Live from IBS with Nick Schiffer: NS Builders

Paul Wurth:

Let’s have Nick do whatever intro he wants. May be a fun way to start. It’d be a fun way to start. You hate this.

Nick Schiffer:

I do.

Paul Wurth:

It’s great. You’ll love it.

Nick Schiffer:

You are listening to “The Building Code,” your guide… I knew I was going to screw that up. It was close.

Paul Wurth:

Who was that?

Nick Schiffer:

Your guide to building.

Tom Houghton:

Is that my voice?

Paul Wurth:

No, that was in Nick’s.

Tom Houghton:

Your guide to a better way.

Nick Schiffer:

Your guide to a better way of building your business.

Tom Houghton:

It was good.

Paul Wurth:

I like that.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Or maybe we just start episodes from now on.

Tom Houghton:

Just start.

Paul Wurth:

We always called and then do it at the end.

Tom Houghton:

I know yeah, we talked about this.

Paul Wurth:

The Modern Craftsmen’s great. They always start cold.

Nick Schiffer:

You like the banjo, too?

Paul Wurth:

Yes, I like it all.

Nick Schiffer:

That guy recorded that in my office.

Paul Wurth:

Really?

Nick Schiffer:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

We need music, I’ve been telling you about that. I want a new jam.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, we got a new jam.

Paul Wurth:

We’re working on it.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. Stay tuned for our post IBS podcast.

Nick Schiffer:

Did you check up on our sonic branding that we came up with? Doug came up with?

Paul Wurth:

No what’s that?

Nick Schiffer:

Sonic branding. Do you know what sonic branding is?

Paul Wurth:

No.

Tom Houghton:

Like trademarking through-

Nick Schiffer:

Yah, like a noise. It’s like everyone here and then it’s all of a sudden, “Oh, I know who that is.” If I say Intel computers, you know what that ding, ding, ding. That’s sonic branding.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, I know that.

Nick Schiffer:

So I had said-

Tom Houghton:

I think we just had to pay them five bucks for that by the way.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, whoopsie-daisy. We’ll cut that out.

Nick Schiffer:

So I had it right on cue, right? I was talking to Doug about it and I’m like, “We got to come up with something.”

Tom Houghton:

Sure.

Nick Schiffer:

And it’s like, well, you can’t use a saw because that’s just dumb. And I can’t remember how he came up with it, but I think one of the guys had a tape measure out and he had it strung out and he let it let go and it went. And he heard that and he recorded it. And so if you listen to our videos at the beginning, it starts with that, every video.

Paul Wurth:

I like it.

Nick Schiffer:

So when you’re scrolling Instagram and you get the sound on you hear that.

Paul Wurth:

I didn’t know that.

Tom Houghton:

Then you know.

Paul Wurth:

When did you start doing that? Because I haven’t noticed that.

Nick Schiffer:

Probably four months ago.

Paul Wurth:

You know, the problem is when I-

Nick Schiffer:

Well, you also have the sound off, so then you hit the sound.

Paul Wurth:

I always do that.

Nick Schiffer:

We play it again at the end, but we, we play it… Because in the beginning you kind of want it to go slow to fast. And then at the end we have it go from fast to slow.

Paul Wurth:

I like that. That’s always my problem with the Instagram. I never have my sound box. I’m usually in a place where I don’t want the volume to go crazy when I’m doing Instagram stories.

Tom Houghton:

Like a church.

Paul Wurth:

Like church. When I’m supposed to be paying attention to my kids. I’m just kidding. I love them.

Nick Schiffer:

Your wife’s like, “What are you doing?” Nothing.

Paul Wurth:

Nothing, working.

Nick Schiffer:

I heard you, I heard the story. I heard stories going.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, exactly.

Nick Schiffer:

I heard Nick’s voice.

Paul Wurth:

That’s how you get caught.

Nick Schiffer:

You were skipping.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s how you get caught. Yeah. Well, they should have an automatic closed caption on those things. If the sounds off [crosstalk].

Nick Schiffer:

So we talk about that all the time. So most of our videos that we do on Instagram, we don’t talk. It’s very just process-oriented but interesting enough to understand what’s going on. But we talk about transcribing videos a lot.

Paul Wurth:

You should totally do it. I love that when that happens, because again, I think we’re all the same. We’re all not listening volume a hundred percent of times.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely.

Nick Schiffer:

So we’re going to be launching a different kind of video series more towards the business side and marketing and sales and what kind of what works for us.

Paul Wurth:

That’s smart.

Nick Schiffer:

And that’s where we’re going, we’ll put a heavy push on LinkedIn. Because that’s where that audience is and we’ll transcribe that. We’re transcribing a video of us doing baseboard. It’s just, no one’s watching that video and going to read, “Oh, now he’s coping.” You’re watching that as a video to be interested in and listening to it.

Paul Wurth:

Agreed. You know the transcribed could almost be like your principles of a presentation, it doesn’t have to be the words you’re saying, it’s the concepts you’re talking about. The bullet points.

Nick Schiffer:

He’s done a few. And I was, “Dude, how long did it take you?” He’s, “Actually not long.” I’m like, “What do you mean?” He’s like, “I put my phone in voice dictation, played the video and it just dictated the footage.” There’s some words that you don’t say properly. So then it’s…

Paul Wurth:

You just go back and edit.

Nick Schiffer:

Yeah it puts cucumber in random places, but yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah big cucumber fans I’m sure.

Nick Schiffer:

I don’t know why I chose cucumber.

Paul Wurth:

Cucumber, that’s a weird one.

Nick Schiffer:

I had to think of something random.

Tom Houghton:

That was pretty random.

Nick Schiffer:

Yeah. It was

Paul Wurth:

What word gets mistaken for cucumber?

Tom Houghton:

I don’t want to know.

Nick Schiffer:

You know what it is? I’m blushing I can feel it, autocorrect. Sometimes it’s damn-it auto-correct and then I’ve had correct auto cucumber. That’s exactly why.

Paul Wurth:

Oh, when you actually type in autocorrect saying that they autocorrected you. Then it goes cucumber.

Nick Schiffer:

And then it goes correct has changed the cucumber on me.

Paul Wurth:

People will feel that. That’s going to be shared pain there.

Nick Schiffer:

Cool. There’s your one minute clip for the episode. Stay tuned.

Paul Wurth:

So if don’t know yet, we’re here with… Have we even announced him?

Tom Houghton:

No.

Paul Wurth:

We’re here at Nick Schiffer.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. This is what happens when you don’t do an introduction.

Paul Wurth:

You cannot handle it.

Nick Schiffer:

Tom, it is okay.

Paul Wurth:

You’re such a control person.

Tom Houghton:

Whoa.

Paul Wurth:

In a good way.

Nick Schiffer:

I think the Sonic branding really… They were, oh, this must be Nick.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, that’s right.

Nick Schiffer:

They heard the.

Tom Houghton:

You basically should just Sonic brand your voice.

Nick Schiffer:

Oh, well, to elaborate on the sonic branding, you also can’t trademark it.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Nick Schiffer:

Applied for that and they sent me a nice decline letter.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, doesn’t like that.

Nick Schiffer:

Yeah, you can’t own that sound. I’m like, “I made that sound.” Well, someone made that sound.

Paul Wurth:

Somebody, yeah. I love it though. I mean, it does have evoke emotion. When you get that, we talk about all the time in the podcast. It’s why radio stations do segments, right? It’s kind of the same thing. You can expect it, you sort of know what you’re about to get into. And it creates a feeling every time.

Tom Houghton:

So in case it wasn’t clear, we’ve got Nick Schiffer on the podcast. I’ve just been holding that in for five minutes.

Nick Schiffer:

Thank you for having me.

Paul Wurth:

Can we get Tom a beer from the village vendor?

Tom Houghton:

Nick, thanks for coming back on the podcast. We really enjoyed talking with you and love seeing you and following you on social media. If you’re not following Nick on social media, you need to be. Where would you love them to follow you? All the places, name one.

Nick Schiffer:

Instagram is definitely where we spend most of our time and as builders, we’ve been putting a lot of content out on YouTube. And then this year, I think obviously our podcasts, monographs and podcasts as well, partnered up with John and Tyler, but LinkedIn and Facebook are something that we’re focusing a little bit more on this year.

Tom Houghton:

Interesting.

Nick Schiffer:

For different reasons, to touch different segments of what our industry. Obviously there’s a client driven motive behind it, but there’s also the big picture of what we do and why we promote what we do and the craft is for industry betterment.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. And that’s why we love working with you because we’re the same thing. Obviously, like you said, business, we want to make money. We want to expand our product usage across construction, but there’s a real opportunity to lift the entire industry up.

Nick Schiffer:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

And it’s cool to be a part of it, honestly.

Nick Schiffer:

I mean, that’s why I’m sitting at this table. That’s why we’ve become friends. And, I think we’re friends, right?

Tom Houghton:

But we were absolutely friends.

Paul Wurth:

You guys are getting tighter than me. Because you went out and did some video. I can just picture it in my head.

Nick Schiffer:

He flew a drone in an area and I was like, “I don’t know if we can fly here.” And he looks, he’s, “I got the okay, let’s go.”

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, that means he probably couldn’t fly it.

Tom Houghton:

Commsworth, right?

Nick Schiffer:

Yeah, Commonwealth Ave.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, Commonwealth Ave.

Paul Wurth:

Well, my point is we were all friends together and then you guys just went and did your own thing. So In my head I was doing one of those scenes where you guys are laughing, you go out to dinner.

Tom Houghton:

Running through the fields. Yeah, okay.

Paul Wurth:

Boston Square or whatever. I’m not jealous.

Tom Houghton:

Sure.

Paul Wurth:

A little bit.

Tom Houghton:

That’s okay, you can come next time. We’ll go back.

Nick Schiffer:

I think it’s super important. Even when the company was just me, it was always about me doing it… It was me and one guy and we had to do the best that we could because we wanted to be the best that we could, but also share with what we learned and what we messed up on and how we grew and hopefully help someone. And now that’s compounded by my team and now it’s them really teaching the technical side of it. Where my focus in communicating with other people, it’s been about culture in the company because what people struggle with is hiring great people. And I’m fortunate enough to have amazing people that work on our team. I realized that it was based on what we were promoting. The culture that we promoted, the opportunities that we were giving people, despite the investment financially.

Paul Wurth:

What’s funny is when people talk about, they have trouble hiring people, they always put it on the pool of candidates. Like there’s nobody there. Well, maybe you should look at yourself, right?

Tom Houghton:

Turn that mirror back around.

Paul Wurth:

How are you posting the jobs? What are you seeing in the jobs? What’s your office look like? Nobody wants to work there.

Nick Schiffer:

That’s not true. My office is terrible.

Paul Wurth:

Is it bad?

Nick Schiffer:

I guess mine’s not-

Paul Wurth:

Your best friend Tom would know better me. How’s his office?

Tom Houghton:

It’s a work in progress, but the workshop is really magical. That’s the best place.

Paul Wurth:

Because you do your own cabinets and things, so you just have a huge workshop?

Nick Schiffer:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

You’ve got to focus on the good part.

Nick Schiffer:

It’s actually not huge, it’s pretty small, but it’s great. The guys in there have done a great job of setting it up. Tom messed around with the garage door for 35 minutes getting the light right. The shot.

Tom Houghton:

Hey, but it looks great.

Nick Schiffer:

I watched that video. I’m like, “Man, that garage door is perfect.”

Paul Wurth:

The video is so good. Honestly, your portion of it, with all those shots and you guys walk in the job site, it was quite cool.

Nick Schiffer:

Yeah. I keep seeing up on the 40-foot billboard up here.

Paul Wurth:

Your big face is up there. Good.

Tom Houghton:

You know you’ve made it when you’re on a 40-foot LED wall.

Nick Schiffer:

That’s awesome.

Paul Wurth:

So we’re at the IBS. Obviously these are all a series. So day two and a half. Were you here yesterday?

Nick Schiffer:

I was, yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. So what do you think? This year, just in general and then any products, you see anything?

Nick Schiffer:

Dude, honestly, so Ken and Nick are with me this year, as well as Doug.

Paul Wurth:

The other, Nick.

Nick Schiffer:

The other, Nick.

Tom Houghton:

Other Nick.

Nick Schiffer:

And Doug and I have been busy with events and a couple of speaking engagements and working with vendors and things like that, which has been super fun for me personally. Kind of stepping outside of my comfort zone, speaking alone in front of people. I had to put a PowerPoint together. I haven’t done a PowerPoint since middle school.

Paul Wurth:

It’s tough.

Nick Schiffer:

I did a terrible job.

Paul Wurth:

Well, we have a great team. I literally have no idea how to build PowerPoints.

Nick Schiffer:

My graphic designer, I was casually mentioning it and he’s like, “Dude, I would have done it for you.” I’m like, “Good to know next time.” But the show’s great. And what was really cool to see is yesterday there was a big meetup and it was driven around social media and the crowd that kind of hangs out there and the fact that there was so many people there compared to last year and then an hour after it was done, people were still hanging out and there was just this massive amount of positivity floating around and people talking and communicating and networking. It was just super, super cool. So for me that’s what this is about. My team’s bouncing around, networking, but they’re focused on really developing personal relationships with the vendors that we work with and we want to work with.

Nick Schiffer:

I think about the first time I was here, all I tried to do is walk and see everything. I don’t need to see everything, I need to come and develop relationships with people. Not that I need to get a deal or, or they give me something or I give them something it’s I just need a relationship with this person because this isn’t a product I use and when I run up against the wall and with an issue, who do I call?

Paul Wurth:

It’s weird we’re not going backwards, but it’s full circle. We spent all these years, communicating electronically so much that now we got to get back to going, it is really important to meet somebody face to face. You know what I mean? That’s what this is about now. The other thing is, from an outside perspective, the whole online community that you’re a huge part of, it’s growing big. I can just see it. I’m watching it from the outside more and more people are here just for the Instagram meetups with you guys and that networking.

Nick Schiffer:

It’s funny.

Paul Wurth:

It’s a ball rolling downhill pretty fast.

Nick Schiffer:

You mentioned full circle in the communication, right? So I haven’t actually talked to a lot of people about this but recently, we had this guy on our podcast tattoo fly guy and he’s part of this corporation for fly fishing for veterans. He was on our podcast for a couple minutes talking about his… It was for veterans day we had him on. And a week later in the mail, I get a thank you note for having him on the podcast. And meanwhile, I do a pretty good job about email follow ups. Thank yous, thanks for the opportunity. Hey, I heard I lost the job, it’s okay, thank you.

Nick Schiffer:

I’m pretty good about that. Stopped it. I ordered a thousand branded postcards and every person I meet with, architect or just anyone. Past clients, I get to my office, I write a note, I throw it in the mail.

Paul Wurth:

Huge.

Nick Schiffer:

And it’s because when I remember opening that, and I never even reached out to him and I think about that fact that I should be reaching out to him.

Tom Houghton:

You should send him a thank you note.

Nick Schiffer:

I should schedule coffee with him to say, “Thank you.” For the thank you note.

Paul Wurth:

Well, maybe you guys have a thank you off. And it’s just [crosstalk].

Tom Houghton:

Thank you, no, no, thank you, no, no, thank you.

Nick Schiffer:

But I remember the way I felt opening it, and it’s like, you’re absolutely right, we’re so digital that you are losing this personal touch where now I send it and a few people reached out and was, we bought a car, we just re-upped our lease on my wife’s car. And I sent a thank you note, “Hey, thanks for making that process easy. Look forward to working with you in the future.” He was, dude, no one in my entire career has ever thanked me like that.

Paul Wurth:

Thanked me, yeah.

Nick Schiffer:

And I was, “Cool man.”

Paul Wurth:

That’s huge. I totally hear that.

Tom Houghton:

Coming soon to Buildertrend, the ability to digitally create this and then physically send it out. We’re going to partner with somebody [crosstalk].

Nick Schiffer:

You’re going to have 400 kids writing 170.

Tom Houghton:

Thank you notes today. The product team is going to hate me for [crosstalk 00:14:00].

Paul Wurth:

Our intern programs will be bad, we need more stamps. Sorry for the penmanship, it was a 17 year old.

Tom Houghton:

Speaking of customer experience though, you had a panel yesterday with your co-founder Dan Houghton.

Nick Schiffer:

Oh, that’s right.

Tom Houghton:

Just a plug, we’re going to have a little snippet of that panel on the podcast. So stay tuned for the next …

Paul Wurth:

This podcast?

Tom Houghton:

Our podcast.

Paul Wurth:

This episode?

Tom Houghton:

Not this episode.

Paul Wurth:

Okay, sorry.

Tom Houghton:

You’ve got to stay tuned.

Paul Wurth:

I got to look at the schedule.

Tom Houghton:

Okay. So we’ve got that coming up. So stay tuned to get more of Nick and his expertise on customer experience. But bringing that back around to the customer experience and bring it around to the people of this. We talked a little bit about talent earlier. You’ve got great talent. You’ve got Molly, you got Nick, you got Doug here. What’s your advice to those listening on how they can attract top talent?

Paul Wurth:

Attracting top talent.

Nick Schiffer:

There’s a lot to it, but simply put, the culture in which you promote. Well, first off it should be real. You shouldn’t be promoting fake culture. And I think that’s where people are promoting a culture and then living up to a lesser-

Paul Wurth:

Hundred percent.

Nick Schiffer:

… a lesser thing, right? Really understanding what brings people value. I’m going to talk personally about what we do, right? So one thing I realized is the work-life balance and separating work and life. And I realized that when I had kids and we talked about this recently, one of our episodes is that one thing I implemented is I got rid of my work phone when I get home, my work phone stays in my work bag off. Not on the counter so I walk by and touch the screen to see if I have a notification, off away.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. We talked about that a little when I was there, that you have two separate phones.

Nick Schiffer:

Yeah. And so that was huge. And that was one of the first steps. And I really told my guys, I’m like, “Everyone gets a phone allowance because you’re expected to answer the phone when I call or when anyone calls and you all have emails.” But the phone allowances is to pay for that phone. And if you want a personal phone, I would encourage you to get your own phone.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, makes sense.

Nick Schiffer:

Separate it. But the culture within the company is that for our time off we take Christmas Eve all the way to New Year’s Day off.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah mandatory.

Nick Schiffer:

Mandatory, around the week of July 4th.

Nick Schiffer:

And then they’re accruing vacation on top of it because that’s time to recharge. It has to be the case. Having the opportunity to do your very best work, but when you mess up it’s all right. But it’s not okay if you keep messing up and doing the same thing, but let’s work through this and figure out why did you mess up? Did we do something wrong? And being okay with the understanding that the investment in those mistakes will net a better result.

Paul Wurth:

Totally.

Nick Schiffer:

But I think really just promoting the positivity behind all of that. There is a lot of negative in this industry. There’s a lot of hard things that we deal with. What construction is organization of hundreds of humans with all their baggage and issues to net a product that people expect to be perfect.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s a really good summary of that because it’s-

Nick Schiffer:

First off-

Paul Wurth:

It’s mission impossible.

Nick Schiffer:

It’s not going to be perfect. We have a lot of things working against us. Nevermind the human aspect of it. But I really think to summarize a positive, people focused culture is what is really important.

Tom Houghton:

Sure.

Paul Wurth:

And to do that as a business owner, you probably got to have a pretty hard conversation with yourself, a real look.

Nick Schiffer:

Real hard.

Paul Wurth:

What is our culture? What is important to me? What kind of things am I driving by the policies I’ve put in place?

Nick Schiffer:

Really hard. I would say that I take a lot of risk on people, because I see… I’m impatient as a person, but I understand that what I’m doing and what we’re doing as a team isn’t about tomorrow this is longer than that. And some of the team might not have any experience or really struggles with things. But that’s all right. If you’re driven if you’re going to work towards it, I’ll help. I’m cool with that. I want to touch on something because recently a gentleman had asked, I think he was a stone fabricator and he has a guy that’s been with him for 40 years. Really great fabricator, amazing fabricator.

Nick Schiffer:

And he’s got laborers that work in the stone shop as well. And he was talking about those guys they don’t really know what’s… They can’t really polish stone. They’re just laborers. So when when the shop’s clean they send them home and they might not get 40 hours for the week. And then he switches and he’s like, “But I’m not really sure what happens when, Dave, when he retires or he quits.” Are we not making the connection here? The laborer should be working with Dave when he’s done with his job for the two hours, pay him 40 hours and teach him. You’ve spent all that time developing Dave and what you’re not doing is developing someone in the coattails of him to continue that. And that’s what I think a lot of people forget is they build these companies and they build these teams and these cultures of great people, but what happens when someone transitions into a new role? You can’t just restart and start from zero.

Nick Schiffer:

Then your company is literally restarting. It needs to be a coattail thing. And that is really important.

Paul Wurth:

I think what’s really great just to make it full circle is sometimes you need another business owner to see your blind spots.

Nick Schiffer:

Absolutely.

Paul Wurth:

And that’s what’s great about networking because maybe that seems very obvious to us hearing the story it’s, well, geez.

Nick Schiffer:

Of course.

Paul Wurth:

Come on. But when you’re in the mix and you’re in it, that’s tough. That’s good.

Nick Schiffer:

I think you’re absolutely right and that’s what I love about networking. But that’s what I love about even more than networking with builders, networking with people outside of our industry and taking… What’s nice about it is it’s almost not directly related. It’s, “Well, you build specs. And I build custom homes.” It’s different. Where it’s, “No, you’re running an ad agency and I’m running a construction business, but I can see how that was successful. And I’m only taking the points of building the culture, not the fact that you build specs for those customers.” And that’s what’s been super interesting for us recently is that we’ve taken a lot. Look at Doug.

Tom Houghton:

I know, looks great.

Paul Wurth:

We’re looking at Doug right now.

Tom Houghton:

We’re looking at Doug. Hi, Doug.

Nick Schiffer:

But the reason he was even a thought in the beginning is because I was looking at other industries bringing in video to what they do. And I’m, “All right, well, I don’t know a construction company that has a videographer, but I really like Doug, and I want him to hang out, so let’s do this.”

Paul Wurth:

So you were telling that story on our last podcast that-

Nick Schiffer:

He wasn’t full-time.

Paul Wurth:

That you’d been talking to him and he was, “Forget it. We’ll figure out how to get you paid and figure it all out.” That’s really cool.

Nick Schiffer:

Yeah, we sat down and I was, Doug, I really like… He did a video for another builder and it was li,

Tom Houghton:

Ooh, shallow choice, Doug.

Nick Schiffer:

But no, rightfully so.

Paul Wurth:

That’s his right.

Nick Schiffer:

And he did a great job. And it’s not that I didn’t like that fact that he did that. His creativity is so in line with who we are and what I see this company doing, is that I want this to be us. And we had multiple conversations. And finally, I was, dude, let’s just figure this out. We were talking yesterday and people always ask, “How does this work? How’s this work financially?” And he’s not going to answer that. And I said to him yesterday, I’m, I don’t know either.

Nick Schiffer:

And I was , “Let me correct that.” I do know it’s not… But everyone’s looking for the ROI. Give me the numbers. And I’m, there’s is no numbers. What’s the numbers of you spending four hours on Instagram a day? What I see is there’s value in what he showcases on the team is these guys are now looking at themselves on video and then on the camera and seeing that this is cool, man.

Paul Wurth:

I like to think about that part of it.

Nick Schiffer:

When these guys come on, they feel as though they’re under a microscope at first, but then they start getting super proud of what they do and can’t wait for it to be showcased. And that’s what gets them really excited.

Nick Schiffer:

And then it’s, he’s going to be here, I got this new idea and I’m going to do it on camera.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Nick Schiffer:

And that continues to develop that culture.

Paul Wurth:

I never thought but that’s awesome.

Tom Houghton:

And the brand that you’re building too, you’re looking for ROI, look no further than the fact that your reach of how people know you and what that looks like.

Nick Schiffer:

Right. Listen, it’s brand awareness. It is educating our consumer as to the value that we bring to them and the processes that we take, it’s developing the culture and then it’s looking at the industry and asking everyone, hey, step your crap up.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely.

Nick Schiffer:

We’re not perfect, but we’re chasing it.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s really cool. I love it. Makes sense.

Tom Houghton:

It’s 2020.

Nick Schiffer:

It is.

Tom Houghton:

We’re thinking about, what’s this year look like? It’s January, still thinking about resolutions, I guess. We talked about, hey, let’s set your business up for success. Maybe find somebody, a partner in crime almost that you could say, “Hey, what do I need to work on in my business?” So what’s it look like for you? What’s 2020 look like for your business? What are you looking forward to?

Nick Schiffer:

I would say continuing to refine the team. One of the guys asked, are we hiring anyone this year? And I quickly said, no. And then they said, are we firing any anyone this year? And I slowly said no.

Paul Wurth:

Whoopsie-daisy.

Nick Schiffer:

And he was, “Wait, what?” No, no. I haven’t thought of that. What I have thought a lot about is that I started my company as a carpentry company. I grew into a remodeling company. The remodeling company is now growing into a general contracting company. The general contracting company became a general contracting and cabinet company. And what I have always wanted to do is build and renovate entire homes, like build brand new homes. And what has been the focus for me is that social media has been great at showcasing who we are with the micro details, but now I need to start stepping back and showcasing that this is part of something bigger. We’re not just building cabinetry. We’re not just doing interior trim, we’re building homes. And so this year there’s going to be a heavy focus on developing the, I’m using air quotes, the funnel of attracting those right clients, because to be candid that’s been the biggest struggle.

Nick Schiffer:

Not correcting, but when people see it as a carpentry company, they’re going to call for carpentry work. And then when we became complacent with that, we shifted into remodeling and then we continued to shift. So we keep getting comfortable and then taking another step up and then we’re redefining our clientele.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Nick Schiffer:

So I’m hoping that in a way that 2020 is the last, I’m saying this knowing it’s not true, I was going to say the last change, right? What I look at it is the team and myself we’ve put a significant amount of work into what we do. And we want to now focus on bringing on the projects that we are truly passionate about doing.

Paul Wurth:

That’s really cool.

Tom Houghton:

I just want to figure out a way to clone you and put one of you in every state. Because I think everybody needs an NS Builders.

Nick Schiffer:

That’s an amazing compliment.

Paul Wurth:

Well it’s true. It’s very refreshing when you talk about the industry, your business, the way you think about it. Honestly to god, it’s super true.

Tom Houghton:

I mean, we talked about this offline, working on projects in our own homes-

Nick Schiffer:

Because we’re best friends.

Tom Houghton:

We are best friends.

Paul Wurth:

How often do you guys talk offline? What is going on?

Tom Houghton:

Will invite you to the next hang out.

Paul Wurth:

You guys are just send thank you notes to each other all day long.

Tom Houghton:

Are you on WhatsApp?

Paul Wurth:

Sorry go ahead.

Tom Houghton:

It’s okay. So the level of detail you put into your projects shows that it’s possible to do it. I think it’s so quickly that we all just write off, it’s construction. It doesn’t have to be perfect science.

Nick Schiffer:

Right.

Tom Houghton:

And there’s no such thing as absolutely being a hundred percent perfect, but we can strive for that and that’s what’s so great to see as you strive for excellence and see you deliver that excellent product to your customers.

Nick Schiffer:

That’s what people trip up on is that we’re not perfect. And those guys that are significantly better than us, right? But as individuals, all I’m asking is that you’re giving all of the effort, a hundred percent effort into it. And I’ll ask that straight up and I’ll look to them, “Hey, is could you have done that better? Yeah? Okay, then do it again.” If that’s the best you can do, then listen, that’s all I’m going to ask, but I need you to do the best that you can do every time because you’re going to incrementally get better if you’re doing that.”

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely.

Nick Schiffer:

I think the complacency in this industry, I think it’s shrinking, which is nice. But I think for a long time it was, everyone was in their bubble, so it was easy to be complacent. There’s a lot of disruptions now.

Paul Wurth:

You put some light on stuff. It’s oh, okay.

Nick Schiffer:

There’s a lot of things being showcased that are kind of weeding that stuff out.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Sure.

Paul Wurth:

Which has been great.

Nick Schiffer:

You just talked about how you can get comfortable in doing what you’re doing and then you got to shake it up. So that way you’re making sure you’re delivering the right thing for your clients.

Paul Wurth:

You told a story last time about having to rip out an entire kitchen, have you done that yet?

Nick Schiffer:

I did rip it out.

Paul Wurth:

Right, yeah. I know you had said you were going to, but yeah. So now it’s over.

Nick Schiffer:

Man, I forgot that I hadn’t done it yet. So yes.

Paul Wurth:

And it wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough.

Nick Schiffer:

All right. So I talked about this yesterday at a talk and I had never done the math until I put together this PowerPoint.

Tom Houghton:

Hey, there you go.

Nick Schiffer:

And come to find out, we had lost, it was a $170,000 job and it costs me $45,000 to redo that, out of pocket.

Nick Schiffer:

So we weren’t making 45 grand on this job. So that was a big red. But yeah it was basically up on one of those slides I had said, you have a few options. You could have fixed it, and it would have been passable and the client would have been okay with it and kind of call the spade a spade. And we probably wouldn’t have got a negative review from it, it probably would’ve been pretty neutral. And we would have walked away, no pictures and been okay. But what does that say to us? And what does that say to my guys? It’s well, he let that slide, so we’ll just let this slide and then I dig into, it’s a slippery slope to mediocrity.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Nick Schiffer:

And I never set out to be mediocre at anything. That’s not my style. If I’m going to do something I want to do it as best as I can. You know? And that was ultimately the decision. We never even thought about the money behind it, beyond the fact that we can’t afford to do it right now. Let’s squeeze this in incrementally. Let’s squeeze this in over time and figure out when this will actually work for our schedule and for us financially.

Paul Wurth:

When you talk about that, I’m not a business owner, but I’ve been really close to this business since the beginning. And I’ve talked to enough business owners. I really like your honesty about financial decisions. It sounds sometimes like if there’s this pot of money, I’m sure people listen like, “Well, yeah, if I had a pot of money, I’d fix everything.”

Nick Schiffer:

All right. So that came up.

Paul Wurth:

Bur you’re really real about it. You’re, I’m going to fix it at some point.

Nick Schiffer:

So that came up and someone was like, “Okay, whatever, obviously you can afford to do it.” I’m like, “no, no, it’s not that we could afford to do it.” All right, let me put this in a different way. If you can’t afford to do it, then let’s figure out, communicate to the client that you’ll be you’ll be back to do this when you can.

Paul Wurth:

That’s what I mean. We’re all human and I guarantee that connected with your clients, no matter what.

Nick Schiffer:

Yeah. At the end of the day we replaced it. We actually gave them a better product than we originally planned because we were, listen, let’s just pull out all the tricks now. And we ended up delivering a product that they were incredibly happy with, that they now referred us. The architect pulled us aside and said, “Listen, you didn’t have to do that. I don’t know anyone that would have done that. This says a lot about you guys.” And then on top of that, we filmed it. We filmed ripping it out and I posted it on social media and we talked about it. And then I got a phone call the next day and he was like, “Hey, you don’t know who I am. My name’s Jim. I just saw the video you posted. This is insane. I’ve known guys that rip out their work. You just told the entire world that you screwed something up and then you spent the money to film it, edit it and put it on social media and put yourself on blast.”

Nick Schiffer:

And I laughed. And we ended up chatting for a while, but I was, that’s a big question that homeowners have. It’s, well, what happens if this goes wrong?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Nick Schiffer:

What if this job goes sideways? What kind of person are you? And here’s your answer.

Paul Wurth:

And now you have evidence to show them or at least speak to. That’s cool.

Tom Houghton:

That’s good stuff. We can talk for hours.

Paul Wurth:

Just you and him or all three of us. Because what’s going on here? I know you guys are friends.

Tom Houghton:

You’re just going to milk that joke.

Paul Wurth:

It’s not a joke at this point. Now it really hurts.

Tom Houghton:

Okay. Well, we’re going to go fix this offline with Paul. We’re going to have a little kumbaya session. Nick, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Nick Schiffer:

I really appreciate it guys.

Tom Houghton:

We love having you here. We’d love to have you back again some time. We’ll figure out a time to get you back on so we can talk some more about Buildertrend and-

Nick Schiffer:

I think I’ll see you guys in March.

Paul Wurth:

Cool.

Nick Schiffer:

BTU.

Paul Wurth:

You’re coming again?

Nick Schiffer:

Bringing a couple of new guys. Well, not new guys, new guys to BTU.

Tom Houghton:

Okay.

Paul Wurth:

That’d be awesome.

Nick Schiffer:

So I’ll see you then.

Tom Houghton:

Stay tuned.

Paul Wurth:

We’ll go out of the town.

Tom Houghton:

That’s right.

Paul Wurth:

Or maybe you guys will.

Tom Houghton:

You can come too, Paul.

Paul Wurth:

All right, cool.

Nick Schiffer:

I appreciate you guys. Thanks.

Tom Houghton:

Thank you.

Tom Houghton:

Love what you heard? Don’t forget 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.” Appreciate you.