Anniversary Edition: Top 3 Takeaways

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s “The Building Code,” Zach Wojtowicz here.

Charley Burtwistle:

Charley Burtwistle. And joining us today, our producer, John Beck.

John Beck:

Hello.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Welcome. Well, you might be wondering, why would we bring on our producer, video editor, extraordinaire? Today’s a very special day on “The Building Code,” Charley.

Charley Burtwistle:

Today is the three-year anniversary of the inception of “The Building Code.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

Which is pretty phenomenal.

Charley Burtwistle:

It’s huge. It started out with just an idea, a dream, and three years later, here we are. It’s gone way downhill since Zach and I took over, but it’s actually coming pretty close to the one-year anniversary when we took over too. So a lot of anniversaries today, very special recording today, we’re going to be doing a best of and going through some of our favorite moments. And since John edits all of our podcasts for us and listens to all of the stories, we thought it best to have him on and share with our listeners out there at home.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I know we make it seem so easy to put this together, but we’ve got a lot of people that have over the last three years put their spin, they’ve contributed. We’ve had guest hosts, we’ve had people who have come on and hosted with us. We’ve had people that are over Zoom, they’ve come into the office, we’ve done it at BTU, we’ve done at IBS. So we thought it’d be a great way to bring on John and celebrate and give us a perspective from the other side.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Just a couple fun stats that we wanted to share with our longtime listeners, you’re probably like, we obviously aren’t the original hosts of “The Building Code” and we’ve taken it since about May, of last year. We’ve had 23 episodes together, Charley this is the data for you.

Charley Burtwistle:

I love that. This is surprise data too. You told me you’re going to share some stats, I’m hearing live.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You haven’t heard this yet?

Charley Burtwistle:

No.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Wow, okay. Someone doesn’t check their emails. So our first episode was with Chris Krebs from Novice, on how to use tech to sustain growth.

Charley Burtwistle:

I remember that. I had a follow-up call with him afterwards, I enjoyed the conversation so much.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And we’re actually going to point out, we have international guests as well. We’ve had people from all over the country. So I don’t have any stats on that, but I just noticed I missed a stat that was meant to be shared. That it’s not just people from the US, we’ve had people from all over the entire planet, which is pretty special. Our very first episode was called “The Story Of Buildertrend,” and it was about how Buildertrend came to be and was hosted by Dan Houghton, Jeff and Steve Duggar and how Buildertrend developed over time. And-

Charley Burtwistle:

Which is an awesome episode, by the way. It’s our number one most played episode ever, and I can see why. It’s very, very inspiring to hear them talk about the birth of Buildertrend and where we got today. And if you’re a fan of construction, if you’re a fan of Buildertrend, if you’re a fan of entrepreneurship, great episode.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, when I traveled for work, a lot of people would ask about Buildertrend and what’s the backstory of our company. I pointed to the podcast, maybe we can hear all about it from our founders on this first episode. And it’s pretty unique because we’re based out of Omaha, Nebraska, if you listen to the podcast you know that we’re totally self-started and Dan Houghton and Jeff, and Steve’s… One of their parent’s basements, and now we’ve got over 900 employees, we’ve had a town hall recently. We talked about projection of Buildertrend having over 1,500 employees by the end of 2023.

Charley Burtwistle:

[crosstalk].

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. And so we’re going to continue to grow. And the podcast is a really special place for us to get to share that with our listeners.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. A live view into the journey of the company that is Buildertrend.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And it’s a real privilege. I mean, not everybody at Buildertrend obviously gets to do this. So it’s really cool that Charley and I work at Buildertrend, we actually do a lot of different things. Charley and I were just talking off-air how before the podcast we didn’t work as much together, and now we see each other at every meeting and it crosses over into the episodes. It’s like, “Oh, you’re just talking about spreadsheets.” And now we’re just talking about our customers, which is my favorite part of my job.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. And as you guys can probably tell, Zach and I have grown to resent each other throughout this podcast.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s not true.

Charley Burtwistle:

No, we’re best friends. BT buds.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Remember that?

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, that was our first ever episode.

Zach Wojtowicz:

The BT buds. And we’ve had a lot of fun ideas. John, what’s your favorite Charley pitch idea that you’ve heard in our time in our 23 episodes of hosting the pod, to put you on the spot.

Charley Burtwistle:

If there’s too many [crosstalk 00:04:28].

John Beck:

I mean, there’s so many. I mean literally every-

Zach Wojtowicz:

Literally? At least 23 ideas.

John Beck:

Every episode there is a, “Oh, that’s that’s a T-shirt.” And I’m like, “Oh yeah, I got to write that down.” I just want to have a wall of all of the coffee mug, T-shirt, bumper stickers. Do we do bumper stickers anymore?

Charley Burtwistle:

Oh, yeah, we can.

John Beck:

So we can just cover the wall with all of Charley’s ideas.

Charley Burtwistle:

[Crosstalk 00:04:50]-

Zach Wojtowicz:

Have just a fist bump logo as part of our-

John Beck:

I mean, even just this morning. I was on the floor laughing. If I can already start with this, the thing I love the most about the two of you together, I get the best laughs. Your banter is why I keep coming back even though I have to listen.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. It’s part of your job.

John Beck:

It’s my job, I’m forced to.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Be honest John, when people ask you, “What’s your favorite part about Buildertrend?” How hard is it to really explain I mean, how much you love The Building Code and we are definitely your two favorite people at Buildertrend and-

John Beck:

It is my favorite part of the week.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We didn’t pay him to say this. As I look into the camera, this is totally earnest. John has an amazing backstory. John worked at NASA and he produces the video content that our customers’ testimonials happen. So we send him all over the country and I think I assume the Buildertrend RV with all your camera equipment rolling up on the customer’s job site. We’re like, “All right, let’s go. Let’s go shoot some videos.” You do fantastic work. We’re really lucky to have you.

John Beck:

I’m glad you just glamorized it with the Buildertrend RV. No, it’s been my own car. And it wasn’t all over the country. So far I’ve only gone to Phoenix and to Boston. And I don’t do all of the videos.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You do my favorite videos. And you make us look good on YouTube which-

Charley Burtwistle:

Is a lot of work.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. That’s not easy.

John Beck:

But I do love it. I mean, because I’m a documentary filmmaker, that’s my background. That’s what I did for NASA, that’s what I did on the side. And so I love people’s stories, I want to hear real authentic stories. So getting to go to Phoenix and talk to Brad Leavitt and go… I’m just like, “Can I please stay another week?” In fact, I did make an extra effort to go back again and get more of their stories.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And I’m sure you have plans to go out to more customers over the next few months. Yeah, it’s a great part and obviously, one of the running jokes is Charley never gets to travel, which is one of, we’re going to change that.

Charley Burtwistle:

Normally a big requirement for data scientists is a lot of travel.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We got to get you outside.

Charley Burtwistle:

We got to go outside.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That vitamin D isn’t going to fill up itself you know.

Charley Burtwistle:

Hey, sit by a window.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Good point. Yeah, so we thought another great way to celebrate “The Building Code” is to go back into our vault of episodes and talk about some of our favorite moments with “The Building Code.” And I’m going to start off with mine. This actually won’t surprise either of you, given my consulting background that we had Breakthrough Academy on with Benji, not that long ago, about three or four months ago, to talk about what they do with their customers. And what I really loved about that episode was we got, not just into the consulting world, and there’s a lot of services and people out there that do consulting work. And his take on how to run a business and build a culture was something that I distinctly remember just being so, just hyped about those concepts that are transforming the way that people think about a construction business.

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s really easy to just be like, “They build houses.” But there’s so much more to running an efficient, and really, really desirable place to work. And any business can use those principles to make it the best place for their employees and invest in your employees. And that’s something that Buildertrend does an amazing job at. We have so many people that come here and they start at one place and they move another that’s a very common thing, if you talk to anybody who’s been at Buildertrend for a few years, is it’s in a lot of cross-collaboration. And Benji talked about how you could do that in construction industry and set standards and precedents and write job descriptions and explore benefits. So we’re going to listen to him talk about that with us, and then we’ll come back and talk about [inaudible 00:08:45].

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, let’s hear it.

Benji Carlson:

You’d asked a question, Charley, about tactics to hold on to your talented people. So this is about retention, and my perspective on retention is it’s fundamentally about engagement. You need to have people that feel bought in, they feel challenged, they feel like their skills are developing. They feel a certain way about what they do, and I think engagement is the word that business owners should be thinking about. Keeping people happy is a bit of an abstract concept, it’s a bit ethereal. It’s like, what does that even mean? It’s work at the end of the day. So I think the question is, “How do I keep my team hyper-engaged with what they do?”.

Benji Carlson:

So there’s a couple things. And I mentioned that visible growth opportunities thing, that career path thing for listeners that want to hear it. We just did a really good deep-dive episode on this on our podcast, we’ll put a link in the description. But to summarize it, people need to ascend. People need to see that I start here, but then I get up here in time. And that’s especially true in trades and construction where a lot of these roles that we’re offering that we’re looking for. Let’s be real, they’re not as sexy as, “Hey, I’m a graphic designer.” “Hey, I’m a remote digital marketer.” It’s like no, “You are a landscape technician. Or you are a skilled laborer or whatever.” We can talk about how to make those roles sound sexier, which you can totally do as well but-

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’ve noticed that landscape, the title you use for it is something, I don’t know, I haven’t heard a lot of-

Charley Burtwistle:

Landscape technician?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, landscape technician.

Charley Burtwistle:

[crosstalk 00:10:41]-

Zach Wojtowicz:

The titling.

Benji Carlson:

These are the small little tricks you do.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, you just beef it up.

Benji Carlson:

You don’t call it a landscaper, you call it a landscape technician. It’s like the subway, they’re called sandwich artists. As gimmicky as that stuff sounds, this stuff works.

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s psychology.

Benji Carlson:

You need to make… What’s that?

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s psychology, right? It makes it-

Benji Carlson:

Make it sound cool.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Benji Carlson:

Make it sound cool and people will be more likely to be interested in it. But to this to this visible growth opportunities thing, I think the one thing that we’re seeing a lot of our members have a ton of success with, is they’re thinking through how their organizational chart is designed, and they’re linking one node on the system to a higher one, to a higher one, to a higher one. They’re getting very clear on what skills, what aptitudes the person needs to develop to move up, what results that business owner would need to see from the employee to move them up. It’s not just giving promotions willy-nilly, there is actual measurable stuff that you need to see.

Benji Carlson:

But then they’re giving them the training, the coaching, the support that they need to do that, and they’re talking about that on the website, they’re talking about it in their recruiting messages. It’s a big part of the brand and the messaging around the business, that’s created a much more attractive thing. That’s created a much more appealing offer to the workforce for a lot of our members. Whether they be landscapers, roofers, painters, whatever, that visible growth opportunities piece is huge.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We just heard from Benji in Breakthrough Academy. Let’s move on to, Charley, your favorite episode and I’ve- You don’t want to talk about at all?

Charley Burtwistle:

No, I do. I just-

Zach Wojtowicz:

I guess you gave a pretty good intro-

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, I’ve said enough.

Zach Wojtowicz:

John and my perspective. Great episode.

John Beck:

What do you guys think about Benji’s perspective?

Charley Burtwistle:

Benji’s perspective is very good. I also remember he had a great mustache.

John Beck:

Yeah, exactly. Do you remember what the clip was about there, Charles?

Charley Burtwistle:

Yes, I do. And what’s funny is we were actually talking about Benji in Breakthrough Academy at the bar last night. So Zach and I were hanging out in a social setting and we came back and started talking-

Zach Wojtowicz:

Surprising. We just can’t get enough of each other.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. We started talking about the construction consulting in the podcast and Benji came up. So for my clip, I actually chose from our episode with Russ Stephens. And it was about how to become financially fit. It was a fantastic episode. And I’m not just saying that because he sent Zach and I a book afterwards, which was a very kind gift, if he’s listening, thank you, Russ. I have a couple of quotes in here that I just highlighted that I wanted to talk about. There’s one, he says we talked about 33% markup, which is 25% gross margin on new homes, even higher for remodeling jobs. And a lot of builders find that very hard to accept, because in their mind the game’s hard. And it’s just a joke if you think you can change those sorts of margins.

Charley Burtwistle:

And that’s what the whole episode is about, was like, there’s a better way to do things. And a lot of time, that’s a tough pill for people to swallow because they’ve always done it this way and it’s always been hard. And then they’re like, “Wait, this whole time I could have been charging that much, I could have been doing it this way, making things easier?” And yeah, so he has a ton of good quotes in here. There’s one that I guarantee I pitched as a T-shirt at the time, I don’t know. But it says, “Cash is king, but profit wears the trousers in the industry.” So talking about just a lot of times people focus only on cash flow and not enough about the other parts of their business.

John Beck:

Yeah. It makes sense why people gravitate toward these episodes where it’s really getting into the process and details. You can learn so much. All of these episodes will be posted on our blog as well, if you want to dive deeper into what these individuals are doing in their careers.

Charley Burtwistle:

Roll the clip.

Russ Stephens:

We target builders between the ages of 25 and 55. Typically, below 25, they haven’t really started but we do welcome builders that are just starting a building company. We get a lot of guys come to us that, “I’m about to start, I’m going to join you later.” You need to start now before you actually start this company. We don’t limit we don’t disqualify people for being too old, I would’ve disqualified myself, but we don’t target builders over the age of 55. And the reason for that is, these guys have just spent the last 30 years building or running their building company in a certain way. And they simply don’t believe that the margins we talk about are possible.

Russ Stephens:

And in the early days, this was a real challenge when we didn’t have the proof behind us because we talk about 10% net margin, and we talk about 33% markup, which is a 25% gross margin on new homes and even higher for remodeling jobs. And a lot of builders find that very hard to accept because in their mind the game is hard and it’s just a joke if you think you can charge those sort of margins. But now that we have the proof, because of not only our 500 members, but we work privately with over a hundred building companies across five countries, so we have all their data. We now have the proof that these margins are achievable, but they are linked to marketing. You can’t just put your prices up, there is a process.

Russ Stephens:

But having said all that, we still end up speaking to builders over a certain age, their mindset won’t allow them to believe this because to accept what we’re saying as being true would be to accept that they’ve just wasted 30 years of their life. And for some guys, they just can’t allow themselves to believe that. It’s a bit like the matrix. When Neo meets Morpheus and Morpheus says, “We never free a mind over a certain age, it’s too dangerous.” Yeah, that’s the same with the Association of Professional Builders. We never free a builder’s mind over the age of 55.

Charley Burtwistle:

That’s maybe one of the best analogies I’ve heard to date. That’s incredible. Well, you’re speaking my language, first of, all proving stuff with data is what I, do day-to-day. Right after this episode-

Zach Wojtowicz:

[crosstalk 00:16:39] of the closet.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, I’m going back to my dark corner to do exactly that. And I just love your marketing strategy is positioning yourself as a thought leader. Actually, Zach and I were reading one of the blog articles you guys recently posted about how the booming construction industry right now doesn’t necessarily equate to booming profits. Is that something that a lot of people have misconceptions about? And is that another one of those things that you’re just trying to teach people more than what may appear obvious on the offset?

Russ Stephens:

A hundred percent. It’s a big myth in our industry, isn’t it? Because too many people focus on cash flow and I’m constantly at odds with the saying that cash is king at the Association of Professional Builders where we say cash is king, but it’s profit that wears the trousers in this industry. It really is all about profit because it will bite you sooner or later.

Zach Wojtowicz:

John, we’ve listened to two clips so far. Let’s talk a little bit, what’s your editing process when you hear these clips and you remember the time that you spent having to go through and fixing our stammers and really making it sound like we know what we’re talking about? How long does it take you typically to edit an episode and put the show together?

John Beck:

You know, believe it or not, and I’m being totally honest. It’s gotten so easy.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh, boy.

John Beck:

I really don’t have to edit much out because you guys just-

Charley Burtwistle:

Wow. Man, we got to get John-

Zach Wojtowicz:

We are naturals.

Charley Burtwistle:

We got to get John on here more often. I normally just have Zach tearing me down, tearing me down [crosstalk 00:18:17]-

Zach Wojtowicz:

What? That is just false.

John Beck:

That is slanderous.

Charley Burtwistle:

A lot of compliments, thank you, John.

Zach Wojtowicz:

My favorite part, honestly we’ll do a recording, we’ll do a clip and we have a window that you might be able to see on camera if you’re on YouTube right now, and John, we can see him and a lot of times Charley will do it, then we’ll look and John will just be like… Put his thumb up like.

John Beck:

Yeah, just this morning you were like, “It was a slow thing.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

We try to read it and our producer of the show, Danielle, she’ll be in the room and be on the interviews. And so we’re always reading their reactions to, did we do it right? Did we say the right things? But let’s get to your choices, John, as far as… John, he got two episodes, two clips?

John Beck:

Well actually, I thought the assignment was to find three.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh wow, we’ve got extra credit.

John Beck:

It was actually a tough choice to pick between these two because I could really… I mean, I’ve been able to identify with a lot of them, but these two in particular really stood out. The first one was Episode 124 with Bill Gray from New Zealand, because he was talking about building for extreme situations such as earthquakes, and his earthquake story reminded me of my own going through the earthquake. I mean, I’ve been through a lot of earthquakes coming from LA.

Charley Burtwistle:

I feel like you should real quick, share your earthquake story. Because you told us, me Zach that day in the studio, and it’s one of the craziest stories I’ve heard.

John Beck:

Well, the ’87 one, I thought was bad. That was my first one. But then ’94 was a Northridge quake, and that came at 4:30 in the morning. It’s the scariest thing in the world to have that kind of shaking happen in the middle of the night wake you up, but it was not a back and forth, it was an up and down.

Charley Burtwistle:

When you were thrown out of your bed.

John Beck:

It felt like I was being thrown up 50 feet and dropped, repeatedly.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Everybody loves your house, until it’s not earthquake-proof.

John Beck:

My ceiling collapsed, every shelf collapsed, I was thrown against the walls. I broke all the paintings in the hallway because I was thrown to one side then the other.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, I just remember Bill saying that his area in New Zealand had thousands of earthquakes.

John Beck:

Thousands, yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

They’re not major quakes, but the buildings are constantly being shooketh.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, shooketh. But then he talked about all the cool things that they have to do in construction in those areas, like with the hexagon shapes, or flooring that can shift with the house and things like that. It’s just a dynamic of building. As if building a house wasn’t hard enough, now build a house …

Zach Wojtowicz: 

How do I anticipate the earth moving? I’m like, “How does Excel work?”.

John Beck:

It’s things like that. It’s whenever the crisis happens that that says we need to change things. And so they went from five pages of plans to build a house to 40. Just to get off the ground, the things that have to be approved. But it’s all for the right reasons. And now they’re building homes that can sustain that with better foundations, and lighter roofs, and lighter structures altogether. And he said something too, that I really loved. And he was like, “Our new building code is saving lives first, save the building second.” And I love that as a priority. Because I feel when I started working at Buildertrend, that was the feeling I got more than anything was that, “We love our customers so much.” We’re doing this for our customers first, and great builds second. It’s like, this is about their experience.

Charley Burtwistle:

We had our company town hall yesterday, and I think Dan Houghton had a quote that really resonated with me. It’s like, “If we take care of our customer, the business will take care of itself. If we’re constantly worried about how are we going to make money, and how are we going to get new customers and worried about our business, we’re failing our customer and our business is going to fail.” So I think that’s a sentiment that’s definitely shared across the entire organization.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Let’s listen this clip from Bill Gray.

Bill Gray:

There’s about 150,000 earthquakes happening a year. Now when I say that, most of them you can’t feel them.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Right, but they’re out there.

Bill Gray:

About 150 to 200, you feel.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Wow. So almost one a week? More or less?

Bill Gray:

Yeah, yeah. But only felt in various parts of the country. It’s not that we’re all sitting here getting thumbed every week.

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s the old earthquake, no big deal.

Bill Gray:

Well, it does get a little bit like that. Back in 2010, 2011 there was a major earthquake just down the road about a hundred miles from here. And it took out most of Christchurch, which is a city close to here. Basically, they had to demolish roughly 9,000 homes, and there were 170,000 buildings damaged. So yeah, she was pretty full-on I can tell you. Well most of the regulations were around the earthquakes were based on earthquakes that had happened way back in 1931, so a long time ago, even before I was born. So once this major earthquake happened, suddenly there were a lot of changes regarding the regulations on how we build.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Is there a level that the code sets you out the way? Like if you get a 5.0 on the Richter scale, your house should maintain its structure? Or is there… What’s that process of what are the codes trying to prevent? How severe of an earthquake can the codes really mitigate the impacts of those earthquakes?

Bill Gray:

Well, I guess the main thing to remember is that the building code first and foremost, is trying to save lives. So then it’s saving lives first, worry about the building second. And so a lot of the work that’s been done around the regulations has been to make sure that the building stays up, giving people enough time to get out. And also, if you can, minimize the damage of the building itself.

Zach Wojtowicz:

All right, John, so we just listened to Bill and talked about the dynamics of dealing with constant earthquakes, which is unfathomable. What’s your second clip? I’m curious.

John Beck:

Second clip was pretty recent, just like what, a month ago Episode 137 with Katy Katie Kath and Joe Christensen because they get to go to IBS, and Zach got to go to IBS.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh no, this is when it all started. If you’re we’re looking for the route.

Charley Burtwistle:

Oh, what a brutal – You’re going to make me listen to it too? Live it again?

John Beck:

And so Joe made this sound like, when Charley said, “I don’t get to go.” And Joe’s like, “Wow wow.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh, we’re playing that clip, right?

John Beck:

Oh, yeah.

Charley Burtwistle:

All right, let’s hear it.

Zach Wojtowicz:

If you watch the video, when we’re doing the interview, we’re looking at the camera and he’s like, “When we go to IBS.” And I looked at Charley and his face is just like-

Charley Burtwistle:

What’s tough as the first couple, I said as a joke-

Zach Wojtowicz:

I know, and it just kept coming up.

Charley Burtwistle:

But then I had to keep saying, I’m like, “Oh, yeah.” Because it does sound awesome. They were doing a panel with Dan Houghton, you were going down your booth.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I was there.

Charley Burtwistle:

Everything was really, really cool. And so I had to keep saying like, “Oh my God, that’s going to be awesome.” But then people start laughing at me because they thought I was sad, and I was, yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You were dearly missed.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. Thank you, I appreciate that.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We’ve already been strategizing on 2023.

Charley Burtwistle:

I think we’ll be there three.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We’re calling it now. Next year, when we do a birthday episode, it’ll be post-IBS.

Charley Burtwistle:

Charley’s there.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Charley’s there.

Charley Burtwistle:

We should do a whole blog just like me-

Zach Wojtowicz:

Charley’s adventure in Las Vegas. And he’s at the mall and he’s at the… I don’t even know what [crosstalk 00:26:46]-

Charley Burtwistle:

I go to a make your own T-shirt store and just for a full day straight, I’m just printing Building Code T-shirts.

Zach Wojtowicz:

All right, let’s check out this clip with Katie and Joe.

Charley Burtwistle:

I wasn’t going to bring it up, but I’m the only person on this call that will not be at the international builder show. So I’ll be living vicariously through you guys.

Joe Christensen:

Woo woo.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, I know.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, we’ve been trying to swing it but he doesn’t have quite enough poll just yet. What are you guys going to be talking about? Give a little sneak peek. Don’t give too much away, but we’re really excited to have you both there in person talking about it. What are the things that… The theme is modern building. What are the first initial thoughts that you’re thinking think about with that topic?

Katie Kath:

In terms of what is a modern-day builder? For me, that goes back to our brand. So for me in a modern-day and our clients, I feel like I am my client. Nine out of 10 clients are me in the sense of demographic, where we are in our life, we have kids, we like to cook, we want an open floor plan like what you see behind me, we need a mudroom, if you’re in Minnesota that’s back in that corner. I mean, we all need the same things. And so if we all need the same things, we’re all probably drinking the same coffee, we all might have a Peloton in the basement, we might have our favorite pair of Nikes in the back. We’re all behaving very similarly.

Katie Kath:

And so when they are looking for a company in renovation and building I mean, it seems like it’s a really sexy thing to do. I mean, there’s no shortage of it. Everybody wants it, our inbox probably much like Joe’s. I mean, it’s insane how many people have the ability and the one to take on these major projects, which is such a huge disruption in life. But no different than when you go to get a cup of coffee, they want the same thing from their build team. They want convenience, they want communication, they want to brand, period. So how are we creating a brand, is where I’m headed.

Joe Christensen:

Love that.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s really interesting. Joe, what about you?

Joe Christensen:

I think as a modern-day builder, you have to be willing to disrupt things. And I say that because we started this business by saying, “Hey, the guys we work for, what did we like, what we didn’t like.” And they were true artisans, they were craftsmen, they were so knowledgeable. But the guys we had worked for, my business owner and I, they were rough and tough contractors. Who in the end, the clients respected but didn’t want to invite them over to dinner. They were scared to ask questions. The people that worked for these guys were scared to learn from them or be again, I use that word, vulnerable, because that’s a, I feel like a disruptive word in our business. And it’s even worse what we do commercial contracting as well. It’s still so prevalent there.

Joe Christensen:

It is a rough and tough business, and if you don’t have thick skin, it can be tough. And I think it’s a problem, and I think that’s the disruption that you have to have is that as a modern builder, you cannot be that way anymore. The mountain that we have to climb is how do we make it a customer service-oriented business? Not get railroaded by the clients. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, how do we calm the waters, be process systemized so it can be a fun experience. At the end, guess what, I tell people, “Buckle up, we’re going to have conflict resolution throughout this whole thing.” But guess what? I’m a fun person to deal with, even through the crap.

Zach Wojtowicz:

All right. Well, we just listened to our final clip. We hope you enjoyed this episode down memory lane. I actually got to meet everybody down in IBS for that, in person.

Charley Burtwistle:

Cool. That is awesome. Did you go to the panel?

Zach Wojtowicz:

I was working. That’s the thing. I mean I wasn’t there to socialize and just shake hands. I mean I was working quite a bit.

Charley Burtwistle:

I forget about that aspect of IBS.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. I mean it was a great show but it’s definitely… We’re there to make sure our guests have a great experience and-

Charley Burtwistle:

It takes a lot of effort.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And Danielle deserves another shout-out for everything she does on the IBS side because it’s incredible. Our booth was just insane. And the whole marketing team, really.

Charley Burtwistle:

I feel our first official shout-out has to be Danielle, right?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah absolutely.

Charley Burtwistle:

She would be here on the mic with us today but she had prior engagements. But obviously, she’s here for every single episode. She actually sits right across the table from Zach and I, so even though you don’t see her on camera she’s a part of every episode.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We’re going to get her on here.

Charley Burtwistle:

We will get her on here.

John Beck:

You’ll see her hands moving on a computer.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, every now then you’ll catch her at the corner.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Is that the third host? She doesn’t want to be on camera. But it’s going to happen.

Charley Burtwistle:

If you ever hear a notification go off from our computers, it’s always somebody else. Not Zach or I.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That would never happen.

Charley Burtwistle:

Okay. So that’s first shout-out. Who else do you got?

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m going to shout-out to our original podcast team on “The Building Code.” We’ve got our first producer which was Brooke Brockman, who’s now our VP of marketing who really worked with Tom and Paul to bring it to life. And then she passed it off to Kayleigh Oxford who I worked with very closely, she’s near and dear to my heart on a lot of things, but this was one of her first big projects and she’s very proud of what it’s become, and it’s exciting that she still gets to be somewhat involved through me, who now is the host. And we were just talking before on the show that she still cares about it and wants it to be successful and it’s really awesome to… It lives. Through her through me.

Charley Burtwistle:

When I came on as a guest she was running it.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, she was the Danielle.

John Beck:

She was sitting on the-

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, she printed out all my questions for me, helped me prep for it, she was very, very kind.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. John, you get a shout-out. First off coming on the pod.

Charley Burtwistle:

True.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Never an easy thing to do. It legitimately wouldn’t happen without you. We’ve also got Courtney who is our director of content marketing. She obviously helps us come up with the questions and the content. And then Riley actually goes through and writes our questions and our scripts and directs us and gives us guidance on things that maybe we hadn’t thought of from perspective. And we also have the other copywriting teams Chelsea and Lizzie and all the marketing team who really bring this to life. We hope you love it. We love it. And we hope you’ll stick with us for another year.

Charley Burtwistle:

Wow. That was a fantastic list of shout-outs. I just had to shout-out my mom. She’s the biggest fan.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Shout-out the greatest of all, the moms. My mom, I appreciate you, thanks for always listening and telling me how great I’m doing.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, I need that. So my mom and I appreciate that too. She likes all the Facebook posts and yeah, she’ll text me when we have good episodes, text me when we have that episodes. “Son, that was …”

Zach Wojtowicz:

“I’m disappointed in you.”

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh no.

Charley Burtwistle:

But yeah, I mean it is been a fun ride. Zach and I are very fortunate. We joke around a lot, but at the end of the day, this is a really, really cool experience that we get a chance to do. And not very many other data scientists get to host a construction podcast. So yeah, it’s my favorite day of the week for sure.

Zach Wojtowicz:

John, you get the final word.

John Beck:

My final word is just going to be a little nugget. So this is my two-year anniversary last week. So when I started here, my brother-in-law Brian Stowell, he’s a developer builder in Colorado. And man as soon as I started here I was like, “Dude, you’ve got to get Buildertrend.” And he still has not gotten it.

Charley Burtwistle:

Oh, man.

John Beck:

So I’m doing a shout-out to Brian to get him to finally sign up because he is like, “Yeah our system, it works all right. It works all right.”

Charley Burtwistle:

Oh, do you tell him there’s a better way?

John Beck:

I know there is a better way. You’re going to love this. It’s just, everyone has those fears.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, listen to Benji’s episode.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah…

John Beck:

Just do it,

Charley Burtwistle:

There’s an easier way. I feel like since this is a special episode, we’ll end it the way Courtney always tells us to end it, we always forget. Make sure you like, comment, subscribe, rate, review. You can leave stars on Spotify now. So if you listen on Spotify leave a five-star there. And don’t forget, we’ve gotten great feedback so far about our mini-episodes. Next week we have Brad Dinan, who is on the product team, to talk about the new summary page. So huge update coming out, make sure you guys listen to that, they’re shorter episodes. He’ll be fantastic I’m sure.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Always great to have our internal team to be here and talk about what’s coming down the pipeline for our software.

Charley Burtwistle:

And tune in next week for another episode of “The Building Code.” I’m Charley Burtwistle.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m Zach Wojtowicz.

John Beck:

I’m John Beck.

Charley Burtwistle:

See you next time.