Finding success through learning: Why Buildertrend University is worth the investment
On this episode of “The Building Code,” Zach and Charley are chatting with Chris Fox, director of design and sales at Fox Home Innovations, LLC, in Manhattan, Kansas. Chris is a Kansas native and started the company in 2009. He’s passionate about construction work and began learning at a very young age, working for his father’s tile business.
Tune in to the full episode to hear more about Chris’ experience at Buildertrend University and why he sees the value of attending our two-day educational conference more than once.
What’s a tangible takeaway you brought back to your office after Buildertrend University?
“One of the things that stuck out to us was the estimating or proposal side. That’s the lens we looked through the entire time we were there [at Buildertrend University]. So, fast-forward to now, and we’ve got new cost codes. I mean, we tripled the amount of cost codes we created and those are being implemented literally today or next week. So, we created a giant list of cost catalogs and set them apart by different brackets of projects and different types of projects. And that’s going to lead us into templates. So, by the end of the summer, our goal is to have all those cost catalogs built out.”
Has attending Buildertrend University motivated you to make changes to your processes?
“The idea of bringing sales proposals and estimating closer together is going to help us and our client experience. It’s also going to make us more efficient. It’s a big goal, for sure. It’s a lot of work, but if we weren’t there in person at Buildertrend University, we probably would’ve never had the motivation to make that change. But also, we wouldn’t have been able to see the path in front of us.”
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Zach Wojtowicz:
Hey everybody.
Charley Burtwistle:
Hey everybody. Welcome to “The Building Code.”
Zach Wojtowicz:
Hey.
Charley Burtwistle:
I’m Charley Burtwistle.
Zach Wojtowicz:
And I’m Zach Wojtowicz.
Charley Burtwistle:
I think we can keep that intro.
Zach Wojtowicz:
I like that. They don’t have a choice if we don’t shoot it, that’s what they get.
Charley Burtwistle:
True. This is the only one we have.
Zach Wojtowicz:
As we creep to more and more episodes, they just be get more and more unraveled. What’s the hundred mark going to be like for us?
Charley Burtwistle:
Gosh, we got to be getting close. No, we’re not. We are like 120. Okay. Well, we are recording with a guest today with this very exciting, the world doesn’t revolve around Zach and I … Zach, who do we have today?
Zach Wojtowicz:
Today, we have Chris Fox out of Manhattan, Kansas Fox Home Innovations. Chris and I have met numerous times actually, so I’m excited to catch up actually as recently as these last few weeks when we talked to him in front of our entire company about kind of just their perspective about Buildertrend. So, now we get a little more safe zone can edit it, not live.
Charley Burtwistle:
Yeah, that was actually very cool. I hate, hate, hate to give Zach compliments, but he did a really good job. He interviewed Chris in front of, like you said, our entire company, everyone tuned in. It was a proud co-host moment to watch him fly solo and absolutely kill it. And he was able to because Chris I feel like was very easy to talk to.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Yes.
Charley Burtwistle:
We had another customer on there, too. They both did great. But no, I’m excited and get a chance to talk to Chris and share some of the insights and ideas, and feedback that he had for Buildertrend with all of our listeners as well. So, without further ado, let’s get Chris in here.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Hey, Chris, welcome to “The Building Code.” It’s great to see you. Thanks for being here.
Chris Fox:
Yeah, glad to be here guys. Good to see you guys as well.
Charley Burtwistle:
So, this is the first time being on the podcast for you, but I was actually just watching you two days ago. Well, you and Zach did a live with customer presentation for our full company. So, I was tuning into that one. So, very excited …
Chris Fox:
Very cool.
Charley Burtwistle:
… to get a chance to officially meet you, Chris. But for those of them, our listeners that were not watching that obviously because they don’t work at Buildertrend, tell us a little bit about yourself and your company.
Chris Fox:
Yeah, great. So, I have a company called Fox Home Innovations. We are down in Manhattan, Kansas, so just south of Buildertrend headquarters by about two and a half hours. So, definitely in the Midwest here. Small community, about 50, 60,000 people when college is in session, kind of the town is known for Kansas State University. It’s kind of the big hubbub that brings everybody here, that sort of thing. But been in business going on about 14 years now. We are a design-build firm, so we focus on residential design and construction primarily remodels. We’ll do a new home probably once a year. We’ll do a large custom or something like that but do approximately 65 to 70 projects a year. Typically, average project size, anywhere from about 100 to $150,000 on average is kind of what we see. So, my business partner, Matt, he runs the kind of overall operations and acts as our general manager.
And then my position is in the sales side of things. So, I kind of help lead the front-end team when it comes to sales and estimating and focus on all of the legion and some of the front end marketing activities with our marketing person. That’s where I live on a day-to-day basis is the sales role. So, yeah, we have about 20, 25 people on staff that’s changing every day it seems like in this world, but several open positions now hoping we can get those filled. But we strive to self-perform all the work that we do. That’s kind of what our big goal is. Big vision is move towards self-performing close to 90% of all the work that we produce just to create that sense of control around the project as well as control the end client experience. That’s what we’re really big focused on.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Chris, before we go too deep, I want to run down after how this interview goes versus the other one. I think there’s a variable here that might distract us a little bit.
Chris Fox:
Okay.
Charley Burtwistle:
Me?
Zach Wojtowicz:
Yeah, it’s Charley, just saying.
Charley Burtwistle:
Yeah, thanks.
Zach Wojtowicz:
So, we like to give each other a hard time then really good love. Love the Buildertrend shirt by the way, if you’re watching on.
Chris Fox:
That was actually accident. I was mowing earlier, and I couldn’t change and I grabbed my thing and my wife’s like, “Do you realize you’re wearing a Buildertrend shirt for your thing?” I’m like, “Oh, look at that.”
Zach Wojtowicz:
Look at that on brand.
Chris Fox:
They tried brand. They’re super comfy though.
Charley Burtwistle:
They are.
Zach Wojtowicz:
That’s a good one. They just-
Chris Fox:
Super, super comfy.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Yeah, perfect mowing shirt, really. You and I have got a lot of FaceTime lately with not on the interview. We met when you were in Omaha for Buildertrend University, and you’d been before, so how was the second time?
Chris Fox:
It was a lot of fun. Definitely a lot of fun. A lot of changes. I was actually, I’ve got another Buildertrend shirt somewhere. It says Buildertrend University. What does it say? Landmark 2018 or something like that.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Vintage.
Chris Fox:
So, we were the very, very first Buildertrend University or BTU as you guys call it now. And seeing the diverse change between now and then has been awesome. So, a lot of fun. It was really, really cool to dive in to see what’s new and all that good stuff. Kind of a funny story were when we first came out there, it was about six months after you guys moved into the building you guys were currently in. And it was not done yet, and there was still kind of stuff going on everywhere and everybody’s trying to figure it out and you guys were kind of growing into the space, but it seemed like it was like you’re a hotdog in the hallway type of thing where you’re just like, there’s a little bit of people and then all this room to expand. And then now seeing you guys now this past spring where you guys are busting at the seams, it’s pretty cool to see. So …
Zach Wojtowicz:
That’s hilarious because we’re so full in my department that I akin it to a school cafeteria that ran out of room, we like desks and by hallways now and stuff. I was like, “Ah, what happened? I missed the hotdog days, Chris.”
Charley Burtwistle:
Yeah.
Chris Fox:
Right, right.
Zach Wojtowicz:
We’re booming. Yeah, that’s awesome. And I think you’ve said that you’re planning to come up with your team just to come visit as well, right?
Chris Fox:
Yeah, so we run EOS as our lively blood, the way that we run our business, that type of thing. So, we do an annual in a quarterly, every quarter basically with our leadership team. And so, we were actually just discussing this past week. I was trying to leverage the relationships that I’ve created with you guys and said, “Hey, can we get a conference room for a couple of days? Can we come hang out?” And your team impression was like, “Well, absolutely, definitely, let’s do it.” So, probably this fall I’m hoping to bring the four of us up and just kind of spend a couple of days, maybe a day with some of you guys’ team doing some stuff and some really cool collab marketing stuff is what I’m hoping. And then also do our offsite during that time too. So …
Charley Burtwistle:
Gosh, that’s awesome, Chris. I mean, you’re just going to have to maybe get a desk at Buildertrend here …
Chris Fox:
Yeah, cool.
Charley Burtwistle:
… sooner or later.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Builder in residence.
Charley Burtwistle:
Yeah, absolutely.
Chris Fox:
Here you go. I like that.
Charley Burtwistle:
I’d love to hear, it’s fun hearing about your first time at BTU, and I remember those office days as well. I’d love to hear how your onboarding journey has gone with Buildertrend from where you first kind of decided we need a software solution to now just rolling up and renting out the boardroom for a couple of days and being an absolute all-star.
Chris Fox:
It’s kind of funny. So, we were actually co-construct users beforehand back in 2013, I think is what it was, 2012, 2013, right around there. And we were a very, very young company in its infancy. The one thing we recognized being young at that time, 21 years old. So, looking at the future and understanding, “Hey, if we’re going to be in this industry, technology needs to be a part of it.” And there’s got to be something there. There’s got to be that connection there and let’s just recognize the fact that it’s around us all the time. It’s changing all the time. And we got to work with it, not against it. As many of the other construction trades in our industry at that point in time was looking at it as and so, we tried co-construct for a little bit there and we were a company of four people.
We were very small, and it seemed to work great, but we had didn’t have processes, we didn’t really good at holding each other accountable. We didn’t even have job descriptions. We were just getting work done just right in the trenches every day. And we recognized as we grew really quick. And next thing now, 2000 I think we became a member. Was it 2014, Zach is what we looked at?
Zach Wojtowicz:
Yeah. Yep.
Chris Fox:
Because fall October of 2014. Anyway, I think we looked at it at that time and we were up to eight to 10 employees, and we recognized that no one’s really doing what they’re supposed to do on the technology side, and it’s kind of a mess. And so, we need to create, we need to a reset. So, we looked at that point in time and said, “Okay, if there’s a time to change anything, let’s do it now.” And at that point in time, that’s when Buildertrend was really getting a lot of traction, a lot of growth.
And so, we were like, “You know what? Let’s just start from scratch, Buildertrend’s where we want to be. Let’s make that switch now.” Let’s let that create some buy-in for the rest of the team and saying, “Hey, this is new.” So, forget everything else that we did in the past. Forget all the pain points and the things we were and were supposed to be doing and not doing that sort of thing. And here’s chance to start from one. Let’s really, really get simple. And that’s kind of where it started. We started with the schedule side of things, not necessarily at the project level, but the global level because we were growing so quickly, and we were looking at all these projects and one of this idea of doing what we say we’re going to do, and what’s biggest complaint I hear from customers is just, “Hey, I don’t know what’s happening or I don’t know when my project’s going to start and this and that.” And if we don’t know that issue ourselves, then we can’t tell you what it is because trust me, if we knew we would, we’d tell you.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Right.
Chris Fox:
So, we started out very simple using that as a schedule base. We actually created a job called Crew Layout, and every color is a different employee and a different job, and it all lays out. We still use that today. We use every other function of it, but our crew layout job, so to speak, is paramount to us in the way that we use it. So, that was the first piece of it. And then as we started growing, we just started taking bite size chunks of it with doing the selection side of things, doing the sales and proposals. That was a big step for me ’cause that’s the primarily my function. So, that was a huge step, getting out QuickBooks and jumping into the CRM and using the proposal side of things to where we get to the point where we’re doing full cost accounting, cost of completes, job costing, and all of that stuff as weird are today. So, it’s definitely been a journey. It’s been a fun journey. It’s been a hard work ethic put into it to get there, but it’s been really cool. So …
Zach Wojtowicz:
How’s it been worth it?
Chris Fox:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. 100%. I think I was telling you on our deal the other day, describe the value of what Buildertrend software does for you and your team. And I tell everybody this when we onboard them, because we spend a half day talking about Buildertrend walking through it and onboarding our new team members and this and that. And the way that I always tell people is, you got to recognize, this may feel different than you. It may feel hard to grasp and figure out where things are at, but understand, if we didn’t have this, we would have to have at least another full-time employee on staff just to keep our stuff straight. So, because of that, that’s tremendous value right there. So …
Zach Wojtowicz:
That’s what I’d love to hear.
Charley Burtwistle:
Yeah, I was going to say, Zach, there has to be music to your ears.
Zach Wojtowicz:
It is.
Charley Burtwistle:
Like the way he talks about onboarding Buildertrend.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Yeah, it would’ve been …
Chris Fox:
I’m a sales guy.
Zach Wojtowicz:
It would’ve been embarrassing if it was like, “What’s the value in front of the whole company?” We’re like, “We’re not really sure.” I’m like, “Oh, I’m about way digging that one out. I don’t know. What’s the time you saved?”
Charley Burtwistle:
I was …
Chris Fox:
Right.
Charley Burtwistle:
I am kind of constantly rooting for Zach’s downfall. So, I was hoping that you were just going to cancel your subscription live right in front of a thousand employees. And Zach …
Chris Fox:
That was funny because when I first got on there, so what’s the biggest joke that we can play on your team? How do we got all this captured audience here? It’s like, “Here’s an opportunity I’m feeling.” And Megan’s like, “Nah, I don’t think so.”
Charley Burtwistle:
Oh, yeah, because you had Longo in the room with you, right?
Zach Wojtowicz:
Yeah, she was sitting across me. It would’ve been like, “Yeah, so are we going to talk about what you said to me at the karaoke bar or something?” And I’ve been like, “Ah.”
Chris Fox:
You’re good.
Zach Wojtowicz:
“Ah, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Chris Fox:
Good times.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Yeah. Yeah. We got to keep it. Well, I’ll tell you the real story after we’re not being recorded, right?
Chris Fox:
There you go. There you go.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Well, I do like to ask. So, you go to Buildertrend University and what’s a tangible takeaway that for your last session that you guys came back to your office and it was like, “All right, we’re going to improve this or change this.”
Chris Fox:
Yeah, so the biggest thing that we recognize, so the team that went up was myself, our new salesperson, our estimator. And so, the three of us sit on a team together in sales and estimating and naturally coming to the estimating course or focus track, so to speak, is to learn what’s new and different. There was a lot of things that have changed since I went through and learned that type of stuff years ago changed for the better for sure. But one of the things that stuck out to us was like we were doing all the estimating or proposal side, and what we thought things were going to cost and estimate, and then that became a tangible project or a sold project, we would transfer to all the estimating side. What we didn’t realize is that our estimator was like, “Yeah, I don’t believe any of this. I’m deleting it all and starting over.”
And so, it was myself and Shane, our sales guy and Gino were sitting at, we went to a really nice dinner before everything got started, and Gino’s telling us this, and Shane and I are just like, “What? Really? You’re just deleting it all and starting over.” That’s the opportunity. How do we make that not happen? And so, that’s a lens we looked through the entire time we were there. So, fast-forward to now, and we’ve got new cost codes. I mean, we tripled the amount of cost codes that we created and got those are being implemented I think literally today or next week. I mean, we’re right there on that. We brainstormed cost catalog. So, we created a giant list of cost catalogs and set them apart by different brackets of projects and different types of projects and that type thing.
And that’s going to kind of lead us into templates. So, by the end of the summer, our goal is to have all those cost catalogs built out. They’ll probably be close to 60, 70, 80 of those cost catalogs that will make up several different proposal templates with the goal of when we sell a project to do a proposal for a project, we’re using things that the estimator bought into and had a part of creating, so when he gets it, he’s like, yeah, that makes sense. And here’s a small tweak here, here’s a small tweak here, that type of thing. But the idea of bringing sales proposals, estimating closer together is going to help us and our client experience is also going to make us more efficient. So, that’s kind of our big takeaway. It’s a big hairy audacious goal, for sure. It’s a lot of work. You guys going to go into it, but if we weren’t there in present BTU, we probably would’ve never, not only had the motivation to make that change. But also, just been aware to be able to see that path in front of us. So …
Zach Wojtowicz:
Ambitious, too. The big stuff went and tripled your cost codes that’s pretty monumental.
Chris Fox:
Yeah.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Was that through your one-on-one session or through a class? What kind of …
Chris Fox:
It was more or less just the three of us.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Yeah.
Chris Fox:
“Hey, look what we learned today.” It’s like, “Hey, we need to do this.” Because we kind of took in the 80-20 rule as we’ve grown and since we self-perform a lot of work, our biggest cost code errors come around labor cost codes because they’re clocking in in the field and this and that. And they might do a deck in the morning and then frame the window in the afternoon and how is that accurate and this and that. So, we just were really simple about it. I said, “Okay, if you have a hammer and bags on, you’re outside. It’s exterior framing labor. If you’re inside interior.” We’re just very, very simple in that way. And that worked for a really, really good point in time. And from a job costing standpoint, it’s still accurate.
So, labor in labor out, labor estimated versus labor actual, it’s all there. But what we were missing is just that empirical data to look back on and say, “Hey, on average it takes us four hours to do this task or whatever the case may.” And so, we know as we go in the future, we’re going to need that. So, this is kind of the setup to make that happen. So, most of the cost codes that we added were really just labor codes. So, there’s going to be some accountability and a lot of training and hand holding and probably a six-to-nine-month process down the road until we can look at all that in our system and realize that that’s really actually working. But we knew we need to make that shift.
Charley Burtwistle:
Well, it sounds like, I mean this, that’s maybe the third or fourth example already this interview, how you just talk about how your company’s constantly innovating. And I was just clicking around in your account in our CRM, too, and I mean every new product we roll out or looking for people to beta, it seems like you guys are always kind of chopping at the bit to get first access to that. How do you manage, and I’d love to get your perspective and maybe advice to listeners on how you manage continuing progress and continuing to work and get work done, but also continually improving tripling cost codes, for example, or asking about a Buildertrend financing program. Or I think you mentioned on the call the other day, you’re in the beta for the new CRM integrations and things like that. How do you find time to do both, improve and maintain?
Chris Fox:
It’s tough. Yeah, it’s so tough. I think that’s probably where our biggest challenge is is capacity, and it’s really a capacity at all levels. And we’ve gotten really good over the years of maximizing our resources and primarily maximizing our human capital. We look at these strategic positions that we’re going to start bringing out, especially those middle management layers. That’s where we’re trying to gain a lot of capacity for the things that you’re talking about. So, right now, we just hired a production manager. So, someone that is not my business partner that’s going to oversee all general GM over the entire company, but yet have someone focus on just production all the time. So that, yeah, 50% of their job, they could still be in the field coaching their team, this and that. But then there’s this other capacity to dive into how do we do the day logs better?
How do we do scheduling better? And then we’re next thing now opposed to the projects that we’re doing for customers. We’re also starting to incorporate projects for ourselves just as, just like your guys’ rollout your products, same type of thing. It’s like a product owner in essence. It’s a lend that from the tech world, if it so to speak, is just taking it and saying, “Hey, our goal this year is to accomplish this task, and this is the vehicle to get there. We just don’t know where the way is and the road map to that.” So, creating capacity to do that. So, we’re doing that by finding and adding positions to do that, but then also prioritizing. So, recognizing we were just brought a new salesperson on who is in a fantastic people person, he’s going to do extremely well, but he doesn’t have construction knowledge.
And so, how do we bridge the gap for him to be able to make a construction proposal on cost and scope of work for $100,000 kitchen without that level of experience of being there, done it. And so, we recognize, “Oh, cost catalog, small, it’s in bits pieces. That’s the tool for making that happen.” And so, right now that salesperson, he is primarily doing decks and bathrooms. So, our cost catalog started with that. And so, that gives those tools. So, some of the integrations and the work that you’re talking about is coming out of necessity and just creating those tools as we grow. So, some of them can be a little bit more reactive and proactive, but that just comes down to the capacity and prioritization, if that makes sense.
But yeah, it’s tough. I think every new feature or things that comes out, I would love to just go down a rabbit hole and kind of figure this out. Some of the custom reporting stuff that you’re doing. I got a call with Brett and all I want to do is just spend a week on some of that stuff, but just it’s not a priority right now in the fall and wintertime when I know that there’s going to be capacity there, then that’s something we’ll kind of look at. But it’s all that balance, which I guess nothing ever is going to balanced, but that we sure try.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Well, I think that kind of leads into my next question, too, is we always like to ask people who have made it. What do you tell someone that’s maybe flashback to 2015 when you were getting started with Buildertrend, how do you make it? Part of what I’m hearing is you do have to prioritize. It’s important to have a plan to be disciplined. What else would you tell a new user, someone who’s trying to establish processes, how do you stay focused? What’s that process look like?
Chris Fox:
Yeah, I think it’s really, really tough. But what kind of drives me is I’m a person of, I like to have control. And when I don’t have control, I don’t have the information. I just don’t feel safe. And that’s really applied to really anything in my life. And it’s one of the biggest reasons why I probably started a business is because I wanted to be able to create an experience for others and myself that I would have control and I understand it and what I expected to happen, happened. And that’s comes back down to me as a person and just what’s important to me and Buildertrend has kind of filled that gap for me in a way. I will tell you that the most rewarding thing that I have, or the way that I look and get a quick snippet of my business is through Buildertrend.
So, from an owner level, I can be anywhere in the world. And my activity screen, whatever that looks like, I got to call whatever that name of it is. Now, I’m going to pull it up because it’s going to the activity feed. Seeing that on every single thing, what customers paid, what this is, what invoice was done, what change orders signed off on, what all that stuff does, it just makes you feel safe. And from a business level, the risks that we’re taking, being having all that in one spot that I can scroll back to is extremely important. And we’ve made some changes where daily logs are not just like what happened on site. Every customer interaction gets a data log. Every single touchpoint, every single meeting point. So, I’m a salesperson and I see, “Hey, I sold the Smith project, or whatever the case may be.”
I know I can follow that through without having a conversation, without having a meeting. Anytime plans are updated, I can check out plans, and I can say so in tune with my business without spending so much time and resource away from my team members, it’s everything. And so, if I would say, if that’s the carrot that I would dangle out to any new users, that’s the thing. I’d say, “Look at this because this is what you want, but recognize the only way that works is if you go it all in.” If you’re just coming and saying, “I’m into this.” And you put the work ethic into it and recognize it probably will take you two years to get to that point, but it’s worth it. And so, that’s kind of how it would be my answer to that question. That’s something I look at every single day, multiple times a day. And it is super important. And it’s probably the biggest why that I have. The why we stay with Buildertrend.
Charley Burtwistle:
I love it. I love the attitude. I love the growth mindset. That’s the dream right there for us. That’s what we try to communicate to our customers is exactly what you just pitched. So, if you ever look for a career change and want to come work with Zach and the customer …
Chris Fox:
I’m a sales guy, so let’s go.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Yeah, yeah, sales market background builder and residence.
Charley Burtwistle:
Yeah.
Chris Fox:
Yeah. Let’s go.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Close where you …
Charley Burtwistle:
Yeah, you got your desk already.
Zach Wojtowicz:
… pop the charts. Yeah, it’s just what’s going to happen.
Charley Burtwistle:
I can get you access to some data. You can work on the custom reporting stuff. It’ll be, you can span four or five different departments.
Chris Fox:
There we go.
Charley Burtwistle:
We are running up on time though, Chris. I want to thank you so much for joining us today on the episode of “The Building Code.” We’ll definitely have to get you back on here again because unfortunately, Courtney’s going to be mad at us. I think we scratched about half the questions on the script here.
Chris Fox:
Nice. Very good.
Charley Burtwistle:
Just setting us up for next time, but really appreciate it. Great interview.
Chris Fox:
Yeah, happy to do it anytime. It was awesome to meet you, Charley, and see you, Zach, and do it again sometime, for sure.
Charley Burtwistle:
Absolutely. Thanks, Chris.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Thank you.
Chris Fox:
Thanks, guys.
Zach Wojtowicz:
All right. That’s another episode of “The Building Code.” As I always like to ask you, Charley. You know what? No, I’m going to give my key takeaways first.
Charley Burtwistle:
Well, let me set … Well, that’s another episode of The Building Code. Let me ask you, Zach, what’d you think?
Zach Wojtowicz:
Wow, that feels unnatural. We were talking with another guest about the right flow of things that just felt a little …
Charley Burtwistle:
Okay, well, are you going to tell them what you thought?
Zach Wojtowicz:
I did, yeah. Of course, as I said in the intro, Chris, friend of Buildertrend, bringing the team up here. He knows our people. He had numerous people that he named dropped, kind of the legends at Buildertrend in the interview. Amazing, amazing company down in Manhattan, Kansas. Have you ever been in Manhattan?
Charley Burtwistle:
I have not.
Zach Wojtowicz:
No. It’s a fun little town. And he’s obviously just building up in the community, which is really, really cool.
Charley Burtwistle:
Yeah.
Zach Wojtowicz:
I also think it’s super unique. We need to have him back because I want to talk to him more about his end-to-end experience, and that’s super unique for a contracting company to do. And so, I have a ton of respect, and he really resonated with me. Anybody who knows me personally, when he was like, “I like to be in control.” I was like, “Oh, I know what that … I know what you mean.”
Charley Burtwistle:
Not you.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Yeah, yeah.
Charley Burtwistle:
No, no.
Zach Wojtowicz:
So, I just have a ton of respect to him as a business guy who’s very entrepreneurial. We’ve talked about that time and time again. There’s this kind of spirit of being pioneers, and I love talking to Chris about just the business side.
Charley Burtwistle:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think it’s funny, and I didn’t mean to … Our product team always gets mad at us when I spoil things that are coming down the pipeline.
Zach Wojtowicz:
We want to splash.
Charley Burtwistle:
We want to splash. But when I was going through his Salesforce account, I’m like, everything we’re beta in right now. He’s doing it. It’s insane. Which I think is just the type of person he is and the type of person I would love to be. And I think everyone should strive to be of just kind of that growth mindset, constantly pushing boundaries. So, yeah, great interview. I get why we’re using them so much for marketing content and …
Zach Wojtowicz:
All the above.
Charley Burtwistle:
… tackle the whole company. So, yeah, unless you got anything else, Zach, I think it’s about time for us to get out of here and hit the long weekend.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Yeah, I hope you enjoy it, buddy. And …
Charley Burtwistle:
I hope you enjoy it.
Zach Wojtowicz:
… everybody out there.
Charley Burtwistle:
You want to hang out?
Zach Wojtowicz:
Yeah, dude.
Charley Burtwistle:
Maybe we hang out, so just like outside.
Zach Wojtowicz:
We just see each other’s studio a little inside. We just kind of pass by ships in the night and then we show up in the studio and it’s like …
Charley Burtwistle:
Yeah, let’s hang out sometime.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Yeah.
Charley Burtwistle:
Maybe not this weekend, but sometime.
Zach Wojtowicz:
Yeah.
Charley Burtwistle:
All right, as always, I’m Charley Burtwistle.
Zach Wojtowicz:
I’m Zach Wojtowicz.
Charley Burtwistle:
Make sure you like, review, and subscribe. Otherwise, we’ll see you next time.

Chris Fox | Fox Home Innovations, LLC
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