The advantage of training: How to ensure success with construction software

Charley Burtwistle:

What is up, everybody?

Welcome back to another episode of “The Building Code.” I’m Charley Burtwistle, alone in Omaha in the studio, but joined virtually with …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Hey, everybody. Zach here. I would never, ever miss an episode of “The Building Code.”

Charley Burtwistle:

Of course not.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Unlike someone that made me fly solo recently. No comment.

Charley Burtwistle:

I did. Or, sorry, not I, but some mysterious co-host that wasn’t Zach, did miss an episode earlier this week.

Zach Wojtowicz:

There was only two, so who are we talking about?

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, before we get too into today’s episode, I’ve been biting my tongue for a while on this because I wanted to do it live on the podcast. Zach Wojtowicz got another promotion recently, to director of customer success. So, everyone at home and listening online, let’s give a round of applause to Zach.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Hey, thanks man. I appreciate it. My first love is customer success, so it’s an honor to get to be part of the department, and I’m humbled, and if anyone in CS listens to this, I jokingly said I don’t deserve it, and I don’t think I do. But I love Buildertrend, and it’s been a great opportunity for me, and I’m excited.

Charley Burtwistle:

I’m obviously very happy for you, but I think what’s cool in getting to do this podcast with you is I get to see you interact with our builders, and our customers, and thought leaders across the industry from a front row seat. So, taking that and pulling it out from just this environment and displaying it onto to 20,000, 30,000 customers is going to do nothing but benefit Buildertrend, and the industry as a whole.

So, really happy for you. I had my fingers crossed that whole time, so I didn’t mean any of the nice things I said. We can fall back into our facade of not being friends now.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s right.

Well, today, speaking of our customers, we have an awesome episode with Josh Schaffer at Rog & Wilco out in Denver, Colorado. And he actually did an onsite visit, so I’m excited to talk to him a little bit. As a former onsite consultant, you know I have a huge fan club for our onsite consulting, too, because it’s my origin story is how I think of it in my head.

So, let’s get Josh in here and really get to it to talk about his experience with not only Buildertrend, his onsite consulting and really just all things construction.

Hey Josh, welcome to “The Building Code.” Really excited to have you on today. A little different for us. I’m virtual, so we’re going to figure this out together. Normally, Charley and I are here in the studio. Before we get into some of the topics today, we always like to ask our guests, what’s your story? Tell us about how you got in construction and tell us a little bit about your business.

Josh Schaffer:

Thanks for having me. I’m originally from Detroit, Michigan. Our company, though, is located out in Denver, Colorado. I left after high school, and I went to the Air Force Academy, joined the military, and I was a pilot in the military for 10 years.

I grew up in construction. My father owned a framing company and he got into building as well, so I grew up in the industry and then when I left for high school, or left for college, it was, “I’m never coming back to this ever again.” And then when I got out and separated, me and my wife had started flipping houses here in Denver, and then before I knew it, had gotten my license, and here we are. We had started flipping houses, and now we’re building our first apartment this year, and now we have employees, so many people think I’m a little crazy for not going and flying for the airlines and grinding it out in the construction development, real estate industry, but here we are, and I wouldn’t give it up for anything, so really happy.

Charley Burtwistle:

So, just to help our listeners with the timeline a little bit: graduated college, you mentioned you got a company now hiring employees, that’s Rog & Wilco.

What was the transition from doing your own thing, messing around, flipping houses with your wife, to founding the company and seeing it grow over the years?

Josh Schaffer:

I have that entrepreneurial mindset. So, timeline wise, I graduated in 2008, and I was in the military until I separated in 2020. We started our company in 2017. So, for two, three years it was just my wife and I like flipping houses on the side, stepping out of the jet and then going and working on the houses and things like that.

So, they would take longer than we can bang things out now, but once I separated in January of 2020 right when the pandemic kicked off. It was a little nerve-wracking, but I’d have that entrepreneurial mindset, and I saw just from my interactions with subcontractors and just the industry one, I saw just all of the opportunity that was available, especially in a market like Denver.

I saw the shortage, the lack of good, solid general contractors. So, for me it was just seeing that business opportunity and then, really, I’d worked for the man for 10 years, and was definitely over that, and wanted to work for myself, and I would’ve always regretted not trying it versus going to fly for the airlines or something like that, so here we are.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Did you end up in Colorado because of Colorado Springs and the Air Force Academy down there?

Josh Schaffer:

No, my last duty station, so my last base where I was assigned, was here in Denver at a company called … I did a liaison position as a test pilot for the civilian company that does a lot of the armor maintenance things for some of the special operations plans, which one, afforded me a lot of extra side time, because it was a small detachment, and I didn’t have a lot of oversight, so I was able to leave at two o’clock when I wasn’t flying to go work on houses.

But no, my last duty station was here in Denver, so we had already lived here. We had thought about moving back to Detroit, but there wasn’t that market, that hunger for good design, and things like that just weren’t there yet. And we just felt like Denver, all these people moving here, and just buyers were just gobbling up our stuff, and we were putting out a good product, so it really fit.

Charley Burtwistle:

So, then maybe tell us a little bit more. I was browsing the website before the podcast here, which looks beautiful by the way.

A little bit more about what you guys specialize in. It looks like you do a little bit of everything. You mentioned building an apartment this year as well, too, but what’s the Rog & Wilco bread and butter?

Josh Schaffer:

Our bread and butter is … Our business is 50/50 between client work and our own spec work. So, our bread and butter is a design-build project where whether we’re buying a piece of land or a client is coming to us with a piece of land and saying, “Hey, we want X.”

And it was new for us in that the company started out as just a construction company, and what we found was that we were the client’s first call. Where I would’ve thought usually that first call is to an architect of, “Hey, we want build a house.” Or “We want to remodel our house.” And we always felt that we found that we were the first call like, “Hey, we’ve got a year-old bungalow here in Denver, we want to remodel.” And it’s like, “Well, I’m not really your first call.” Because they’re asking for bids and things like, “Well I don’t have anything to bid against. There’s no plans, you’re not set up.”

So, we ended up doing a ton of due diligence for those clients, and helping them get set up and, “Okay, call, go meet with this architect first, and get us some plans, and we can consult along the way.” And we were doing a lot of that work for free. And so, just last year we started our own Rog & Wilco design where we do all of our own architecture and interior design, and that’s ran by my wife, Colleen. So, we fell into that. And then, we also have a development company that is really for our umbrella company over the construction and design company. So, our bread and butter is our own spec projects. I’ve never spent a dollar on any marketing advertising. So, social media and selling our own projects really kicked off just, “Hey, look what these guys can do.”

Because I was working against the grain when I would have people calling me, “Hey, can you build me a custom home?” It was like, “Well, I don’t have a ton of experience in that.” So, there was some clients that had to put their trust in me that I could get it done. So, it was always very helpful to have …

I’ve never done anything in someone else’s home that I haven’t done on one of my own projects myself, and that’s including any commercial stuff, which we’ve just started to get into. So, as far as being in a niche, we’re still trying to find that, find what our niche is. I’m not, to be completely honest, sure if I want to be building just custom homes for the next 20 years. Or do we really love this, the commercial side, and building an apartment? Where just from a revenue stream it building a 30-unit apartment, I’d have to build five or six houses to get that same type of revenue, where those bodies in terms of employees, project management supervision, I can stick a PM and a super on one job site for 18 months, versus having them spread out against four jobs, four or five job sites.

So, go back to your original question of “Hey, what’s your bread and butter?” I would honestly say that we’re still figuring that out a little bit. We’ve tried, honestly, everything. For me right now, especially on the client side, I’m a big problem solver. I love figuring things out. And so, we don’t turn down basement remodels, and we don’t turn down new custom homes. We flipped the tables a little bit during our due diligence process of making sure that relationship will work. I’m all about enjoying that experience of building someone a home, so I don’t want me or my people to become just these whipping posts that it’s “just build this,” and we like to have that relationship, and we really explain to our clients that you go from a couple of first dates to having kids overnight sometimes.

And so, you really have to make sure that relationship works out well and can we see having a beer in the backyard of this new home 18 months from now? Is that relationship … Because there’s going to be ups and downs of building someone a home or doing the full interior gut. There’s just so many surprises, and you’re talking to them every day, and there’s so many things to work, you have to be sure that this relationship is going to work.

So, we’ve definitely turned down a lot of work because I just didn’t see that good fit with that client. So, again, to go back to your original question, we’re not really sure yet what our direct exact niche is. We’re just honestly enjoying what we have going on right now. We’re fully booked out for 2023. We’ve already got some stuff planned for 2024. So, we’re all about, especially for me as an entrepreneur, finding that balance between enjoying life, especially during my time in the military, I was gone a lot. I did eight deployments in 10 years and it was a lot.

So, there’s this finding this good balance between … Me and my wife have four kids, and they’re entering sports and activities, and I don’t want to … We’re not 25, 26 anymore where we still have that hunger. And we’ll grind, but we can’t work 16 hours a day that, sometimes, it takes. So, for me and my wife, it’s about finding it’s a good balance, a work-life balance, and being entrepreneurs.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That makes a ton of sense. A couple of things sticking out to me, I think it’s a good thing to diversify the type of work you’re doing in construction. We’ve had a lot of guests on the podcast, economists even come in and say they see that a lot. You never know what part of the residential commercial market is going to go where. In 2008 the housing market goes down, and there was some impact on the commercial side, but a lot of builders started to take on more of that. And I’ve even worked with clients where they do have both as insurance. They always have continuous work. So, I think that’s really normal, makes a ton of sense.

The second thing that’s really interesting is we’re had a lot of different guests give us different perspectives on the construction lifestyle, so I really like your take on you were a man of service, you worked for the military, you sacrificed so much, and now construction’s a means to an end. Give your employees a great life, give you a great life, and I really love that mindset from a business strategy, which is like “This is a means to an end to give back to my community in a different way, but still be able to enjoy my time with my family.”

Josh Schaffer:

Exactly. And a lot of those things are just so connected, from my employees and like you mentioned, not only do I want to have a good work-life balance, I also don’t want my employees to work until eight o’clock every night, because then it leads to burnout. And the industry is hard enough as it is. We have to constantly get better and better at what we call “expectation management” with our clients.

And we have this growing list of, “Hey, make sure we talk about all of these things. So, if there’s a lesson learned from another project, make sure we’re telling these new clients like, ‘Hey, expect this.'” And especially logistical nightmares we were dealing with, because those things … Everyone always wants something to blame, or it needs to end somewhere, and it usually ends with the general contractor. So, it’s setting ourselves up so that we’re trying to avoid that bad conversation at all costs, which again, a lot of times now falls on my project managers. And it’s such a people industry, and from the business side of things, I always have that McDonald’s mindset of one day … I don’t want to sell my company but one day, maybe. And you have to set that up so that someone could come in and buy the company.

And it is such a people-driven industry and company. That is the value that we bring is my people. And I am fully aware of that, and it’s not lost on me, and I have to keep and train great people. If you ask any other builder, GC or even a plumber, what their biggest pain point is, it’s finding good people. And again, I even have to as the boss explain that to my clients when they’re upset, because a lot of them are high-net-worth individuals who operate at a high speed, and they expect certain things, and I have to help set those expectations sometimes of the struggles I face as an employer and keeping and finding good talent. And it’s hard enough to even pull people into the industry, man, let alone retain them. It’s the biggest struggle we have.

So, I think that work-life balance and that happiness, I’m trying to solve that of … Because there’s … What I found, “How do we make every day a good day?” And no one wants to look ahead to the week knowing that two of these five days are going to be terrible. It’s like you don’t want to start the week. That sounds terrible. So, when I’m watching football on Sunday night it’s always, “Are you looking forward to going to work on Monday?” Or it’s like, “Man, I don’t want my Sunday to ever end.” We’ve all been there.

Zach Wojtowicz:

The Sunday scaries are real.

Josh Schaffer:

Oh, they’re real.

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s amplified by where you work.

Josh Schaffer:

And it’s even worse if you got a client to call at nine o’clock on Monday morning and tell them, “Hey, you got a $10,000 change order coming their way.” That’s even a worse situation. That’s a bad situation to be in.

Charley Burtwistle:

It’s refreshing to talk to you and your perspective on not just your employee relationships, but your client relationships. Zach and I working at Buildertrend, we talk about home builders a lot, and I think it’s oftentimes easy for us to get lost in the obscurity of it all.

It’s like people build houses, they move on, they make money, they do another estimate, they make more money, they move on. And that’s why we love doing the podcast, is getting to talk to people like you. And I think just the mindset of “Can I envision them having a beer on the pack patio?” Or is this going to be … Buying a house and building a house, other than getting married and having kids and stuff is the largest thing you’ll do in your life. So, to be a part of that and make it special for that person is refreshing to hear for sure.

Josh Schaffer:

And we get that part. I tell that to our employees, it doesn’t seem like much at times, but I love working for maybe the blue-collar clients here in Denver that bought their house 15 years ago, and they’re going to do a line of credit or re-fi to pull that money out and it’s like this couple is trusting us with, a lot of the times now, our main projects are like 700, $800,000. That’s a lot of money. And sometimes we get numb to the fact that, “Oh okay, they have a million dollar budget.”

And it’s like, “Man, no, they’re trusting with you a million dollars.” And a lot of times these people work their butts off to save, and save, and buy this house at the right time, and they’re never going to do this again. For a lot of it, they’re never … They’re not going to go through this process maybe again until they retire, if that. So, we understand that, and appreciate it, and I don’t let you know our people ever forget that point. And that we try and deliver not only a good product, but just a really good experience for them.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Well speaking of relationships, I work on our Customer Success team. We brought you on today to talk about our onsite consulting service. I used to be an onsite consultant myself, and that was my favorite part about working in that service was those relationships you build. I still have builders that I talk to. So, you did it. Who was your consultant? I just want to give them a little shout-out and then tell us about your …

Josh Schaffer:

Chloe.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh, my girl!

Josh Schaffer:

She’s the bomb. Everyone loves her.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Chloe is, she is a superstar. She’s got the brightest of futures.

So, tell me about that experience, and what made you go with onsite consulting, and how did you come to the decision to go through that process to expedite your Buildertrend implementation?

Josh Schaffer:

Our story is probably very similar to a lot of other builders. We had signed up, our Buildertrend account was probably nearing two years old, and it was just six months ago that we did the onsite consulting. And so, when … Not that we were necessarily doing things wrong, it was as we grew and grew, you saw we had our Buildertrend account, we only had maybe two or three projects and weren’t utilizing all the functionality, but you can get away with it. But it’s like now we have 10, 12 projects going on.

So, it got to a point over the summer where my PMs are just on me like, “Oh we need a better process. There’s got to be a better process.” And for me, I’m a prideful guy. I let my pride get in the way for probably six months of, “No, we can figure this out, we don’t have to.”

So we had done a year of just trying to work our way through it, until we got to a point my senior PM and I, Cassie, went to Buildertrend on the Road that it was hosted here in Denver, and we learned about the onsite consulting and we talked to, I forget who the salesman was, but it was like, “Oh, this is exactly what we need, exactly what we need.” And once we started that Onsite Consulting with just that due diligence period where we’re meeting once or twice a week, which a lot of it was just music to our ears of, “Hey, we’re not alone.” And Chloe reminding us of that, “Hey, you guys aren’t alone.” And it was so refreshing to really hear from her, “Hey, this is what other builders do, and you guys aren’t alone.” And it was just good to hear.

We thought it was doom and gloom of like, “Oh, how do we fix, how do we make it better?” And Chloe’s like, “Oh, it’s no big deal.” It’s like, “You just do this, and this. And it was a really a mindset shift where we dealt with that a lot in the military, but here that analogy held true of it, Buildertrend can’t like be customized to every single builder. Everyone has to learn the tools and how it works, how it’s connected, and then we can customize it just the way we operate to use the functionality.

And that’s what I had gotten to, and one of my first conversations with Chloe was like, “I know we have to make this work, because I’ve been out there, I’ve been searching. I’m a systems and processes guy, and I want this to be clean and there isn’t another solution for our size company. There’s just not another good solution.” Through that whole process with her, it was like literally we came out the other side of the tunnel almost as a different company. And Buildertrend’s not paying me to say this, but it’s so different now. And the struggles that my PMs …

And they feel better, they’re more confident in the job they do, they know how everything is connected, and it’s just almost like a light switched. I don’t know, it just worked, and it worked out really well. And then for any other builders or companies out there using it that don’t want to take that next step because of the cost that’s maybe associated with it, it’s worth it. It’s worth it. And it just helped us tremendously. It helped us tremendously.

And now we’re really, really firing on all cylinders and honestly, it’s so nice. Then one of the outcomes on my end is once we get clicking, and my supers are filling out their daily logs like they should, and connecting everything, it’s such an enjoyable experience for me as the boss. Now, that’s the first thing I do in the morning is go in and read all the daily logs. ‘Cause I try to tell the PMs “I don’t want to talk to you guys every day. I love you guys, but I don’t want to talk to you every day. Or we can use this system, and you can lean on me and use me when you need to.” And without Buildertrend and things, little things like that, that’s not even possible. It’s back to texts, and emails, and phone calls.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, obviously huge shout out Chloe.

Of course she listens to every episode I’m sure, but if she doesn’t, she’ll definitely have to check this one out.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m texting her right after this just give her the heads up. So, just so you know.

Charley Burtwistle:

One thing that you mentioned in there that we glossed over, Josh, with the onsite consulting, and again I don’t want to make this super salesy pitchy, but I do think it’s important to call out is it’s not just the day or two that they come out to your business and location, but it’s all the pre-work, too.

Could you maybe talk to the listeners just a little bit about what that pre-work and the recurring sessions are leading up to the actual visit?

Josh Schaffer:

I would argue that yes, we did, I want to say about six weeks of pre-work, and then it was the two days of onsite consulting, and then it even extended past that for I think another three, four weeks. Where, as we implemented the things we did that we set in place during the onsite period, that follow-up with Chloe of, “Hey, how’s this working? Do we need to pivot at all?”

So, I would say the whole thing was two months long. I was really impressed with the pre-work that was done and that we got all the hard work done. And when I say hard work, really digging into how we do things so that when Chloe was here in person, our PMs, and me, Cassie, we had specific questions that we could really dial things in, and we weren’t wasting anyone’s time. So, it never at any point turned into this educational, where it was more of an informative session. It never got there.

And I could see if we didn’t have the pre-work, that period, those two days you could just got lost and end up going down a bunch of rabbit holes, and teaching people how to use estimates, and bid packages. That wasn’t the point. And I think …

I’m in a networking group and that’s when I advertise or promote the onsite team, Onsite Consulting piece of Buildertrend, I always caveat, “Make sure that you and your employees know the system really well, so that if you’re going to spend this money, and someone’s going to come out and do this training, that the team is set up, and what you want to get out of it.”

And then for us that pre-work was so important and to get through all the grind work of, “Hey how do you sign on a lead?” And it was nice just to get all that over with, and then just Chloe asking questions of us, “Oh I’ve never thought about how we do that.” And it’s getting all that out of the way to where even those conversations during onsite consulting wasn’t a 1v1 with me and Chloe. We had already worked out all those things. So, Chloe came just prepared to really dig in and focus on the pain points and how do we navigate them.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Josh, we hear this a lot as I’ve worked with a lot of customers, and it’s really interesting ’cause I think there is a point of no return where you really commit. Some people do the onsite, too, some people figure it out on their own ’cause they’ve been paying for the subscription for two years, and similar story. Sometimes it’s both.

I think what I’m always interested in, because I think you joke about having a lot of pride like that’s not a common trait in contractors. I hate to stereotype, but they’ve had a process that they’ve done for a long time, it’s made them successful, and when they come to a software vendor, and they’re like, “Hey, you’re going to have to change a little bit.” Their reactions can be pretty, “Oh really? I thought I could just get it to do everything I want.” And so, I’m curious, in your experience, Chloe’s uncovering these things in her process, how much did you actually have to change fundamental structures of your business to make Buildertrend fully work for you?

Josh Schaffer:

So, I didn’t have to change too much. In the military we say, “If you had enough bananas you could teach the monkey to fly.” And so …

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m using that in a meeting next week.

Charley Burtwistle:

I’m putting that on a t-shirt.

Josh Schaffer:

And it’s so true. People look at me flying in a jet and being like, “Oh my God, you just must be the smartest person in the world.” All these guys doing this. It’s like that’s not it. That’s the one thing the military is good at is training. Training 22-year-old lieutenants and handing them over a $30 million plane to fly, and they get it, and that’s taxpayer money. So, me coming in, and the way we were flipping houses is like I’m not running my business by the seat of my pants, Excel sheets, Google Drive, four different … AirTable and all these other things. I ain’t doing it.

And so, I’m a big believer, and what really I loved about Buildertrend in the beginning, was the to-do’s and the checklists, because I’m a firm believer that even though every house is very custom, it’s different. The process is the same. So, I’m a big believer that I can build a 300-step checklist to build a house. And that’s beautiful about building with Buildertrend is it had that, and I just I globbed onto that, where it’s like “Oh this fits how I want to do business.” And even if it doesn’t take … We always thought that and still a little bit, our subcontractors are a bit of a limiting factor in really allowing the system to work at its full capacity. We’re always struggling with, “Hey stop bothering me for when you’re going to do your rough-in plumbing. Check Buildertrend.”

And that’s a bit of a process, but we’re even working through it, and I find that after a little bit… And we invite our subcontractors to the office. It’s like, “Hey, I know you’re not technologically savvy but hey, bring your computer in. I will take time out of my day to show you how to open up this bid package request in your email. The plans are right there, and then you come back in, submit it. I don’t even need you to open up a Buildertrend account, but I do need you to bid like this.”

And it’s helped. We’re somewhat stern. It’s like, “Hey, if you don’t want to do business our way, then, I’m sorry, but we can’t do business with you.” And we have let go of a lot of subs where it’s like, “Hey, we have this new standard now, and it’s the expectation of our clients, and we’re going to have that same expectation as with you.” And then that’s what separates the good subcontractors from a business, because there’s a lot of good craftsmen, there’s not a lot of good business owners. And sometimes they forget that, and they lose that, and we’re big on documentation and being organized. And I’m not going to chase people down for payments to make sure you’re getting paid, and we’ll use the system in the process, and let’s allow those things to be simple, so we can focus on being out in the field more and doing the stuff that matters.

Charley Burtwistle:

I feel like the only other question I have for you, then, is what’s next? I feel like you did the onsite, you learned a ton, you established the processes, you’re hiring more people.

What’s next on your to-do list, or what are you looking forward to the most in the upcoming year?

Josh Schaffer:

In the upcoming year, I think it’s, for me, personally, getting back to a point where I’m just working eight hours a day, putting more trust into my employees now that we have a good system and process through Buildertrend in place and letting that work itself out. Continuing to grow the business in terms of maybe stepping into more commercial work.

We just hired our first bookkeeper, so that’s been a real joy and making that connection between say QuickBooks, and Buildertrend, and maybe fixing that process a little bit. And that’s one thing … My hope for Buildertrend is they incorporate more of that financial side, because I would say right now we use Buildertrend, Gusto and QuickBooks, and it’s like how do you make it even better? It’s like I feel like you guys have figured out like 85, 90% of it. So, that’s my hope for the best.

I think Buildertrend is a lot residential based, so we’re still working through how does it work on the commercial side? And while I have a high hopes that it’s going to be all fine, but we’re right there. And I think, overall, if I say one last thing, it’s like anything, and someone said this at the on the road thing, it’s like you’re going to get out of this what you put into it. This doesn’t happen by itself. Buildertrend does not make a disorganized company organized. You got to put the work in, you got to set up things correctly.

Do that, put that eighty, a hundred twenty hours in now. Set your templates up and do those things because then … I’m in that place right now, where we did do all that hard work, and it feels so good. Everything is just really clicking right now. And so, I think we’re excited for 2023. Looking for a little more sunshine. But we’re excited.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Josh we can talk for three hours of your time. This has been an amazing conversation that it just flowed right on by.

We have to call it for today, but is there any last parting words you can give our listeners about recommendations on how to get started with Buildertrend?

Josh Schaffer:

Reach out, reach out. Go to your website, reach out.

I will say that the customer service and the access that you have available to even down to my super, it is bar none the best I’ve ever dealt with even during my time in the military. So, even if I know the answer, sometimes, to a question from a PM, I’ll force them to just log on and ask you guys, and that’s just so that they get comfortable with that. So, I think it’s fairly easy to reach out, and I can most assuredly say people won’t regret it.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, Josh, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for coming on today. I hope to see you again soon.

Josh Schaffer:

Thanks, fellas. I appreciate it.

Zach Wojtowicz:

All right, Charley. We just had Josh in here talking about all things in his business and his Buildertrend experience with Onsite Consulting. And I’m going to actually take it, usually I kick it to you, but I’m grabbing it for myself.

Charley Burtwistle:

Wow. Okay. It must be that giant coffee that you drank throughout the course of the interview.

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s the director title. It’s the whole thing just going to my head.

That was awesome. We obviously talked with Josh a lot about his business, and we always talk to our customers about our business, but for whatever reason I felt like we got into some topics that maybe we hadn’t even planned to talk about today.

And my big takeaway is, this is a common theme coming up again and again, it’s like a hiring strategy, the number one problem that people face is getting people to, good people that you can rely on. And hopefully our listeners who listen to “The Building Code” understand that those challenges are not isolated, but having a process around it and really having a standard.

That really stuck out to me when he was talking about his subcontractors and that he’s turned people away ’cause they don’t follow the process. And that takes a lot of sacrifice in your own workflow and processes. So, really, really interesting to get into those things. And obviously, Chloe coming up, I was literally … it may have been the coffee, but I was so jacked. I know I’m on Zoom, so maybe my face isn’t on YouTube, but I just had the goofiest smile ’cause I can see myself, and she’s incredible. Our onsite team does an amazing job, and it just fires me up, which is why I wanted to take the intro.

What were your takeaways for the outro?

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, Zach, I think you just about nailed them all there.

For people that are listening and not watching on YouTube, Zach had like a five gallon mug of coffee that he drank throughout the course of that.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Shout-out to caffeine, baby.

Charley Burtwistle:

Josh was great. I think the only thing that stuck out to me that you didn’t already hit on was the way I asked what, seemingly, was an easy question that turned out to be quite diverse, is what’s your bread and butter?

And it was so fascinating to hear him talk through how and why they don’t, or I shouldn’t say they don’t have a bread and butter, they have about 10 different bread and butters. And I think you made the comment when we had Mark Boud, the economist on that was one of the things that he recommended a small to medium size home builders do, is diversify their business, see if there’s smaller commercial problem, or commercial projects, that you can take on. See if you can get into the remodeling space. And that’s just going to not only increase your client base for the next round of projects, and word of mouth, and things like that, but also just make you a more solid foundation business to be able to weather all sorts of different storms.

So, Josh was on. I feel like everyone, or Nicole, does such a great job booking all of our guests. Every person that we talk to I’m fascinated by. So, I think that was about it. You got anything else?

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s it. Just make sure you like, comment, subscribe, check us out on YouTube. Sometimes we’re in the studio, sometimes we’re not. You never know where we’re going to be.

So, thank you so much for listening, and we’ll check you guys next time.

Charley Burtwistle:

I’m Charley Burtwistle.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m Zach Wojtowicz.

Charley Burtwistle:

See you then.