Overcoming obstacles: How one builder’s growth mindset led to success

Charley Burtwistle:

Welcome back to another episode of “The Building Code.” I am your one and only host, Charley Burtwistle because Zach Wojtowicz is not here. He is doing some volunteer work, giving back to the community. I think that may just be an excuse because he doesn’t want to spend any time with me. But regardless, with him out, we went out and found the best possible substitute we could, and I am happy to announce in her first ever “The Building Code” podcast experience, Courtney Mattern.

Courtney Mattern:

Hi.

Charley Burtwistle:

Courtney, thank you so much for joining me on today’s episode of “The Building Code.” How are you feeling? Are you excited, nervous?

Courtney Mattern:

Well, it’s a lot different being on this side of the glass in the studio. I’m usually behind the scenes on the podcast. I’m a little bit bossy, as you know, and have high expectations.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yes.

Courtney Mattern:

Now, I’m not even sure I can meet my own expectations.

Charley Burtwistle:

Who is the Courtney going to be for you to walk in after the interview and give feedback?

Courtney Mattern:

Who’s going to come in and say, “Record this again?”

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, try it again.

Courtney Mattern:

We’ve got volunteers already in the studio.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, they’re lining up outside.

Courtney Mattern:

They’re lining up to give me feedback.

Charley Burtwistle:

Courtney, for those of you, Zach and I have mentioned her a couple times, but she was the one that first approached Zach and I about taking over the podcast host roles. We would not be here without Courtney. Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity. I’m excited that this came full circle and us doing an actual episode together today.

Courtney Mattern:

You’re welcome to everybody who’s listening for picking two wonderful hosts.

Charley Burtwistle:

Absolutely. If this episode is really good, we can just formally replace Zach with you and just move forward with us.

Courtney Mattern:

I mean, we did have an exchange yesterday where I was like, “You ready for me to replace you on the podcast?” And then he looked very sad. I take it back. Zach, your spot is safe.

Charley Burtwistle:

Zach’s spot. If anything, he’ll replace me and then that would be the true dream team. But we have a very special guest for our first-ever episode with Courtney, Eduardo Muniz from Boston Best Construction. He immigrated to the United States a little over 20 years ago to started a construction business from the ground up. Very, very excited to hear his perspective on just what it takes to start a business and the entrepreneurial spirit.

I think I did a pretty decent job saying entrepreneurial spirit there. I just kind of slurred my way through it. But yeah, I think without further ado, let’s go ahead and get him in here. Hey, Eduardo, welcome to “The Building Code.” First time on. How’s it going?

Eduardo Muniz:

I’m great. Thanks for the invitation.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, absolutely. Very, very excited to have you on. We were talking to our producers a little bit before this and they were telling me a little bit about your story. I think it’s going to be an exciting interview for our listeners and all involved. But you actually immigrated into the U.S. and started your company from the ground up, which I’d say is different from most guests that we have on that typically family business, they just inherited or hired there and worked their way up.

I think that’s going to be very, very exciting. But for people that haven’t heard your story, could you give us a quick overview of how you got to where you’re at today?

Eduardo Muniz:

I am a Brazilian immigrant. I came here 20 years ago, actually last week was 20 years that I got to United States.

Charley Burtwistle:

Oh, wow. Exciting.

Eduardo Muniz:

With $100 in my pocket and no English, so I had to learn. I didn’t know how to say hi and bye by then. I learned everything on the street. Didn’t go to school. I didn’t go anywhere. I learned working different trades. I started from sales rep on the Brazilian newspaper, and then starting going to a restaurant. I did everything that an immigrant does, but I always had a focus of being my own boss, having my own companies. Today, I have six companies in the United States. Construction is one of my businesses.

Courtney Mattern:

Tell us a little bit more about your business, about your construction business, Boston Best Construction. What do you build? What kind of projects do you work on?

Eduardo Muniz:

Okay. Boston Best Construction was born nine years ago from the ground. I never had experience with construction, and I decided to open my own construction. I started doing small residential projects like bathrooms, kitchens, and out of that we start growing. Today, we do 50% commercial, 50% residential, and we do from design and build from ground up or small remodels. We don’t do much of the small remodels right now again anymore, but we still do it.

Charley Burtwistle:

I was looking at your website before we hopped on here, and it does look like you guys dip your toes in a little bit of everything. Beautiful projects all the way around.

Eduardo Muniz:

The pictures of my website, they’re not stock photos. They’re all legit projects we did.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, absolutely. We’ll make sure to link BostonBestConstruction.com in the shownotes here, so people can see what we’re talking about.

Eduardo Muniz:

Thank you.

Charley Burtwistle:

But you said you started this business nine years ago. You immigrated 20 years ago. Is that right?

Eduardo Muniz:

Correct.

Charley Burtwistle:

You were about 10 years in. Tell us a little bit about the early days of Boston Best. What was it like building a construction business from the ground up?

Eduardo Muniz:

Starting a construction business, knowing nothing about the trade, I had to invest in myself and learning skills. The most difficult part was I didn’t know all the terminology for construction. I went to a client’s house and I didn’t know the vocabulary precisely. I started to hear things that I’ve never heard, and I had to say, “Yes, yes, we can do it.” And then I had to go find myself and learn and talk to friends. It was a learning process for me from day one.

When I started, I didn’t have money to hire people, to do project management, to do purchasing, to do all the financings, like paperwork, things like that. I was one man with all the hats. When I started to grow a little bit, I hired one person that helped me with purchasing, cleaning jobs sites. That was my first movement, getting someone to take all of the hard load that was on me, I hired this person to start doing that part that I didn’t need much knowledge, just need coordination. Then I removed this hat so I could focus on something else.

And then that was the step I was doing to grow my company. I figured out what was my weakness and what was my strength. Whatever was my weakness, I started to hiring people to do it. That’s one of the things I’ve learned in business – you don’t need to know everything. You just need to know someone who does know.

Courtney Mattern:

In those early days, was there ever a time when you were like, what did I get myself into? And if so, how did you work through that and get over that hurdle?

Eduardo Muniz:

No, I didn’t have that on the early phases because one thing that I say is if you are a company worth $100,000, you have $100,000 problem. If you do $1 million, you’d have $1 million problem. Today, I think sometimes, what the heck am I doing this business? So many problems because it’s an industry. Construction, it’s a surprise box.

We never know what’s going to happen that day, so we need to be prepared. I never thought of the early phase, what did I get into? Today, I don’t hesitate again to think because I do have a system in place, but I had that mid-crisis. How am I going to get through the next level?

Courtney Mattern:

When you were starting this company, did you ever expect to get where you are now nine years later? What does the personal growth feel like?

Eduardo Muniz:

I’m a high achiever person. I’m an entrepreneur. Anything that I start, I already start thinking where I’m going to get. I do have a focus. When I started my construction, I know where I want to be. My other five business that I have, I know where I want to be. I know my exit strategy for these businesses as well. It’s like I do have a very clear path where I want to go. Where I am, it is a very good position, but it’s not yet where I want to be.

Charley Burtwistle:

I’m actually curious how you … you said five other businesses and this one, so six total.

Eduardo Muniz:

Yes.

Charley Burtwistle:

How do you go about juggling all those and what percentage goes to each or is it kind of day by day?

Eduardo Muniz:

The construction, it’s the mother of all other ones because it’s where I get the seeds, the funds to generate the other business. There was a point that the Boston Best Construction was generating revenue. Right now all the business run by itself, so I don’t need this anymore, but my day-to-day operation, my full-time job is the construction. Whatever I do before 6:00 AM or do after 6:00, 7:00 PM, it’s the other businesses.

I’ve learned that wealth comes not from your 8:00 to 5:00 job. Your 8:00 to 5:00 job will bring you a very decent life, a good life, will deliver good things for your family, but wealth is going to come whatever you do before 8:00 and after 5:00.

Courtney Mattern:

Eduardo, I’m starting to think that you have more than 24 hours in a day though. You handle the other five businesses.

Eduardo Muniz:

Actually, I do have more than 24 hours. I do have more because the secret is, it’s not how many hours I work, it’s how many people I have working on my team. That’s the biggest secret. It’s like you don’t need to do everything. You need to have the right person to help you. Where I got right now in my company and my other businesses is, I’m building a structure that the business can run without me. I can go to Florida because we are … One of my other business, it’s a mental health clinic, which we have here in Massachusetts.

We are moving now to Florida as well. I’m not physically moving, but we are expanding a clinic there. I’m traveling to Florida every month for a couple of days, so I can be away from my construction company and things still running here happening. It was a system in process. Thanks to Buildertrend. You guys got into this because …

Courtney Mattern:

Small plug.

Eduardo Muniz:

I am away and at the same time I’m inside the company because of Buildertrend. This was not asking me to talk. I’m bringing this. It’s when you put a system in place everywhere. Every business needs a system. The system that I found out five years ago has worked with Buildertrend. It’s a system that delivers me freedom because from far away, I can see what my people are doing on the Daily Logs, and I can put my hands on.

They can make comments. I can see what the clients are saying. My next step, it’s like in the next five months, six months, I want to step out even more from my construction company, but I don’t want to lose control, so I’m still implementing all the tools that Buildertrend has.

Courtney Mattern:

I think sometimes people get afraid to implement something like Buildertrend or a system because it can feel rigid and feel like you’re going to lose that freedom. But sometimes it actually gives you structure, it gives you the time to step away.

Eduardo Muniz:

The transition process is painful sometimes because you are going from probably nothing to a technology. For you to start implementing, like Buildertrend, you guys have from sales to project management and financing, the financial part now and a lot of metrics. I’m pretty sure you guys are adding more content every day. If someone wants to get Buildertrend today and go from one to 100 in one week, he’s going to get overwhelmed because there’s so many tools.

I think you need to start the process. What’s your most difficult part right now in your company? Is it estimating? Get Buildertrend and start working on the tools for estimating. Once you sell your first job, convert as a project, and then you start from there. All of a sudden, you have one project running and then everything starts to line up and automatically you grow the knowledge on the system.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, Eduardo, if you ever have any free time and want to come work as a trainer here at Buildertrend, you just laid it out perfect here.

Courtney Mattern:

Consume all those extra hours.

Eduardo Muniz:

I’m a business mentor, and I help businesses grow. I’ll be more than happy to give tools for you guys as well.

Courtney Mattern:

We should talk about that a little bit more in your journey because I know you’re passionate about sharing what you’ve learned in your business. How are you giving back as a mentor? Do you meet with other builders just like you? Are you focused on other immigrants like you, too, who are coming in with a dream to build a company from the ground up?

Eduardo Muniz:

I discovered my passion this year, which my passion, it’s not to grow business, it’s not being a millionaire, my passion was to deliver to people what I learned. Because what I’ve learned in the past nine years, it’s invaluable because I learned with my own mistakes, and then it costs me millions of dollars. What I want to do is give this tool for people, so they learn how not to lose the money I lost. I’ve lost over $1 million in the past two years.

Courtney Mattern:

Life is too short to make all the mistakes.

Eduardo Muniz:

Exactly.

Courtney Mattern:

You might as well learn from somebody else’s.

Eduardo Muniz:

What I do to give away is I’m Christian and at my church I create a group called as Business Men’s Group. It’s just for men that have any sort of businesses. The Brazilian community has a lot of construction companies. I have a lot of people that I’ve been mentoring every Friday at 7:00 p.m. at the church. I get together with them in a room at the church and I ask, “What are the challenge that week?” And then we go point per point and someone that’s there …

Last week, we had someone that I don’t see him having a vision of being his own boss, having his own company, but he’s stuck in the company he’s in right now. I was talking to him, “Listen, okay, what is your passion?” He didn’t know his passion. I started to brainstorming. All of a sudden he said, “Okay, my passion is this.” Why don’t you develop yourself, your passion, so you can grow to the company you are? I’m helping people grow on the position they are on, the location they are on growing their business.

Not everybody was designed to be a boss. Not everybody. It’s a wire. It’s the way you are wired. I’ve been helping people sometimes figuring it out how to go to the next phase and making plans for their career, not as a business owner, but also as an employee. It’s mindset.

Charley Burtwistle:

I think we probably do have a few listeners out there that maybe haven’t started a construction business yet, but are interested, and that’s why they’re checking out the podcast to get different content and things like that. As someone that has built a construction business from the ground up and are now in a spot where you can give back some of that knowledge, what’s some of the advice that you’d give that person and where to start in their journey?

Eduardo Muniz:

I think the first step to build your construction company, there’s two things you need the fight inside you. One, it’s to kill all the objections that are not making you do the next step. Money cannot be objection. I don’t have money to buy my van. Okay, get your car, put your tools on the roof of your car. I don’t know, buy something, you can put your tools in. Don’t put objections. Because if you have the ability to perform a job and you make objections, I don’t have a truck, come on, that cannot be the reason you’re not going to open a business.

Courtney Mattern:

If you can’t figure out that problem, how are you going to figure out the next biggest problem that comes up running a business?

Eduardo Muniz:

Exactly. You need to come up with the solution for yourself. Creating a business, it’s you solving problems. If you cannot solve your own problem, you’re never going to be a successful business owner. The biggest companies, they are big because they found a big problem that someone has or a small problem that too many people have. It can be one big problem of one person that will give you so much money or one small problem of multiple people that you can solve this problem.

If you cannot solve your own problem of opening the company, you’re never going to be a successful business owner. The first thing is you need to step on your objections. The words “I can’t, I don’t know” cannot be on your vocabulary. That’s the first thing I say to anybody who wants to start their own company.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, I love that. I think specifically in the construction business because so many companies are kind of homegrown, but a lot of people that we have on here, the entrepreneurial spirit of “no one else is going to do it unless I do it” is always really, really inspiring to hear. I love hearing the words of advice from you, and I hope that that lands with a listener out there. And then nine years from now, we have them on this podcast and they can thank Eduardo.

Eduardo Muniz:

I want them to be bigger than me nine years because my nine years I learned with my mistakes. Let’s be the wise man that learns with someone else’s mistakes. I can say it’s something, there’s three types of learning. One, it’s you pay half a million dollars, go to Harvard and you graduate as an amazing major for MBA. You’re going to grow your business with a solid foundation.

You’re never going to make financial mistakes, but you’re going to grow on a piece of five years in school plus building this success, or you’re going to learn like I did, putting my fate to the test and losing the same half million dollars. But from these five years of someone that’s learning, I’ve …

Charley Burtwistle:

Five year head start. Right.

Eduardo Muniz:

Or you can learn with someone else’s mistake. This is the wisest thing to do is get to mentoring and see, okay, so how can I avoid this problem and how can I grow to the next level? If I knew this nine years ago, I would be in some other position right now, way better, if I learn what I’ve learned in nine years.

Charley Burtwistle:

I’ll take option three. I think that sounds like a good one there.

Eduardo Muniz:

Of course, it’s the wise man way of learning.

Charley Burtwistle:

Right. Then you mentioned, you’d been with Buildertrend for about five years, is that correct?

Eduardo Muniz:

Yes, five years.

Charley Burtwistle:

Gotcha. What was the tipping point for you about four years into your construction journey there to think to yourself, okay, there has to be an easier way. I need a software.

Courtney Mattern:

Sometimes we hear that it’s like a mistake or someone else gives you the advice. What was it that sparked the desire to not only grow a business, but then add on this …

Eduardo Muniz:

My desire was not Buildertrend. My desire was to find a tool, a system. I went to multiple other platforms before Buildertrend, and my biggest problem was that … Believe it or not, Buildertrend is a project management platform, but I was introduced to you guys as sales, as leads generation, to create proposals because I found out an easy way for you guys when I put my description, unit price, quantity, and then the mark-up. I can say how much mark-up I want, so it makes the calculation easily.

Before I was doing my proposal, but I was using a Excel spreadsheet saying if I want to have 25%, 30% markup this, and then I was making a lot of simulations until I have my final price. What I figured out was amazing about Buildertrend was the easiest about the mark-up, which okay, I need 30% of this project. 30%, it makes an adjustment by itself. This was one of the reasons I signed up with Buildertrend because it was easy to create proposals. After that, I’ve learned the process about the Daily Logs and converting to jobs.

It’s been a very great journey. You guys recently launched the Takeoff thing building, which was a pretty cool feature. I do have a couple of suggestions to give in the end if you guys want to hear it.

Courtney Mattern:

We love notes.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, cool. I think we typically see people come to us as looking for a project management software. And then it’s two or three years later or months or weeks, whatever speed, they’re like, “Oh wait, we can also manage the pre-sale process. Oh, we can also invoice our clients directly. We can release estimates.”

Courtney Mattern:

We can pay people from the software. Nobody told us.

Eduardo Muniz:

Now, you guys can release payments to all the subs and the subs can get paid by when the project manager approve the job is being done. The finance can … You guys are developing. It’s super cool. I think you guys are going to grow way more than that.

Courtney Mattern:

We hope so.

Charley Burtwistle:

We love to hear it and appreciate you doing our sales pitch for us, so Courtney and I don’t have to.

Eduardo Muniz:

You guys never asked me. On the script you guys sent me about this interview today, there was nothing related for me to talk about your software.

Courtney Mattern:

What have been some of your biggest successes with your company, whether it’s something in Buildertrend or not? What are you really proud of?

Eduardo Muniz:

My construction company? Can you reformulate this question?

Courtney Mattern:

What is your biggest success? Is it a project? Is it some hurdle you overcome? At the end of the day, what are you really proud of?

Eduardo Muniz:

I think today what I’m proud, it’s the team that I built. It’s the people that work for me. I think it took me a while to find the right people to be beside me. In success, it’s not about me, it’s about whoever is with me. Because as I said, I have 24 hours in my day. The rest of the hours, it’s whoever is there beside me. The one thing that I’m proud of, it’s the structure of my company.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, I think that’s a fantastic note for us to end on here. Huge shout out to … Hopefully they’ll all be listening to this episode, right?

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah, your whole team.

Eduardo Muniz:

Yeah, they will probably.

Charley Burtwistle:

Perfect. Huge shout out to them. This is how you can tell if they actually listened or not. You can ask them about, “Hey, did you hear the shout-out?”

Courtney Mattern:

You can say, “Did you hear?”

Eduardo Muniz:

I’ll say about the minutes. I’ll say, listen, 10 minutes and 20 seconds.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, Eduardo, thank you very much for coming on today. I had an absolute blast.

Courtney Mattern:

It’s a pleasure.

Charley Burtwistle:

I’m going to leave the studio definitely more motivated than I was when I came in, so I’ll head back to my desk and find out some work.

Courtney Mattern:

You’re a shining example of a growth mindset when you don’t say I can’t, you say how am I going to. I think that that’s a good takeaway for all of our listeners.

Eduardo Muniz:

Yeah, no, definitely. It’s my passion to help people. Anything that I can do for people, it’s all about that and helping my team here right now, even their personal lives matter for me.

Charley Burtwistle:

Love it. Well, thank you so much, Eduardo.

Eduardo Muniz:

I appreciate it.

Charley Burtwistle:

We’ll be in touch about getting that Takeoff feedback.

Eduardo Muniz:

Oh, perfect. Good, good, good. Thank you so much for inviting me today.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yep, have a good one. See you.

Eduardo Muniz:

You, too.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, Courtney, we just finished up our episode with Eduardo. This is normally the time Zach would ask me what I thought, but luckily, you’re in the hot seat today. Tell us what you thought about the interview. What’d you think about Eduardo and Boston Best?

Courtney Mattern:

Sure. I thought Eduardo was really inspirational. I think in my role on the brand and content team over marketing, we get to tell a lot of success stories and we get to dive into companies and business owners and what their challenges were. I have started to see a theme arise, and there’s something that sets builders apart who become really successful. It’s their mindset. It’s the idea, just like you said, stomp on your excuses, stomp on your objections.

You can’t say, “Ugh, I’m not smart enough. I’m not good enough. I’m just going to keep making too many mistakes,” because that’s going to keep you from growing. Having that growth mindset when you’re starting a business or when you’re starting with something like Buildertrend can be the difference between success and failure.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, I love that analogy there and that outlook. I was reminded multiple times throughout his interview when he was talking about these different things, both of us that’s had the unique experience at Buildertrend of building out teams that had never existed before. When he was talking about is it a $1,000 problem, a $1 million problem, it’s like, yeah, I can relate to that of it really wasn’t high pressure when we first started. And now, five years later, how long have you been here probably? Four.

Courtney Mattern:

Four. Four in September. I think it’s interesting, too, he talked about building his team and different business owners and different people who are entrepreneurs. Some want to manage a team and some don’t. We were actually talking about that just before this. Some people love developing talent. Some people like to be strategic leads and make big decisions and build a roadmap. There’s a place for both types of people in leadership roles, in business roles, and it takes both personalities to make a company successful.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, absolutely. I think I’m excited to hear back from Eduardo. We’ll have to keep in touch with him. I actually think I’m going to send him Zach’s email if he wants to.

Courtney Mattern:

He can take the Takeoff feedback, which we’re always happy to take too. I will just make a marketing plug here, too. We have a Facebook group called The Building Code Crew, where you can give your commentary and your feedback too after you listen to the podcast episodes. You’re always welcome to email my team at podcast@buildertrend.com, too, like real people. That’s me and Nicole and the people behind the glass and the recording booth. We all read those emails. We make sure we answer them. We’d love to hear from you.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, or just email Zach directly at …

Courtney Mattern:

Actually let’s give them his cell phone number.

Charley Burtwistle:

Everyone, go out and email Zach. Go to our Facebook page and just reply, “We want Zach.” That was a great plug. I always forget to do that, so I’m glad you’re here. What I don’t forget to do is tell people like review, subscribe, and we’ll see you next time. I’m Charley Burtwistle.

Courtney Mattern:

Oh, and I’m Courtney Mattern, standing in for Zach Wojtowicz.

Charley Burtwistle:

Boom. Peace.