locally, just follow up with a Facebook request or a LinkedIn request, and then your content-

Jesse Lane:

Like the pictures up their kids. Because then you pop up. Paul Wurth liked your photo or whatever.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’ll do too. But, post things. Then post things and they’re going to see it and then it’s going to give them more context of who you are and what you do and what you’re an expert at. Right?

Jesse Lane:

People feel like they know me at the core before they even call my company.

Tom Houghton:

That’s good.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. And that is a common thing we hear is that the value of these videos, whether you’re getting a couple 100 or not, like one of those couple of 100 people could be your next project. And they know who are before, so they don’t have to go through that dating thing before.

Tom Houghton:

Relationship. It’s online dating.

Jesse Lane:

I’ll end this video topic with this statement. I don’t know of one project that I’ve ever been awarded when they haven’t watched all of my testimonial videos on my website.

Tom Houghton:

Don’t get me started on testimonial videos. We’ll be on here for another hour.

Paul Wurth:

Here we go.

Tom Houghton:

I’m a big fan. [crosstalk].

Jesse Lane:

That’s the number one thing that has built my business, is me taking my camera as a kid contractor, whatever. So I still do it to this day. I’m going to get. And I put it on my website and they sit there and say how awesome we were and blah, blah, blah.

Tom Houghton:

People love that stuff. It’s so important. We have a brand new video.

Paul Wurth:

We’ve got a brand new video that is amazing. Have you seen it yet, Jesse?

Jesse Lane:

No.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. We’ll send it to you. We’ll put it on the show notes. Tom, you did a great job.

Jesse Lane:

Is it on your YouTube?

Tom Houghton:

Not yet.

Paul Wurth:

Hey, we have a brand new.com check out buildertrend.com. Got a facelift and got a new video from Tom.

Tom Houghton:

That’s right.

Paul Wurth:

Just check it out.

Jesse Lane:

Really? You didn’t take off my review, right? By the way, everyone, when you go to Buildertrend and you see their top, I’m like the number one guy right there. J. lane, Jesse Lane.

Paul Wurth:

I don’t think we took it off, did we?

Tom Houghton:

It’s still on there.

Paul Wurth:

It’s still on there.

Jesse Lane:

Good. Leave that because it’s great. All my friends contacted me like, “Dude, I knew you from like Texas, like seven years ago. And I was looking at Buildertrend. What do you think?” I’d run them through whole by whole process. Every event I go to I’m like the Buildertrend sales guy.

Paul Wurth:

We appreciate everything. I mean, I think this has been really insightful. Some really great takeaways for business owners who are listening to this. And I think that people know us from listening to us. Like I can’t stress this enough, get yourself on video. Get out there. It doesn’t matter how good or bad it is honestly at first. I think people just love to hear who you are and your mistakes are just as important as you looking really great on camera. So yeah. Get out there and add value and do what Jesse does

Tom Houghton:

And come to Buildertrend University if you don’t know how to do those things and We’ll teach you how to that.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Tom’s got a great class here at BTU which is, we got one in November, December and all of next year. We just planned the first half of the next year. And then come meet us at the IBS an International Builders Show in Las Vegas, January. I think it’s late January.

Tom Houghton:

January 19th.

Paul Wurth:

To the 22nd. Okay, cool. And then follow Jesse in all platforms.

Jesse Lane:

Yeah. Jesse Lane TV on Instagram.

Paul Wurth:

Here we go. Instagram, LinkedIn. And by the way, he’s feeling bad about LinkedIn.

Tom Houghton:

Follow him on Facebook.

Paul Wurth:

Like a couple of LinkedIn posts for god’s sake. He’s going to.

Jesse Lane:

No, no. Just go to my YouTube channel and subscribe. That’s all I can ask.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s the most important. Okay. There you go. Perfect. Great.

Tom Houghton:

Don’t forget to check the show notes. Jesse, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. We really enjoyed chatting with you about all things YouTube WePay. We hit it all today. So thanks for sharing your experience. And again, just being an advocate of Buildertrend. We love hearing how much it’s helped your business.

Jesse Lane:

Thank you so much.

Paul Wurth:

Appreciate you, man. All right. Take care.

Tom Houghton:

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.”