A hunger to evolve: Going from good to great with Buildertrend Onsite Consulting

Charley Burtwistle (00:05):

What is up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of “The Building Code.” I’m Charley Burtwistle, and today we are going to be talking with Sean Supple, president of Supple Homes, about his recent experience with a Buildertrend service that we call Onsite Consulting. So, while it is going to be the main goal of the interview, I think that Sean’s mentality when it comes to change and his intentionality around change management and why they do the things that they do are going to be applicable across any sort of implementation, regardless of it’s a Buildertrend implementation or a new SOP implementation, a new process or a new hire. I think that change management is a really, really important concept, especially in the construction space, to really be dialed in on and why we do the things that we do. And we’re going to be hearing a little bit about his the experience around why they did the thing that they did, which was an onsite consulting service with Buildertrend, which I will let him tell you all about.

(01:01):

But from a high level point of view, it’s just a service that Buildertrend provides. We send someone out to you, your location, to teach you all about Buildertrend. There’s like a 30-day ramp period and a 30-day ramp off period where they will just double down what they taught you, how to implement it across your business, and really tailor the experience toward you.

(01:19):

So, Sean is a power user of Buildertrend. He’s a power builder out in California. I personally am looking forward to talk to him. As always, I’m sure I’m going to learn a ton, so hopefully our listeners do as well, too. But without further ado, let’s get him in here.

(01:33):

Hey, Sean, welcome to “The Building Code.” Really appreciate you making the time to join me today. How’s it going?

Sean Supple (01:39):

It’s going wonderful. Thanks for having me, Charley.

Charley Burtwistle (01:41):

Absolutely. I was doing a little bit of research on you before this. We had just released a case study with Buildertrend and yourself here a little while back, so I’m excited to meet you in person and talk a little bit more. But for our listeners, we always like to start with just a quick kind of who are you, where’d you come from, and how’d you get to where you’re at today?

Sean Supple (02:01):

Sure. So, Sean Supple, I am the owner of Supple Homes. We’re a custom home building company here in the heart of Silicon Valley, in the Bay Area of California. Been in business, we’re celebrating our 20th year, so we’re excited about that. I’m originally from Boston and grew up there, and I’ve been out here in California for now 34 years, which is crazy to admit. Came out for college and never left. Ended up then going to law school up here in the Bay Area, practiced law for a little bit, that wasn’t my cup of tea. Got into real estate for a little bit, that wasn’t my cup of tea. And kind of happened into construction, like what am I going to do with my life?

(02:44):

And so, had a friend from real estate who had a construction company, and I said, “Can I come bang some nails?” And he said, “Sure.” So, I showed up in my BMW because I was a lawyer, and showed up and was doing just some demolition and so, ripping off drywall, and kind of loved it, loved the physicality of it, loved the instant gratification. And so, anyways, did that and learned everything I could and read books and magazines and did that for about four years and then went on my own and started Supple Homes. And we just started up, me, myself, and I, as a small little remodeling company and slowly but surely added employees and have come up to build, we just finished a 14,000-square-foot house, so we’ve come pretty far in the 20 years.

Charley Burtwistle (03:27):

That’s awesome. I have a million questions, but first and foremost, 20 year anniversary, are you guys doing anything special?

Sean Supple (03:34):

We haven’t figured it out yet. It actually, I think the actual date is coming up here in a couple weeks or month. So, you got any ideas for us?

Charley Burtwistle (03:42):

Well, this episode should be releasing or out that same time, so you got a little promo packet there in and of itself, but if I need to come out there and help you celebrate, you just let me know. I’ll hop on a flight.

Sean Supple (03:53):

We’ll send the invite.

Charley Burtwistle (03:54):

The second question, I love hearing stories. One of my favorite things about being in the construction space is just the entrepreneurial mindset that a lot of businesses have and business owners have. I’ve heard a lot of different stories. I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard a lawyer to a GC pipeline. That may be the first that we have on the podcast here. So, super interesting, trailblazer. What was the kind of final decision you made to jump off and start Supple Homes for yourself?

Sean Supple (04:25):

It was sort of just a don’t know what am I going to do with my life, honestly, and the law wasn’t for me. It was a big difference between what’s legal and what you personally think is right or wrong. And I was doing litigation and family law, miserable. And so, I couldn’t separate the two from what the law was and if I didn’t like the law, and so, that’s why I got out of it. And just, actually, to get into the nitty-gritty, I read a personality book, and it said I was an artisan and in that was construction worker. I’m like, well, let me give it a try.

(05:00):

And so, that’s what I did and it’s actually, it was a long way to get here, but having the legal background and mindset and training and then doing real estate for a year and a half, those things are both so applicable to building. So, it kind of came full circle, and a long road, but it works.

Charley Burtwistle (05:20):

Yeah, kind of unintentionally you checked off a lot of really nice-to-have boxes, I’m sure, from owning your own business there.

Sean Supple (05:27):

It helps me with the contracts and things like that. And we have a very sophisticated clientele working all in high tech. We have high tech and venture capitalists. So, just having that education I think gives us credibility, as well, and being able to converse on that level with people helps.

Charley Burtwistle (05:43):

Yeah, absolutely. I’m also super interested to hear a little bit more about, you mentioned you started out single man shop, you, yourself, and I, to the clientele that you’re working with today and the homes that you’re building. Give me the high notes, the journey to get from where you started to where you’re at today. What were some of the key milestones there?

Sean Supple (06:04):

I hired someone relatively quick, like a laborer to help me, and then brought on a carpenter. But the funny part is, so I was the gopher for the first year because we were doing work and so, I was the one going to Home Depot buying the parts to get the guys to keep working. So, we did that for a while. There was probably three or four of us.

(06:26):

And slowly the projects kept getting bigger, there were referrals, all by referral. We got bigger remodels and then we did some new houses on our own back in 2008, which was terrible, perfectly bad timing. And just then continued plugging along, and it’s all been by referral, so whether architects or previous clients or realtors. And I’ve always strived just to go above and beyond with the people and whether we didn’t make as much money, but we were doing the right thing to build our brand and portfolio and mentality.

(07:01):

We didn’t make a lot of money early on. One, I didn’t know what I was doing business-wise. And two, we were just trying to make it happen and build that reputation for we’re going to do the right thing. And so, it’s worked out, it’s worked out well. Now, we’re kind of a real business, which is great.

Charley Burtwistle (07:17):

That’s a good way to put it. Kind of a real business. That’s a good benchmark to have, I suppose. Why I was super excited to have you on today, I know the goal of the interview is to talk about some of your Onsite Consulting experiences, but I think it’s going to stem a lot deeper than just that. Just from talking to you, I can tell you’re very intentional about the way you do things and you’re constantly driving forward yourself and your business. On your website, you even have the slogan, “Building a better place to live,” which is super aligned with Buildertrend’s mission is to build better as well, too.

(07:52):

And I think that’s really important to have, especially in the construction space. I mean, the growth mindset is important everywhere, but in the construction space there’s a lot, you’re just surrounded by opportunity. It seems like there’s always another job that you could take on or something else that you think you’d maybe be doing bigger or better, and it’s easy to get lost in, “Okay, what are we actually trying to do here?” I think the very successful people that I’ve had on, and I can tell that you’re the same way, have a very clear mission and chunk things up and go one step at a time to ultimately get to where they’re trying to go.

(08:26):

So, while we talk about specifically onsites, I think is important for our listeners to keep in mind the same mindset can be applicable to anything, whether you’re a Buildertrend customer or not or a business owner or not. So, I’m super excited. So, to kick things off, maybe how long have you been using Buildertrend and what initially drew you to the platform?

Sean Supple (08:45):

Yeah, I found Buildertrend, gosh, I think it’s about seven years ago now, at IBS, the International Builder Show in Vegas, and came across the booth and obviously Buildertrend was not nearly as robust as it is now. And it was the game in town. And so, we were kind of floundering with our management, and I was just looking for something.

(09:09):

One of our core values is a hunger to evolve, which I didn’t have back then. You just want to get better. I’m constantly wanting to improve. And so, it was like, hey, if we can do something better, let’s do it, easier, more efficient, more accurate. And that’s my mindset with everything that we do. So, Buildertrend seemed to check all those boxes, and so signed up, let’s give it a try.

Charley Burtwistle (09:32):

Love that. So, you said the mission was a hunger to evolve.

Sean Supple (09:35):

That’s one of our core values, correct. A hunger to evolve.

Charley Burtwistle (09:37):

Love that. I have a nice little mental collection of various kind of core statements that people have had before. I always say that we need to make a t-shirt collection of all these different things. A hunger to evolve is quickly at the top of my list there. So, you signed up and then you got going with an onsite consulting service as well, too, fairly quickly.

Sean Supple (09:57):

We did. It was probably a year maybe, six months, a year, something like that. There’s so much capabilities with it that we just felt the need, that again, I just wanted to get my team on board and teach us how to do things the right way and make the most of it. So, we signed up, you had two of your guys came out, I think because it was a relatively new service, and we spent two days in our conference room going over all the different aspects teaching.

(10:27):

So, we were so new that it was really kind of this is how it works, and quite frankly, it was a little bit overwhelming I think for my team. Because we didn’t know anything about the software really and so, you don’t even know what you don’t know, which is how we got back to, we talk about how we got to the second onsite that we just recently did. And I think things have improved a lot since the first time, but it helped us immensely. It was just a little bit overwhelming, I think, the first time we did it.

Charley Burtwistle (10:59):

For sure. And I think that’s something that is kind of a double-edged sword in what’s great about Buildertrend is what’s awful about Buildertrend, is it is so robust that unless you have a very clear action plan on how you want to implement and adopt it across your business, it’s easy to get stuck or complacent with how you’re using it.

(11:19):

Because a lot of people I saw in, I think it was the case study that we released with you guys, you were finding value with a lot of the easier to adopt features, like Scheduling and Daily Logs and To-Do’s. And it’s important to be like, “Hey, we’re getting a lot of out of this tool, we’re good with where we’re at, we don’t need to adopt some of these other features.” But then you actually made the decision not that long ago, correct me on the dates there, but to have a second onsite service.

Sean Supple (11:45):

We did. We sent your team out I think the end of January, middle, end of January, yeah. And part of it is I’m part of a Builder 20 group, which is sponsored, I don’t know if you’re familiar with that, it’s sponsored by the National Association of Home Builders, and they put together like-minded builders from around the country, we don’t compete, and we meet twice a year.

(12:06):

And so, in the group, I would say of 16, 14 of the guys’ companies use Buildertrend. And so, when we would meet over the years, they were using other features that we weren’t using. I’m like, wow, that seems like great. We’ve got to learn how to do that. So, that was some of the impetus to get a second onsite, to help implement more features.

Charley Burtwistle (12:29):

I love that. And for our listeners that maybe aren’t aware of what the service is, it’s more than just we come out and talk for two days, there’s quite a bit of prep work and post work and stuff like that as well, too. Could you talk through that?

Sean Supple (12:41):

Yes, which I think actually was the most valuable part. So, you get for 30 days prior to the actual two-day onsite, we met either once to twice a week, one-hour meetings with myself and with one of your onsite consultants. We Zoomed and went over, basically did a deep dive into how we were currently using the software and learning how we did it and what we wanted it to do. And not only with me but had some meetings with the project manager or my admin.

(13:12):

And so, it was a whole team effort, so that when the onsite began, excuse me, we had a whole head start, and Willie, who did our onsite, knew who we were in-depth and how we used it and how we wanted to improve it. So, when they came, he had a whole game plan of how he was going to teach us how to make it better.

Charley Burtwistle (13:30):

Love that.

Sean Supple (13:31):

And then we had the two day and then after that was a whole other 30 days of follow-up, again with weekly meetings to go over what we learned and then creating a whole guidebook, which is amazing. It’s like 40 pages, I want to say, of screenshots and write-ups and specifically for our company how to do all these features. So, that was one of the most exciting things of why I wanted to get it, was the training. So, we have new people come in, we have this documented and written and they could use it to learn.

Charley Burtwistle (14:05):

It may be the most, I’ve seen some of the ones that they’ve delivered before, one of the most robust SOP manuals ever created. And like you said, tailored to your company. Because while everyone has to deal with selections and change orders and all the different features, the use cases for their business specifically, the clientele they’re working with, the processes that they’ve implemented, are custom. We have 20,000 customers. There’s about 20,000 different ways that people would want to use Buildertrend. So, having it tailored to your company is really beneficial there.

Sean Supple (14:36):

Yeah, it’s huge, because there’s multiple ways to skin a cat and so it’s like Buildertrend, you have to be something for everyone, 20,000 customers or whatever you’re talking. And so, we have to find the little niches or tweaks or workaround or custom to try to be able to do what we want or adapt to a better way of doing it, how you guys have it or somebody else.

Charley Burtwistle (15:01):

I love that. What were some of the big, I guess goals or maybe takeaways from that second onsite that you’re really hoping to accomplish, and did you accomplish them?

Sean Supple (15:12):

Yeah, we absolutely did accomplish. The big things honestly were a lot of just minor tweaks. Were we doing things the right way? We had over the years learned to do stuff and maybe done workarounds, and it was like, well is this really the most efficient way to do it? So, sort of validating, for one, how we were doing things. And two, which is great, Buildertrend has so many updates, I feel like they’re almost coming out weekly or monthly or whatever. Things change, and there are new features. So, it was able to make sure we were keeping up with the updates and the changes in general.

(15:50):

Two was the financial controls. We were not using Purchase Orders, which people have told me for years, “You’ve got to use purchase orders, you’ve got to use purchase orders.” And so, that was a big push, was to use Purchase Orders. So, I’m excited to say we’re using Purchase Orders now.

Charley Burtwistle (16:06):

Love that.

Sean Supple (16:07):

Which I think will be a huge benefit for us as we haven’t gone through any complete projects yet still, but I’m super excited to see how that works out. And then really making sure and using, along the purchase orders, that we’re using the cost controls, the reports and things, to understand we weren’t doing a very good job of documenting individual cost controls per project. The company overall I had a clear picture on, but not for project specific. So, really get much better on a project level financial control.

Charley Burtwistle (16:41):

That’s awesome, and I’d love to sit here and just talk about how awesome Buildertrend service for Onsite Consulting is, which I think it is, but I think I’m more impressed with your vision for your company and the buy-in to move forward with something like this and actually implement it, which is hard to do regardless of if it’s a software or a new hire or a new process or a new SOP. Change management is hard.

(17:04):

So, I’d love to hear, and I’m sure our listeners would as well, too, how do you get buy-in or how did you get buy-in with your company of like, “Hey, this is something I think, well I know I’m going to invest in, we’re going to have someone out here. I know it’s going to improve our business,” but it only improves if they actually do it right. So, how do you get buy-in with your company and what were maybe some of the things that you did to make sure that post someone coming out and teaching how to use it, those teachings would actually stick, and you guys would actually find value from it?

Sean Supple (17:33):

Yeah, I think it comes from establishing first and foremost a company culture of accountability and growth and we have buy-in to one of our core values, the hunger to evolve. The team has bought into that and so, there’s 10 of us in the company and so, we meet weekly and have team meetings, and we go over those types of stuff. And so, I think we’d had that. So that’s key, first and foremost, to have that mindset of growth, and not growth dollar volume, it’s just growth getting better, improvement.

(18:08):

And so, with that, and then I think as I did some more research into it and could see some of the benefits, I could, excuse me, sort of outline that and show how this could make their job easier. It’s all for, I don’t want to do it if it’s just more work at the point, and it was a different way. So, it was a little bit of pushback, honestly, on we’ve got to do this now, but if you can show that it’s not really any more work, it’s just different in what the benefit is, we’re going to get more information out of it. So, that’s the key, I think, showing what the outcome is and the benefit to the team.

Charley Burtwistle (18:46):

Yeah, that’s always important to frame things up when you’re launching big initiatives as to what’s the why behind it all. And I say it on here all the time, I always personally get so much out of these interviews because a lot of what I do here at Buildertrend is so closely related. We have internal tools that we use here at Buildertrend to manage our processes and our sales funnel and things of that nature.

(19:12):

And my background is in data science, so any time you wanted to collect a new field, it’s more work for our reps to do, to have to mark that. And it’s like, “Well, we’re doing this because we’ll be able to show you where your pipeline is at and reduce the number of calls that you need to make.” But unless you frame that appropriately going into it, then it’s just extra work. And everyone likes to skip to the step where everything’s perfect, and they like to overlook the foundational pieces that you need to lay, which is oftentimes just the why behind we’re doing something like this.

Sean Supple (19:44):

I would agree.

Charley Burtwistle (19:46):

Okay, so then million dollar question is what’s next for Supple Homes? Would you consider yourself power users now? Is there a third onsite coming in the near future?

Sean Supple (19:58):

Well, not too soon. I mean, we just did it so not too soon, a third onsite. Hopefully we don’t need a third onsite soon, right? We got enough out of the first or second one. I think we are power users. I think you guys did some analytics. I think we had a 90 rating before we did the onsite or something, and so, I’m sure it’s kicked up. The goal is to use all the features. We have this service and so, let’s use it. And so, we are inching closer to using it all.

Charley Burtwistle (20:29):

Love that. What about for, let’s zoom out from just Buildertrend specifically. You’re coming into year 20 now, which is very exciting. We’ve got to figure out what the anniversary party is going to be like. But just as a company as a whole, what are your goals for this year and where do you hope to go?

Sean Supple (20:47):

Our goal is to really be an efficient Buildertrend user. Like I said, this is relatively new, some of these tweaks, and so, we’ve got to get through projects for the year. And we do projects that are a year to two years long. Like I said, we’re doing big 10, 12,000-square-foot houses, so they’re two year projects. So, we’re kind of slow moving in that regard in implementing new stuff.

(21:13):

We’re really just as a company, we’re trying to continue to build out, level up our clientele, if you will, and continue to work on, you mentioned SOPs. We’re really trying to dial those in so that we have just a consistent platform. One of the goals for me is no matter which of our four project managers is running a project, the client gets the same experience. Everyone has their own individualities, but it’s the same experience no matter what. And so, if we can make that repeatable, and Buildertrend helps do that, that’s my goal.

Charley Burtwistle (21:47):

I love that. Yeah, I would say you guys are intentionally moving, as opposed to slow moving, but other than that, the projects you guys are building, I was looking at your website before this, are beautiful, and so I’m sure there’s a lot that goes into it. And being able to standardize that process as much as possible. I’m sure it’s just additional worries off of your back.

Sean Supple (22:11):

As much as possible. The fewer unforced errors that we can make, the better. There’s going to be mistakes and errors, we can’t eliminate them, but the fewer unforced ones, that’s our goal.

Charley Burtwistle (22:24):

Absolutely. Well, Sean, it’s been fantastic talking to you. I got at least three notes written down here. Hunger to evolve is the top one with stars around it. I’m going to start saying that all the time. To close things out here, I’d love to just hear your point of view for other builders listening to this potentially considering an onsite with Buildertrend, what would you say to them?

Sean Supple (22:44):

Do it. If you care about your business, if you care about growing your team and being more cohesive, it’s an expenditure that I think will vastly pay for itself. This business we’ve been 20 years, I hope to do it for another 20 years. So, it’s a minuscule expense, and the benefits I think would be enormous for any business considering it.

Charley Burtwistle (23:08):

Absolutely. Well, thank you Sean, so much. An absolute pleasure talking to you. We’ll make sure to link your case study in the show notes as well, too, for people interested to learn more. Otherwise, really appreciate you joining us today.

Sean Supple (23:20):

Thanks for having me.

Charley Burtwistle (23:22):

All right, we just heard from Sean Supple, president of Supple Homes out there in the Bay Area. Definitely lived up to the hype. I always like doing these interviews with people that other people at Buildertrend have interacted with because I always hear such fantastic things. So, right when I walked in today, they said, “Oh, we’re so excited. We have Sean on today.” I got a chance to meet him, and he was fantastic.

(23:45):

We’ll definitely link the case study that we did with him in the show notes as well, too, if you guys are interested to learn more. We actually have some data in there about the increased productivity that they saw before and after the onsite, which I found very interesting at the very least.

(24:01):

But yeah, I took a ton of notes. Number one on there, I have the hunger to evolve. I think that is a fantastic mindset to have, especially in the construction space where things are changing not only every year, but oftentimes every day. There’s constantly new tools out there, new codes, new materials and constantly pushing forward, having that growth mindset, being on the leading edge is just going to continue to put you ahead of your competition, and ultimately, put a better product in front of your clients.

(24:28):

So, I think what they have going over there at Supple Homes is very similar to what we’re trying to do here at Buildertrend. So, it’s just fantastic talking to like-minded people that are constantly looking to push forward and constantly trying to build a better way to do things. So, I learned a lot. Hopefully our listeners did as well, too.

(24:46):

As always, make sure to like, review, subscribe, join us on Facebook at The Building Code Crew. Otherwise, I’ll see you next time. I’m Charley Burtwistle. Peace.