BTU experience with Jenny Sneller: Sneller Custom Homes

Tom Houghton:

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

Paul Wurth:

I’m Paul Wurth.

Tom Houghton:

Joining us on today’s episode of “The Building Code,” we have Jenny Sneller, from Sneller Custom Homes and Remodeling based in Houston, Texas. Welcome to the podcast, Jenny.

Jenny Sneller:                               

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Paul Wurth:

Texas. We just got back from Texas, Tom.

Tom Houghton:

We did. That’s what we’re going to be talking about today on the podcast. Jenny just joined us for our first ever Buildertrend University on the road. We had it in Dallas, Texas, last week. And it was quite an event. One day event, October 3rd. We had over 350 people there, a lot of people, and it was a great event.

Paul Wurth:

It was awesome.

Tom Houghton:

I mean, that’s our take on it. But we want to hear Jenny’s take on it.

Paul Wurth:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jenny Sneller:

It was awesome. I came with four of our employees. We got a chance to hang out, have some social time. But then, the consensus was, we drink from the fire hose. It was a ton of information, and it was just… Everybody was excited. It was really fun.

Tom Houghton:

Good. That’s awesome. Well, let’s dive in first by just, give it a background of your company. And maybe you can talk about those employees a little bit more. How many homes you build. Give us the rundown.

Jenny Sneller:

We started our company in 2011, and it started with my husband, Matt, and I doing everything. So if you had made the org chart at that point, it would have been our names in every single box. We worked out of our house for the first year, or two, very small. And then eventually about a year in, we started using Buildertrend.

Jenny Sneller:

In a way Buildertrend was our first employee. That’s how we look at it as our first investment, and we have just grown since then. Now we’ve got… We built about three to five custom homes a year. We do about 20 to 30 remodels a year, and then we’ve got four employees. We’ve got two Project Managers, a Selection’s Coordinator, and an Office Manager.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome. That’s a good little rundown.

Paul Wurth:

That’s great. You had mentioned something that, I think a lot of us didn’t realize, but I think when you think about it now make sense. That your team enjoyed being on the road together. Getting outside of the office, and just connecting. Whether it’s on a personal, or professional level, you feel like there’s some value there?

Jenny Sneller:

Yes. For sure. Everyone, when we got back, we were like, man, we need to do that more often. Where we just… We all get out of the office, and whether it’s an overnight, or it’s just a full day of diving into more process stuff. Instead of day to day running of the business stuff. We just had a great time just getting to laugh, getting to ask each other questions. It was awesome. I think probably, we’ll make it a quarterly, or a couple of times a year tradition, to just get out with each other.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. It’s like that retreat idea that companies have.

Jenny Sneller:

For sure.

Paul Wurth:

Just you don’t have to do like the typical trust fall.

Tom Houghton:

No trust falls.

Paul Wurth:

You just hang out with people, outside of the office. No ropes courses.

Tom Houghton:

No.

Jenny Sneller:

No. Thank you.

Tom Houghton:

Just some good old fashioned Buildertrend learning there. Buildertrend Universities.

Paul Wurth:

Ice breakers and cabins in the woods and good stuff. Just be normal.

Tom Houghton:

So let’s talk about maybe some of your expectations you had going into Buildertrend University. What made you say, “Okay. Yeah, we’re going to sign up, we’re going to do this. We’re going to bring four team members to this event”. Give us some kind of background on that.

Jenny Sneller:

Yeah. Matt had gone to the onsite training, this spring and he came back so fired up about Buildertrend. And he’s trying to tell all of us, all the stuff. We kind of felt in the dark a little bit, because we hadn’t had that experience. So when we saw Dallas was an option, it’s a much more affordable way for us to bring the whole team, because we can drive there. So we were like, yeah, let’s definitely do it. So expectations. I think I really wanted people to get a little bit more vision about how big Buildertrend is, how much it can help them with their job if they will embrace it. So that was some of my expectation of just, let’s get excited about Buildertrend together. And then two, just some really specific tasks for them to get comfortable with. So those were the two things that I was hoping it would provide.

Tom Houghton:

Okay.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s a good point. Just for the history of Buildertrend University, when we launched this call it March of 2018, I believe it was. It had been something that our clients had been asking for, for a very long time. Which is, is there any in-person training? Of course, everybody knows who’s a client. You have your one-on-one coach. You have unlimited time with them, for making phone calls and doing sort of webinar style trainings online. Which we still push as the first option. But there is some value we always knew based on in-person right. Either getting out of the office or having somebody come into your environment. And so we have two options now.

Paul Wurth:

We have Buildertrend University, which is two days here in Omaha. And then also we have onsite consulting, which our team members actually go to your office. But this is sort of that middle ground where we’re actually going to come to you. But still in that group setting. Where, and a lot of what our co-founder Dan Houghton said in the opening remarks of Buildertrend University on the Road was, is that, a lot of the value is me speaking to other Buildertrend users, networking, talking about your businesses, some shared common experiences with Buildertrend. And I think from some of the feedback, that was one of the big takeaways. People having fun together, even though they didn’t know each other going into it.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Did you have fun, Tom?

Tom Houghton:

I had a great time. I was running all over the place.

Paul Wurth:

You were running ragged.

Tom Houghton:

I love it. Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Your class by the way got one of the highest ratings.

Tom Houghton:

Oh yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

There you go.

Paul Wurth:

Jenny did you happen to see Tom do his thing on stage?

Jenny Sneller:

Oh, I did. It was awesome.

Paul Wurth:

He’s a sight to see, isn’t he?

Jenny Sneller:

His was one of my favorite classes actually. We learned a ton.

Tom Houghton:

Oh, good.

Paul Wurth:

There you go.

Tom Houghton:

Well, there you go. What was… Give me one key takeaway of what you thought. Not to put you on the spot, but from my class specifically.

Jenny Sneller:

Your class specifically, you gave a lot of great equipment recommendations for shooting video. That was great. And it’s inexpensive stuff, which was awesome. Because most builders can’t invest thousands and thousands of dollars in that kind of stuff. So that was super helpful. And then also just figuring out how to organize our folders and files on the back end was incredibly helpful. And tying that into sort of building these templates. I always had thought templates were more of just schedule stuff, schedule templates. But I realized, wait a second, we can template every single thing. And so that it was kind of a revelation, like things could be a lot easier if we would do this.

Paul Wurth:

That’s our new tagline.

Tom Houghton:

That’s good.

Paul Wurth:

Things would be a lot easier, if you just did this.

Tom Houghton:

I’ll give a little background on that class for the listeners. So I, co-taught a class called, managing files and marketing videos, with some other great presenters here, Andy and Taylor. So we gave a background on best practices for managing your files in Buildertrend. But then also I spoke to the marketing side of aspects of Buildertrend and also just making better videos for your company. Because again, it’s 2019 and if you’re not incorporating video into your business right now, you’re definitely behind the curve and you will be. Because they say by next year, 84% of all internet traffic will be video, which is pretty crazy.

Paul Wurth:

It’s wild. Yeah. I think, that class is a good example of, you’re not just learning about Buildertrend there. We try to talk about, I think things we’ve learned from being in business with so many contractors over the last 13 years. We really know this side of the business now, because of all of our 15,000 plus clients. And the different ways they do things and the nuances in their market, things that they can get better at it. And I think we try to touch on some of those in the classes as well, which are some good takeaways.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. So let’s talk about your experience at Buildertrend University on the Road. For all the listeners who weren’t there, give us a play-by-play of the day, highlights from the day, what you loved, maybe even what you didn’t like.

Paul Wurth:

No thanks.

Tom Houghton:

Paul

Paul Wurth:

We’re not taking feedback.

Tom Houghton:

Make sure you leave your feedback on the survey. That way it’s quantifiable. Anyway, give us some feedback.

Jenny Sneller:

Okay. So it starts very early, which… [crosstalk]. We were all dragging down the elevator to get there.

Paul Wurth:

It was early.

Tom Houghton:

It was early.

Jenny Sneller:

We arrived, and it was like, oh my gosh, it’s a real breakfast. Thank you. So we were so happy when… It was a really good hearty breakfast, plenty of coffee. We got to sit and eat for a little bit. And then really each session had two different class options. And so we would make sure that at least one member of our team was in each of the classes, so just we could get all the material. We would split up and go to class and you’d have breaks in between to get more coffee, more bathroom breaks, that kind of thing.

Jenny Sneller:

And then, again lunch was awesome. I think our team specifically was just so glad that it wasn’t like a sandwich or… They were happy that it was like a really nice meal. Because it takes a lot of brainpower to sit through these classes and to think. So they were excited about a real meal. So then after lunch, more classes and really we were done by about 4:30 and we all jumped in the car and headed back. So we were home by 9:00 at night. So it was a long day, but fitted all in.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

It’s great. Yeah. Did you happen to stay for the panel? Did I hear that?

Jenny Sneller:

We did.

Paul Wurth:

Great. I thought the panel was interesting, right?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. What’d you take away from the panel?

Jenny Sneller:

We are actually good friends with Matt Risinger. So it was fun to see him talk a little bit more about, social media and stuff. That was a good takeaway. I’d sat there creating a Sneller Custom Homes, Instagram account. We’re on Instagram.

Tom Houghton:

Yey.

Jenny Sneller:

So yeah, it was fun. It’s always fun to hear from people, I think.

Tom Houghton:

I’m going to go follow you guys right now and we’ll just put a link to that in the show notes. So you can get some more followers there.

Paul Wurth:

He’s got two followers.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. That’s awesome.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. So the panel, we had a really good, interesting group of people there. We had Chad, who is the CEO of Builders FirstSource, which we found out is the biggest supplier in North America. And then we also had David who was a previous guest on our podcast from Janesville [inaudible 00:00:11:36]. He gave some real Buildertrend specific sort of feedback, which I thought was great. How they use it and how they transitioned from residential to commercial and multi-family. And then we of course had Matt Risinger from Risinger and Co. He talked about, obviously his history, about his business. But also how important social media has been in that. That was good.

Tom Houghton:

It was a really good panel.

Paul Wurth:

Hosted by our co-founder Dan Houghton.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

He was keeping it moving.

Tom Houghton:

He was.

Paul Wurth:

That was good.

Tom Houghton:

That was moving and grooving.

Paul Wurth:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. All right. Well, so obviously you said you learned a lot from the conference. Maybe give us one or two key takeaways that you guys were like, okay… Either, I don’t want to lead you down the river there. You just let us know, give us one or two takeaways.

Paul Wurth:

Lead you down the river. What does that even mean?

Tom Houghton:

Like I’m a drafting tour guide.

Paul Wurth:

Apparently, let’s hope no one has ever said that before. First time here.

Tom Houghton:

Well, I’m glad it’s the first time. First time for everything. That’s a new thing. We can lead a horse to water, but can you lead somebody down a river? Not unless you’re a river tour guide.

Paul Wurth:

I think that’s a little easier. There’s a current.

Paul Wurth:

All right.

Tom Houghton:

And we’re back on track.

Jenny Sneller:

Okay. Yeah. I think the template thing is probably top priority for us. We used templates in the past, but not like this, not like what was shown in these classes about what’s possible. So that’s top priority for us, is we’ve started from scratch a little bit, deleted all of our old worthless templates that really weren’t working for us. And we’re starting from scratch.

Jenny Sneller:

I think when you go to a conference like this, you’ve got kind of this fresh level of momentum and excitement paired with a lot of new knowledge. So trying to ride that wave, as quickly as possible before the momentum dies a little bit is important. So we are definitely setting aside time in the next couple of weeks, to create some of these templates and make them start working immediately. Because I think that’s what continues the momentum.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. The momentum down the river.

Paul Wurth:

All right.

Jenny Sneller:

Down the river. Yes.

Paul Wurth:

But, on a serious. One of the things we did was, we pre-scheduled a follow-up training or tried to with every account. And so I think that’s a really important piece to the Buildertrend University on the road, which you don’t get when you come to Omaha. In Omaha, you can come into our office, where we have 500 employees and we can provide you one-on-one time when you’re done with your classes. There that skill just doesn’t work out for us. So we’ll have that one-on-one time this week for all the attendees. We are going to do it online and over the phone. They’re going to help you implement all the things you learned, which I think is really important.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. I’m sure you probably have lots of questions or lots of thoughts, I guess. Yeah.

Jenny Sneller:

I think we maybe, broke the rules a little bit and we talked to our coach, Marge, at the conference. We couldn’t wait. So we just set aside some time, sat down and put her on phone, and we just fired questions at her. And she was super excited that we had made time to do that, because right in the moment you’ve got all these things on your mind. So that’s how we did it.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s great. I don’t think people realize that the Buildertrend coaches here are as invested in your success and Buildertrend, as you guys are. So they really love when their clients call them. They love to help, because that’s what they do every day.

Tom Houghton:

And Marge is a great coach. I mean, all of our coaches are fantastic. And to Paul’s point, they are really invested. Like, when we tell Marge, “Hey, Jenny’s going to be on the podcast”. She’ll be super excited to hear this. Just like, I’m sure all the coaches are when their clients are in the podcast. So that’s really awesome. That’s really smart. I’m curious, what did… Andy, your Project Manager, what did he take away from him? Did you bring both?

Jenny Sneller:

Yes. So Andy and Steve are two Project Managers, so they came.

Tom Houghton:

Okay. What did they think?

Jenny Sneller:

They loved it. Both of them are very introverted and they still enjoyed it. People that don’t like crowds or they don’t like… There’s not any weird, awkward, forced networking that goes on at Buildertrend. It’s not like, hey, turn and ask your neighbor what their favorite color is. There’s none of that weirdness. It’s like, you can talk to as many people as you want, or you can sit on a couch and work on your own stuff. I mean, it’s… There’s a lot of freedom. For any personality type, I think it works. And they were… There was certain little features. Like there was this one feature that they were showing that you can hold down the button on the app and a little quick menu comes up and they were like, “Oh my gosh, that’s amazing”. So little things like that were cool for them to get excited about.

Tom Houghton:

That’s awesome.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s great.

Tom Houghton:

Well, 3D touch action on the iOS app. Those are pretty… Those come in handy.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

We’re big fans of those.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s an easy one that people don’t realize that can really save time.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, absolutely.

Paul Wurth:

Is cool.

Tom Houghton:

That’s really cool. Awesome. Well, we’ll wrap this up, Jenny. Thank you so much for sharing your experience about Buildertrend University. And of course, we really thank you for being a client and we wish you continued success in your business. Thanks for taking your time today to talk to us.

Jenny Sneller:

Thanks so much guys.

Paul Wurth:

Jenny, I appreciate you, and the years of business and we wish you the best of luck. Let’s get all this stuff implemented and get it rolling.

Jenny Sneller:

Awesome. Thanks.

Paul Wurth:

Thanks.

Tom Houghton:

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 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.”