Creating an identity: Why your brand is more than just a name

Zach Wojtowicz:

What’s up, everybody? Welcome to “The Building Code.” I’m Zach Wojtowicz.

Charley Burtwistle:

And I’m Charley Burtwistle.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Today we have another in-person episode. We’ve got a string of these lately. And let me tell you, they’re the best.

Charley Burtwistle:

They are the best. And we chose them for a reason because today is a huge episode in “The Building Code” history. Today is episode number 200.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Are you serious? We did it.

Charley Burtwistle:

We did it.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We did it. They said we couldn’t do it, but we did it.

Charley Burtwistle:

I think a lot of you will remember when Zach and I became interim hosts. I think we still are technically interim hosts, but …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Episode 200, we take off the interim host. We are the host.

Charley Burtwistle:

Okay. Yeah, say it live and we’ll release it and then there’s no going back.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s right.

Charley Burtwistle:

But for this special episode, we want to have some special guests. So, today we have Heather and Stefan from Carlson Projects Incorporated in Lincoln, Nebraska, and we are very, very excited to have them. Without further ado, how are you guys doing?

Stefan Carlson:

It’s great.

Heather Thoming:

Good. Congrats.

Stefan Carlson:

I’m super pumped to be here.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Hey, thank you. You’re the real guest of honor. It’s really exciting to have you both here, two people, for the 200th episode.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, that’s huge.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s fantastic.

Stefan Carlson:

So many things just lining up.

Heather Thoming:

Right.

Zach Wojtowicz:

The script writers really got this one right.

Heather Thoming:

We feel honored.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, we are honored to have you and you came bearing gifts. If you’re watching on YouTube, we have a beautiful candle here and you guys designed the scent yourselves.

Heather Thoming:

We did.

Stefan Carlson:

Personal scent.

Zach Wojtowicz:

The scent is incredible.

Stefan Carlson:

We got candles, all sorts of swag laying around, so thank you guys very much for being so gracious.

Heather Thoming:

Absolutely. Yep.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Did you say we got t-shirts as well?

Charley Burtwistle:

There are some t-shirts. We got some building code or Buildertrend t-shirts over in the corner for you guys as well.

Heather Thoming:

Super excited about that.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Just a little swag exchange. Love it. Well, we’re so excited as we’ve said. You’re local people here from Lincoln, Nebraska as Charley already laid out. Well, tell us a little bit about your company. What do you guys do?

Stefan Carlson:

Carlson Projects essentially changes the way people live. We do that through …

Charley Burtwistle:

Great tagline.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Love that.

Stefan Carlson:

… roofing and remodeling. That’s really what we love to do and that’s what we’re all about doing. We just choose to do it through roofing and remodeling. My dad started the company in ’92, so he had me, built a house and started a company all in the same year.

Charley Burtwistle:

Jam packed all the important things at once.

Stefan Carlson:

That’ll date me as far as …

Heather Thoming:

Your mom had something to do with it, too.

Stefan Carlson:

She had a lot to do with it.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Don’t forget the moms. Shout out the moms.

Stefan Carlson:

But yeah, so he started the company then. He started primarily in roofing and realized we probably needed to do something in winter. And so hey, let’s start doing remodeling. When I started with my dad, I really wanted to do the remodeling side, so that’s kind of what I’ve focused all my effort on. Before it was kind of like 80% roofing, 20% remodeling, and now it’s kind of flipped where it’s about 70% remodeling, 30% roofing. We’ve kind of tipped the scales a little bit I guess. But yeah, that’s what we do.

Charley Burtwistle:

That’s awesome. Heather, you are the marketing director, right?

Heather Thoming:

I am. I am.

Charley Burtwistle:

Tell us a little bit more about how you got brought into the fold here.

Stefan Carlson:

She’s got more titles now, too.

Heather Thoming:

Yeah, yeah. It’s growing.

Stefan Carlson:

That’s how small businesses is.

Heather Thoming:

It’s kind of an interesting story. I’ve been with the company a little over a year now. I was very early on a fan of Carlson Projects. I followed them on social media and loved everything that they did, loved their authenticity, loved their craftsmanship. I loved everything about them.

I had been a creative lifestyle blogger for about 10 years as also a stay-at-home mom. And so, I am familiar with social media, I’m familiar with marketing and stuff, but at that time I was at home and a mom. When they posted they were looking for a marketing director, I was just like, I had already fallen in love with them purely because of their social media and what they were willing to share out there. And so, when I had the opportunity to jump onto the team, I took it and ran with it.

What was so awesome was that the minute I walked in the door, everything that I had felt from their social media was very evident the minute I walked in. They were true to themselves. I love the brand that they’ve built, and so, it was very easy to come in and kind of take the reins and kind of run with it and fall in love even more with the company.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s awesome.

Stefan Carlson:

During the first interview, I told my brother, my brother also helps run the company with us, I told my brother, I’m like, “She’s way overqualified.” I told her, and that’s the second interview I think, I’m like, “We’re not going to be able to pay you what you’re worth, but we can put you to work for sure if you want to work here.”

Heather Thoming:

I didn’t really care …

Stefan Carlson:

We’re very lucky to have her.

Heather Thoming:

… because I loved Carlson Projects so much. And so, I was just like, “I don’t care. Pay me whatever you want. I just want to work with you.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s amazing. I can tell too how you are just genuinely in love with everything they’re doing. That is pretty rare. It’s hard to find people who just love their job and the passion that comes out. So, really, really awesome. What are your guys’ relationship like? How do you work together? I mean, I’m curious.

Heather Thoming:

We collaborate really well together.

Stefan Carlson:

Yeah, I would say so. When I started with my dad, he didn’t have a website. Well, he kind of did. It didn’t really work. And so, I was like, “I’m going to get you into the 20th century” or 21st century or whatever century it is. And then I started kind of doing social media. If you go back in our social media, it’s like gen one GoPro bubble pictures.

But I just knew it was important. And so, I really tried to focus on, okay, how do we be the best at social media? It was never I was very good at it, so I would hire friends, I would hire college kids, I would hire whoever had a great eye that I thought for photography. When I hired Heather, I was like, “She’s a director of marketing. She’s not just like a photographer.”

And so, our relationship has been really awesome because I’m able to kind of idea bounce rather than just like, “Hey, I want to go shoot this photo at this place.” Whereas I can say, “Hey, in three years I want to be able to take this thing and cut it up into that and make it look like this in the end.” And she’s like, “I get it. Let’s do it.” And so, collaboratively, it’s been a really fun relationship.

Heather Thoming:

Yeah, it’s been a super great relationship.

Charley Burtwistle:

I know our marketing team was raving about your blog before you guys came in here. They’re huge fans. Maybe explain to us a little bit, because this has been a common theme. I can never remember the release order, but we just talked to another person about marketing and social media and what companies could be doing. I think you’re kind of seeing the shift of people like Stefan that’s thinking about, we know this is important, we know we need to do it, how do we start taking those first steps?

I’d be really interested to hear your perspective, and I think our listeners would be as well of you come into this company, they have some established processes up, but how do you take that and go to the next level? You can’t do everything all at once, you got to focus. But what were those first few months or maybe the first year had been like to really stand up and take these ideas that you guys have together and implement them?

Heather Thoming:

Right. I would say we are big believers in inbound marketing and the importance of catering to a very savvy consumer who likes to be educated before they even contact somebody.

Obviously, it’s something it takes a while to build. That’s not something that’s going to happen overnight. And so, we’re kind of, how do you eat an elephant? And it’s one bite at a time. We’ve slowly been trying to roll out some really great content and with the goal that when we have a customer walk through the beginning of our experience, they’re almost 100% sold before Stefan even walks in the door to do sales.

That’s kind of our vision. And so, it’s a slow build, but we’re working on it. We were talking about it on the drive up here, our latest blog post is actually about Buildertrend.

Charley Burtwistle:

There we go. We’ll have to link that in the shownotes.

Heather Thoming:

Yeah, totally.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Make it happen.

Heather Thoming:

Just the importance of using technology like Buildertrend and other software that we find very valuable in creating a good brand experience for our clients.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, that’s incredible, and excited to read the Buildertrend blog as well.

Stefan Carlson:

I would say when she first started, it was very much my whole dream I guess, was just put as much content out there as possible and hopefully it’ll go somewhere.

Zach Wojtowicz:

The spray and pray method.

Stefan Carlson:

Yeah.

Heather Thoming:

Right. Right.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Love that. That’s what I would do.

Stefan Carlson:

Now, having her, it’s like, okay, let’s be strategic because she’s incredible at putting the content together, editing it and getting it out quickly. It’s like, “Okay, let’s be strategic and actually think about this” and maybe on a calendar basis like, “Okay, we film this day at this time, and here’s the five things that we want to get done, so we can actually have a content plan.”

We have not a schedule, but we have a blog idea doc that we’re just constantly just mowing through to get more blogs out there. I’d say that’s what she really brought was I felt the confidence to be like, “Here’s all of the ideas. Let’s get it in one spot and let’s start just knocking things out.” I think that’s really where the rubber met the road, I guess.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Why did you guys decide now is the time to bring on someone for this? This is an area I’ve talked to builders about personally. It’s like, have you guys invested in marketing? A lot of times they’re like, “It’s just like we have so much work coming to us that we don’t see the need to invest in a marketing or branding.” They look at it as an investment. I put dollars of this pay salary, all that. Why, for you guys, did you decide that this was the right time to bring on someone for this?

Stefan Carlson:

I have always wanted the company to be a brand, something that somebody looks at and goes, “I want to buy that. I want to buy from them because it’s them, not because, oh, they’re the cheapest bid, or they’re the quickest construction person. I want it to be them because I can say it’s either a Carlson Projects project, or that name comes with something.” It’s kind of a no-brainer in my head, but I would see where a lot of builders are like, “I’ve got plenty of work to do.”

A lot of what I’ve tried to create in what I do is how do we kick out the clients that aren’t necessarily the clients that we want. How do we weed through those types of people without them even filling out a form on our website? If they already have followed us for, she followed us for I don’t know how many years, they followed us for how many years, they’re either going to be in our sphere, or they’re just not even going to call us.

So, it’s like, okay, it’s not going to waste our sales team’s time to get them in the door or to try and convince somebody that’s never going to buy from us to buy from us. That’s what I’ve kind of viewed marketing as is how do I create a brand around it, so it’s like that’s the person I want to use.

Charley Burtwistle:

I feel like that’s a shift in the construction industry is people focusing more and more on the experience. Well, mostly and ideally for your customers, how do you make their experience as good as possible? How do they know exactly what they’re going to get coming in? What are their expectations coming in? How do you fulfill those and work with them?

But also what you were just alluding to is the experience on your side as well, too. Not all jobs are created equal. Not all dollars are created equal. That’s something that Buildertrend struggles with, is something that a lot of people struggle with is how do you say no to people? If you can organically do it through the brand and marketing kind of generation that you’re doing, then that’s just a win-win for everyone involved.

Stefan Carlson:

Yeah.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah.

Heather Thoming:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh, go ahead. Sorry.

You said something really interesting that is kind of sticking in my head where it’s like you position brand as a choice. I wanted to take control of my brand, which is philosophically, do you always have a brand or brand only come after you choose what it’s going to be and then work towards it?

Heather Thoming:

Well, you’re always going to have a brand, regardless of whether you’re putting effort into it or you’re not putting effort into it. And so, it’s going to be a positive experience, or it’s going to be a negative experience, and it’s your choice.

That was the one thing that I really loved about Carlson Projects is Stefan was very forward-thinking before people in this industry really were thinking about that, that brand was very, very important. We are going so far as a company that a lot of times, and you guys have talked about it here on “The Building Code” about how brand is more than your logo, it’s more than your colors and what’s on your shirt. It’s about the experience that the customer has.

And so, we’ve been working really, really hard to create an entire brand experience from the minute somebody contacts us throughout the entire process. This is an industry that unfortunately has kind of a bad reputation and there’s a lot of anxiety that comes with working with somebody in this field. We’re hoping, I know that my goal coming into this is I would love to change that perception.

I want people to say, “Oh my gosh, I want to work with Carlson Projects again, and I want to tell my friends about it because the process was so smooth, they were in constant contact with us. We knew exactly what was happening from the minute we walked in the door. We knew what the next step was and we were comfortable in the estimating process. We were comfortable in everything.”

That is a huge part of your brand. As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to your brand, it doesn’t matter how talented you are, if you are not branding yourself well, it doesn’t matter. Your brand is the keystone to your company. And so, if you’re putting a lot of effort and thought into that, then you’re able to showcase your talents, and people are going to see that.

Charley Burtwistle:

Gosh, I hope Courtney’s in the studio right now, our brand champion, because she has to just be head over heels.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I think she’s fist bumping in the corner.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, I was going to say, our brand champion here at Buildertrend, you’re just preaching to the choir right here.

Heather Thoming:

Yep, yep.

Stefan Carlson:

Well, it’s almost like when you hear the word contract, you’re like …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Sounds expensive.

Heather Thoming:

Used car salesman.

Stefan Carlson:

One sounds expensive, used car salesman. You don’t automatically think trust. It’s like, okay, how do we change that? We are nowhere near to the level of experience for a client that we need, where we see it can be, but we’re like we said, slowly eating that elephant and just trying to figure out, okay, how do we integrate these things in order to make it an automatic communication with a client?

That’s what that blog’s about is how do we integrate things like Buildertrend and HubSpot? How do we integrate those things where it’s like a client knows exactly what’s coming next after this meeting? What’s coming next after that meeting? How can they see the end product rather than sign the contract? Okay, what happens next?

Heather Thoming:

Now what? Yeah.

Stefan Carlson:

I just signed $100,000, $500,000. What’s going to happen now?

Heather Thoming:

Right.

Stefan Carlson:

Whether you like it or not, if you are a contractor, your client is having those thoughts. It’s like how do you get in front of that so you can preemptively walk them through the process, and it’s not you talking to them every single time.

Heather Thoming:

We have a button on our website to our Buildertrend portal and so, our customers are able to easily go … How many times are you working on a project with something and you’re like, “Dang it, where was that link to… I can’t find it, but I want to look at that estimate again. Where’s that email?” But they can just go onto our website and click on that button and get right into their portal and see everything that we have set up for them and to be able to easily communicate with us.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m curious, family-run business, you and your brother, and then your dad is still involved in the business?

Stefan Carlson:

And my mom.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And your mom?

Stefan Carlson:

Yep.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s awesome. What do they think about all the brand changes? What’s that dynamic like?

Stefan Carlson:

My dad was kind of the similar thing where what he’s very good at is building relationships, and that’s what he was amazing at. He had already created a little bit of a brand as far as built around him. People trusted Greg Carlson. I wouldn’t say they didn’t care about the price, but they cared less because they knew he was going to take care of them.

Zach Wojtowicz:

They’re in good hands.

Stefan Carlson:

Yep. And so, it was easy to build on top of that, but it was harder to say, “Hey, people are going to find you this way instead of just your personal network.” That’s kind of where we’ve just been slowly building that of understanding, okay, what does that look like? How does that get built?

I think my mom’s always seen it. She’s a very visual person, so she’s always loved being able to see all of our projects and be able to share that with her friends or the next client she’s working with. My brother is kind of the same way.

My brother is hilarious in the fact of if he’s going to make a purchase, he researches to the 10th degree before he ever buys anything. And so, he buys on brand. He buys on not brand as in is it the most expensive or does it look good on my feed or any of that, but he’s like, “Is this thing going to last me another five years or is it not? Because I will spend twice as much if it’s going to last me twice as long.”

And so, he understood that from the get-go of this is what we’re trying to build. So, it wasn’t super hard to bring him along with that, thankfully. But it’s difficult when you’re talking about in the budget meeting of, “Hey, we need this budget for marketing.” And you’re like, “Huh? We do?” It’s like …

Heather Thoming:

Why?

Stefan Carlson:

Most construction companies don’t spend that. I’m like, “I know, but we aren’t most construction companies.”

Charley Burtwistle:

We’re not most construction companies. We’re different.

Heather Thoming:

Right.

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s our brand.

Heather Thoming:

Right, right.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s really interesting. I got to imagine, too, your dad’s been in business going on over 30 years in Lincoln, driving around Lincoln, it’s all the homes that you’ve touched and the community. Lincoln is a low-key very communal town.

Stefan Carlson:

Absolutely.

Heather Thoming:

Very, yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

One of the things about it. Omaha, not as much I would say …

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, I agree with that.

Zach Wojtowicz:

… compared to Lincoln. I get kind of weirdly emotional when I talk to people about their family businesses because it’s just kind of a lost art in America. It’s just not common anymore. You don’t see a lot of family-run small businesses like you used to.

Stefan Carlson:

Right.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s amazing.

Stefan Carlson:

That aren’t complete horrible shit shows.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, right. They all fizzled out. That’s why they’re not around as much.

Stefan Carlson:

I mean, a lot of times when you hear family business, it’s like, okay, how much arguing happens behind the scenes?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Honestly. I had some on-sites in my day where I was like, “Am I a family counselor?”

Stefan Carlson:

Were you in a family business?

Zach Wojtowicz:

No, but for Buildertrend, I would do consulting, and so, I would travel, and I would go to people, and they struggled separating the family from the operations. There was kind of that personal side. You’re like, “Hey, you can’t talk to your brother like that at the business. You’re trying to be successful, and your employees are looking at you like, why’d you just say that to him? That’s my boss.” It’s interesting. Really, really cool.

Heather Thoming:

I would have to say coming from an outside perspective and being an unofficial Carlson …

Stefan Carlson:

You’re adopted.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Can’t get away now.

Heather Thoming:

I know. They do such a good job of working together. It’s inspiring and it’s fun to be able to showcase that.

Stefan Carlson:

I mean, it’s one of our core values is we’re a team. That stems from my dad, my brother and my mom were kind of butting heads because we were actually homeschooled, too. I don’t know if you can tell, my social awkwardness. They kind of butted heads a little bit. My dad literally came home and was like, “Hey, hey, look, you’re all on the same team here. You’re trying to get to the same goal.”

That’s really where that stemmed from is like, okay, we’re all trying to win here. We don’t need to be yelling at each other. We’re going to see each other at Thanksgiving or this weekend at family lunch. So, let’s figure out a way that we can actually work through problems in a way that’s healthy.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, I love that you’ve kept this core kind of traditional values, family businesses in the communal city of Lincoln, Nebraska, but you’re also very, very forward-thinking. We hit really hard at the beginning on the marketing, the social media and stuff like that, but even just implementing a construction tech software like Buildertrend in family businesses. We’ve had some guests on before that was like, “My dad was just fired up that we brought on a fax machine in the office, and now he wants to implement Buildertrend.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s literally a quote.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. It was a father daughter I think. Dad was like, “I was in charge of getting the fax machine.” Yeah, she was in charge of getting Buildertrend. What was that process like? How long have you had Buildertrend? Was it a similar kind of pitch of we know we need something, but …

Zach Wojtowicz:

You just looked in the distance like it was a war-torn PTSD.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, that’s some PTSD right there.

Stefan Carlson:

Well, I can tell the whole story if you have the time.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We got the time.

Stefan Carlson:

January 2016, we went to the conference, the IBC or whatever.

Zach Wojtowicz:

IBS.

Stefan Carlson:

IBS, IBC, whatever.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Best named conference in America.

Stefan Carlson:

The irritable bowel syndrome conference.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We’re going to get uninvited.

Heather Thoming:

Yeah.

Stefan Carlson:

That year before. It was just me at the time doing kind of the remodeling stuff and my dad was just running the roofing stuff. My mom was involved still, but she wasn’t as involved as she is now. We had a project that it was just horrible. Client wanted all these changes. We had no way to track the changes. I thought I kept up with all of them, thought we did our best.

The end product was great, and the client was happy, got done with the project, and I mean we lost just a ridiculous amount of money. I was just looking at my dad, I was like, “There has to be some way that we can track these things. There has to be a way.” At that time I was using three softwares to create an estimate for a client.

And so, we went to the conference or whatever, and we’re hanging out in Las Vegas, and we walked by this builder thing, Buildertrend thing. And I was like, “I wonder what that is?” I don’t know if he still works here or not, but Andy …

Zach Wojtowicz:

McCarville.

Stefan Carlson:

… McCarville was there.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Big OG.

Stefan Carlson:

I was like, “Hey, does your software do anything with change orders?” He probably doesn’t even remember it because he’s probably sold so many people on the software at this point.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I have so much to say after this. I’ve got to tell you a story after this.

Stefan Carlson:

But he goes, “Oh yeah, we have this super cool thing.” He showed me how to do a change order on the software. My dad wasn’t with me. I was like, “I’m sold. Whatever this costs is going to save any sort of money.” So, we literally bought it just for …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Change orders.

Stefan Carlson:

… change orders. That was literally the only reason why I wanted to get it.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s amazing. I think you changed Andy McCarville’s life in that meeting because there’s an old wives’ tale, I guess, legend on the floor. Andy McCarville is one of our original CSMs. He would always talk about change orders in his first meeting with customers no matter what. That is not in the script to bring up change orders right away. I think you’re the origin. I’m having this amazing moment of like, oh my God, that’s why Andy McCarville always brought it up.

Charley Burtwistle:

Guys, I did it one time.

Zach Wojtowicz:

It worked.

Charley Burtwistle:

He bought right there.

Heather Thoming:

And it worked.

Zach Wojtowicz:

He said it was worth way more. That’s so funny. That’s amazing.

Stefan Carlson:

That was 2016.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Did you also know that we were based out of Nebraska?

Stefan Carlson:

That was the other funny thing because he was like, “I actually live in Lincoln. I’ll come and …”

Zach Wojtowicz:

He does. He still does.

Stefan Carlson:

Yeah. He’s like, “I’ll come and do your intro with you.” We’re like, “Sweet, awesome. It took us flying to Las Vegas to find this software.”

Charley Burtwistle:

Right up the street.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You cannot make that up. That is amazing.

Stefan Carlson:

That’s how we bought it, and that’s how we really wanted to use it was because I didn’t care about any other features at that point, zero percent. I just wanted to be able to track if something happened, I didn’t have to find a piece of paper, write down what the change would be, find the client, have them sign it. It skyrocketed our change order rate because I could actually track it. That’s the whole origin of Buildertrend.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s awesome. Do you guys use more than change orders now?

Stefan Carlson:

Yes.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Good. Great. Okay, fantastic. Just want to make sure.

Heather Thoming:

Yeah.

Stefan Carlson:

We actually use it for a lot.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Great.

Stefan Carlson:

We use it for all of our guys’ time clocks. We use it for all of our estimating. And then we have it integrated with our QuickBooks now, too. We’re working on that integration. We’re not 100% there yet. Then when the guys clock in, it goes instantly into that. We can see the costing happening right as it’s going on. Receipts are going to go through there. We use the calendar function but more as a guideline than an actual.

Heather Thoming:

We’ve integrated with HubSpot.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh yeah, one of our newest integration.

Heather Thoming:

Right.

Charley Burtwistle:

One of the first 128 I think.

Heather Thoming:

Huge fan.

Charley Burtwistle:

There you go.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s amazing. Are you using HubSpot for your marketing?

Heather Thoming:

We use it for a lot of stuff.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Really?

Heather Thoming:

Yeah. Yeah.

Stefan Carlson:

Your guys’ timing is great because we just got all this stuff implemented we’ve been working on for like the last year.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We actually have been spying on you.

Stefan Carlson:

That makes sense.

Charley Burtwistle:

The change order guy.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, the change order guy. Just follow that guy.

Charley Burtwistle:

You mentioned earlier in the interview that you have the customer portal in your website, right?

Heather Thoming:

Mm-hmm.

Charley Burtwistle:

So, anytime someone needs to go to log in, they just go right out to your guys’ website instead of having to go through Buildertrend or anything like that, which is awesome. I wish 100% of our customers did that. If you’re talking brand and client experience, this is the one spot you need to go no matter what I think. Yeah, that’s incredible.

Heather Thoming:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

How’s this year looking for you guys? What have you looked for, been your big goals for 2023?

Stefan Carlson:

Oh, I’ll let Heather answer first. I’ll put you on the spot.

Heather Thoming:

Put me on the spot?

Stefan Carlson:

Yep.

Heather Thoming:

One of our big goals is we’ve been working really hard over the last year to kind of construct a great client experience. And so, we’ve been slowly working on that. I would say from my perspective, that’s our biggest goal, and I think we’re doing pretty good with that.

Stefan Carlson:

Yeah, I would second that. It would be easy to tell you, I want to sell $17 million worth of work. That’s a great goal. It’s like, yeah, but that doesn’t really do much for you. I would say that is a huge goal. I am drastically focused on how do we build a client experience, and that will scale our business automatically.

If every single client that walks through our door at the end of it, or 90% of our clients that walk through the door at the end of it, they’re like, “You have to work with Carlson Projects if you’re doing anything,” that will scale your business way bigger than all the marketing dollars you can spend.

And so, that’s kind of what we are really trying to focus on is change the stigma of contractor. Change that stigma, and then give somebody an actual experience. I would say, I mean, we’re not there yet, but that’s …

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s always a work in progress.

Heather Thoming:

We’re working on it.

Stefan Carlson:

That’s where we’re trying to go.

Charley Burtwistle:

That’s definitely the right mindset to have.

Heather Thoming:

Our focus is just building relationships rather than a client experience, too. We’ve had clients that have had the whole crew over for lunch and because we’ve developed that relationship with them that they want to have us around, they’re sad when we leave. And so I think that’s really exciting.

Stefan Carlson:

Yeah, I’ve had a lot of clients that are like, “I’m sad to see Andy or sad to see Rob go because I like having them in my house.” I’m like, “That’s what I want.” We hire very slowly because it’s like, I don’t want just anybody in somebody’s house. I want somebody that’s actually going to care about that client as a person rather than just like, I’m just getting my paycheck today. I’m going to put the tile in and get the cabinet up. It can be that some days, but it’s about way more than that than just showing up and getting it done.

I would say that has probably hampered us from scaling, but it has built a culture within Carlson Projects of like, no, we take care of the client. I would say that’s our biggest goal we’re trying to do, and then along with getting all of our internal communication really, really dialed in and using the tools that we have to make sure it’s concise.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Well, you know what I’m hearing, a second episode to talk about hiring.

Charley Burtwistle:

I was going to say, yeah, that’s just such an incredible mindset. I always joke with Zach, and I always talk about just how motivated we are after these episodes to go back and work and help all this happen. Just listening to you guys has been a pleasure. I just looked at the clock. We’re way over time and it just flew by. So, for a second episode, we can’t wait until episode 300.

Heather Thoming:

Absolutely.

Charley Burtwistle:

Maybe we can do 250.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, no. Like 250, the half century mark.

Heather Thoming:

Okay. There we go.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, thank you guys.

Heather Thoming:

We’d be happy to come.

Charley Burtwistle:

Thank you guys so much for being on and for coming in the office and the swag …

Stefan Carlson:

Of course.

Charley Burtwistle:

… and everything. This is absolutely awesome.

Stefan Carlson:

Thank you guys.

Heather Thoming:

Thank you.

Stefan Carlson:

Appreciate it.

Charley Burtwistle:

As always, make sure you guys remember to like, review, and subscribe. Until next time, I’m Charley Burtwistle.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And I’m Zach Wojtowicz.

Charley Burtwistle:

See you.