Buildertrend spotlight: Eric Fischer, Director of Product

Tom Houghton:

You’re listening to “The Building Code.” I’m Tom Houghton.

Paul Wurth:

I’m Paul Wurth.

Tom Houghton:

Joining us on this episode of “The Building Code,” we have our director of product, Eric Fischer, and we’re going to talk about all things Buildertrend product related in a Buildertrend Spotlight. We’ll dive into that in just a second, but first want to tell you about an exciting opportunity we have called Buildertrend University on the road. We’re calling it BTU on the road for short. This’ll be taking place in Dallas, Texas on October 3rd, 2019. It’s a one day event for you and your team to learn more and how to optimize your usage of Buildertrend. So make sure you sign up for Buildertrend University if you want to continue to grow your business. Today, we have a Buildertrend Spotlight. We are joined by our very own director of product, Eric Fischer. Hey, Eric.

Eric Fischer:

Hey, Tom.

Tom Houghton:

How’s it going?

Eric Fischer:

It’s going great.

Paul Wurth:

What is the Buildertrend Spotlight?

Tom Houghton:

Buildertrend Spotlight is where we take an episode of our beloved podcast and dedicate it to diving deeper into the world behind the curtain of Buildertrend.

Paul Wurth:

I see. We did this with Scott Siegert recently.

Tom Houghton:

We did. Fantastic episode. If you haven’t checked it out, it’s episode 22. It’s a great episode.

Paul Wurth:

It was a great one. Had fun. Happy to have Eric here representing our product and engineering division.

Eric Fischer:

Thank you.

Paul Wurth:

Buildertrend’s set up structurally behind the scenes in three major departments with a bunch of other supporting departments that are critical to operations. We would put Eric’s under engineering. So just for simplicity sake, they build our software that you guys use every day.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, and the product team’s really devoted to making Buildertrend better. They’re the core drivers of that, I would say.

Eric Fischer:

Definitely. That’s our main focus is listening to customers and making sure that the product that we put out in front of them is allowing them to number one, take care of all their needs on job sites, back office, but also, moving forward and kind of keeping sights on the industry and making sure that new tech and things of that form are also available for our customers as they become online and come available for them.

Tom Houghton:

That’s awesome.

Paul Wurth:

We talk about this a lot. We don’t have people that are in construction day-to-day here at Buildertrend. So the only way we can improve our product is by listening to our clients.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

We’re introducing a new way to do that today, right?

Tom Houghton:

That’s correct.

Paul Wurth:

Is that right?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Did I let that out of the bag too early?

Tom Houghton:

You did. We were going to tease it at the end like, “Hey, stay tuned to the end,” but why not just do it now?

Paul Wurth:

You’re from Hollywood. I’ll take your advice.

Tom Houghton:

Okay. Thanks. Well, we’ll tease it now that you’re going to have an opportunity to not only give feedback on the product, of course, we’re going to talk about that, but also on the podcast. We’re going to tell you the details of a new way to contact us to share your feedback, and then also throw out questions to our guests. So stay tuned to the end of the podcast and we’ll talk more about that. But first, let’s talk about customer feedback. Why is it so important to our team?

Eric Fischer:

Our customer feedback is the lifeline. Obviously, number one, it’s who’s the end user of our software, but they’re also the ones that have an idea of what needs to happen on their projects that we can facilitate more efficiently for them, what are the pain points or issues that they come up across time after time on job sites or in the office? Our job is to listen to those concerns and take them and find solutions that we can make an opportunity in Buildertrend to facilitate each of those options and really make it very intuitive for our users also.

Eric Fischer:

The end goal with Buildertrend is to provide a program that allows our businesses to number one, scale into it. So as they begin using it, they can pick out what they want to use within there, but also grow into the software and have it accommodate that growth while making it intuitive for everybody in their entire company to be able to use Buildertrend. You’re not just the owner or the office administrators, but really the field guys to the supervisors, the project managers, even to the subcontractors and owners on job sites. So not only creating new functionality and kind of staying with the industry, but also making it easy and then at the end of the day, impactful as far as the insights that we can glean from that information that we’ve got.

Tom Houghton:

Fantastic. One of those key pieces of the puzzle that you talked about was kind of the user experience. We actually have a team inside the product team itself that’s dedicated to that. Could you share a little bit of the details of that?

Eric Fischer:

Yeah. So we’ve got a team of six on our UX team here and really, their job is to vet ideas prior to us even building anything and sending it over to our developers. They’ll put together prototypes or wire frames, as we’ll call them, and they’ll put those in front of our customers or they’ll also put them in front of people who are not Buildertrend customers just to vet the intuitiveness of that feature, but also to make sure that the workflow and kind of the end result that we’re going for on each of these new features or enhancements are hitting the mark and really resonating with each of our users.

Tom Houghton:

Good stuff.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. I think people assume that the problems are obvious and they’re really not in our industry because not only within construction do we serve four main segments being residential home building, remodeling, especially contracting, which is an array of businesses, and then commercial. Even within those segments, one user’s problem could be another user’s problem, but they could be completely different. What I mean by that is like, if I want to fix bids, how they would fix it for them could be completely different story for the guy next to him because they run their business differently. So it’s just a very complicated world where you want to make sure nothing gets lost in communication, translation from the problem to the solution we’re trying to provide. So we go out there and we research and make sure we completely understand what they’re trying to accomplish and then deliver the right result. Is that fair?

Eric Fischer:

Yeah, it’s 100% percent. The thing with the construction industry, like you said, Paul, there’s a million different ways to handle each function within the business. So you talked about bidding, but really estimating is one that we’re looking into right now and rewriting or making our estimating tool better. You go out and you talk to our customers and everybody does it different. There’s not one standard process for how to handle that. So really, it’s a very complex problem, but it’s also at the end of the day, understanding who we are in the market and what we want to facilitate for each of our users. So taking that into context and then also making sure that as we talk to these customers, what’s kind of the foundation that all of them are bringing back as far as that feedback and making sure that we appease those needs rather than trying to go down every little road that we could.

Eric Fischer:

Really, at the end of the day, maybe you don’t meet anybody’s needs because you try to be so specific with the functionality that we’re trying to make sure that we’ve got a lot of research feedback in there. Then we facilitate the areas that we excel at here and Buildertrend, which is communication; getting those bids out, getting selections made against the allowance and getting the formatted estimate or proposal out to those customers. So just another example of how something seems easy up front and as soon as you start digging into it, really gets complex and you start seeing all the different use cases for it.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. We can’t be everything to everybody.

Tom Houghton:

We try.

Paul Wurth:

We try. Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Let’s move on to that. We talked a little bit about how all this comes together. So you guys have created this product life cycle. Is that what you call it?

Eric Fischer:

Yeah, our product life cycle.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Eric Fischer:

So everywhere from when we’re exploring it to when we start designing it in product to when it’s actually being built by our developers. So throughout that, really, it starts up front with all of our different feedback channels. So you guys mentioned our new feedback channel that we’ve got right in program, user voice. We’ve also got our CSMs, or our customer success staff who’s constantly talking to customers, passing ideas up that are being brought up on trainings or phone calls coming in. Then we’ve also got our competitive analysts who are always looking at what’s in the industry, what new tech is coming out, and making sure that we’re vetting those things. So that a large part of that goes into exploring. Like Paul said, when we were exploring, we’re making sure that we understand the true root of the problem, make sure we get the pain point that our users are going through.

Eric Fischer:

Then after that, we’ll prioritize those against number one, what is business impact? So how important is that functionality to an end user company? Then how complex is it going to be for us to number one, break it down from a product point of view, but then also how complex is it going to be on the back end for our development team to build? So kind of all those characteristics are vetted upfront. Then after we vet those, we prioritize, push them through. When it starts being designed, that’s when it’s passed to our product team. Our analysts actually start working on creating the documentation for, what permissions are going to need updated? What’s it going to look like in program? It’s also where our UX team starts to come into play as far as making sure that the workflows are very efficient and meeting our end users.

Eric Fischer:

Then as we develop that, we’re working constantly with our development team of, what tech is available? Is there anything that we’re not aware of that maybe our developers who have their ear to the ground with that all the time can help us maybe make that easier for end users with some new tech, some different contexts in there? Then once it’s passed over to development, that’s where our release coordinators come into play and we actually get it over to the engineers who start building it. We’re constantly updating the platform every day, but you’ll see those updates. We’ll kind of piece them out slowly and then we’ll make the big splash once it’s all the way developed and we’ll push it out to our end users. So we’ve got a few exciting things that I think we’ll talk about here at the end the podcast today coming down the pipelines that have all originated from our CS team and have worked their way all the way through that process to being developed here.

Tom Houghton:

I love new tech.

Paul Wurth:

Technology Tom.

Tom Houghton:

That’s me.

Paul Wurth:

That’s why you work here.

Tom Houghton:

There you go.

Paul Wurth:

That long process, wow. It takes a lot.

Tom Houghton:

It does. There’s a lot of moving parts in there. I want to talk about the release cycle just because I think a lot of people don’t understand that we’re constantly updating the program. Every day, we’re updating the program. It’s a very unique release cycle. Could you speak to the pressures of that? I would say would be one side of it, but then also how the actually benefits the customer.

Eric Fischer:

Yeah. So on the front end, it’s not always customer facing releases that you’re seeing going out every day. A lot of it may be health of the program, code health. It may be little updates as far as tool tips are updates to that form. So the everyday isn’t something that’s always noticed. A lot of it is to make sure that the program is optimized for efficiency, as far as our users going in and interacting with it, but on the life cycle of those bigger releases, you’re not releasing and shipping the entire project at once. If we were to go down that road, you’re really at harm of a lot of bugs or a lot of issues showing up. So we kind of piece those projects out.

Eric Fischer:

As our development team is working through them, they’re constantly publishing little pieces of it. So at the end, when we push out a cool QuickBooks Buildertrend integration piece, we’re not pushing all the code at once. A lot of the code has been established. It’s been vetted by our QA team to make sure that there’s not any bugs in it. So by the time that that final release is pushed out and the go live is there, it’s really been ironed out. So we have minimal impact for our end users as far as bugs, them showing up having any sort of workflow issues or things like that. We’ll work those out constantly throughout the development life cycle. On the pressure side of things, yeah. It’s always a constant flow to make Buildertrend bigger and better, make sure that what we’ve got in there is really optimized.

Eric Fischer:

That’s been the focus here recently is we’ve got a lot of features. We’ve got a lot of functionality and a lot of width in the program. We want to make sure that we optimize those workflows and really, for the end user, it’s meeting all their needs as far as what data they need to input, but it’s also intuitive like I said earlier, making sure that the end users can comprehend it, the order of the prioritization of the information they’re viewing is where it should be. Then at the end of the day, it really leads us down a road to at some point, become a business intelligence tool also, really glean insights from all these data points that we’ve got to surface issues for our customers before they become issues. So as we keep developing, there’s a ton of stuff that we can do. We’ve got plenty of stuff to work on in the platform, but there’s also a ton of new technology.

Eric Fischer:

That business intelligence piece really moves the needle for myself. I think for us internally here at BT is gleaning insights for our customers before they have issues on jobs, before they even notice them, using the data that we’ve got inside of the platform to surface really cool visuals for them to interact, dive in and meeting the needs and understanding the roles within that company also, everywhere from what’s the owner of the company going to need? They’re going to learn a little bit more high level information, be able to dig into that. Whereas the field personnel are going to want more access into job by job relations and kind of activities. So we’ve got some really cool things we can do and yeah, there’s always pressure. But the great thing about having a big program is there’s a ton of stuff that you can make updates to and make better, and then there’s also a lot of new functionality that we’d like to add here in the future, too.

Tom Houghton:

Speaking of cool things, when are we going to see AR built into the Buildertrend app? Augmented reality for those who are not up on the tech lingo.

Paul Wurth:

What is augmented reality?

Tom Houghton:

Augmented reality is this new technology. Speaking of how much I love technology, right?

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

That you can use your iPhone or Android. So for example, how we would implement this as we’d have selections and you could present those to your customer, to your client and say, “You need to pick your granite.” So then they use their iPhone in the Buildertrend app, and they point it to a surface and they can see the different granite colors in basically, in three dimensions looking at their phone and it overlays it on their current surface, whatever. So you’re standing in front of a table and then you can overlay this granite or quartz or whatever pattern over that using augmented reality. It’s taking reality and augmenting it.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. We’ll get the definition of augment on the show notes.

Tom Houghton:

On the show notes.

Paul Wurth:

So if you’re remodeling your home-

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

… you can see the finished product through your phone?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. Which Kohler faucet do you want?

Paul Wurth:

Right.

Tom Houghton:

Shout out to Kohler by the way.

Paul Wurth:

So you you can take a picture of a room and then place a dinosaur in there or something, right?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. In fact, Ikea is one of the people that have this built into their app. You can, of course…

Paul Wurth:

You were at Ikea this weekend.

Tom Houghton:

I just so happened to be at Ikea this weekend. But if I wasn’t, I could open the app from my house and see if the couch that they’re selling there fits in my space through my phone.

Paul Wurth:

What’s the name of the couch? They have great names.

Tom Houghton:

Farfignougan.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. You made that one up, but they have good ones.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

No, that makes sense. Eric, augmented reality. Sounds like…

Eric Fischer:

It sounds like Tom’s been talking to Justin Rediger here.

Tom Houghton:

Oh, yeah?

Eric Fischer:

Oh yeah.

Tom Houghton:

There you go.

Eric Fischer:

So we actually have a competitive analysis position who’s been looking into augmented reality. There’s some cool stuff. I think it does apply a large part to the selection side of things. Down the road, yes. It’s not something that we’re currently working on at this point, but definitely something that we’d like to work towards. I think it’d be great to be able to envision what is the room going to look like, maybe different sizes of windows, like you were talking appliances, sinks, things of that form, and actually be able to bring it to where that customer can understand it in their own home.

Eric Fischer:

So there’s a lot of stuff we can do there. I think another thing that comes down, not necessarily on the augmented reality side, but is taking pictures and measuring things, being able to bring back quick wins that all of our contractors going through on a daily basis and being able to facilitate things like that easier also. So some cool tech things that we can definitely do with the app for our field use, and then also some cool reporting things back here for the full site version of it also.

Tom Houghton:

Nice.

Paul Wurth:

You had mentioned something about data, Eric, just there.

Eric Fischer:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

I think that’s a theme within our business and I think in a lot of small businesses is taking the information that you get while doing your job every day and using that, surfacing that to make better data-driven decisions for your business, right? What’s really interesting… People don’t know this. Tom, maybe you don’t know this. This is for your information.

Tom Houghton:

Fun fact.

Paul Wurth:

Fun fact about Buildertrend; To date, we probably represent 20% of all construction in the United States. 20% is done under our platform, 800,000 users, $30 billion worth of projects have gone through our systems. So my point being is that we have a lot of data about our clients, about the industry and we’re using that to better serve our clients, but we can take that to our clients as well, their world. If they do 100 products in Buildertrend, there’s some really key things that you can surface at the end of the year or quarter when you’re looking at your projects.

Tom Houghton:

That’s good.

Paul Wurth:

Reporting tab just came out for that one.

Tom Houghton:

Shout out to the reporting tab.

Eric Fischer:

Reporting tab is super cool, but to Paul’s point right there, kind of what we’ve got going on here internally with our data science team is machine learning algorithms and taking an idea or an ideal path towards developing a project, let’s say, and they’ll be able to show us and kind of, what does that ideal path look like? Well, same thing with our customers on their job sites. After they run these projects through and we have the data points, what does that great schedule look like for a project that we can display? What do potential issues look like as far as them not having certain things assigned or having improper connections with their predecessors in the Gantt chart?

Eric Fischer:

Things of that form that we’ll be able to provide insights to, and again, show issues before they become issues for those contractors. So I think there’s a lot of stuff to do down there, but reporting is fantastic. It’s kind of phase one that we’ve got out right now. We’re really looking to get into some work in progress reports, cashflow, forecasting reports, things of that that really help you assess the health of your business and understand where you stand at all points in time.

Tom Houghton:

That’s awesome. We’ve gone from AR to AI, and the machines are taking over everything now, apparently.

Paul Wurth:

Does that scare you?

Tom Houghton:

Maybe. Depends on who’s coding them, which we’ve got a pretty talented engineering department.

Paul Wurth:

They’re great. How many people are in the engineering department?

Eric Fischer:

We’ve got about 120 in engineering between development, product, UX team and the quality analysts also. So about 120, I believe.

Tom Houghton:

And mobile? Don’t they fall under?

Eric Fischer:

Yeah, some mobile. Some mobile will have product analysts, developers.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Got a big team.

Eric Fischer:

Big team.

Paul Wurth:

Takes a big team.

Tom Houghton:

Let’s talk about stuff that’s coming sooner than all this AI and AR stuff. Let’s talk about one update that’s coming out that you’re just really excited about.

Paul Wurth:

This is our sneak peek.

Tom Houghton:

Sneak peak.

Paul Wurth:

This is it.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. It’s happening.

Eric Fischer:

Yeah. I think one of the exciting ones that we’ve got coming out, it’s kind of two pieces here, but is to our QuickBooks integration. So one piece of feedback we’ve been hearing for a long time is the ability to pull expenses back that are just input into QuickBooks and pull them into Buildertrend. So that is one that we’ve got coming out here towards sometimes start a September. So we’ll have that coming out for our customers where instead of having to initiate cost inside of Buildertrend, we’ll actually be able to pull it right from your QuickBooks into Buildertrend. That’s a great thing for new customers that maybe aren’t ready to take the leap right into bills or purchase orders inside of Buildertrend yet to really ease that onboarding where you’ll have access to all of your financials right away, and there’s no barrier of entry on that.

Eric Fischer:

It’s going to allow your field managers, your project managers to have access to their budget against their estimate at all times, versus having to have access into your accounting system, which a lot of business owners, from talking to them, don’t want that a lot of their employees having access to that sensitive information. So that’s a big one for us. The other one is kind of a best practice that we’re updating here. So previously, to get information sent to QuickBooks, you had to market as paid in Buildertrend and kick it across over to QuickBooks and that’s when it would show up. We’re actually updating that to where you’ll be able to bill it from Buildertrend to QuickBooks and when that payment or that check is actually made in QuickBooks, it’ll feed back and update Buildertrend. So now, your status is when items are paid, are going to be totally in sync. Reporting’s more up to date. So just setting best practices. So those two updates to the QuickBooks integration going to be fantastic and really, in my mind, take us to the next level of what we’ve done on the financial side of things.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. I’ve actually had the privilege of seeing this prototype QuickBooks sync in action, and it is amazing. The team has done amazing work, how seamless this was working, even in its prototype stage.

Eric Fischer:

It’s awesome. You run into so many instances where information is just not going to originate in Buildertrend. QuickBooks has the ability to link credit cards to their invoices area or their payments area. So information like that where it’s double entry to get back in Buildertrend, that’s not a worry anymore. Same thing if you’re working with a big box office store, they may automatically add that information to your QuickBooks for you. Now, that information could come back and be viewed in Buildertrend without having to do the kind of the double entry by the accounting team.

Tom Houghton:

Incredible stuff. Let’s talk about how people can be a part of this process more because again, we value everyone’s feedback. How would somebody, if they have a idea or suggestion, how do they get that to the product team?

Eric Fischer:

Yeah. So one way that we’d really like every user to take advantage of is available within the question mark up in the top right hand corner Buildertrend. Underneath that, there is a give feedback loop. Once you do that, it takes you to our user voice channel. Inside of that user voice channel, we’ve got any submission that customers have made. You’ll be able to review any of that information, filter it down. You’ll also be able to comment if you want to provide extra context on any of the submissions that are there. You can also submit new submissions if you’re not seeing idea already posted by another user. Or you can go through an up-vote things, which really give us the ability to number one, update those customers as that feature, that new project is moving forward and it’s got updates to it. We’ll go ahead and you’ll actually be linked to receive email updates as that project is progressing through.

Eric Fischer:

Then another cool thing that comes out of that is we’ll also use those feedback groups, those groups that are kind of giving feedback on certain projects to vet solutions before we even develop them. So that’s where our UX team comes into play. We’ll get prototypes, wire frames out to those users that have uploaded them, let them take a peek first, see if it’s meeting the needs of the problem of the issue that they’re providing a submission for. So user voice is fantastic. The other option always is through our CS team, our customer success team. So as you’re going through trainings or calling in, feel free to share that feedback. They do a great job of working with our technical services team and making sure that feedback gets looped up to product. Then it’s vetted against all the other feedback pieces that we’ve got coming into the funnel also.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome. If people want to find out more about the updates that are happening, they can check out…

Eric Fischer:

Yeah. User voice is actually great for that too. So if you go into user voice, you can actually filter by status as you can see what we’re looking into as far as what we’re exploring, what we’re designing as far as the product team’s starting to look into and break down, and then you also can see what’s being built by our development team. So it’s kind of the roadmap of Buildertrend that can be seen there. There is some fluidity to it, but as far as what’s being built, it’s a great idea of what you’re going to see coming out in the works. You’ll also see another option within that question mark where you can go to recent updates and within that, you’ll actually see them segmented out.

Eric Fischer:

So both of them are accomplishing the same thing. The nice thing about user voice if you were to go to that path is you’ll actually be able to see the other customers how popular it is and provide some context to the feedback that goes along as far as how important it is to your business and maybe your idea of how it would work for your business and how you’re seeing it implemented in Buildertrend. So two different access points to go ahead and see that information at any point.

Paul Wurth:

What’s nice about the recent updates-

Tom Houghton:

What’s that?

Paul Wurth:

… is the guy who stars in the videos.

Tom Houghton:

Oh, really?

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. He does a good job.

Tom Houghton:

You’re a big fan?

Paul Wurth:

Big fan.

Tom Houghton:

Oh, thanks.

Paul Wurth:

If any listeners want to see Hollywood Tom Houghton in action, this is your best spot. Go to your Buildertrend account, go to recent updates and click on the first video. You’re going to see our star, our star shining bright.

Eric Fischer:

Did you really just call somebody else a star?

Paul Wurth:

That’s right.

Eric Fischer:

I’m amazed.

Paul Wurth:

That’s right.

Tom Houghton:

It happened here first.

Paul Wurth:

A first on the podcast.

Eric Fischer:

Amazing.

Tom Houghton:

There you go. Awesome. Okay. Well, this has been a great chat. We want to wrap this up with the same way we wrap up every internal discussion is we want to get to know you a little bit. So we’ve got some fun fact questions to ask-

Eric Fischer:

Oh.

Tom Houghton:

… if you are prepared.

Eric Fischer:

We’ll see.

Tom Houghton:

Maybe.

Eric Fischer:

We’ll see.

Tom Houghton:

First question, you have a favorite sport that stands out amongst all other sports, correct?

Eric Fischer:

Oh, yeah.

Tom Houghton:

And that sport is?

Eric Fischer:

I’m a baseball guy.

Tom Houghton:

You’re a big baseball guy.

Eric Fischer:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Not just a small fan, big fan.

Eric Fischer:

Big fan.

Paul Wurth:

Previous to Buildertrend, you were a coach, right?

Eric Fischer:

Yeah. So prior to starting at Buildertrend, I was a high baseball teacher and coach, also played baseball in college and still with the College World Series being based out of here in Omaha, it’s kind of one of the things I grew up on as a kid is making my trips down in June to every CWS with parents, friends, things of that form, which kind of got me started on it. Yeah. Still follow it very heavily today. A big time Cubs fan. Then also it kind of takes a back seat here comes September though once Husker football season starts. Baseball season from about April until September, and then Husker football kicks up and that’s kind of where focus starts going here.

Paul Wurth:

You should do an episode for the kickoff season. People know that we love Husker football because- [inaudible 00:24:24]

Tom Houghton:

It’s true. Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Comes up every time you say Nebraska. Somebody says Husker.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Let’s just stay on brand. Let’s do a whole Husker-themed show.

Tom Houghton:

We’ll do it with the Tunnel Walk and everything.

Paul Wurth:

Producer Brooke’s given us the dirty eyes.

Tom Houghton:

She’s shooting us down as we speak.

Paul Wurth:

Or override that one.

Tom Houghton:

Yikes.

Paul Wurth:

All right.

Tom Houghton:

Okay. Maybe we’ll go rogue. All right. Second question, if you could eat one food for the rest of your life, it might be your favorite food, might be the last bit that you want to eat, what would it be?

Eric Fischer:

I think I got to go with lasagna, probably.

Tom Houghton:

Really?

Paul Wurth:

Wow.

Eric Fischer:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Lasagna.

Paul Wurth:

Curve ball.

Tom Houghton:

I didn’t see that coming.

Paul Wurth:

No, me either.

Eric Fischer:

What other answers have we gotten?

Paul Wurth:

Probably…

Tom Houghton:

We never asked that question.

Paul Wurth:

And I didn’t know that question was coming.

Tom Houghton:

Actually, Scott.

Paul Wurth:

Oh, he said cheeseburgers. Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Cheeseburgers.

Eric Fischer:

Cheeseburgers.

Paul Wurth:

Where’d he get it from? He says he’d cook his own.

Tom Houghton:

That’s right. Spoiler alert. I guess now you don’t have to go listen to that other episode.

Paul Wurth:

You can still listen to the episode.

Tom Houghton:

It’s still a good episode.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Lasagna.

Tom Houghton:

Lasagna though. Where’s that coming from?

Eric Fischer:

I just love lasagna. I don’t know. Hey, man. Italian food, it sounds like something that won’t get too old.

Paul Wurth:

Period. Put a period on it. I love lasagna, bro.

Eric Fischer:

There you go.

Paul Wurth:

What about you, Tom? Fish and chips.

Tom Houghton:

That is the fastest way to get a segment cut from the podcast is that accent.

Paul Wurth:

Tom grew up in England for all those who didn’t know. There you go. What is it?

Tom Houghton:

I don’t want to steal from his. This is his podcast.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. Sure.

Tom Houghton:

Not my podcast.

Paul Wurth:

We’ll tease… Tom’s going to give an answer one of these episodes.

Tom Houghton:

Exactly. Not this one though. What has been the most surprising thing or experience that has happened to you this last year?

Paul Wurth:

Hard hitting questions here from Tom.

Tom Houghton:

Hard-hitting journalism.

Eric Fischer:

Honestly, I’d probably say taking over in managing Pro Services. When that came up, it was kind of out of the blue. We were changing as a company at that point where we were deciding to really kind of elevate what we’re doing with Pro Services and get somebody to oversee more of the day-to-day with that. So caught me off guard when that opportunity came up, but it was definitely something that was fun. With that, I got to go out and do a lot of our onsite consulting, go and visit about 15 of our customers, fly around the country with another one of our onsite reps, Daniel Martinez, and I had a great time doing that.

Eric Fischer:

I loved getting some face time with our customers, and honestly, it set me up at a great path for moving up into the director of product role, getting to go on those visits, really understand the pain points that go into just trying to facilitate and get a system for your business and kind of take what you’ve been doing and change it and put it into a software at this point. So that was a heck of a lot of fun. I enjoyed it and it really, again, set me up for what I’m doing now within our product team.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome. Great responses. Knocked it out of the park.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Baseball color.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Just in case your wife listens to this, I probably would have said something with the family though. You know what I mean? Cover your bases there.

Tom Houghton:

Well, now it’s… Cover your bases.

Paul Wurth:

Let’s go.

Tom Houghton:

Yes. All right. Well, we’re out of time. It’s the ninth inning, bottom of the night.

Paul Wurth:

One too far.

Tom Houghton:

I tried.

Paul Wurth:

Should have just ended it.

Tom Houghton:

I tried. Anyway. Thanks, Eric, for joining us on the podcast today.

Eric Fischer:

Appreciate it.

Tom Houghton:

We really enjoyed getting to know you a little bit, hearing more about our product, our awesome product.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

And thank you.

Paul Wurth:

So if you’re listening, check out recent updates. Check out user voice. You want feedback, right?

Eric Fischer:

We want all the feedback that we can get.

Paul Wurth:

Some people think that we don’t. We do.

Eric Fischer:

Feedback’s what made Buildertrend what it is right now. That’s how it’s gotten to this point. So that’s going to be our lifeline moving forward and we’ll appreciate any and all.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. Check out the user voice, and then also we’ll plug our podcast, Feedback Line, starting up here shortly.

Paul Wurth:

Oh, we’re taking voicemails or something, huh?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

That’s going to be fun.

Tom Houghton:

So that way, people can-

Paul Wurth:

I love it.

Tom Houghton:

… ask more questions about Buildertrend, about one of our guests.

Paul Wurth:

What do you want to hear from the podcast?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. Who do you want us to bring on next?

Eric Fischer:

Where’d you find this Paul Wurth guy?

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. What qualifies me to be on here whatsoever? That’s probably going to be the first week. I’m fine with it.

Tom Houghton:

All right. Stay tuned for that. Want to share a suggestion for a future guest, have a question about Buildertrend that you’d like us to discuss, or a topic that you’d want us to cover on the podcast? Let us know by calling and leaving us a message at (402) 596-6437. That’s (402) 596-6437. And who knows? You’ll maybe hear yourself on the podcast. Love what you heard? Don’t forget to rate and subscribe to our podcast, so you can hear from more guests that will benefit your business. Also, please check out our show notes page for more information on what we discussed on this episode. You can find it at buildertrend.com/podcast. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time on “The Building Code.”