I quit Buildertrend with Ryan Hay Oakman Building Company

Tom Houghton:

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

Paul Wurth:

Hi, Tom. I’m Paul Wurth.

Tom Houghton:

Hey, Paul. Thanks for saying hi to me.

Paul Wurth:

That was a nice little wrinkle there.

Tom Houghton:

That was.

Paul Wurth:

I thought it was getting a little dull.

Tom Houghton:

Well now-

Paul Wurth:

Our listeners know who we are.

Tom Houghton:

Stay tuned because in 2020, whole new intro coming.

Paul Wurth:

Hoo.

Tom Houghton:

A little tease there.

Paul Wurth:

Something like hip hop or something?

Tom Houghton:

I don’t know. We’ll see. We got the nice rock music at the beginning.

Paul Wurth:

We also, and we, that means me, I want to start doing segments.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. We’re talking about adding some segments to the show. If you have an idea listeners, email us at podcast@Buildertrend.com.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. I like it.

Tom Houghton:

We’ll accept any and all suggestions.

Paul Wurth:

We got ideas.

Tom Houghton:

We have quite a few.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. Well we’re just leaving our guests hanging.

Tom Houghton:

We are. Let’s move on. Joining us via phone today is Ryan Hay, owner of Oakman Building in Austin, Texas.

Ryan Hay:

That’s right.

Paul Wurth:

Hey, Ryan.

Ryan Hay:

How’s it going guys?

Paul Wurth:

Did you catch that?

Tom Houghton:

I did.

Paul Wurth:

I said, Hey.

Tom Houghton:

Hey, Ryan. I bet you he’s never heard that joke before.

Ryan Hay:

Never.

Tom Houghton:

It was the first time. Okay. That’s new for Paul.

Paul Wurth:

Let’s edit that. Ryan, thanks for coming on.

Ryan Hay:

Thanks for having me.

Paul Wurth:

Excited to have you on. We met, jeez, a couple of weeks back, right? In Dallas for the Buildertrend University on the road.

Ryan Hay:

Yep. That’s right. Went up to Dallas, did the Buildertrend training. It was a day up there and yeah, had a good time.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. So we chatted and I think I remember, it was a whirlwind down there, but I remember hearing your story and going, okay, let’s get this guy on the podcast. So here we are.

Tom Houghton:

So Ryan’s got a great story. He’s currently a Buildertrend customer. You signed up originally in April of 2018, but then a few months after that, about nine months after that, you decided to leave Buildertrend. You were away for a couple months, then you came back.

Ryan Hay:

That’s right. Yep. We ditched you guys and then came crawling back.

Paul Wurth:

And we welcomed you back.

Tom Houghton:

With arms wide open.

Paul Wurth:

The warm Buildertrend embrace.

Tom Houghton:

Exactly. Yeah. The prodigal son had returned.

Ryan Hay:

With one swipe of the credit card and I was back in the family.

Paul Wurth:

I like that.

Tom Houghton:

That’s good.

Paul Wurth:

I like that. That’s all it takes.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. Okay. So maybe you can give us… Let’s start with the background of your company. Just tell us some details about what you guys do, how big your team is. Let’s start there, but then we want to dive into your story.

Ryan Hay:

Sure. So started my company in 2014. I’ve had a career in home-building as well as commercial and heavy civil construction prior to that in Houston, and then moved to Austin. My company wanted to move me back to Houston and my wife at the time did not want to move back to Houston. So she wanted to stay in Austin. And how Oakman got started is, a buddy of mine were watching football and drinking a beer. He lived on the east side of Austin and said he wanted to get out of the east side and build a custom home for his family in a little bit better school district. I told him, “Man, I can build you a house.” One thing led to another, he bought a lot. I created an LLC, bought insurance, and all of a sudden I had my own little home building company here in Austin.

Tom Houghton:

Just like that.

Ryan Hay:

Just like that. One thing, in 2014, the market was really thriving here. And so the architect that designed that house had two more remodels and got those under contract and told my wife, we have something here. So quit my job and focused on Oakman full-time. So I left the company and the salary in 2015, at the beginning of 2015. So I’ve been by myself, primarily for the first couple of years. And then the last two years, I’ve hired a couple of project managers and some office staff. So currently we have five employees, two project managers, an admin, a bookkeeper, and myself. Primarily build in central Austin, full house remodels, a couple of new builds, new homes. That’s basically it.

Tom Houghton:

That’s cool. That’s great.

Paul Wurth:

That’s a really great story. So I have questions. We ask everybody this. This could probably be a segment.

Tom Houghton:

It is. This is a segment. The background to your name.

Paul Wurth:

So how did you come up with the name for your business?

Ryan Hay:

So Oakman is my middle name. So Ryan Oakman Hay.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. Is that your mother’s maiden name then?

Ryan Hay:

So it’s my grandmother’s on my father’s side maiden name.

Paul Wurth:

That’s cool.

Ryan Hay:

So it’s his middle name and then it’s my middle name and it’s also my son’s middle name.

Paul Wurth:

Awesome.

Ryan Hay:

And I swore up and down when I was a kid that Oakman would end with me and I would not pass it on. And then I ended up with a company named Oakman and my son, so kind of switched there, but all my friends call me Oakman.

Paul Wurth:

Oh really?

Ryan Hay:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. So you’re Oakman.

Tom Houghton:

That’s why I struggled with the intro. I’m just used to calling him Oakman.

Paul Wurth:

That’s good.

Ryan Hay:

I’ll call and check on, whatever countertop supplier or whatever, and they’re like, “Yeah, Hey John, the oak man is on the phone.” And it’s like, “I’m not the oak man. Just Oakman.”

Paul Wurth:

Well, you did that as well.

Tom Houghton:

I did. Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

It’s Oakman.

Tom Houghton:

Oakman.

Paul Wurth:

That’s a really cool story. The other question I have for you is, you’re a fairly younger guy, You had really no plans or grand schemes to get into custom home building. It’s just sort of happened with you. I’ll say this, how scary was it to hire your first employee or what were some of the things that concerned you when you did that? Because that really means that you’re kind of in it, right?

Ryan Hay:

Right. Yeah. That was definitely something I mulled over for, man… When I started I was by myself. So almost immediately the thought of when I can hire an employee, I started thinking about it right off the bat. Obviously I didn’t do it right away. And it’s scary. It’s not only the financial responsibility of being a business owner and saying, I have to make this guy’s salary, probably above my own at the end of the day, but also the responsibility to their family, to them. It’s a lot. And so I hired my first project manager on an hourly basis. I thought that was a little bit better. Maybe I could control his cost a little bit more. And then quickly changed him over to salary once I saw the ability for us to get more done, to expand our bandwidth and our management and our coverage, we kind of took off.

Ryan Hay:

So I had my first project manager for about eight months before I hired our second project manager. And so yeah, getting over that hump of hiring employees was a big one because I wanted to make sure I had the money and the resources to do it. And then once I saw I was like, this is awesome. I hired another one.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s great. So as you move forward and maybe this is something that a lot of business owners who are listening can relate to, what is the formula for adding more employees now? How do you know when the time is right or that you’re financially ready for that? Do you have some sort of format?

Ryan Hay:

I think for us, it was just looking ahead at the projects that we had coming, having a good feel for the next 6, 8, 12 months, running a bunch of calculations on worst case scenario, best case scenario, as far as our sales and revenue and profit were going to go. And just at that point, okay, what’s this going to take? Can we do it even if something goes wrong, we’re still going to be okay. And that kind of gives you that runway to then, as soon as he comes on, it’s an immediate, okay, now we’ve got to get work on that next job and get that next project lined up so that we can continue the train rolling.

Ryan Hay:

So before I hired employees, it was two or three projects. When I had three projects spread across the city, I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off all day. And once we were able to hire an employee and a project manager, I was able to split it up geographically. What made sense for who to run what project based on experience and owners. And we were able to really focus on what we’re doing and manage our day so much better and increase our productivity based on that, because we were able to, we’re not reactionary, we’re able to be much more forward looking that way.

Paul Wurth:

It seems like that is the shift for a lot of businesses in this industry, the industry in construction and especially residential building and light commercial. It’s like at one point you stop being reactionary and become, your proactive.

Tom Houghton:

You got to go on the offense.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Does that correlate with the time you go, “Okay, well, I need something like Buildertrend, or I need this backbone of how we do things, how we plan, how we log information, where we store information.” Or did that come with employees are asking for this?”

Ryan Hay:

For us, I hired an employee and I had no process procedures. Like where are the latest and greatest plans for this project? It’s like, well, dang, they’re on my computer. It’s like, I know where they are, they’re in my file, how I categorize things. And so it quickly became obvious that we had no policy or procedures for anything. And so, we start with the document control and that sort of thing. So we make sure we’re building the right thing. And from there we just quickly looked for solutions and that’s what kind of brought us into the Buildertrend arena, I guess.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. So I feel like there’s a period of a couple of years there, as you were probably getting your processes up and running. What were you using before you came to us the first time around? Do you mind me asking?

Ryan Hay:

No. A hodgepodge of online, cloud drives and storage solutions, folders on my desktop. When it was just me, it wasn’t an issue because everything was on my computer and I didn’t have to share it with anybody. And if I did, I emailed an architect or whatever. So that was easy. Once I had a small team, two project managers and actually, one project manager looking at hiring, the second, I realized, man, we need to share this stuff easier and more efficiently, and put our information all in one spot so that we have that place that we can look.

Tom Houghton:

Okay. So you started with Buildertrend and then you with us for-

Paul Wurth:

Are we going to get into the hard stuff?

Tom Houghton:

We are. It’s going to get rough here, folks.

Paul Wurth:

Product team, or I guess, I don’t know whose fault it is.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. Well, let’s-

Paul Wurth:

It could be sales team, could be product, anyway.

Tom Houghton:

Let’s go point some fingers.

Paul Wurth:

Buildertrend employees are listening. Just close your eyes, close your eyes.

Tom Houghton:

Take your ear buds out.

Paul Wurth:

Just take some time off.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. So tell us, so you got started and you’re with us for a few months, and then what happened? Walk us through that.

Ryan Hay:

So starting off, I think we did bite off more than we could chew. So looking back on it, we tried to go from zero to Buildertrend elite user overnight. It was something that wasn’t fully adopted because of that, because people got frustrated because we didn’t start off with a single thing. So we got started with a couple of the things, like Daily Logs were pretty easy. We kind of put a couple of job schedules in there. We weren’t using selections. We weren’t using any budget tools. We weren’t using client communication messaging or any of that stuff. The daily logs were really the first thing we picked up. And those were awesome and very beneficial during that time.

Ryan Hay:

And so, after about eight months, we started like, “Hey, I don’t feel like we’re using this software.” And we had a team meeting about it. And we said, is this worth it, one? Do we need it? There’s four of us in the room and the admin wasn’t even there at that time. So it was the bookkeeper, we weren’t doing the budget stuff through there. So it’s like, is this worth it? And we came to the decision that, “Hey, maybe we can go back to our rudimentary hodgepodge of apps and softwares and do it that way.” Our clients weren’t really using it, probably because we weren’t pushing it. We can do our daily communication through email. We can do our file storage through Google Drive or Dropbox or something. Selections can go back into Excel, that sort of thing.

Ryan Hay:

And so we pulled the plug and we turned it off and we built a Google Drive. We transferred our schedules over to Microsoft Project and then stopped with the Daily Logs. We tried to do, during that period that we were off, we tried to do Daily Logs in an email to me. It worked for a while. And then during that time, we just kind of got back in old habits and everything kind of fell off. We started dropping the ball more on plans. Clients would ask us, how do you communicate with us? Where can we see what’s all of this documentation. And I would think to myself, I’d be like, Buildertrend would have been perfect. Shoot. But it’s like, we have this Google Drive that we’ll share a link to this folder and that’s where your plumbing fixtures are. And it just kind of felt, I don’t know, rinky-dink and amateurish of how we were trying to sell our process. And we’re trying to be an elite, luxury, high performance home builder, who prides ourselves on being the most attentive team in the city. Yet we’re using this hodgepodge group of things and there’s different pieces of information everywhere.

Ryan Hay:

So we were sitting, same kind of thing. Hey, now this isn’t working. And one of my project managers is like, “Let’s go back to Buildertrend, but let’s do it right.”

Paul Wurth:

What was his name?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. We need to give her a raise. That person needs a raise.

Paul Wurth:

They might have a t-shirt coming to them.

Ryan Hay:

And so, I kind of told them, I’m willing to spend the money on it, but we’ve got to dive in, we got to do it right. And so we started over, swiped the credit card again, got back in. And I think we started off right in the fact that we took things one at a time, back in the Daily Logs. And I said, “It is now a requirement that every job gets a daily log every day with pictures.” They started doing that and that’s taken off and that works. And then we said, okay, we’ve got two new jobs coming up. Those are going in Buildertrend. I’m going to spend the time, get with my coach, figure out the selections so we can sell this stuff.

Ryan Hay:

And just slowly began integrating as much as we could in one thing at a time. And honestly, we’re still not an elite user of Buildertrend. I don’t do budgeting in Buildertrend right now. That is on the horizon for us. We’ve actually had a meeting this week with my bookkeeper about getting her started with training so that we can start because for us, I want as much in there as possible. And so I think this time we’ve gotten buy-in from my employees. Our owners love it. It’s one of the first things, when I sit down and interview for a job before I’ve priced anything, I pull out my phone and my app. And I’m like, they’re talking about this last remodel they did 10 years ago and how horrible it went with communication. I’m like, “Well, this is how we solve that. This is how we keep your selections in line. This is how you know, if you need the contract, this is the folder that it’s in. If you need, whatever, schedule you don’t have to call me for this schedule, you can look right here and we update this every day or every other day.”

Ryan Hay:

And so they’ve bought in, they love it. We live in a very tech savvy community in Austin. And so sometimes they almost expect a platform or something that you’re going to use. And so it’s been really beneficial for us since then.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, that’s a great story. There’s something to be said about that idea you had in buy-in from your employees, because in some cases, a lot of companies, it’s just forced, not forced on them that might be a little aggressive, but a business owner goes, “Hey, we’re doing this because we need process.” And for them to get a little taste of it, then go back and then kind of be the ones that prompted you to go do it again. You definitely got buy-in at that point.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely.

Paul Wurth:

And you have to, because they’re the people with the boots on the ground really doing it. So I thought that was interesting.

Ryan Hay:

Yeah, those guys, those are the guys that are using it and that are benefiting from it with having the information at your fingertips. And so, yeah, you’re right. It was important for them to come to that, wanting it again, wanting a one solution. And we said, for us to be at the top of the market in Austin, which is where we want to be, we need to have this platform and be able to show our customers that we’re the best.

Tom Houghton:

I think it’s great too, that for listeners to hear, obviously I think you went in, like most people, which is we’re going to implement this software and it’s going to change everything. And we’re just going to dive in the deep end and we’ll figure it out as we go. And you’re just like building the train tracks as you’re going down the track. And it’s like, that does not work. It’s funny because we’re coming to that time of year when everybody’s thinking about, “Okay, what am I doing next year?” And we’re setting all these big goals and we’re like, “How are we going to get there?” And it’s like, “Don’t worry. We’ll just get there. We’ll just go and we’ll figure it out.” And it’s like, “No, you got to start with small. You got to make it bite size. And that way you can take time and implement each thing as you go.”

Tom Houghton:

So like you, you started with Daily Logs and got that going and you put a process around it. That’s such a great model for people to adopt when they’re trying to start something new, like how you did. So I commend you guys on that. That’s really great that you figured that out.

Ryan Hay:

Yeah. Definitely think going that guns blazing, because honestly, the first day I signed up, I was like, “All right, let’s dump our budgets in there. Let’s get those plumbing, fixtures, uploaded. And here we go.” And it’s, not that it’s not that easy, but it’s not that easy. There’s more to it on the backend. But once you get the back end going and understand everything, we’re a much better company because of it.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Implementing Buildertrend, there’s so many different facets to it. Like what kind of builder are you and what are your current processes and how sophisticated or not sophisticated are you? How many employees do you have? Were all of them involved in the decision process? Is Jack 85 and has no business and no want to use this at all, like one of your employees. So there’s so many things. On top of that, then you actually get to the software. And the software is much like building. You’ve got to build a good foundation in terms of how you learn it. And a lot of that’s behind the scenes, like cost codes, cost catalogs. You can’t just jump into selections or it wouldn’t really be efficient for you. It wouldn’t do what you’re asking it to do.

Paul Wurth:

I thought the other thing that’s interesting that we talk about a lot, we kind of are our own worst enemy because, over the years, we’ve been taking suggestions from our clients like, “Hey, do this feature, do this feature.” We’re like, “Yeah, that sounds awesome. Let’s build that feature.” So now we’ve got like 27 features and they don’t all apply to everybody. And not everybody’s ready for all of them. So you log in as a business owner and you see all 27 features and I’m sure just like you, did you go, “We’re not even using all this. We’re not getting all the benefit out of it.” And I don’t think that’s actually apples to apples.

Paul Wurth:

In a lot of cases, a daily log can save a company $5,000 lawsuit every year. So I think that’s really good for people to understand is that, we’d love for you to use all of it that apply to you, but if you’re not, you’re still getting the value out of it, in many cases.

Tom Houghton:

Do you have any other tips for listeners that might be in a similar situation for you? Whether, I guess at any of the stages we’ve talked about, pre or considering like that you were in that wrestle, that moment of like, “Do we continue doing this or revert back to our old ways?” Anything else that our listeners might actually say, “Yeah, I’m right there with you on that.”

Ryan Hay:

I think for us, it’s just, it’s like anything. It’s not a one-stop, dump your info and go. I think one thing the Dallas training taught me was how the templates and the backend stuff can really save you time. I was like, man… And learning those new features of… Because I built a schedule almost from scratch every job. And I was like, “Well, I’m never going to do that again. I’m going to have a new home schedule and a remodel schedule and tweak them.” And so there’s lots of that stuff that’s out there. And so I think just, for us, taking advantage of the training, getting that next new tip or whatever it is to get you over that hump of what you need the software to do for you is beneficial.

Ryan Hay:

So I would suggest taking a step back, what’s not working right, and then you’re going to have to put some time into it on the front end so that you can reap the years of ease on the back end.

Tom Houghton:

That’s perfect. Yeah. I think obviously, like you mentioned, you came to Buildertrend University on the road. We’ve got BTU’s scheduled monthly, basically, in 2020. So I would assume based on what you’ve just said, you would highly recommend people to come to Buildertrend University. It’s like you said, you’ve got to take some time out of your day to kind of carve away, but then you’ll reap all the benefits after you’ve done that.

Ryan Hay:

Right. Absolutely. Yeah. I would definitely-

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Take some time out of your day to carve a way, if your name’s Ryan Hay. Is that what you were going for?

Tom Houghton:

Thanks, Paul. A poet over here.

Paul Wurth:

Last thing, Austin, Texas. A lot of buzz about Austin, Texas out there.

Tom Houghton:

There’s a lot of our product.

Paul Wurth:

Everybody thinks it’s the coolest place in the world. Tons of tech companies are there now, no income tax, Texas.

Tom Houghton:

That’s a win.

Paul Wurth:

Texas. And it’s like what? Keep Austin weird or whatever. There’s a bunch of festivals down there. So A, can we come hang out? Yes and B… But in all honesty, we’ve talked to a lot of companies, a lot of friends of our product are down in Austin, Texas, like Matt Risinger. He talks about the Austin community as it relates to building. Is it something unique down there? It feels like it’s very, and I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but it feels like it’s very not competitive as some markets might be, but also-

Tom Houghton:

More collaborative.

Paul Wurth:

Collaborative. That’s what I meant.

Ryan Hay:

I a hundred percent agree with that. I think it’s really cool. I’ve got Matt Risinger’s cell phone, I’ve called him about stuff. I bid against guys that, or interview for projects against guys that are good friends of mine. I tell people, if this other builder gets the job, I’m not upset about it because I know he’s a good builder. I know he’s doing the right thing. So it’s a very collaborative environment and that’s really cool. I know it’s not like that in a lot of places.

Ryan Hay:

I welcome any other builder to walk my job sites, come check out what we do. I’ll answer any question that anybody has. I got other builders call me all the time. We talk about our jobs that are not going great and are going great. So, yeah, I definitely think that this community is unique in that it’s very collaborative and not competitive. And I think a part of that is that it’s been a booming economy for the last few years and we’ve all got plenty of jobs to go around. So there’s plenty of work for all of us and it seems to be continuing.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome. We should have Ryan back on to talk about some of those, the phone calls that you don’t want to make to somebody else and kind of a learning experience there.

Ryan Hay:

I got a bunch of them.

Tom Houghton:

That would be fun. Awesome. Well, thank you Ryan so much for coming on the podcast today and sharing your experience. Of course, we loved hearing your story about your interaction with Buildertrend over the course of your business. And of course, we love that you’re back in the Buildertrend family and we’re glad that the software’s working with you and just helping your business run smoother. And of course we wish you continued success in your business.

Ryan Hay:

Thanks so much for having me, guys. I really appreciate it.

Paul Wurth:

All right, Ryan, appreciate it. Thanks very much.

Ryan Hay:

All right.

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.”