Bracing for a possible building cooldown with the APB’s Russ Stephens

Show Notes

Residential construction might have been booming the past couple years, but will that growth continue into 2023?

Today on “The Building Code,” Zach and Charley discuss “The State of Residential Construction Industry 2022” report with Russ Stephens, co-founder of the Association of Professional Builders. Russ shares his thoughts on the benefits of making future business decisions backed by data.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about the APB’s report, the data predicting new market challenges for the industry and how to prepare for a potential slowdown in building.

How can data help builders raise their margins?

“Well, what are these guys on the higher margins doing that the guys on the lower margins aren’t? And it’s overlaying that data and being able to prove. I think, we always say margins are linked to marketing, and we are able to prove that the guys spending more than 1% on advertising their building company were the guys that were achieving much higher margins. And it’s facts like that. As a coach, you can talk about best practice, but to have hard data that no one can really refute or argue with and show, well, this is what the guys are doing. These are the successful guys. This is what they’re doing. And these are the results they’re getting. That’s a fantastic takeaway for us because it really does help with, yeah, showing builders the way forward.”

What is one of the most interesting findings you took from this year’s report?

“I think one of the key findings really came about in terms of the use of project management software, like Buildertrend, because what we found is that 65% of residential building companies are now using dedicated project management software. Now, to put that into context, that figure stood at 34%, just 12 months prior – that is a staggering swing. So, it’s a massive trend in our industry. And I think it clearly demonstrates that builders, residential builders are becoming more professional year on year – which is fantastic to see.”

To learn more about The Association of Professional Builders, visit their website.

Download the “The State of the Residential Construction Industry 2022” now for comprehensive data that can help you make better business decisions.

Get these exclusive offers from the APB:

Industry Benchmarks KPI’s Action Plan (Free – $500 value)

Professional Builders Secrets book (Free + Shipping)

Listen to the Professional Builders Secrets Podcast

Related content:

Check out the last episode of “The Building Code” to hear about how our award-winning Customer Success team uses customer feedback to improve support strategies and assure a quality experience every time.

Subscribe to “The Building Code,” and never miss an episode.

Got podcast topic suggestions? Reach out to us at podcast@buildertrend.com.

The Better Way, a podcast by Buildertrend:

Looking to improve how your team plans projects with the world’s No. 1 construction management software? Pick up Buildertrend project planning pro tips on the newest season of “The Better Way, a podcast by Buildertrend.” Subscribe and stream all of these bingeable episodes on your favorite listening app now.

Follow us on social:

Instagram:
@buildertrend

Facebook:
@buildertrend

Listen to “The Building Code” on YouTube! And be sure to head over to Facebook to join The Building Code Crew fan page for some fun discussions with fellow listeners.

Transcript

Charley Burtwistle:

What is up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of “The Building Code.” I’m Charley Burtwistle.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m Zach Wojtowicz.

Charley Burtwistle:

And we have some exciting news before we get started here. As I always remind people, Zach and I have jobs outside of the podcast and in Zach’s real job, he just got a fantastic promotion as senior manager. Let me be the first to say congratulations, Zach.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Thanks, man.

Charley Burtwistle:

Very well deserved.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I appreciate it.

Charley Burtwistle:

I bet you didn’t know I was going to do that.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I did not know you were going to do that, but hey, I wouldn’t be anywhere without you, my friend.

Charley Burtwistle:

Oh, very sweet. That’s enough about Zach. Onto our actual episode today, we have Russ Stephens, the co-founder of the Association of Professional Builders. He has actually been on the podcast before, so very excited to have him back on. Zach, tell our listeners a little bit about what Russ is going to be talking about today.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Russ runs this amazing organization that helps builders really improve all elements of their business. And as a former consultant here at Buildertrend, that was something that we dabbled our feet into to kind of wait and help people with processes, but from a Buildertrend focus for us as organization goes well beyond that. And I have no doubt as we’re having our conversations, we’re going to go down some amazing rabbit holes about the business side of running a construction company. The margin aspects, the what should be investing in, but they do a really cool report every year where they kind of dive or deep dive into a lot of the elements of running a business. How much are you spending on marketing? What are you asking your customers? What is your projected margin? Are you running reports? And so, this report is annual, as I mentioned, and is known as the …

Charley Burtwistle:

You’re scrolling all the way to the top. I also have it opened.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m so deep.

Charley Burtwistle:

Because it is 89 pages long, but let me tell you, it is not a boring 89 pages. It’s very, very well produced. Every single one, every single page has a different graph or a different metric covering as Zach was mentioning a very wide spectrum of kind of everything you could ever need to know about not just running a construction business, but running any business, I would say.

Zach Wojtowicz:

The state of residential construction industry 2022, owned by the Association of Professional Builders.

Charley Burtwistle:

And it spans four different countries as well, too. A ton of incredible participants in the survey. Will save some thunder for Russ because I’m sure he’s going to have a lot to talk about.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Absolutely. You’re going to be able to download this report in the shownotes. So, make sure you check that out and just kind of dive deep and compare yourself to see what’s going on in the residential construction industry. Let’s get Russ here. Russ Stephens, welcome back to “The Building Code.” It’s so great to have you on once again, as we were kind of getting ready, Charley mentioned it’s an elite group. We have not had a lot of repeat guests. So, welcome back. How have you been?

Russ Stephens:

Thanks so much guys. Thanks, Zach. Thanks, Charley. It’s an honor to be back. I really enjoyed our chat last time. So, I’m really looking forward to this. Thanks so much.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We did, too. In fact, we did a kind of a recap episode for our anniversary and Charley chose your episode as his favorite that we’ve recorded. So, we are really excited for you to be here.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. And it had nothing to do with you sending us the book afterwards, as some sort of pride. I genuinely enjoyed it. For our listeners that weren’t lucky enough to catch that first interview. Could you catch them back up a little bit who you are, Association of Professional Builders kind of what you guys do and your mission.

Russ Stephens:

Sure. Yeah. So, I’m the co-founder of the Association of Professional Builders. Our mission is to improve the residential construction industry for both builders and consumers. And a fundamental belief we have is that builders deserve to be earning a lot more money than they’re currently earning from building new homes and large-scale renovation projects. But we also believe that consumers deserve a far better service than they’re currently getting. So, we work with builders and help them to systemize their building companies because that is what is going to deliver a better service and better profit margins. And I think Buildertrend is a great example of a fantastic system that builders need, and our systems complement software like Buildertrend. We’re more like a systems menu, I guess. So, if you’ve ever been told that you need to create a systems menu in order to franchise your building company or maybe sell it, and it all looked way too hard, well, that is exactly what we provide to our members.

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s a phenomenal service. I just think we remember all the amazing detail that we got into about your association, and we thought it’d be great to bring you back on because you guys have just published your state of residential construction for 2022. This thing is an absolute treasure trove of information. I spent a lot of time digging through it when it was sent to me. In fact, Charley sent some tidbits to people internally around Buildertrend because we just thought it was so interesting. He’s a data guy. Let’s talk a little bit about the report and kind of what people can expect to find in it and how you went about developing it.

Russ Stephens:

Yeah. Well, this started back in 2020 when we went out to our database and our followers who are all residential home builders, and we asked them about 80 questions about their building company, and we got some fascinating insights. So, in late 2021, we went even deeper asking about a hundred questions this time only we did it with the assistance of partners like Buildertrend and CBUSA. And that meant we were able to reach so many more builders outside our immediate network and then create a very, very comprehensive report, which covered marketing, sales, financials, operations. But it also meant we’re able to spot trends across four countries and also compare to what had happened 12 months prior.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. And as Zach mentioned, it’s a treasure trove for sure. It kind of goes on and on and on, but every single, at least for me, every single graph was more interesting to the previous. But again, that is a little bit skewed because I’m a data guy. So, I’m glad that we’re … The first time you kind of got to talk to Zach about the consulting side of things. This time you’re here. We’re going to talk about data.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Is that your way of telling me to shut up?

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

This is Charley’s episode.

Charley Burtwistle:

If you want to take your headphones off. So, out of all those things that you guys surveyed, you’d mentioned about a hundred questions kind of that second time through, were there a few different things that you would distinguish as kind of the most important or key takeaways for you?

Russ Stephens:

Yes. I mean, a lot of it was trends really on the key takeaways because just spotting how this industry is evolving, and I think what’s really useful about a report like this is when you look at the hard data coming in, it then prompts other questions in your mind. I’m sure you can relate, Charley. I think we’re one and the same here, aren’t we? Yeah. We get quite excited looking at these spreadsheets and these percentages and these numbers coming in, and it kind of triggers other questions. So, you start doing overlaps, and you can start looking at things like margins, what margins builders are working on.

Well, what are these guys on the higher margins doing that the guys on the lower margins aren’t? And it’s overlaying that data and being able to prove, I think, a lot of stuff that we say to builders that we always say margins are linked to marketing, and we are able to prove that the guys spending more than 1% on advertising their building company were the guys that were achieving much higher margins. And it’s facts like that. As a coach, you can talk about best practice, but to have hard data that no one can really refute or argue with and show, well, this is what the guys are doing. These are the successful guys. This is what they’re doing. And these are the results they’re getting. That’s a fantastic takeaway for us because it really does help with, yeah, showing builders the way forward.

Charley Burtwistle:

I remember the last time you were on here, you compared the margins that you kind of coach and teach your builders that they can have to the matrix. Whereas like you’re opening their eyes for the first time. And they didn’t know that these types of margins were possible. You also had a fantastic quote. That was, “People always say cash is king, but profit wears the pants.” Both of those I have on my list to turn into t-shirts at some point.

Zach Wojtowicz:

He’s not joking. I mean, like he actually wants to do that. As I look through this report, there’s so much that you can uncover, I mean, marketing, advertising do you provide any sort of details about certain parts of projects, the financials? I mean, what didn’t you cover in this report? I mean, there’s so much to unpack. Is there anything in particular that really stood out to you as kind of like, even you learned through this project?

Russ Stephens:

I think one of the key findings really came about in terms of the use of project management software, like Buildertrend, because what we found is that 65% of residential building companies are now using dedicated project management software. Now, to put that into context, that figure stood at 34%, just 12 months prior – that is a staggering swing. So, it’s a massive trend in our industry. And I think it clearly demonstrates that builders, residential builders are becoming more professional year over year. Yeah – which is fantastic to see.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. What do you think are the tenets of that professional element in construction? You said they’re becoming more professional, adopting software’s a part of that. What else does that represent to you?

Russ Stephens:

Well, I think it represents a much better communication with their clients because if you go out to the industry and, or, sorry, not the industry, but if you go out to consumers that have built or know people that have built, and you ask them what their biggest fear is, and we’ve done this on a number of occasions is always communication. And to be fair, that’s not just construction. That happens in a lot of industries as well. It’s always communication that comes up. So, I think this is a key thing that modern project management software like Buildertrend is really addressing and overcoming because it really allows builders to over communicate with their clients and get on the front foot.

And I guess this is part of the process that we work with builders as well is they’ve got great tools like project management software. But really, it’s encouraging them to put the processes in place that allow them to get on the front foot and ask their clients ahead of a meeting what their net promoter score might be. “Would you recommend our building company to friends or family,” but to ask that prior to every meeting and that allows you to address any concerns because when someone says they give you a rating of five out of 10, there’s a problem. And invariably, the next question is how can we improve that score? And then that gives the builder a chance to address the problem before they even meet on site and the way that transforms a relationship, which then leads to referrals is priceless.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. I love that idea of asking on the upfront side of things and getting ahead of it before it even incurs and on the communication side. I actually had a firsthand experience of a builder that wasn’t communicating well. My dad’s remodeling a house down in Tucson, Arizona, and he was trying to send me pictures today. And he was like, “Well,” he was talking to this girlfriend. He’s like, “Did he text you? Or did he text me?” He was like, “No, I think it was an email.” And he had dig through those and I’m like, “I know of a really convenient project management software that would give you a portal. They could put all the pictures in one spot and then I could see them,” but so I’m going to try to get … I’ll make that sale by the time the job’s over.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m going to follow up on this. I want your KPIs on your close rate.

Charley Burtwistle:

Okay. One of the things you mentioned, Russ, was the huge shift from 2020 to 2021, the increase in project management software. What do you think 2022 looks like? What are some of the upcoming years and trends that you kind of anticipate that are the biggest challenges facing the industry right now?

Russ Stephens:

Well, right now, I think the trend is going to continue. I think we are going to see more and more builders adopting dedicated software like Buildertrend and becoming more professional. Obviously, it’s not going to continue at that rate that we saw in the last year. And I think there were some reasons for that. I think the lockdown’s played a big part. You know, it gave builders time to work on their business where the sites were shut on, and it gave them that opportunity to implement new systems. And I think the workload as well that played a big factor as well because seeing the surge in workload, builders knew they couldn’t continue doing things off spreadsheet or even out of their head and they needed specialist tools. So, I think they were big contributing factors, but I still believe that trend is going to continue forward for sure.

In terms of challenges facing the industry, the path ahead is tough. There’s no question about that. And I believe it’s probably going to be tougher in Australia and in New Zealand than the USA right now, but that’s not to stay. It still will be very tough for builders in the USA because demand is ultimately going to call. We’ve heard from the Fed they’re now talking or warning us to brace ourselves for bigger increases than previously expected in interest rates. That for sure is going to call demand. And when the tide goes out, then that is going to reveal the true financial position of a lot of builders. And that’s not going to be pretty because right now there are too many residential building companies losing money without even realizing yet. And even in the USA where builders have coped a lot better than other countries with cost increases, because yeah, I noticed in September 2020, the builders in the US were, I think they were looking ahead a lot further than a lot of other builders.

They were anticipating these increases. Maybe they were hit in the US a bit earlier. I think maybe that’s the reason, but they were putting allowances in and protecting themselves. And they also have the benefit in a lot of contracts in the US of cost escalation clauses, which we don’t have in Australia and to a large part in New Zealand and Canada as well. So, but even when you take that into account for builders in the US, and you say, “Okay, well, they were protected from the increase in materials and labor, they’ve still been exposed to the increase in the fixed cost ratio. And due to delays from the supply chain.” Now, as an example of that, a typical well run building company has got a fixed expense ratio in the region of 15%. That can fluctuate a bit dependent on where they are in the growth cycle.

But 15% is pretty much an industry benchmark for residential construction. And the other thing to bear in mind is that builders can only run a finite number of projects at any one time. So, what that means is when a project that’s due to run for say, 26 weeks then blows out to 39 weeks because of the supply chain issues, they’re fixed expense ratio has now increased to 22.5%. So, unless you are marking up your projects by 29%, you are going to be losing money. And that doesn’t even take into account any increases in cost of materials and labor that may have filtered through, or even the increases in the fixed cost like fuel or wages. So, that for me is a hidden cost that is rising. And it’s something that builders must be aware of, and which is why it is so, so important to know your numbers.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And I’m just actually looking at the report kind of on the side here. And I noticed on that question of what percentage of your revenue did you just spend on fixed expenses in 2021 and 30% said they don’t even know. And so …

Russ Stephens:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s a sizable portion of the survey sample. And about another quarter in that 10 to 15%, which you mentioned is kind of like where you want to be, but it just goes to show you there’s so much to consider when running the financial aspect of your business, but a lot of builders aren’t necessarily sure how to go about it.

Russ Stephens:

Yeah. And one way that we raise awareness of this is in the how to price your jobs calculator that we produce for our members. And within that calculator, we actually have the fixed expense cost per job per day. And that becomes a real eye opener for a lot of builders, because not just understanding what their fixed costs are, but understanding how much each project costs them for every one day it’s been delayed. So, when you get a delay on the toll delivery, and that pushes the job back a week, that figure per day could be between $300 to $500. It’s a staggering figure when you work it out. Now you work that out for a week that isn’t coming off your revenue, that isn’t even coming off your gross profit, that is coming off your bottom line, your net profit. That is painful when that runs into a few thousand dollars.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and delays on a project are becoming more and more expected, but ultimately like you need to mitigate as much of those unforeseen circumstances as possible. And you can do that by calculating these fixed costs and controlling them as best you can. Is there any other aspect, or I guess, recommendations you could give to a builder who’s trying to understand a little bit more about what other unforeseen things could have impact the margin that maybe they’re not thinking of?

Russ Stephens:

Yeah. One of the most important numbers, I think a builder can be across is the forecast cost to complete, which you can pull out a Buildertrend quite easily because you set your budget at the beginning and what you don’t want to be doing is reviewing it at the end of the job to see how close do we get. You’ve got to review that every month and not only review it, but log that gross margin, that revised gross margin as a percentage in a spreadsheet. Now, when you do that, your spot trends. I mean, jobs, they kind of have a life of their own. They’re almost like living organisms. And I think a lot of the time you can rock up on site and you can feel the energy. You can tell when a job’s going badly and when it’s going well, and the jobs that are going badly, you will see that gross margin decline.

It’s problem after problem, it’s challenge after challenge, and it’s very hard to get a job that kind of grinds to a halt for whatever reason, kind of back up to full speed again. It’s a bit like an old tanker, but a job that’s going well, running well, that just seems to have a great motion about it. And the margin will continue to increase as you come in under budget on certain cost centers, and you put your proper margin on the variations or the change orders, I should say, and you’ll see your gross margin increase, but conversely, there’s going to be jobs where you’re going to see that margin decrease. And it’s very important that you’re aware of this by looking at that forecast cost to complete inside your Buildertrend package and you monitor that.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. So obviously, the first kind of step there is, is just to understand what is my margin now, what am I tracking on? Where is it high? Where is it low across my different jobs? But I remember last time you were on here, you also kind of challenged builders to reimagine what their margins could be, if they were to make some changes and do things kind of the right way and not just kind of settle for the status quo. What sort of insights did the builders that you guys survey kind of provide on their margins now? Did you see what you were anticipating? Were they low, high?

Russ Stephens:

Yeah, I guess we saw what we were hoping to see and to a certain extent maybe what we expected to see, but budgeted margins did increase and yeah. The reason I say you’d hope to see is because when the market is this busy, if you’re not raising your margins during a booming market, then you’re never going to do it. So, it was great to see that margins did increase, but the big question now is will they be realized when the project’s complete because of all the things that we’ve just been talking about, they’re being eroded. And in Australia, we’re already seeing the consequences of that with some very large construction companies have been folding. And we already know that there’s a lot larger ones to follow. Yeah, we’ll be following quite shortly. And then we expect the smaller companies to follow in the months after that.

So, although it was good to see the budgeted margins increase, we are expecting those margins not to be fulfilled because of all the challenges that builders have faced. And yeah, to be honest, I think margins are probably one of the most misunderstood components of running a building company or any business, maybe because as business owners, we all think it’s about price. We think price is the most important thing, it’s going to determine whether we make a sale or not, and price is not the most important thing. It is a factor, but it is not the most important thing. And it’s these myths about margins that just keep builders working for very little or even no net profit. And yeah, I think the insight showed that margins are increasing which they had to do. But we’ve got to be very aware of not just the margin we’re putting on at the start of the job, but we’ve got to look at what happens at the end and of course all the way through so that we can react quicker.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Which again, another point here, I’m noticing on your survey respondents, only 50% of people indicated that they’re running monthly reports in order to get those insights. And your recommendation obviously would be like at a minimum, you should be looking at it from a month by month standpoint.

Russ Stephens:

Yes. This is like a key component of our project management systems inside the members pool tool, because there is a very comprehensive end of project process, which involves the estimator, the project manager, reviewing everything in terms of budget and timeline and looking what can be improved because that information that happens on site must filter back to the estimator. But at this moment in time, it’s never been more important to filter that information back on a monthly basis because it is changing so quickly.

And I think as well, when we look ahead, and we see that demand is going to drop off, that’s when margins start to drop as well. Because yeah, as business owners, we then start to chase revenue, which means we compromise our margin. Consumers feel they’re in a stronger position to negotiate. So, at this moment in time, although we’ve been inundated with demand, it has never been more important to get your marketing strategy correct and in place, because you’ve got to be generating more demand than you have supply. You’ve always got to be turning away work so quite easy now, but as things cool off, you still want to be turning away work. Otherwise, your margins will decline, and you will be trying to convert every single agreement into a contract, which is not a great position to be in.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yes, you’re speaking towards the change that’s going to be coming soon, how people need to be prepared. I’m hoping that what you’re talking about right now resonates with a lot of our listeners out there. Do you have any obviously we’ll link to the Association of Professional Builders in the show notes, but any advice or like resources that you would recommend people start looking at now or steps to start taking to make sure they’re getting their financials in place and are kind of preparing for the shift that’s coming?

Russ Stephens:

Yes. I would recommend reading our book that you mentioned earlier, professional builders’ secrets, but we do also have a financials action plan for our members, which covers the industry benchmarks. So, being that we have spoken about financials a bit in depth and talked about what’s happening in the industry. I think it would really help your listeners to understand what the industry benchmarks are. So, this is a course that we do sell outside our membership for $500. Our members get it free, but yeah, I’d like to make that available to your listeners free of charge, just so they can get a bit of meat on the bone really behind what we’ve been talking about here. So, I’ll provide you guys with a link that will allow them to access that course free of charge.

Charley Burtwistle:

Wow. There we go. That’ll definitely be on the shownotes.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, absolutely. That sounds amazing, Russ.

Charley Burtwistle:

Zach, maybe you can take the course, brushing up a little bit.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Will finally learn a thing or two.

Charley Burtwistle:

You’ll finally learn a thing or two. And obviously, if our listeners are Buildertrend customers, they can always call into our fantastic CS team, which Zach was a part of for a long time, and they can help get those things sorted out and at least start tracking the data correctly in Buildertrend to pull some of these reports and understand their financials.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Love it. Russ, we are just about out of time, but I want to just kind of circle back on the theme of what we’ve been talking about. And obviously, there’s always challenges to running a business. Let’s look forward through 2022, and we obviously anticipation of kind of the slowing down of demand as one of the challenges, but we’ve also still got supply and labor challenges. What’s your gut tell you what that’s going to behold for the next eight to 12 months as we round out 2022?

Russ Stephens:

Well, what we’re seeing a lot of now is builders cap in their growth rather than chasing the growth because yeah, while it got quite exciting at the end of 2020, with all this opportunity coming along, and builders were taking that opportunity and signing contracts way into the future. We’ve now seen the consequence of that and committing to a price way into the future and how that can really expose a building company. So, we’re seeing more and more builders that are now capping their growth. Certainly, amongst our membership, they’re using one of our systems, which is construction slots, which is basically the process of allocating a finite number of jobs over the next 12 months and even 24 months. So, what they’ve done by doing that is limiting their supply and now they’ve got their supply limited, and they’ve got it planned their focusing on maintaining their profitability, rather than chasing more revenue, which is probably a smart thing to do in the current climate with cost rising so fast.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Russ, is there anything in the report that kind of gives you hope for the construction industry? Maybe something that builders can look to the future and say, “This is going to be an industry that’s going to continue to prosper?”

Russ Stephens:

Yes. And that is the way the industry is becoming more professional. I think you can look at all aspects of the report, whether it’s marketing, whether it’s sales process, financials operation, staff, training, it all points toward a more professional industry. And for way too long, builders have not been regarded as professionals. Even now when I’ll go out, and I’ll meet friends, and they’re building, the way they talk about their builder is not with the respect that these builders deserve as true professionals for the knowledge they have.

And just because they’re working on site that doesn’t make them any less professional than accountants, architects, or dare I say, even lawyers, or maybe not to say lawyers, but now builders are professionals. They’re engineers. They’re using both parts of their brain. And that’s why we always say anyone with half a brain can be an architect or an accountant, but a builder, you got to use both sides of the brain. So, what I’m seeing is the industry becoming more professional. And that really, really excites me because I want to see builders looked on as true professionals, just like white collar workers.

Charley Burtwistle:

And that’s a fantastic t-shirt idea. The half a brain, half a brain, you need both to be a builder. That’s the best idea for the episode.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Charley’s just trying to steal all your content, Russ.

Charley Burtwistle:

As a machine, quote machine.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Well, make sure you get royalties, Russ. If we come out with any swag, you need to be sending us, speaking of lawyers, royalty …

Russ Stephens:

Do I need to say copyright after every …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Exactly. This is a trademark material. Russ, that was fantastic. That is a truly inspiring message. It was so great to have you here on “The Building Code.” You’re always welcomed back, and I hope you enjoyed it, too.

Russ Stephens:

I did. I loved it. Thanks so much, guys.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Charley, we just had Russ Stevens on “The Building Code.” What are your thoughts? You know I like to know.

Charley Burtwistle:

A ton of thoughts. I mean, Russ is always fantastic. I just love his optimistic attitude about you can always be improving. You can always get better. You should set goals, track your goals. And I mean, I feel like the moral of the story is make more money. At the end of the day, I feel like everything that was in the report, everything that Russ talked about is how do you work smarter? How do you work better? How do you work more efficiently to make your life easier, do more jobs, put more homes in people’s lives and make more money as a business?

So, it’s always interesting. You know, I mentioned in the episode getting his consulting side of things, but obviously, with the report that just came out, getting the data side of things, I would highly, highly encourage all of our listeners to go out and download that for free. It is an incredible report, and I’ve already referenced a couple of the numbers that they quoted in there, in Buildertrend, in my day-to-day work. So, really beneficial, and I really do think will get Russ on here a third time because he’s fantastic.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Open invitation, come back on “The Building Code.” We love having these types of people come on the podcast, just because they’re so well versed in the industry. I always learn a ton about the considerations that our business folks out there have to really wrap their head around. It’s complicated. It’s not easy. You think about all the things that you have to consider to run a business. One of the really interesting questions on this that I had never even thought of this is like, do you take time to work on the business, not in the business, right? Even those little details that kind of make it all come together are insights that you can gain by checking out this report. So, we highly recommended as Charley said and also, we’re going to link to the Association Professional Builders book and their podcast. So, check out all their content, the thought leader in the industry and we’re really happy to bring people like this, so that you can learn more about how to better your business. Charley, a couple more things to close this out.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. Again, if you want to listen to Russ’s first interview, you can go back and listen to the previous episode. And actually, next episode, we have another fun chance to talk with someone here at Buildertrend, inside Buildertrend to learn about how we’re making and learning our software more fun. So, make sure to check out that as well. Again, that’s a mini episode. We’ll be coming out next week, but I think that about does it for us and this episode, I’m Charley Burtwistle.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m Zach Wojtowicz, check us out next time.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yep.

Russ Stephens

Russ Stephens | Association of Professional Builders


Places You Can find us

Listen on Apple Podcasts
Available on Podbean
Listen on spotify

Get updates for The Building Code

Be the first to know when new episodes are released.

We think you’d also like this

3 hottest housing markets to watch in 2022

blog | 4 min read

Mar 8, 2022

Mining the data field: 3 hottest housing markets to watch in 2022

We’re taking a look at our data to reveal the three states where home builders are seeing the greatest rise in demand and profits as Americans relocate at record rates.

Read the blog
Illustration showing how to future proof your construction company with tech.

blog | 8 min read

Dec 13, 2021

How to future-proof your construction business with tech

More than ever, your company’s success depends on innovative tools and strategies that help you stay ahead. Here are tips to help builders become digital transformation heroes.

Read the blog
Data Insights

blog | 6 min read

Jun 29, 2021

How builders can stay ahead of rising construction supply costs

Material supplies are low. Cost of lumber is high. What’s a construction team to do? We’re talking with an industry expert to learn how to navigate today’s volatile environment.

Read the blog