What millennials want with Evolved Structures

Tom Houghton:

You’re listening to “The Building Code,” your guide for a better way to run your business. I’m Tom Houghton.

Paul Wurth:

I guess I’m Paul Wurth.

Tom Houghton:

That’s great. That’ll work for today. Let’s bring on our guests. We’ve got in the studio, joining us live, we’re joined by Nick Wilcox and Josh Bundren of Evolved Structures. Co-founders there. Hi guys.

Nick Wilcox:

Hey, how’s it going?

Josh Bundren:

How you doing? Thanks for having us here.

Paul Wurth:

Welcome in studio.

Tom Houghton:

In the studio.

Paul Wurth:

A studio that Nick knows, right? Because one of the unique things about this podcast and Evolved Structures is Nick used to work for Buildertrend.

Nick Wilcox:

That I did.

Paul Wurth:

So we thought that’d be interesting for the listeners to hear from you, because we’ve had some of our customer success members on before and they sort of tell what the job is from an X’s and O’s, tackles and blocking kind of thing. But I think you can kind of talk about your experience as a customer service rep and then how that evolved…

Tom Houghton:

Oh.

Paul Wurth:

… into owning your own business.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Nick Wilcox:

No, absolutely. I think it’s…

Paul Wurth:

So we’ll tee that up. First though, as we do with everybody who we have on the podcast, who are Buildertrend clients like your business is, we want to hear about your profile. Sort of, what do you do? How do you go to market? What makes you special? How many employees you have?

Tom Houghton:

And let’s start with the name. How did they… [crosstalk].

Paul Wurth:

Oh, we always do this.

Tom Houghton:

Exactly.

Paul Wurth:

We always do this. We want to know how people get their name.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. What was the evolution of it?

Paul Wurth:

It evolved into this name somehow. How is that? Are we going to do this?

Tom Houghton:

[crosstalk] We can just keep going all day.

Paul Wurth:

We going to do this all episode?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Nick Wilcox:

I think it was just how we started the process and seeing what other people were doing and just kept seeing where the process was evolving, the product was evolving. So we thought, somehow we’ve got to get this in the name. I don’t know if it’s going to sound good or not, and then stick it to a logo and somebody said, that looks good. So there you go.

Paul Wurth:

There you go. Your story is probably something that is very familiar to a lot of customers.

Tom Houghton:

To a lot. Yeah. I mean, it’s not like…

Paul Wurth:

I mean, there’s not a whole data science team behind every decision that relates to you naming your company. Sometimes it just feels right.

Josh Bundren:

Nobody’s grandpa was named Evolved or anything.

Paul Wurth:

Right. Sure. That makes sense. Cool. That’s a good story. So what do you guys do? Tell me about your business if you had a 30-second pitch at it.

Josh Bundren:

My background is in real estate and I’ve worked with builders before and our other partner, Ryan, for three years now we’ve been looking at the market here in Omaha and seeing what was missing. So there’s an entry-level market type home that people weren’t getting, they weren’t getting finishes, they weren’t getting processed, they weren’t getting service. So we’ve been brainstorming this for years and we were lucky enough that somebody introduced us to Nick and the three of us put our heads together and just meshed.

Tom Houghton:

That’s awesome.

Paul Wurth:

So you guys are based in Omaha, Nebraska. That’s where our headquarters is, is Buildertrend. Obviously, we’re in over a hundred countries and have builders all over the United States and North America. But your story is probably not unsimilar to some of their stories, right? You see a need in a market and you feel like we’ve got to fill that, right?

Josh Bundren:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s capitalism at its best.

Paul Wurth:

Right. That’s everybody’s dream, right?

Josh Bundren:

Yeah, so that’s not just building, that’s everything. So what does the customer want, and what are they not getting, and how can you do it and do it in an efficient manner?

Paul Wurth:

Elon saw that Tom was a mark because he hated all that gas and so he created the Tesla for Tom.

Tom Houghton:

Just for me. It was really just for me. We’re best friends now.

Paul Wurth:

That’s a podcast joke. Tom has a Tesla. Our listeners know that now.

Tom Houghton:

They do.

Paul Wurth:

They should be very well-versed.

Tom Houghton:

They are very well-versed.

Paul Wurth:

Have we every put your Tesla on the show notes?

Tom Houghton:

Producer, Kayleigh?

Kayleigh:

Not yet, we will.

Tom Houghton:

Oh.

Paul Wurth:

It’s on. Check out the show notes for…

Tom Houghton:

Exclusive pictures of Paul and Tom riding in the Tesla.

Paul Wurth:

I haven’t been in it yet. Let’s go.

Tom Houghton:

It’s true.

Paul Wurth:

We’re going Dairy Queen run.

Tom Houghton:

Dairy. Shout out to Dairy Queen for sponsoring the run.

Paul Wurth:

Free sponsor.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, exactly.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. Next time you’re paying DQ.

Tom Houghton:

Exactly.

Paul Wurth:

All right. We digressed again [crosstalk].

Tom Houghton:

Back to Evolved.

Paul Wurth:

A lot going on here.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

So Evolved Structures, you guys do single family homes, I assume from that Josh, and it’s entry-level and what was the market missing? So explain sort of what your thesis is.

Tom Houghton:

What was the need?

Josh Bundren:

There was a couple of large production builders here in Omaha, and one vacated the market years ago, and then kind of left with one, and they were putting one product forward. And what we were seeing on the real estate side of things is there’s people either in their first home or their move up home that were looking for something. And the buyers shifted now from what it was 20 years ago, you’ve got millennial buyers that don’t have the same needs, but the product was still the same as 20 years ago, we felt. So we did a lot of studies. We took buyers out, questionnaires, buyers agents, what are they looking for? What are people saying when they go into either existing and new construction homes.

Paul Wurth:

That makes sense.

Josh Bundren:

And then based the business kind of off of that need, so that’s where it all started. And it was a lot of pen on bar napkins and throwing ideas out, late night phone calls, trying to figure out, hey, I’ve got a great idea and then it just kept moving.

Paul Wurth:

So that’s interesting because that is not an easy market to get into when it comes to entry level, right? You can be a framer, or a real estate agent, or designer and say, I’m working with all these custom home builders, it can’t be that hard. I’m going to go do one custom home. I’m going to find the client, they’re basically going to finance my business because they’re going to do my first one with them. Not the same when you got to go out and buy a bunch of land and develop plans and… Am I right? [crosstalk]

Josh Bundren:

Yeah. We’ve both worked with custom home builders before and everybody thinks that’s great. They want to go out and work for a custom home builder, it sounds sexy. I’m not saying that there’s not a great market for that. But what we saw was that there’s an entire segment of the buying population that’s being completely missed and it’s because it’s hard. It’s hard to figure out efficiencies of business to keep the costs down while still delivering a nice product. So that’s why it took so long. I mean, we had to figure out great products. We had to get great relationships with subs and with some of the providers here and it took a while to do that. But putting that together with the systems that we’re putting in place here with Nick, that all goes together. So it’s got to be a very scaled, efficient from start to finish process for us to be able to deliver a good product and deliver it at a price where it makes sense for people.

Paul Wurth:

And also who had the super-rich uncle then? Where’s the capital come from? And you don’t have to answer that question, but that’s a piece, right? That does keep most people out of there.

Josh Bundren:

Yeah. I mean, I think Ryan and I, pretty early on were pretty passionate about this and we believe that we’re both kind of come from a little bit of a hard-nosed background, blue collar, want to grind it out. So we figured if we put our tail out there, we’re not going to let it fail. And we knew we had to find a kind of a strategic partner and somebody that could be kind of boots on the ground, that knew a lot about the business side of the building side of things and the efficiencies of that. And met Nick and we all just kind of meshed and there’s a lot riding on it for a lot of us here.

Paul Wurth:

Good. Sure.

Josh Bundren:

But I think that we all have enough faith in the product, enough faith in the team that it’s going to be a good success.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. I mean, it makes sense, right?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

I mean, we’ve seen that. And look, Omaha is probably a little unique in its market size because there’s no national builders here, there’s no regional builders here and that alone makes you unique. There’s one player who does a sizeable volume, maybe another one a little bit under that or half that, but that does open up an opportunity. I’m wondering why no national builders, or regional builders have never jumped in, honestly.

Tom Houghton:

Not like they need to come.

Paul Wurth:

No, no, stay away.

Tom Houghton:

We’re good here.

Paul Wurth:

Stay away.

Josh Bundren:

We’ve had one that came in a few years ago and there’s a couple… [crosstalk]

Paul Wurth:

That came in and came out.

Josh Bundren:

There’s a couple now, they’re dipping their toe in. So I mean, that’s going to happen. So you just have to be ready for that and you can’t let that necessarily affect all the decisions that you make. You’ve got to be able to deliver it better.

Paul Wurth:

No. Because you guys know this market better than anybody, right? You grew up here. So there are some unique characteristics of people who live here, that gives you an advantage. Truly

Tom Houghton:

If you had to sum up one thing that you feel like… you were saying, from all this research that you were doing to find out your client’s needs, if you had to pick one thing that stood out to you as like, hey yeah, we could easily fill this need in this entry-level product. What would that be?

Josh Bundren:

Being in real estate, I do a lot of research on millennial buyers and a lot of millennials are being pushed to renting right now, it’s for a number of reasons.

Paul Wurth:

By whom? What does that mean? Just price point, the price of all of it.

Josh Bundren:

One is that the product that’s out there right now, they don’t want bigger, necessarily, they want better. And it’s kind of economy driven, so you have these, what they call, mini mansions or McMansions that people were building 25 years ago, they don’t want 3000 square feet, they’d rather have 1800 efficient square feet with nice materials in them that they can live in and won’t deteriorate in three years. So something that they can kind of be proud of and it’s something that has a design flare to it. So we kept hearing those things over and over again and that’s where it started.

Paul Wurth:

So first-time home buyers, they have a couple options, right? And I’ll speak to Omaha, but I’m sure it’s very similar everywhere else. You buy an older home, oak paneling everywhere and older appliances and I think the level of what we expect, even at 19, 20, 21, 22 years old is pretty high right now. I want it to look nice. I want it to be nice. So you got to buy an older home that you probably don’t really love and then you got to put some money into it if you have money, if you don’t have money, you got to wait a few months or years and that’s not great. So your option is go buy a tract home. But these tract homes are just that, they’re track homes, they’re not really thoughtful. Maybe they’re even a little bit bigger than I want, probably a little bit more expensive than I want, so is that kind of what you’re saying?

Josh Bundren:

Yeah. For sure. I mean, the younger buyer now, they’re not our parents’ generation, they don’t know how to fix things. Generally, they don’t want to fix things.

Paul Wurth:

That’s a really good point.

Josh Bundren:

They don’t want to do those types of things. They want to spend their time doing other things. I mean, they’re more active, doing outdoor activities, they travel more, so they don’t want to spend their time refinishing a kitchen themselves. Some of them don’t have the money to do it because it’s not like you’re going to be able to get a loan if you’re 22-years-old to go out and remodel a kitchen. So they have buying power if they’ve got a good job, but they don’t necessarily have a lot of capital. So for them to go out and buy a new product, something that they can live in and not have to worry about breaking down on them, that’s key for them.

Paul Wurth:

Sure. That makes sense to me.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. So you guys are…

Paul Wurth:

Hold on Tom.

Tom Houghton:

Oo.

Paul Wurth:

What was your first home?

Tom Houghton:

My first home?

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Tell me about your experience.

Tom Houghton:

Well, I rented until just recently.

Paul Wurth:

California?

Tom Houghton:

Well, yeah, of course, rented in California. Can’t afford anything there.

Paul Wurth:

Tom in Hollywood.

Tom Houghton:

That’s me.

Paul Wurth:

So that was all rental?

Tom Houghton:

All rental.

Paul Wurth:

And when you came back here. Oh, good point.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. So I rented and then… [crosstalk]

Paul Wurth:

So you’re not really the case today because you were a little bit older.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. A little older and kind of missed the boat.

Paul Wurth:

Right.

Tom Houghton:

I waited.

Paul Wurth:

But how did it work?

Tom Houghton:

Well, we of course reached out to a whole bunch of builders because we thought, I’m young, I want something new. Like you said, we don’t necessarily need all the square footage. And part of that too is, this economy with building cost going up to the roof, you just can’t get all that square footage anymore because it just costs so much to build. So we were okay with that though and reached out to a few companies and of course, nobody called us back. And so that of course was an initial damper to the process.

Paul Wurth:

Oh, teaser, because I want to get into that. We’ll talk about your sales process, but… [crosstalk 00:10:49]

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. And then ultimately ended up just doing what probably a few people here in Omaha have done, which is just getting frustrated with the new market and said, forget this. We’re just going to go buy a standard home.

Paul Wurth:

Move in with your parents or something?

Tom Houghton:

Oh, no.

Paul Wurth:

No. Okay.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

People shouldn’t do that. Not a good idea.

Tom Houghton:

We don’t encourage that on this podcast, go out there and find something.

Paul Wurth:

So you bought an existing home and… [crosstalk].

Tom Houghton:

Bought an existing home.

Paul Wurth:

… you’ve probably done some tweaks to it.

Tom Houghton:

Oh yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, which is kind of a pain, right?

Tom Houghton:

The oak stuff, got to get rid of it, right?

Paul Wurth:

De-oak.

Tom Houghton:

Although, it’s coming back around. No?

Paul Wurth:

[inaudible 00:11:20].

Tom Houghton:

Maybe? I don’t know. That’s what I’m hearing from people.

Paul Wurth:

We have somewhat of a designer in the room and she… [crosstalk].

Tom Houghton:

She gave me a 50-50 though. I got like a maybe on it.

Paul Wurth:

That’s because she’s nice.

Tom Houghton:

Ah, thank you for being nice.

Paul Wurth:

It’s a hard no.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. But one of the things that you guys mentioned on your website, that I thought was awesome, is offering a customer-centric experience. And that sounds like one of the pain points that I faced myself. I really appreciate when builders have this in mind of providing a better customer experience. So maybe you guys can share your story and your heart behind that.

Nick Wilcox:

Yeah. I mean, with our customer experience, I mean, a lot of it is going to be built around the Buildertrend platform. We wanted a place that…

Paul Wurth:

Like the sounds of that.

Nick Wilcox:

Putting a plug in for you. We built it around that because we wanted to kind of build this experience forum that’s not overwhelming. Because I feel like when I built a house, a lot of builders are like, go here, go here and make this selection, make this, deal with all these allowances, things like that. We didn’t want to do that to the client. We wanted it… [crosstalk]

Paul Wurth:

You mean the hassle of traveling and trying to remember your allowance, and go into the thing and dealing with the sales rep who maybe isn’t the greatest thing and then somehow communicating that back to the builder, that part of it?

Nick Wilcox:

Yeah, absolutely. Or the client getting frustrated because they go into these big showrooms and there’s thousands of things for them to select from and they want to go, well, we want this, well, that’s triple what your allowance is and… [crosstalk]

Paul Wurth:

No, they’ll get charged for that.

Nick Wilcox:

… then they’ll get frustrated and things like that. So, I mean, we heavily utilize the selection section of the program to build this experience for the client where they can come in and have this feeling that they have a ton of options to choose from and they’re going to get this real custom feel to it. But kind of in the background, we’ve kind of twisted their arm into which direction to go. So we kind of looked at what’s trending in the industry, what’s popular, let’s give them this selections. And then we kind of built into the pricing of our homes so that they can just go through and click. There’s not all of these potential, okay, I clicked this and now we have… [crosstalk]

Tom Houghton:

$10,000 extra.

Nick Wilcox:

… 10, 20 or $30,000 in extras and now we priced ourselves out. So kind of that hassle-free, let them really enjoy the experience. We have all the products that they can come and see so they can see that tangible item and touch it and feel it.

Paul Wurth:

Which some people want to do, right? It’s not always going to be all digital.

Nick Wilcox:

Yep.

Paul Wurth:

But you’re controlling that whole environment, right?

Nick Wilcox:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

You’re controlling the conversation.

Nick Wilcox:

Yip.

Paul Wurth:

Which is good for everybody, that’s not handcuffing people, that’s just making sure that we’re efficient with our time and here’s what you have.

Josh Bundren:

Well, it’s those weeks that we spent talking to buyers, talking to buyers’ agents, and then Nick and I spent countless time at all the subcontractors and vendors going through selections, testing them out with potential buyers to see what worked, what didn’t work. So those things are there. They’re probably things that people were 95% of the time going to choose some of those selections, anyway. Like Nick said, why send someone to a showroom to have them overwhelmed and ultimately disappointed because maybe they think that they’re not getting something? [crosstalk] They don’t know the difference between $5 tile and $25 tile when they see it on a wall, so let’s keep them excited about it because they start with excitement.

Paul Wurth:

If I went to a car dealership and I thought they were all the same price when I got there and every car was in front of me, from the Camry all the way to the Tesla, in terms of price points… [crosstalk]

Josh Bundren:

Don’t know if they’ll come back around.

Paul Wurth:

… if you go to that car lot thinking, okay, well, these are all options for me, I can’t wait. And then I go there and they say, the Tesla is X amount more than the Camry. I’m disappointed. I shouldn’t be disappointed because I signed up for the Camry. But if you give me all these other options and let me think that they’re available, they’re going to be in my price range, well, it’s automatic disappointment.

Josh Bundren:

And I’ve sat in on those meetings with potential buyers, with some of the tract builders and even with custom builders where I want this, I think this is what I’d like to have, well, that’s not even an option for you. You can’t do that. So there’s more no’s than yeses.

Paul Wurth:

And that’s not a good experience no matter what industry you’re in.

Josh Bundren:

So it’s like, how can we front that off to where everything that they’re potentially thinking, there’s a great answer for them and they’re going to be excited from start to finish.

Tom Houghton:

Just for the record, the analogy doesn’t work.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. Here we go. He’s going to put on a sales model.

Tom Houghton:

Because the cost per mile, average cost for a Camry versus a Tesla, the Teslas are actually cheaper. Just for the record.

Paul Wurth:

I didn’t insinuate otherwise. Did I?

Tom Houghton:

A little bit.

Paul Wurth:

I put a little inflection of my voice. But what does that mean? Who knows.

Tom Houghton:

Well, we’re clarifying.

Paul Wurth:

Clarification understood.

Tom Houghton:

Thank you very much.

Paul Wurth:

There you go. So this all makes sense. This concept makes a lot of sense. I think anybody listening, this makes sense. Obviously, if this is the business you want to be in, in home building, there’s a lot of different ways to do it. Is it working?

Josh Bundren:

So far. I mean, I guess the proof’s in the pudding. We’ll find out here pretty soon. The neighborhood that we’re developing, that we’re in is up and running. We’ve got four foundations going. So we’ve got a lot of traction with both buyers and buyers agents.

Paul Wurth:

Great.

Josh Bundren:

And the price point that we’re in, it’s typically a buyer that’s going to buy, 90 days out, they want to see something.

Paul Wurth:

So we’re building speculative right now to get some proof out there. And that makes total sense. Every neighbor like that has a home like that, or model home. Is that what they call it?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Are you calling it something different because you’re new and unique?

Josh Bundren:

No, no. We’ve got four spec homes out there and we’re going to treat one probably as a model, but in business everything’s for sale. So we’ve gotten plenty of lots ready to start new homes.

Tom Houghton:

That’s awesome. So you’ve started in the subdivision and I was looking on their Instagram earlier. You should follow them on Instagram. It’s @evolvedstructures. Okay. So follow them on Instagram. I’m sure. They’ll give you a follow back. Remember, we talked about that as a community of listeners here, we can help everybody kind of grow their account.

Paul Wurth:

Good call back. We need to do this every episode. So every listener… By the way, did you know that we had 42,000 downloads in 2019.

Tom Houghton:

It’s pretty impressive.

Paul Wurth:

Pretty good, right?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

This might hear 42,000 plus ears, gentlemen. So anybody listening today go to where? What’s your handle on Instagram? I should know this.

Tom Houghton:

@Evolved… [crosstalk 00:17:18]

Paul Wurth:

Evolved with a D. There you go.

Tom Houghton:

… structures. With an S at the end too. Evolvedstructures.

Paul Wurth:

I’m following right now.

Tom Houghton:

Perfect.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. Everybody else do the same.

Tom Houghton:

That’s right.

Paul Wurth:

And we’re going to do this for everybody who’s on the podcast because it’s a community.

Tom Houghton:

It is. But back to my point, so I was scoping them out on there. You had some of your renders of the houses on there and so I saw that first. Then I went to the website and I saw the price point and I was like, what? Because the homes that I saw in there, your designs are fantastic, very contemporary, love them. But I was not expecting to see that price point on the homes there.

Paul Wurth:

Are you saying this because they’re our guest or legit?

Tom Houghton:

No I’m saying this because I think it’s legit. I think if you… [crosstalk]

Paul Wurth:

Well, if you’re getting Tom’s stamp of approval for design, I mean, you are… I’m being honest, you’re doing a really good… [crosstalk]

Tom Houghton:

Well, because I think I’m also trying to entice the listeners to go check them out first and do this same process and go take a look at the homes, think about what the price point would be and then go look on the website and see where you’re seeing where the price point starts at. I think it’s impressive what you guys are doing.

Paul Wurth:

I like it. Let’s track the hits on the website. Man, your Instagram is nice.

Nick Wilcox:

We’ve got some good help on that.

Paul Wurth:

Very well created. All right. So Nick, you worked at Buildertrend, so how much of that has affected this or influenced this plan? Was it possible? I think it’s safe to say from a behind the scene’s perspective, it’s not possible to do this for a building company if you don’t have good processes. Buildertrend is a good vehicle. So was that introduced to Josh and Ryan from you and maybe Josh you can jump in afterwards, is that part of the science behind this?

Nick Wilcox:

Yeah. So I mean, when I first met them, it was through a mutual friend and they knew I had this interest in building homes and that’s something I’ve kind of had a passion for, for 15, 20 years. Buildertrend gave me kind of a lot of confidence with talking with builders and learning the industry and kind of learning the whole management side. Because I mean, that’s realistically when it comes down to it, with us subbing everything out, we just a project manager.

Paul Wurth:

Correct.

Nick Wilcox:

Just making sure this gets done on this day, move on to the next step and we kind of hit that. And so when I approached them, the first thing I said, hey, if we’re going to do this we have to use Buildertrend. This is the only way I’m going to come over and do this because I mean, I spent the last three years immersing myself in the software and training builders on how to use it day in and day out. And I said, this is what’s going to help us achieve what we want and where we want to get to in the future and it’s going to make it very seamless for us.

Paul Wurth:

Well, I mean, because look, you could do a custom home. I mean maybe shut your ears. You could do one home a year without Buildertrend. Okay. I’m willing to admit that. One custom home, that’s it.

Tom Houghton:

It’ll be painful.

Paul Wurth:

That is the line.

Tom Houghton:

It could be easier.

Paul Wurth:

I’ll say one is my limit.

Tom Houghton:

Okay.

Paul Wurth:

Two, you got to use us. But it’s impossible to do what you’re talking about. Economies of scale and trying to scale something like that without dialed in processes, right? I mean, I think everybody could admit to that.

Tom Houghton:

And part of your margin that you guys are making is in your efficiencies there, right?

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

I mean, that’s what you’re talking about, finding the right product and finding the right process behind that and how you can scale that for your business, because that ultimately increases your margin, your profit.

Josh Bundren:

Yeah. Without a doubt. I mean, upfront, that was something we talked about that. But using Buildertrend was… Ryan and I, like I said, we’ve been in the industry a little bit and we’ve seen people use it, not to its full potential and how that can sometimes be overwhelming to people that are not using it in the ways that probably it should be.

Tom Houghton:

Sure.

Josh Bundren:

So in talking with Nick and his comfortability within him explaining all the tools that it actually did have, it was no brainer just to dive in. The amount of time we put in upfront, making sure, like you said, our efficiencies down the road, those things are taken care of. It’s easy when you’ve got four or five projects going on at a time. When you’ve got 25, you need those processes in place.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely.

Paul Wurth:

One project, Josh, you didn’t get that note. Or five, you need Buildertrend. That’s our official statement and we’re sticking with it.

Tom Houghton:

Something I think is interesting that could come up as a question here is you had a unique advantage of having somebody with extreme knowledge of the program. So should other builders who are listening, be thinking about hiring people who probably have previous experience with Buildertrend?

Paul Wurth:

We need to keep the lights on. You can’t take all of our employees.

Tom Houghton:

I know that, but I’m saying… [crosstalk]

Paul Wurth:

You need somebody who’s here now, Josh used to work here. Josh used to work for us.

Tom Houghton:

Don’t take all our employees. What I’m saying is hiring people who have previous experience with Buildertrend or are using our certification process, finding people that have gone through that.

Nick Wilcox:

I mean, I agree a hundred percent with it. I saw it in my time here with dealing with clients, hiring other people, I saw people going from one company to another and starting up Buildertrend trend on them. And their sole reason for getting hired at this other company was because of their experience that they had with utilizing Buildertrend and helping them get up and run more efficient. You see it a lot.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that’s safe to say, right? If you have somebody with knowledge of Buildertrend, you’re off to the races rather than having to teach everybody. But there’s some online ways to do that. We’ve talked about and honestly, we’ve seen for many years that when construction companies post jobs, they ask for Buildertrend experience. So that’s definitely something people see.

Tom Houghton:

So we’d recommend that.

Paul Wurth:

We’d recommend that.

Tom Houghton:

Continue that process.

Paul Wurth:

Do that, yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Speaking of process, so when you implemented the software for your business, was there any pushback from anybody else on the team or was that just part of the buy-in process from the get-go?

Josh Bundren:

I think that’s one thing that we were all on board with.

Nick Wilcox:

There was no pushback from Josh or Ryan on it. They’re like, hey, let’s do this.

Paul Wurth:

Well, it sounds like it was part of the plan, which is really important. So let’s talk about everything. So we were talking before the podcast that you’re starting to implement some of the lead management stuff. Is that going to be a part of when prospects come into your wheelhouse, how we manage that and how we keep your eyes on it?

Josh Bundren:

Without a doubt. I mean, any business knows that leads are opportunities. So if you’re not managing those and you’re not categorizing those and following up with those, that’s money down the drain, so that’s any business. So Nick’s been great at kind of helping us, we’ve got CRMs in our other business that we know how to use. So being able to have that all within Buildertrend, and being able to utilize those and then to be able to transfer those from the lead over to customer is the goal, obviously.

Paul Wurth:

Absolutely.

Josh Bundren:

And have that be seamless, huge part of it.

Paul Wurth:

I mean, you would think that everybody would understand that a lead is opportunity. But we have found, no offensive to anybody listening, that in construction that’s not always true. So another leg up, right? Be efficient, have processes on the lead management stuff, call people back. Big one, obvious one, but big one. And with Buildertrend, I was talking to you about it, you can set these templates, right? Lead comes in your wheelhouse, you apply a template, the calls you want to make are preloaded for you for the next 30 days, the email marketing is preloaded for you. It’s going to be really cool for you guys.

Josh Bundren:

Again, that’s huge. I mean, for being able to contact people, you’ve got to be able to have the systems in place. Otherwise, I’ve seen builders write down a phone number and a first name on a post-it note and stick it on their truck dash, and that’s lead to them.

Paul Wurth:

Absolutely.

Josh Bundren:

And it finds a trash can eventually. So being able to have all this stuff categorized on, who’s hot, who’s six months out, who maybe doesn’t know what they’re going to do yet and we can do all that within the program.

Paul Wurth:

Absolutely. Well, good. That’s going to be awesome. The number one thing we need to do is have them a recurring guest, a check-in series.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. We need to see you guys back in six, eight months, something like that.

Paul Wurth:

Right, because this is a really unique story. It’s like, okay, we’re just getting off the ground. I believe in it. You got me. Tom are you in?

Tom Houghton:

I’m a believer. Remember? I was bought in for their Instagram.

Paul Wurth:

You were bought in before. Do you follow?

Tom Houghton:

Of course.

Paul Wurth:

Okay good.

Josh Bundren:

We can put it in an electric outlet in the garage too, just so you know.

Paul Wurth:

There you go.

Tom Houghton:

Oo, that’s good.

Paul Wurth:

Tesla Tom perked up to that one.

Tom Houghton:

Nice sell there.

Nick Wilcox:

… Garage part of it. That you don’t realize it’s a three-car garage on that house.

Paul Wurth:

There you go.

Tom Houghton:

See?

Paul Wurth:

This is good. So we will have this as a segment, so we’ll check in six months from down the road. We’ll see if you sold anything. Here’s hoping you do.

Nick Wilcox:

Otherwise, I’ll be back here working.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, right.

Paul Wurth:

The door’s always open Nick, Josh, hey, if you need somewhere.

Tom Houghton:

We accept all kinds here.

Paul Wurth:

We’re always hiring. But no, I think you guys have got a great plan and we wish you the best. I think it’s going to be something really cool to check in on. So we’ll check in a few months, six months down the road, see where we’re at.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. And if you’ve got questions for Evolved, send them over to podcast@buildertrend.com and we’ll send them over to them. And maybe we’ll talk about them in the next episode when we bring them back.

Josh Bundren:

Sound great, thank you guys very much.

Nick Wilcox:

Thank you.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome. Thanks.

Paul Wurth:

All right. Thanks guys. Appreciate you.

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.” Appreciate you.