Haven Builders Part 1: Self-evaluating for success with Dallas Stobbe

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’m Paul Wurth.

Tom Houghton:

Hey Paul.

Paul Wurth:

Hey Tom.

Tom Houghton:

We’ve got a great series of episodes here. This is our first ever.

Paul Wurth:

We’ve been on a roll.

Tom Houghton:

We have been, the roll continues.

Paul Wurth:

There we go.

Tom Houghton:

But if you’re just joining, if you’re just subscribing to “The Building Code,” go back and take a listen to the past few, because we’ve had some exceptional guests on, and we are not stopping.

Paul Wurth:

No, no.

Tom Houghton:

And we have a special treat today.

Paul Wurth:

Oh, my.

Tom Houghton:

Because we’re doing our first ever back-to-back cliffhanger episode.

Paul Wurth:

Wow.

Tom Houghton:

So, at the end of this, we’re going to say something like, “Tune in next time.”

Paul Wurth:

I don’t think we are. I’m pretty sure you will be.

Tom Houghton:

Oh. That’s my job.

Paul Wurth:

That’s always been your job. Hollywood Tom.

Tom Houghton:

That’s my job, yeah. That’s me.

Paul Wurth:

But yes, I get it. That’s fun.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. So, today we’re joined by Dallas Stobbe, general manager of Haven Builders. And on our next episode, we’re going to be joined by their design manager, Charissa. And she will be talking about more stuff to come. But so, we’re doing this, kind of, as a back-to-back combo. It’s going to be great.

Paul Wurth:

So, one amazing company?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Two guests, back-to-back?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

It’s exciting.

Tom Houghton:

And you’re going to want to make sure you listen to both, to get the full picture on Haven Builders, because they’re doing a lot of great work up in the Saskatoon area, which-

Paul Wurth:

I love that name.

Tom Houghton:

Saskatoon?

Paul Wurth:

It’s fun to say.

Tom Houghton:

There’s a lot of S’s, because it Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Well, enough about me. Let’s talk about our guest. Let’s bring Dallas on. He’s joining us, again, all the way from Saskatoon. Dallas, how’s it going?

Dallas Stobbe:

It’s going awesome. I actually was up early this morning and had a 6:00 AM round off on the golf course. So, I did 18 holes in two and a half hours. So, I just to race over here.

Tom Houghton:

Oh, That’s the best-

Paul Wurth:

Hold on.

Dallas Stobbe:

A good start to your day, hey?

Tom Houghton:

That’s the best way to start your day.

Paul Wurth:

I have so many questions there. So, it’s light out at 6:00 AM?

Dallas Stobbe:

Oh yeah. It’s light at… Because we’re so far North, it’s light at five in the morning. I was going to take a picture this morning at 5:20, and the sun is up there already.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. They’re on the 52nd… Somewhere up in the 52nd parallel. Which, for those keeping track, the reason I know this is because I used to live over in London, which… So, during summertime, you’d have really only six hours of non-light hours. So, 18 [inaudible 00:02:30]

Paul Wurth:

Non-light hours, you mean night?

Tom Houghton:

Well. It doesn’t ever get… I mean, it gets dark, but it’s not… I don’t know.

Paul Wurth:

We’ll see-

Tom Houghton:

You just have to, kind of, be there.

Paul Wurth:

Hey. Everybody, we’ll see you later at non-light.

Tom Houghton:

Have a good non-light hours.

Paul Wurth:

All right. So, and the other thing would be 18 holes and two and a half hours. You’re moving.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. You’re cruising.

Dallas Stobbe:

Yeah. You’re running.

Tom Houghton:

He’s an expert golfer, too.

Paul Wurth:

And what did you shoot?

Dallas Stobbe:

Kind of, low eighties.

Paul Wurth:

Low eighties is very good.

Dallas Stobbe:

81, 82.

Paul Wurth:

Nice work.

Dallas Stobbe:

The guy I was with shot 200. So, he shot 70.

Tom Houghton:

Well done.

Dallas Stobbe:

Yeah. We had a good morning.

Tom Houghton:

You got to play with somebody always worse than you, right?

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. I want people my speed.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. There you go.

Dallas Stobbe:

Yeah. There you go.

Paul Wurth:

Awesome. Productive.

Tom Houghton:

Yes, Dallas. Again, thank you so much for coming on the show. We want to talk… Let’s start off, first off, with Haven. Give us a background. Tell us about your background, but also the background of the company.

Dallas Stobbe:

All right. So, we started Haven in 2010. And it started as… The dream was, kind of, doing a luxury kind of high-end finishing home building company in Saskatoon. I had worked in, kind of, the cabinet industry in Saskatoon and, kind of, noticed that there was, kind of, design elements and features that were, kind of, missing from this town specifically, that I’ve, kind of, seen, because I’ve traveled Western Canada, I’ve been in, kind of, Asia, overseas. I’ve been all over the U.S., and you just see different architectural items and design features. And we hadn’t really seen that in Saskatoon. So, it’s, kind of… Noticing and recognizing the opportunity, and putting a vision in place, and then executing the business. So, we’ve been going at it for 10 years and learned a lot of lessons along the way. I’ve definitely had to grow as a person, in my skillsets and in my personality and all that stuff, because I’m naturally just an introvert. And so, it’s been… When you look back, there’s a lot of changes and a lot of growth and a lot of work.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. I think that’s a good… I’m going to start with the introvert side of things, because I think that’s something…

Dallas Stobbe:

Uh-oh.

Tom Houghton:

I know, right? Every introvert’s dream is, “Let’s talk about you being-“

Paul Wurth:

“Let’s get on a podcast and talk about your biggest fears.” Thanks, Tom. What a nice host.

Tom Houghton:

But I think there’s definitely listeners out there who would classify themselves as introverts, and I think it’s… And business owners in general.

Paul Wurth:

I agree. I was going to say the same thing. You probably don’t get into construction to be a forward-facing sales guy. But I would assume, when you own your own business, whether you like that or not, that’s exactly what you are. You’re the face of the company and you’re speaking to why somebody might be doing a project with you. And I had the same question as Tom. What was some of your experience early on doing that? And you said you learned a lot, maybe just some high-level stuff that you learned.

Dallas Stobbe:

I definitely had to make some very intentional kind of changes in how I emailed people or dealt with people. And it’s… Because I naturally see things as pretty black and white, right or wrong. And so, in business, a lot of times, I’ve had to learn that you need to be more diplomatic than anything. And so, it was more the diplomacy and trying to… “Let’s figure out what’s the best case scenario for both of us.” Rather than me winning or being very self-focused on that. It’s more… And it’s what’s going to benefit the company the most? What’s the long-term effects of the decision-makings that we’re doing? Saskatoon is a really small town. There’s 330,000 people here, but honestly, it’s a tiny, tiny town. So, word gets around easy. So, it’s very much about reputation.

Dallas Stobbe:

It’s about upholding a reputation, tons of referral business, tons of people talking to other people. And we’re at the point now, where people will be, “Oh, this person told me about you guys.” And I’ll be like, “I don’t know who that is.” And that’s the place you want to be, right? When people, you don’t have a clue or never met or never even talked to, are like, “Yeah, go talk to Haven and at least give them a shot or see what they’re about.” And you never know where that came from, right? Whether it was random, because we do a lot of paid advertising on Facebook. We’re very active on social media, on Instagram. So, we feel like we have a soft following on Instagram because of the age demographic that we’re dealing with. They’re not quite at the point where they would be necessarily purchasing our product, but we’re planting the seed.

Dallas Stobbe:

And so, you’re thinking 5 or 10 years out, when these guys… Maybe they’re just getting out of optometry school or something like that, or they’re just getting into their chiropractic business. In 10 years they’re established and they’re ready to, kind of, do that dream home, or the big line, or get their… Transition their two or three kids to a bigger house. Those are the steps we’re, kind of, putting in place to make sure we’re ready for that. So, it’s… We’re thinking about now and think… But I think a lot about the future, and where we need to go and what we need to do. So, a lot of times, it feels like we’re a little bit team heavy, but we provide so many services for our clients that we are like no other builder in town. I talked about that.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. You talked about that, because I was looking at your team on your website, and one role is architectural technologist. And I’ve been to… I dare to even imagine, I mean, builder websites I’ve been to, in the last 13 years, probably 20,000 or more. I’ve never heard that role. So, talk a little bit about what David is, at your company.

Dallas Stobbe:

Sure. So, David is a extremely talented person. An architectural technologist is literally almost the same schooling as an architect, without the title. But they are very versed in building, construction, in envelope… So, he does all of this stuff on computer. So, he’s drafting our house plans, but he also, for us, which is very unique for us is, he does the 3D modeling. So, we’re doing virtual tours with our clients. We draw everything. And what do I mean everything? We’re so detailed, as we also provide a furnishing service for our clients, we’re drawing the furniture or selecting the pieces that are going to be laid out in the home and then we help the client purchase them through our design process. So, David is a very, very crucial piece to the puzzle because he brings the drawing skill side. And what he also does, because of the 3D and virtual tours, a lot of people have difficulty visualizing what their home is actually going to look like when it’s done, looking at it at a plan or drawing lines on a page.

Dallas Stobbe:

Everybody has a different picture of what it looks like, right? And so, when you actually get it on computer or get on TV and you get to do a presentation, then people are like, “Oh, I love this.” And you can make tweaks or adjustments pretty easily. And you remove all of the changes that you would normally do on site, once you see something and say, “I don’t like it.” Or, “This wasn’t what I saw in my head.” And you’re like, “Well.” When you’re in that situation, you’re like, “Well, how come you didn’t see that in your head?” Right? “We drew it right here, blah, blah, blah.” That’s a frustrating place to be in. Whereas when you draw virtual tours, no questions about what happened, right? This is it, right? And you get a lot more buy-in, and your clients just fall in love with it.

Tom Houghton:

I think this is a great point, and I want to hang on this for a second, which is that, I’m hearing more and more builders doing this, which is, you’re not only building the home, but you’re also educating your customer on what to put in the home, to make sure you’re completing it. And it’s something that I think, again, I don’t know why I’m so surprised about this, but it’s like any major purchase… It’s like you buy a car, you want to know what’s the interior of the car look like, right? So, you build a house and everybody thinks, “Oh, well I want to know what the elevation looks like. And I want to know…” And they think big picture, “What’s the kitchen look like? X…” All that stuff. But no one is actually thinking about, “What does it feel like?”

Tom Houghton:

What is the sofa and stuff like that, that’s going to go in your living room. And we can talk with Charissa more about that. And maybe we’ll, again, tease that a little bit. I want to talk more about the design, but going back to the business side of things, did you start there? Or how long did it take you to get there? Because again, I’m thinking other listeners who are probably not there yet. What’s that road look like, to get to this stage where you’ve got this architectural technologist, and you’ve got somebody on the design team, and you’re offering these extra services? Because, like you said, you offer a ton. Did you start that way? Or can you give us a background there?

Dallas Stobbe:

That was a little bit evolutionary. We started with a really good draftsperson that we subcontracted to. But about five years in, then we brought somebody on staff. The reasons for that is, really, really streamlining the process. So, we design buildings from start to finish. And what I mean designing, I mean, we’re taking every single item for the home, and we do it in two months. Then we can do that because there’s a team of me, David and Charissa, the three of us. So David’s drawing it, Charissa is bringing in all of the design elements, and because we’re in the same office, we can have our really quick chats and our check-ins, and make sure we’re on the same page, and we’re also a team. So, we’re also sharpening each other and, kind of, pushing each other.

Dallas Stobbe:

And you don’t have that when you’re dealing with a subcontractor, and they work for you. You can challenge them, but there’s not necessarily the team aspect. It’s, kind of, up to them, what they decide to do, right? So, there’s a huge benefit to bring it in-house and to also providing that service to our clients, because our clients also enjoy meeting with David and talking to him, and he’s a big piece of the puzzle. It’s very beneficial.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. And I think… You said something earlier that I’ve always said, because I’ve never been one to understand plans or visualize, when I can just see a blueprint, I just can’t do it. It’s just not in… And I think there’s many people like that. And so, I would assume 3D modeling and virtual tours are things that are going to be happening more and more. It doesn’t sound like it happens a lot on the front-end, for a lot of clients. So, I think that’s a big one. And then, even taking it to the next step, and this is probably your area, Tom, an AR sort of situation, where it’s even more spatial in there, with furniture and stuff. Is that something you guys have your eyes on? And it sounds like it has treated you well. So, are you always keeping your eyes on the next sort of way you can do this with technology?

Dallas Stobbe:

I think, realistically, we’re probably five years away from, kind of, the VR goggles as being, kind of, a commonplace thing. And literally having a space in our building, that’s just empty space that you can walk around in, and look in every corner of your home, what it’s going to look like. That’s a realistic possibility. I think, within five years. It’s going to be an investment, obviously, from a business standpoint. Right now, we’re focused on trying to make sure that our renderings program is still going to be top of the line. So, we’re getting pretty accurate images when we’re drawing stuff.

Paul Wurth:

You see it as a competitive advantage, yes? Even within your market?

Dallas Stobbe:

Yeah. I think the only downside of it is the overhead costs and having somebody on staff. Whereas, if… That’s why, as a business, we have to always sell value, and we’re not selling on price. If we sell on price, we will lose, because if somebody comes to us and says, “What’s your cheapest cost per square foot?” I’m just like, “I can’t help you.” That’s not what we do. We build people’s dreams, and we provide high-end services, and we are a 100% turnkey. So when you move into your home, your landscaping is done, and your furniture… You can sleep in your bed that night, we move all your stuff in for you, we make your bed, and all your furniture has been purchased and set up for you, and styled. Let’s try and not put a price on that, because our clients, they don’t say, “What’s the price?” They just say, “When is it going to be ready?”

Paul Wurth:

Right. That’s a great point.

Tom Houghton:

Selling the value, that’s crucial. I do want to come back to the technology thing just real quick, because again, I do think that’s something that you guys have as a distinction point for yourselves. I think this is an area that builders should be paying attention to. There’s a lot of rumors coming out that Apple is going to be coming out with these AR glasses. So, obviously, VR, virtual reality. I definitely think… I could see more builders moving to that space really soon, taking the 3D CAD renderings and things like that, and putting them into goggles that people could wear. But I think we could be getting to a spot here, where we’re having this conversation virtually, but if we were in your boardroom there, with you, you could pull out just a little QR code, we’d put on some glasses and we’d take a look at what kitchen fixtures are going to be in the kitchen, and they’d appear as though they’d be right on the surface right there.

Tom Houghton:

I think that’s almost something else to be thinking about and keeping an eye on, because I think consumers, we see this technology, more and more people are adopting it. And if we, in the building industry don’t, people are going to come, have these conversations, be like, “Wait, what do you mean I can’t see the house? We have all this technology at our fingertips. We should be able to do that.” So, I think it’s a great distinction point for your business, that you’re already out there, you’re already investing in it. And it sounds like you’re also seeing the rewards from that.

Paul Wurth:

The construction industry is always battling how to bridge the gap between what a consumer gets every day in their life, in terms of technology, and what they don’t get when they build this huge custom home. And I think if you solve that gap as a business, in all aspects, from the moment they contact you, until the moment you turn in the keys. If you can just somehow match what we get every day from the biggest companies out there, like Tom just said, I think you’re going to be pretty well positioned. And it sounds like that’s, sort of, where you’re getting to.

Dallas Stobbe:

Yeah. It’s always… Always has been and always will be about expectations. And so, can you meet the expectations? And that’s going to be the story, all the way through the build. Can we meet the expectations? And when we fail on that, or when we struggle with that, what are we going to do about it? Or how do we make this easier to meet expectations? Or how do we define… Just because a client has an expectation, doesn’t mean it was right or correct, right? So, then it’s like, how do we steer them, so that we have the proper expectations, and we can meet what they want? And the visualization is transformational to that process.

Paul Wurth:

Exactly.

Tom Houghton:

Let’s speak to expectations a little bit here too, because when you’re showing a virtual rendering, I think we’ve all seen those Pinterest fails, right? So, everybody sees, “Oh wow, look at how great this could look.” And then you actually deliver the product, and it looks something completely different. How has your team… I’m just curious, how has your team wrestled with that? Because again, when you show somebody a virtual rendering, it looks perfect, right? And then you get out into the real world, really building this product, and you realize, “Oh man, this has got to change, or this is not going to look the way.” How do you approach that with the clients?

Dallas Stobbe:

I honestly haven’t viewed that as a huge struggle for us because of the team that we have. When you draw things that are actually buildable, from David’s standpoint, where he actually puts the time in and the thought into it, it makes things a lot easier for project managers. And we have a two month process where we design everything. So, we pick everything for our home. Everything is itemized in a Google Doc spreadsheet. So, we have a plumbing spreadsheet, electrical, and for every item in the home, there’s… It’s detailed out exactly, what all these items are, and there’s links to the website. So, when our project managers go to look at this document, they have all the information in front of them. So, they’re not… There’s no questions to ask the client. There’s no dialogue. There’s only questions of the little in-between stuff. “And what was the vision here? What was the idea here?”

Dallas Stobbe:

When you do that, you take all of those question marks out of the picture because we also… Because we pick everything when we design everything, we price everything. And we offer our clients a fixed price contract at the start of the job. And offering a fixed price contract is risky for us. But because we can actually design, pick everything, and come to an actual starting point that we finalize, with the prices, and we’ve rendered everything so we can see the whole picture, our clients aren’t making changes, because they’ve seen what the vision is, they’re committed to it, and they know what the cost is. So, then they don’t get into the job and they’re like, “This isn’t what I thought it is. And now, I have to spend $100,000 more. And now I’m really angry at you because you’ve lied to me. And you said, I could build this home for this price.”

Paul Wurth:

That’s so smart.

Dallas Stobbe:

And you’ve got to get past that point. So, you’re always looking for clients that aren’t looking for the cheapest price, they’re looking for… They understand the fear of going over budget and they understand the fear of being consumed by designing a house forever. And because it’s a custom… Super custom houses. So, I’ll give you a couple of examples. You literally have two homes in, kind of, higher end neighborhoods. So, we just… One of them is… We’re almost finishing, because we’re doing their landscaping for them right now. And the second one, we’re about a month away from being completed. They’re both around $1.5 million. During a nine-month build process, the one house has $3,000 of change orders, which is client-driven, and the other house has around $20,000 of change orders.

Dallas Stobbe:

This is on a $1.5 million house. So, as a percentage, that’s pretty much nothing. People are… When you’re building a $700,000 house, they’re worried about going over 100, 150, and what’s going to happen to that. The big part is having a plan in place, and then executing it. When we’re in construction, in the middle of a job, our clients are not… They’re not rushing to site to pick anything, they’re not making decisions, they’re not canceling meetings or moving their work schedule or doing anything. They meet with us onsite, to see the progress, and they get super excited because they don’t have to make any decisions. They just get to experience and see what’s happening. And it’s a ton of joy. If you guys… I mean, you may have watched some of our testimonial videos, some of our videos, but our videos, with our genuine clients, that’s all straight from them going through a process and just talking about how easy and stress-free it was. It always comes back to setting the expectations and having a plan in place.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. It sounds like you guys just put a lot of effort into the upfront, like you said, set expectations, but you don’t over promise either. Like what Tom… Tom’s, sort of, original question was, you don’t try to over-design and not know that you can’t pull that off. So, there’s not that disappointment when you’re done. So, it sounds like your investment in your people, and then also your technology, is paying off. But the one question I did, from a construction business point of view, how do you handle change orders? Because you said the one house has $3,000 in client-led change orders. So, that’s agreed upon before, with the client, but there’s always such a gray area about what a change order is. Do you guys just try to do a really good job of defining that upfront?

Dallas Stobbe:

Yeah, we try to. It’s pretty funny, because no matter how many times you say, “This is going to be a change order.” It’s still like, “Hmm, maybe it shouldn’t be.”

Paul Wurth:

Right. Yeah.

Dallas Stobbe:

And I’ve, kind of, come to the point where we try to avoid them as much as possible. As much as we can, we plan at the start. So, if we do have change orders, it’s very clear that it is not our problem, it’s their choice. And when I say that it’s customer-driven, that means they just… They’re like… It wasn’t like we screwed up, it was like, “Oh, I just… I trust you guys so much, I just want to… Let me… We should just add this little item now.” Or, “Let’s just make sure we get it done.” The classic builder industry is that we’re going to sign you into a prelim contract, and we’re going to design your house during construction.

Dallas Stobbe:

And we don’t know what it’s going to cost. And during the process, we’re going to have these situations. And I’ve been in this spot before, we have these situations where we’re like, “Oh, your hardwood budget is $20,000. You want a $30,000 hardwood floor. You have to cough up the extra 10 grand.” And you do that for every item of the house. And all you end up with… You just end up with an angry client, who’s frustrated, they’re stressed out, because it’s their job to figure out how the budget is going to shake out, and where they are going to go over on, or where they need to squeeze. And the dream dies during the process, because they’re so frustrated.

Paul Wurth:

That’s a good point.

Dallas Stobbe:

And it’s no fun for the builder either.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, nobody is winning.

Dallas Stobbe:

No. Part of what we did was recognizing the long list of problems or tendencies of builders or the stigmas, right? Against building a custom home. And we did two things from that. We sat down and we said, “We have to figure out a way to do this differently. We’ve got to design first.” And the second thing that we did was we… I actually found… And it’s called the Association of Professional Builders, and they’re out in Australia. And now that… You guys may have heard of them, because they have some really, really awesome, very specific for builders, coaching stuff that they do. Because the classic… Here’s the classic construction industry, and I’m 100% this person, I’m a carpenter, I’m a craftsman, and along the way you’re working, all of a sudden you own a building company, and you’re like, “Oh, shoot. I didn’t go to school for finance or for managing people. I don’t understand insurance.”

Dallas Stobbe:

And you’re dealing with all these things you never even thought of before. And now it’s your problem. And you’re like, “I’m a carpenter. I don’t… All I care about is a nicely finished home.” And you have all these other things that you need to educate yourself on. So, you need to learn about work in progress, and how that affects your financial statements every month. And you need to learn… Because construction, invoicing and billing is so… It can be so complicated because you’re going to have jobs that cross into year-ends. So, you’re into the next year, and it’s just a nightmare, from accounting. And tons of people screw this up, from a building construction standpoint, because a lot of their accountants have a viewpoint of manufacturing, and it’s totally different in construction than manufacturing.

Dallas Stobbe:

So, we went through The Association of Professional Builders. It was completely awesome. We did it for about 18 months, and it was really good in helping me transform my mindset, and building skills in developing this business, and getting it going in the right direction. Part of it is still 100% self-driven, because we have to put the work in, but it’s having somebody coaching you, that’s completely unemotionally attached to you, and giving you advice, and helping you figure out… We could talk about very specific client problems and how to deal with them, or we talk about the bigger picture of working on the business, making sure we have the right vision or the right direction.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. I mean there’s a lot… Great. The two things I picked up on, which is you can do when you start a building business, or something you can do when you take an honest look at what you’re doing today, as a building businesses, is look at all the stigmas around building. There are out there, right? There’s probably a top five we could all name. And then, evaluate your own business, right? And understand, are you actually perpetuating those stigmas, or are you doing something against those? And I think if you do that, I think that you’re probably in the top 10% of construction companies out there, especially in your market, and it’ll serve you well.

Tom Houghton:

Because you also stand out instantly. You know what I mean? If we’re saying the majority of it, again, that’s how you get a stigma, right? Is people feel like the majority of people act this way, and again, I love that, Haven… That you’re dedicated to changing that stigma. Again, we here, at Buildertrend, we see ourselves as partners in your business, and we want the business, we want the industry to really turn the corner here, and really change that stigma.

Dallas Stobbe:

Right. I’m just saying, Buildertrend is a huge part in being organized, and being transparent with your clients, and having centralized documents, and having your calendar live and organized. And we communicate only through Buildertrend, to our clients. So, whether it’s video messaging, or whether it’s email, it’s mostly email, but our PM’s, our project managers, they’re doing daily logs of what happens on sites, we’re tracking and documenting things. So, we can actually look back and see what transpired, if there’s issues that come up, or what the timeline has been, or how long has it been since this happened. And it really helps you in, kind of, testing and measuring what to change or what to do better. A lot of our focus is on continuous improvement, and you only do that by analyzing and assessing what’s happening. So, just to have a way to check that. So, Buildertrend is the perfect app for running a construction company.

Paul Wurth:

We appreciate that. And I think, lately, we’ve stayed away from talking about Buildertrend on this podcast, just because everybody knows where we work.

Tom Houghton:

We work for Buildertrend, no surprise there.

Paul Wurth:

We love it. But I think you said two things that we’ve tried to be working on a lot, over the last couple of years, which is, outside of the features and functionality of Buildertrend, and the app you use, what else can we do to help business owners with the problems you just brought up? Many of them come up through the trades, and that’s their passion, and they did not go to finance school because A., that’s boring, and B., who wants to figure out tax codes? But so, one of the things that we just launched, was a partnership with Monthend. I’ll just leave it there, it’s a great company who helps with your finances, and they’re specialized to Buildertrend. And so, we’ll throw some links in the show notes for that, because I think that can be a really great resource for people.

Tom Houghton:

Real quick. To try to sum this up, because there’s been so many great things. But I want to talk about the new development that you’re working on, and use that as a segue into our next episode a little bit. So, I know we chatted together on Instagram, a few weeks ago, and you guys mentioned that you’re building it on a new development area. You’ve got this, kind of, new opportunity there. Could you, kind of, tee that up a little bit for us? Tell me… Give me some details about it, but then also, I want to… I think there’s a lot of builders out there, you’re trying to find a new place to go, new land. It’s always a trick of figuring out where you’re going to build next. Can you share about that process a little bit?

Dallas Stobbe:

Yeah. So, there’s a development that we have been building, which I would view as the development in Saskatoon, and it’s pretty much full. It’s also a little tricky because the developer is also a builder. So, there’s a little bit of issues that come up when you’re like that. So, what I really, really like about Edgemont Park estates is that the developer isn’t a builder. So, he has one goal in mind, and that’s selling lots. So, we’re able to purchase lots from him. We’ve had fairly extensive discussions about promoting this development and pushing it, but we’ve put in a lot of work in, from our end, and marketing it. So, it’s getting a lot of traction. It’s a great… To me, it’s a really great development because there about half acre to one acre lots.

Dallas Stobbe:

There are lots that should be inside city limits in Saskatoon, but they’re not. They’re two minutes outside. But the city always does, kind of, smaller size stuff. But they’re priced great, they’re around 225 to 250 for the lots. And so, you get a lot that’s half acre, it’s not too much that you’re overwhelmed by the maintenance of your yard and all the plants or trees that you need to maintain, but you also get your own space and you move away from, kind of, the fences in-between everybody’s yards, and, kind of, drive into your garage, go in your house, and hide. It’s much more of a community-based, and the best part about Edgemont, for sure, is that all of the amenities are there already.

Dallas Stobbe:

The parks are set up, there’s a… Tennis courts are there, the hockey rink is there. The developer has been very, very intentional about investing in the development before building any houses. And usually… I don’t know the cases with you guys, but usually, what happens, you build the houses and everything comes in, and it might be two to five years later, and everybody sits there and grumbles, “When is the park going in? Because it said it was last year, and now it’s this year.” And you, kind of, lose steam when you do it that way. So, I see a lot of potential here, and a huge benefit that it could be really, really neat community. And we are very excited about Edgemont.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. That’s awesome. I think that is a great way of doing it, because I agree, we see that all the time here. Typically it’s, if you build it, they will come. But usually, that’s houses first and then all of the extra stuff that goes along with it, because they want to make sure that they’ve got the houses in, but I think, reversing it, it shows, you probably can sell the lots faster because all the other stuff is there already.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. We typically don’t get our hockey rinks for like…

Dallas Stobbe:

Forever.

Paul Wurth:

Forever, yeah. I love it, how it’s parks, tennis courts, hockey rinks.

Tom Houghton:

Well, and we talked about pickleball. They’re going to pickleball courts there or something?

Dallas Stobbe:

Yep.

Tom Houghton:

So, that’s great.

Paul Wurth:

Just need swimming pools here.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

That’s all good.

Tom Houghton:

Well, but they’re only… Yeah, it’s a seasonal thing.

Paul Wurth:

It’s a seasonal thing.

Dallas Stobbe:

If there’s no rank, there’s going to be a riot.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. We don’t want that.

Paul Wurth:

There’s a quote from the neighborhood.

Tom Houghton:

There is, yeah.

Dallas Stobbe:

That’s how you fundraise.

Tom Houghton:

Exactly. Awesome. Dallas, thanks for teeing that up for us. Again, listeners, stay tuned for the next episode, where we’re going to continue talking about that development and other aspects of the design world of Haven Builders. But Dallas, thanks for coming on and talking about business in general and how you’ve been running it. You guys been doing a great job, keep crushing it. We appreciate you working alongside Buildertrend to make your business better.

Dallas Stobbe:

Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for having me on. I really enjoyed my time, and you guys asked some great questions. It’s fun talking to you.

Paul Wurth:

Thanks man. Appreciate you.

Tom Houghton:

Thanks.

Dallas Stobbe:

Yeah. 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.”

Paul Wurth:

Appreciate you.