Compassion in construction with Ed Earl

Tom Houghton:

You’re listening to “The Building Code: Your Guide to a Better Way to Run Your Business.” I’m Tom Houghton.

Paul Wurth:

I’m Paul Wurth.

Tom Houghton:

And joining us today, the Zen Builder is on the airwaves with us. Ed Earl. Welcome to the show.

Ed Earl:

Thanks guys. I’m happy to be here.

Tom Houghton:

We’re happy to have ya. And we’re feeling very zen-like right now.

Paul Wurth:

You’re feeling very calm?

Tom Houghton:

I am.

Paul Wurth:

I am too. I’m in the presence of calmness. How does one get the name, the Zen Builder? Let’s start there, Ed.

Ed Earl:

Well, that’s a good question, Paul. So it kind of comes from a couple of different sources. I have been a practitioner of Zen Buddhism for about 20 years. I’ve studied under a Zen master named Thich Nhat Hanh. But in addition to that, I was actually also the construction project manager for the construction of a nunnery at the local Buddhist monastery, Deer Park Monastery here in San Diego. That’s one of the monasteries run by Thich Nhat Hanh. So I had the unique opportunity to spend like two or three years with these monastics, guiding them through this construction process. And it was really enlightening for me to see how they handled all of the anxiety and stress and everything that’s associated with a construction project. And through that, I really learned how to incorporate those concepts into not only my own business of construction project management, but in my role as a business coach to contractors, and as a public speaker. And like this year at IBS (International Builders’ Show), my presentation was on how to eliminate drama with homeowners, build trust, and reduce conflict in your construction projects.

Tom Houghton:

That all sounds like a win for everybody.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Every contractor we talked to references that they’re like at therapist if they’re building for a couple. And so there’s a lot of stress, there’s a lot opportunity for people to get crossways with each other while they’re stressed out. So, I mean, do you have your people that you work for and with, do they all sit down with you and go through like a Buddhist session to start? Just really set the tone?

Ed Earl:

It’s funny because it’s not really anything that formal. It actually was with the monastery project, but in general, it’s not. It’s really just more of an approach. And it’s really at the ideas of like one of the things that we were just talking. I just got off a call with one of our contractor coaching clients and having an issue with a difficult client. And it’s really getting them from the position of judgment to one of compassion and really recognizing that these homeowners are stressed out. I mean, the biggest decision of their life… They’re making these decisions. And a lot of times, they act in ways that may seem combative or even abusive, but it’s because of the stress of what they have. And if the contractor can kind of help to see that from a more compassionate standpoint and not be so judgmental, it really helps to make the process move along much more smoothly.

Tom Houghton:

I love that. We all need a little more compassionate in our lives.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Yeah. You don’t have to give it all away, but what would you say to a contractor that, “Here’s how you become more compassionate?” What are some steps, tactics they can do?

Ed Earl:

Yeah, well it’s really in understanding the homeowner’s perspective and recognizing as a construction professional, we take a lot of things for granted and the homeowners don’t realize that. And one of the things is that the purchasing decision for today is so different with the online purchasing. People are so used to being able to buy something, have it shipped to their house instantaneously, know exactly what it’s going to cost, know exactly what they’re getting. I mean, all of that is the exact opposite of how a home construction project goes down. And so I think it’s really made those expectations a lot more difficult because of that. So and when a contractor just kind of goes, “Well, that’s obvious,” well, no, your homeowner doesn’t realize that. They don’t realize that they’re buying a process, not a product. And so that’s part of what it takes in really understanding that from a homeowner’s perspective.

Tom Houghton:

Sure. Yeah. I mean, construction is a messy process. There’s a lot of moving parts to it and there’s a lot of stress that can go along with that. But you, yourself sitting here as we’re talking to you, seem very relaxed and I’m sure there’s probably a lot of listeners who would think like, how can I be as relaxed as you are, as you’re seeming, I guess. I don’t know, maybe you’re not really relaxed, but I don’t know. Can you give some tips? Yeah.

Ed Earl:

Yeah, no. I think part of it is… I mean, look, it’s a practice, it’s part of my daily practice. I mean, I meditate for 30 minutes every morning, first thing in the morning. And I’ve done obviously a lot of studying under my Zen master. And so that all comes as part of that. But there are things that contractors can do and that we coach our clients on to really help them to be… The relaxed part of it comes from reducing the stress and the stress reduction comes from using tools and techniques like understanding the homeowner’s perspective. And at the show this year, I talked about “The Four Agreements,” which is a book by Don Miguel Ruiz, and really incorporating those four agreements into a contractor’s daily practice. And those kinds of things.

Tom Houghton:

For those listeners who maybe don’t know who you are, can you give us a little more background on kind of what your day-to-day looks like?

Ed Earl:

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So I’ve got two different businesses. The first one is that I am one of three partners in a relatively newly formed business called Residential Contractor Services Group. And so we are a company providing an umbrella of services to residential contractors, mostly focused around business coaching. And so my two other partners are Paul Sanneman and David Lupberger. And between the three of us, we’ve got over about 60 years of experience in the construction industry. And so we work with about 40 or so residential contractors nationwide, both providing business coaching services, as well as the other services that we provide in RCSG include a recruiting service and marketing services. David and I do public speaking. David also has a business continuation service. So it’s just a whole umbrella of services that we provide to contractors. So that’s kind of the first business.

Ed Earl:

And then for the last 20 years, I’ve run a construction project management business here in San Diego. And I work as an owner’s rep. So probably, well, hopefully many of your listeners understand what an owner’s rep is, right? So I’m hired by homeowners that are building large estate homes, and I help them to put their team together, select their architect, contractor, interior designer, and then manage that whole process. And over the last 20 years, I’ve done everything from a $27 million house to a safari camp in Botswana to a historical rebuild in Monterey, California. Just a whole variety of different projects and working with lots of different types of clients as well.

Tom Houghton:

That’s quite the portfolio there.

Paul Wurth:

Well, let’s take it back even further. What did you do before the 20 years and you started your client rep business?

Ed Earl:

So, well, I actually have an MBA from Stanford and so…

Paul Wurth:

I didn’t know that that felt like I threw you a softball. “I had an MBA from Stanford. Thank you, Paul. Check.” I didn’t know that so…

Ed Earl:

It’s funny, Paul, because I’ve, I’ve appeared on the, on the panel with Dan Houghton for the last five years or so. And whenever Dan introduces me, he always says, “Yeah, this is Ed Earl, the only person here at the show that has an MBA from Stanford.”

Paul Wurth:

Oh yeah, that’s right.

Ed Earl:

Yeah, so I started really on the commercial side. I had done some commercial development in Los Angeles where I grew up before business school. And then after business school, I worked for a large commercial developer here in San Diego. And then after doing commercial construction for about, I don’t know, 10 years then I got in on the residential side and I’ve been doing pretty much residential work for the last 20 years.

Paul Wurth:

That’s great. That’s so interesting. To grow up in the LA area and do commercial because it’s got to be so much different than probably every other city minus like four or five of them commercially. And same thing with residential too. What’s unique about where your specific clientele is obviously a higher end, but also where you build the residential building and in your price range is very similar to commercial building in a lot of ways.

Ed Earl:

Right? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s exactly right. And that’s where a lot of what I learned in the systems and systematic approach to building houses. I mean when you’re building a 25,000 square foot house, it’s got like a commercial size Atri AT system and all the wiring and everything that goes into it with all the home controls and automation, it is like building a small office building.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Makes sense.

Tom Houghton:

Let’s pivot the conversation a little bit, because we know that you’ve got some great advice that we’d love the listeners to hear, and we’ve kind of coined these into three mortal sins that all contractors make, is that right?

Ed Earl:

Right, that’s right.

Paul Wurth:

Very fire and brimstone. Yeah.

Ed Earl:

Right. Yeah. So that’s kind of from my… I was born and raised a Catholic. I went to a Catholic school for 12 years. So that’s kind of coming from that side, it’s a little bit of like it’s an attention grabber, but the three mortal sins. These are the things that we in, in our work with all of our contractors that we’re working with nationwide, we find these are three things that many contractors that they commit. And they’re kind of based on what we call three of our commandments and unlike the biblical commandments, which are “thou shall not,” ours are “thou shall always.” So the first one is, “Thou shall always be marketing and selling,” and that’s something that contractors oftentimes don’t do.

Ed Earl:

And what they don’t realize is that their construction business is really a marketing business. We tell our clients Nike is a marketing business that sells tennis shoes. And every business is basically a marketing business and they build their trends. But as a marketing business, it sells software and a contracting businesses is no different than that. And recognizing too that there are many different forms of marketing, especially in today’s world. And for a while, I think that the jury was kind of out on social media and whether that was really going to be an effective tool for the residential contractors. But I think a lot of people, including my other panel mates this year and next year has proven that with a really comprehensive social media campaign, it can make a big difference and it may not directly impact and will lead to leads for contractors, but definitely it impacts the image that they build and the overall marketing program that they’re creating.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely. We love marketing.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, for sure.

Tom Houghton:

And selling.

Paul Wurth:

And the guests we’ve had, like Matt from Emergent and Nick from NS Builders, it does 100%-

Tom Houghton:

Make a difference.

Paul Wurth:

Make a difference and create leads for them too so over half the lead they get is from their social media channel. Now they have huge followings because they’ve been really hardworking at it for the last four or five years and they’ve got a great content as Ed said. But yeah, you just got to start doing it and you’ll see the effects.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Ed Earl:

Yeah. And it’s also about building brand as well. It’s like we say, “Why does Coke advertise?” Well, it’s all about building brand. And if a contractor really wants to develop and be able to be in a competitive advantage in their market, they have to have a unique and distinguished brand from their competition and not just try to compete on price. Contractors competing on price, that’s not a long-term viable strategy.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. It also just hurts the entire market. Everybody starts undercutting everybody else. And then there’s no value there anymore.

Ed Earl:

Right. And I think another thing too, we’ve had many of our clients hire marketing companies, and they don’t really understand the unique characteristics and needs of a residential construction company. And that’s one of the reasons why with RCSG, we’ve created our own kind of marketing services for people specifically where we focus exclusively on residential contractors.

Tom Houghton:

That’s smart.

Paul Wurth:

So, “Thou shalt always be marketing and selling.”

Tom Houghton:

Yep.

Ed Earl:

That’s the first commandment. The second commandment is, “thou shall always be recruiting good people.” So this is another thing that contractors are not doing all the time, and that’s always recruiting people for their companies. And if you wait until your top project manager quits or leaves on you, it’s too late. And again, we tell our coaching clients, it’s like a football team. I mean, no good football team has just one quarterback, right? You’ve got the second string quarterback, the third string quarterback. You’re training those people. They’re out on the field working with your star quarterback, learning and waiting for their time to get into that position. Well, it’s the same way with a construction company. You have project managers and superintendents, various people in various levels, and you always have to be hiring to fill those people in those ranks. And if you wait until the last minute until your office manager quits or your superintendent quits, it’s too late.

Paul Wurth:

Especially in the climate we’re in, right? With the labor shortage and less and less young people getting into the skilled trades in our industry. It’s always more important. You find somebody out there or you see somebody? You grab them. Find a spot for him. Again, I don’t want to bring up Nick, but Nick from NS Builders talks about it all the time. He may not even financially be able to afford somebody, but when he finds talent, he just says, “Come on board, we’ll figure it out financially,” because he knows it’s just going to benefit his business.

Ed Earl:

Yeah. No, another thing too. We’ll stick on Nick for a second as well because I listened to his podcasts with you guys, is that another great benefit of the social media, the social marketing that he’s doing, is that he’s building this desire for people to want to come and work for NS Builders. And so that’s another great benefit of having a robust social media campaign. It’s not just about marketing, but it’s also affects that second component of recruiting.

Paul Wurth:

Absolutely. So this second commandment, Ed, would you apply that equally to subcontractors and trades that you run into throughout your year as well?

Ed Earl:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Because same thing applies, right? Your drywall guy that you love may not always be there. Might as well have two or three on deck.

Ed Earl:

Absolutely. You always need… Yeah. And we go through with our clients and we’ll make a list and say, “Okay, how many drywallers do you have? How many framers do you have? How many plumbers?” You’ve got to have some bench strength and in each of your trades, you should have two or three subs.

Paul Wurth:

It makes sense.

Tom Houghton:

That’s good stuff. Number three-

Ed Earl:

Another thing too, Paul, you had mentioned that how in today’s market, it’s hard to find people and that’s true. And what we find is depending on the market, one of these first two components can undermine a construction company. In good times, like where we are right now, a construction company can go out of business because they’re not hiring enough people. And in bad times, the construction company can go out of business because they’re not doing enough marketing to getting business. So really whether it’s in strong times or bad times, you need to be doing both of those things all of the time.

Tom Houghton:

That’s smart. Best way to protect your business right there.

Paul Wurth:

And number three.

Ed Earl:

All right. So the third commandment is, “thou shalt always be adopting new technologies.”

Paul Wurth:

I love this one, Tom. You like this one?

Tom Houghton:

This one, we really liked this one, I think.

Paul Wurth:

Continue.

Ed Earl:

You like this one?

Paul Wurth:

Absolutely.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Ed Earl:

The fact of the matter is, and we’ve seen this after all of our decades of working with contractors, contractors are Luddites. They just are very slow to adopt new technology. And Paul Sanneman tells this story because he’s been at this longer than me, back in the day with the pagers, he would try to get contractors to use pagers. And then it was hard to get them to use cell phones. And I remember, I don’t know, what was it, maybe 10 years ago, I showed up on a job site with a trio. You old enough to remember a trio?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, absolutely.

Ed Earl:

Those glorified palm pilots? And I remember showing up with the builder and I was like, “Hey, Brian, check out this new phone. I can actually send and receive emails from the job site. I don’t have to like go back to my office or on my laptop.” And he just looked at me, he’s like, “What a stupid idea, like who would ever want to send an email from the job site? Like that just ruins my day. I don’t want to see all that stuff while I’m out here. And really the first advice that we give when we take on a new coaching client is, the first question we asked him is, “Do you have a cloud-based construction management system?” And if they don’t, we say, “Okay well, you’re getting one. So that’s the first thing we’re going to work with you on is getting on a cloud-based construction management system.” So five, six years ago when I first started looking at systems and I’d have to kind of be versed in all of them.

Ed Earl:

So I used to use three different systems in my construction project management. Back then, I was really the only guy doing that and when I give these presentations at the Builders’ Show and get a show of hands, maybe one out of every three or four people would raise their hands. Now I think this year, I think we’re starting to reach critical mass. This year I felt like at least half of the audiences were using a cloud-based construction management system. But I still really see one of the advantages, biggest advantages I think is the marketing. And if a contractor is going in to make a presentation and they pull out their iPad or their tablet and show them how they’re using Buildertrend and the features they’re using, there’s a very good chance that they’re going to be the only person that’s using that platform. And that, I’m telling them, makes a big difference for my homeowners I know that I work with.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, we try to really stress leveraging our owner portal, that’s we call it, for the customer. So when you’re having that meeting, that initial meeting, you can actually pull that up and show them, “Look, this is your dashboard that you’re going to see the updates on the job site. Our daily logs are going to be here and our schedules here, and this is how you can keep track of everything.” And I really think there’s a huge opportunity for our market to use that as a marketing tool. They just kind of think it’s like, “Oh, it’s just a side feature of Buildertrend,” where it’s like no, no, this is actually how you can close deals by giving those clients that commitment to this and that they can be a part of the process.

Ed Earl:

Yeah, exactly right. Yeah. I think one of the biggest advantages of, of using Buildertrend is in that marketing tool. And I know as an owner’s rep, I’ll come in with Buildertrend and use it. The contractor isn’t even using it. So that’s all I use is that owner’s portal. I’m posting photos, I’m doing a schedule and storing all the documents and doing job logs and that’s it. The contractors kind of doing their own accounting, so I’m not issuing change orders and all that, but just using that owner portal portion of it is such a powerful tool for my, for my clients.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. I mean, again, obviously having the marketing background that I have, I look at that monthly fee that we charge and I go, “You could just write that off as marketing.” You could just use that portion of the program, write that off as your marketing and you’re going to close deals because of it. Just like that. Yeah.

Ed Earl:

Right.

Paul Wurth:

It makes a lot of sense.

Ed Earl:

Exactly. Yeah. No, just like me, I mean, I’m using whatever, four or five of the features in Buildertrend and that more than pays for itself. Just using those. I mean I’m not doing hours logs, I’m not doing purchase orders, I’m not integrated with QuickBooks, none of that. And using whatever, maybe 25% of the capacity and it more than pays for itself.

Tom Houghton:

Sure.

Paul Wurth:

Well, that’s great. Go ahead.

Ed Earl:

Go ahead?

Paul Wurth:

No, go ahead and finish. Yeah.

Ed Earl:

I was just going to say I mean, it starts with the cloud-based construction project management system, but there’s so many other technology tools out there that are available, right? For estimating or whether it’s 360-degree cameras.

Ed Earl:

I mean, that’s changed the way that I document all of my projects. Now I can go in and right before drywall, we go in to document every room with a 360 camera shot. For projects where you can go in or remodelers can go in with their iPad and be able to see the studs and the framing behind the walls. And there’s just a lot of technology out there. And it’s all there to really help not only save the time, but also the money, which is so critical and all of that technology is available. And contractors just really, for the most part, are not utilizing it as well as they should

Tom Houghton:

On this technology thread, I’m just wondering in your experience, if you can give maybe just one or two points of when you go to look for new technologies and adopting them, what are those crucial things you’re looking for? What’s got to be on your hit list of it’s got to have this, or it’s got to work like that. What’s your criteria?

Ed Earl:

Well, I think there’s a lot of software out there and people are always kind of coming up with new ideas. I really like to go with something that’s more proven, that’s got a track record and a history behind it because there’s a lot of great ideas, but there’s a lot of ideas that they’re either underfunded or they just aren’t developed well enough. So I don’t propose being the early adopters. Leave those for some of the other people. Wait until the technology is better established before you adopt it.

Ed Earl:

And then the second is to really… It’s different case-by-case basis. So I just started using Loom now with our coaching practice. And so we’re using the Loom videos to be able to communicate with our clients. We have a set of new forms that we’re doing in Rufu. And so there’s a lot of programs out there, but it’s using the ones that are most necessary and vital for your business. So there’s not kind of a go-to list of here’s five different pieces of technology that every contractor should use. You have to kind of personalize it and decide what’s going to be most effective for your unique operations in your contractor construction business.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely. Yeah, that’s great advice.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, it makes sense. So the three, what are they? Deadly sins?

Tom Houghton:

Mortal sins?

Paul Wurth:

Oh jeez. We’re talking about-

Tom Houghton:

Mortality here.

Paul Wurth:

Some of my soul. The three sins would be-

Tom Houghton:

Always be marketing and selling, always be recruiting good people, always be adopting new techno-

Paul Wurth:

Buildertrend- Wait, what?

Tom Houghton:

Nice plug there, Paul. That was good.

Paul Wurth:

I was going to say, if you need me to send your business cards, I’m happy to do that. They’re there in the mails. Start passing those things out.

Tom Houghton:

It’s good to be thinking about it in that big sense. All three of these things can easily help your business and you just have to get the right mindset for that. I mean, these are great principles to base a business off of, so.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, absolutely. That’s great.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome. Well, thank you, Ed, so much for coming on the podcast today and sharing your industry experience and knowledge. We really appreciate you sharing that knowledge with our guests and of course, wish you continued success in your business.

Ed Earl:

Well, thank you both. I really enjoyed being on the show and appreciate you.

Paul Wurth:

Where can the listeners find the Zen Builder?

Tom Houghton:

If you want to follow Ed, go ahead and do that.

Ed Earl:

Yeah. So a couple of things. Well, if you’re interested in wanting to learn more about my coaching services, you can go to Residential Contractors Services Group. And for those of you that don’t like to type that many letters, you can actually just type in R-E-S-G dot O-R-G. And you can find more information about me and my coaching services there. And I was looking for more followers on Instagram. You can find me on Instagram @thezenbuilder.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome. And we’ll put a link in our show notes to both of those as well. So you can go to the show notes at buildertrend.com/podcast and find those links to follow Ed there.

Paul Wurth:

Love it. I feel better.

Tom Houghton:

You feel better?

Ed Earl:

Do you? Oh good.

Tom Houghton:

It’s like therapy.

Ed Earl:

A little more calm?

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, I feel calm

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, that’s good.

Paul Wurth:

That’s good. All right. Thanks so much.

Paul Wurth:

Thanks.

Ed Earl:

All right, thank 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.”