Talking technology and templates with Paul McManus

Tom Houghton:

You’re listening to “The Building Code,” your guide for a better way to run your business. I’m Tom Houghton.

Paul Wurth:

I’m Paul Wurth.

Tom Houghton:

I liked the intonation there.

Paul Wurth:

That’s a tease.

Tom Houghton:

That was good.

Paul Wurth:

It’s going to be a difficult… Well, it’s going to be a difficult podcast.

Tom Houghton:

Yes.

Paul Wurth:

For you.

Tom Houghton:

For me, not for everybody. Well, maybe for everybody else.

Paul Wurth:

No, this is going to be great for everybody else, but good luck, Tom.

Tom Houghton:

Thanks. I appreciate that. Joining us today, not only am I joined by Paul Wurth on this podcast, I’m also joined by Paul McManus from McManus Kitchen and Bath. You’re based in Florida, Tallahassee, correct?

Paul McManus:

That’s right.

Tom Houghton:

Well, welcome to the podcast, Paul McManus.

Paul McManus:

Thanks very much. It’s a real pleasure. I’ve been listening for a long time and it’s nice to be on.

Paul Wurth:

Welcome, Paul.

Paul McManus:

Thanks, Paul.

Tom Houghton:

Longtime listener, first-time guest.

Paul Wurth:

There you go. You can just call me PW from now on.

Tom Houghton:

There you go.

Paul Wurth:

Establish now.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul McManus:

PW.

Paul Wurth:

There you go.

Tom Houghton:

Exactly. Well Paul, thank you. Paul McManus, thank you for joining us today. We’re talking about templates. We want to get to know you and your business though first. Specifically, one thing that stood out to us was, on your website it mentioned that you spent four years traveling the world as a bicycle tour guide. Can you give us a little bit more background on that? That’s quite the resume.

Paul McManus:

Sure. Yeah, that was a fun part of my life. I’ve always been heavy into cycling and then one day I stumbled across this website, a company called Tour d’Afrique. I used to also… Little prelude to this. I used to be a Peace Corps volunteer in Zambia, in Southern Africa, Southern central Africa. Four years I lived in Zambia. So this company runs a bicycle tour from Cairo to Cape Town, and I was like, that’s intriguing. And it goes right through Zambia, it actually goes very, very close to where I was stationed at Zambia. So I was like, that’d be an awesome way to go back to the continent and I could revisit my country that I was stationed in.

Paul McManus:

Cost $15,000, so at the time I was like, well, that ain’t happening. But I saw the jobs tab, so I applied. And with my background, my travel to Africa that I had previously, I had EMT backgrounds, I was a strong cyclist, had strong cycling background, they hired me. So for four years I traveled the world doing these Intercontinental bicycle tours with that company.

Tom Houghton:

That’s pretty impressive.

Paul McManus:

It was fun, man. It was a lot of fun. The Cairo to Cape Town, I did four times. Shanghai to Istanbul, was one of our tours. St. Petersburg to Venice. All in all, I think I went to 35, 40 countries together with them.

Tom Houghton:

How long was the ride from Cairo to Cape Town?

Paul McManus:

It’s about four months. Yeah, it’s a long journey.

Tom Houghton:

Wow.

Paul McManus:

Yeah, and you’re camping the whole way. Yeah, it’s amazing.

Tom Houghton:

I did a bicycle ride in Ireland for four days, 350 miles over four days. But four months, that’s impressive.

Paul McManus:

Yeah, it’s a different animal. The first month is a little novel, but then everyone settles in and you’re just… That’s your life. You wake up at your job. Every morning, you wake up, bike between 60 and 100 miles and you go to bed and you get up the next day and you do it all over again

Tom Houghton:

That’s quite a way to see the world.

Paul McManus:

Yeah. I love traveling by bike, because you’re traveling fast enough that you cover distance, but slow enough that it’s real visceral. You get to interact with people. You get to see things that you wouldn’t see if you were driving or on a bus or train.

Tom Houghton:

Impressive. Well, that’s quite the background. I think that’s a first for us, for introductions from our guests, so well done on that. So let’s talk about your company a little bit, McManus Kitchen and Bath.

Paul McManus:

So with McManus Kitchen and Bath, I actually, as you can imagine, I shut down the company while I was traveling for four years. Coincidentally, it coincided with the worst time in the world to be in construction because I started that job in 2009. It wasn’t some grand master plan. It just worked out that way. I got done in 2014, restarted the business in 2015. Kind of like a typical remodeler, just like I’d always done it. I was also a remodeling contractor. I worked with other showrooms in town, but after about a year of doing that, we decided to open our own showroom and become a design-build remodeling company that specialized in kitchens and bathrooms.

Paul Wurth:

How’d you originally get into construction? I mean, you have a pretty diverse background, Peace Corps.

Paul McManus:

Yeah, college actually. It’s an incredible, weird story. Not weird, but I went to work for a painter in college. He went out of business. He went bankrupt. He felt bad. I was a foreman for him at the time. He gave me all his equipment. He said, “Sorry, but here, at least take my ladders and stuff, man. I feel terrible.” So I started my own painting company. After college, I continued to run that, turned into a handyman business. I attended a few trade schools, started doing remodeling work, got my contractor’s license and here we are today.

Tom Houghton:

Again, that’s quite the journey.

Paul McManus:

I tell people, mostly it’s because, once you work for yourself, it’s almost impossible to go back working for someone else. So I tried a couple of times, and oh I’ll go work for this guy, and it’s just so hard once you, I think, get the bug of running your own company.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

And you mentioned, after a year, you made that transition to design-build. And man, we’ve had so many guests on that are design-build companies, and they’ve talked about the benefits of that. What led to that decision? What are some of the barriers for companies who don’t do that and how do you sort of get through those barriers?

Paul McManus:

I think that’s… The main way I think I got through those barriers was just pure ignorance. Not knowing some of the challenges and some of the expenses and just pushing ahead and solving problems as they came up, was a big one, which I think is often how a lot things happen when you’re an entrepreneur. But for me, why I did it, it was mostly control of the whole process. We were having issues with delays where we felt like some of our vendor partners weren’t ordering things on time or not prioritizing our stuff enough. And it was causing us some issues, some design problems, and so we decided, bring it on house. It’s been great. It’s taught us a lot. We’re definitely better remodelers for being design-builds, because now we have a much better product knowledge and a much better understanding of the whole process of-

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. And what are some of those costs/barriers? That one, if somebody is in your shoes, four or five years ago, whatever it was, and they want to get to be design-build, what should they be looking out for?

Paul McManus:

Yeah, that’s a good question though. It was more expensive than I thought, to get displays and set up a showroom and all that. And I kind of compare it, it’s a little similar to how difficult it is to find and hire subs and develop relationships with subs. Doing that with vendors, it’s a very similar process. You got to find vendors you trust and want to support you and you want to work with them and you like their product, and you want to grow together.

Paul McManus:

And for a small showroom like us… If I go to Kohler, Kohler doesn’t really care about me. I mean, they care about me, but I’m a tiny ant on the landscape of things. You want to find vendors that want to support someone at your scale. That’s challenging. And then really, it opened up a whole level of management for me. Managing designers, managing salespeople, showroom staff, that’s a different animal than it is managing subcontractors and guys in the field. So it’s just a relatively steep learning curve, but nothing is insurmountable. I’ve found a lot of great support through a couple of different groups that were very helpful to me.

Tom Houghton:

That’s awesome. Speaking of things that have probably helped, you’re using technology, obviously, in your journey and you’ve chosen Buildertrend as your partner in that. What was that process like in getting started and does that help you stay organized in your business?

Paul McManus:

Yeah, I wouldn’t run the company without Buildertrend at this point. I probably shouldn’t tell you guys that, because now you know you’ve got me on the hook.

Tom Houghton:

It’s our little secret.

Paul McManus:

I feel like I was very lucky in adopting Buildertrend, because I adopted it… So 2015, late 2015, early 2016, I brought it on board. And so I’ve been able to use Buildertrend as almost like a guide to how we’ve built out all the systems for our design and build firm. So when we started looking at, well, how are we going to manage POs and selections and all that? Buildertrend was there. So rather than trying… I think a lot of my friends in the construction industry who adopted Builderstrend, they were trying to wrench their legacy systems onto Buildertrend, which can be a challenge. Sometimes you have to unlearn and relearn in order to do that. We were able to just sort of go with Buildertrend from the get-go, and that was very helpful. I wouldn’t be running the same company without Buildertrend. I would have done things probably differently, probably less efficiently, I would guess.

Tom Houghton:

So speaking of efficiency, I think you’ve got a new process too, or a new service that you’re calling bath express. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Paul McManus:

I can tell you a little bit about that, but I got to tell you, you guys really do your homework, because that went up on the website this morning I think, or maybe yesterday morning.

Tom Houghton:

What can I say?

Paul McManus:

You’re one of 10 people in the world probably, who know.

Tom Houghton:

Well, now there’s a whole lot more people who know.

Paul McManus:

I mean, if you click on that link, it doesn’t actually even go to a live… The right page yet.

Tom Houghton:

That’s kind of why we wanted to know. You intrigued us with the name, we want to know more about it.

Paul McManus:

It’s hilarious. I was building it this morning and of course, like you always do, I ran out of time. So I had to go to an appointment and I was like, no one’s going to click on it today.

Tom Houghton:

Surprise.

Paul McManus:

So MKB express is that… You’ve probably heard of things like Two-Day Bath or Five-Day Bath, MKB express is sort of our version of that. So it’s a way to provide more economical bathroom and kitchen remodels to homeowners.

Tom Houghton:

That’s fantastic.

Paul McManus:

Quicker process, different product. Try to provide something high-quality, lots of color and style options, but it’s faster and less expensive.

Tom Houghton:

Okay.

Paul Wurth:

And for you, economies of scale, right? You guys are probably going to do it the same way, limited set of toilets and sinks and things like that, that they choose from. So the client gets a really good product, but you guys can really scale it, so you can do more and really pump them. I got to believe that, the key to this podcast template, has a big part of that, right? Templating your schedules and things like that?

Paul McManus:

Yeah, absolutely. Now, we haven’t built anything out for MKB express yet, but certainly leveraging Buildertrend in that service, that product, is going to be critical.

Tom Houghton:

Fantastic. Let’s transition that and talk more about templates, obviously you’ve got a lot of experience using them. Tell us about the kind of before, during and after of your process in exploring the template world of Buildertrend.

Paul McManus:

What’s great about templates is, the first template we built was very, very simple. I think probably… I bet for the first six months I used Buildertrend, I didn’t even pay attention to templates. And I would build new calendars, every single job and new to do’s, every single job. And then finally, it might’ve been after I went to Buildertrend University where someone opened my eyes to the power of templates, built our first few templates. And now, we do an autopsy at the end of every project. We call it a job autopsy meeting where we kind of go over what went well, what didn’t. We’re updating the template now, every job. Tweak this, tweak that, who’s assigned to that?

Paul McManus:

And it’s a great way to make sure nothing falls through the cracks ever, right? Because we import that template. We have one for kitchens, one for baths, some for follow-ups, some for pre-construction, it’s got all our To-Do’s and calendar items. And then once we import it, obviously it has to be tweaked. Some things might get deleted, but what we’re making sure of is, nothing gets missed, which has been extremely helpful, especially when onboarding new people and training new people. There’s no better way to make sure things run smooth as you’re bringing on new staff.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. One thing we talked about in the previous episode with Jordan, who really introduced the audience to templates if they hadn’t heard of yet, is that a lot of people think templates are for production home builders, right? If you build the same home every time and you have the same three colors and things like that. But I mean, you are a kitchen and bath company, so it speaks to, it could really be for any size of company and any style of construction they do, right?

Paul McManus:

Oh yeah, absolutely. We’re a full custom kitchen and bathroom model, so. But even though every job is different, the sequence of events is often very similar and the To-Do’s… The things we want to do, are very similar. So we’ll always do a demo, we’re always doing tile install or we’re doing cabinet install, so those things are all built in. And almost more important than the calendar for us, are the To-Do’s. We use a ton of To-Do’s to make sure follow-ups done, ordering is done, following up on orders is done, et cetera, et cetera, just making sure all the boxes get ticked.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. And one tip for people that they may not know, is they think they need one template for a job. You could have a kitchen template for certain features, and then you can just bring on smaller templates and like what you had mentioned, phases. You could have a whole set of templates for a certain phase of a job, it doesn’t have to be all built at once, right?

Paul McManus:

Absolutely, yeah. We actually use a design template, so we sign a client… We first import a design template, we then have a preproduction template, which is sort of the ordering phase. Then we have that, what we call the build template, which is the actual kitchen remodel. And then we have a follow-up template for our follow-up process, and warranties and staying in touch with the client and all that stuff.

Paul Wurth:

That’s great.

Tom Houghton:

So what was your process in getting started? Like you said, you came to BTU probably, and that’s when the idea kind of got started in your head about using templates. You’d heard obviously, probably how beneficial they are to use. What was that process of actually putting digital pen to paper there?

Paul McManus:

It wasn’t very difficult because I’ve been building… You’re building them already, day to day, so it was just a matter of building one and importing it. And then like I said, just slowly improved it over time. Yeah. I mean, I kept trying to remember back, it’s been four or five years now since we first created them. I think I went a little off the rails at first, because I created way too many templates. I think I went nuts and was like, oh, I’m going to have a template for a hall bathroom. I’m going to have one for a master bathroom. I’m going to have one for a powder room, and I’m going to have one for a small kitchen. And that was a little too much. And we wound up going with just a standard kitchen, standard bath.

Paul McManus:

And so that worked well for us, simplifying it. But it’s just an evolution, they get changed. They’re so easy to change and update. We’re just in a meeting and we say, ‘Hey, how did we forget to do this? Well, I don’t know. How do we make sure we never forget to do this again? Well, why don’t I add it to the kitchen template? Good idea. Let’s do it.’ And it gets added right there. And then we’ll never make that mistake again.

Paul Wurth:

I think one thing we missed in the previous episode for the uninitiated to the templates, is where the heck do you find them?

Tom Houghton:

Where in Buildertrend is this mysterious template menu? That’s a great-

Paul Wurth:

Tom, people have just been listening to the last six episodes and just been infuriating at their desk.

Tom Houghton:

They were like, ‘Why didn’t they just tell me where it is?’ We just wanted to keep you in suspense all this time, folks. So thanks for being patient with us. You can find it underneath your jobs menu. If you hit the jobs menu, there’s a drop down there, you can switch to the template menu. It’s kind of hidden. And I know from our support team, we do get some calls from people sometimes when they accidentally switch to one and they don’t mean to, because obviously you’re kind of still working in the program the same way you always do, it’s just, instead of having your jobs list there, you’ll see the template menu list. So that’s where you can see all the templates that you already have built out for you. So look for the jobs menu above it, where it says jobs menu, you just click on that drop down, change it to template menu. And now you know.

Paul Wurth:

Yep. Knowing is half the battle.

Tom Houghton:

That is very true. Good play there. So you obviously started off, you went kind of template heavy. Then he came back to simplifying your process, which is great. And now, like you said, you’ve got a couple of different options for your templates, but you also have to tweak them. You’re still saving time though, you’re still seeing the benefit out of using these, right?

Paul McManus:

Oh, it’s a huge time-saver. I mean, one click and my designer has imported an entire project calendar. Now my project manager is going to have to go in and she’ll spend 15 or 20 minutes tweaking that to any individual job. But for all intents and purposes, it’s done once she imports.

Paul Wurth:

I’ll leave the group with this, is that, this is our second episode on templates, but two episodes back, we talked to R.B. Gallup, and he had mentioned he’s going to start using surveys. And one of the best things to do… People think that surveys should be the end of the job. And one of the best things to do is, template a handful of different surveys, right? How do we do during our sales process? And actually release it while they’re still just finishing the sales process. How do we do with setting up expectations and the demo? But it’s just more of a great way to check in with a client. So there’s a plug for surveys, that’s a two episode call back. And a favorite way you can template is surveys right there. Do a handful of them and release them throughout the job.

Paul McManus:

Yeah, I’ll have to listen to that. I missed that podcast episode. I’ll go listen to it. When I first started trying to template surveys, we had some issues with the template importing correctly into the schedule. That was two years ago probably. But then we got in the habit of doing it outside of Buildertrend, and I never came back to it. So maybe I’ll go re-look at that.

Tom Houghton:

One thing I want to talk about with you, since we’ve got you on the line, is obviously kind of trends in kitchen and bath that you’re seeing. One thing that I saw on your Instagram page, which by the way, if you’re not following McManus Kitchen and Bath, do that now, pull out your phone. Well, if you’re in a safe spot. Get off the road, if you’re driving, don’t just do this in the middle of the road. Be safe. So go follow them on Instagram, it’s just @McManuskitchenandbath on Instagram. That’s a pretty easy handle there to follow. One of the things I saw that I wanted to talk about specifically was, because I’ve not seen this yet, is a little custom cubby for somebody’s iRobot from their Roomba.

Paul McManus:

Oh, yeah.

Tom Houghton:

I love that idea.

Paul McManus:

We’ve been doing a decent number of little cubbies like that, and underneath tall pantries. Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. I mean, because I’m obviously a big fan of technology, big fan of robot stuff like that. We’ve got a robot vacuum named Gerald. That’s his name. Paul’s got one as well.

Paul Wurth:

Nope. That was my hand, just trying to understand what we’re talking about. You got robots in the house now, Tom? I thought you kept those in the garage.

Tom Houghton:

Nope. Nope. They’re invading everywhere now. Technology’s everywhere, Paul. You got to get with it.

Paul Wurth:

Okay.

Tom Houghton:

So there’s lots of different players in the game. There’s Neato, there’s Roomba. So these will clean, they’ll vacuum your house. Let’s see. I think Neato has one that actually will mop your floor as well.

Paul Wurth:

Wow.

Tom Houghton:

So it’s great, they are great tools to have, especially if you got a family, you’ve got small kids, you’ve got crumbs everywhere. Or if you’re just a neat freak like me, then hey, great, you got that too. But they’re kind of just out in the middle of nowhere. Usually they’re about a foot and a half… It’s about that size, and they’re just kind of out in the middle of nowhere. So having a spot for it to kind of “return home” its own little home that’s kind of tucked away, I think that’s genius.

Paul McManus:

I got a robot vacuum six months ago. Game-changer.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul McManus:

Highly recommend.

Tom Houghton:

Really?

Paul McManus:

Yeah, it’s fantastic. In a way it’s bad, it makes me a little lazy. I’m wiping off the kitchen counter, I just sweep it right on the floor and I’m like, robot’s going to get that first thing tomorrow morning. I don’t even bother. But you learn a lot when you get one because I learned, oh, my couch was a half an inch too low for the robot to go under the couch. So I got some little risers and raised my couch up. But so now we start to design kitchens, we think, well, what’s going to get in the way of things like that? And then the cubby came out of that conversation too.

Tom Houghton:

I love it. That’s so cool. Now I want a cubby in my house, so Paul, you’ll have to come up to Omaha and we’ll figure out a spot.

Paul McManus:

We’ll bring up the team, and we’ll do a purpose visit.

Tom Houghton:

There you go. I love it. So besides robot cubbies, that’s a thing now, what else? What other trends? What other tips do you have for us?

Paul McManus:

So as far as cool little things like that, which I think are a little more fun. More global trends like white cabinets and waterfall countertops and stuff, are more popular. But we’re big fans of what’s called an angled power strip, so if you Google that… We get ours from a company called Task Lighting, but I’m sure other companies make them. Instead of a plug in your backsplash, it’s an angled power strip, if you can imagine that, that goes up at the bottom of the cabinet. So you have this beaut… What we always say is, you have this beautiful backsplash, you’re spending $40 or 60 or 80 or 100 dollars a square foot on this backsplash and then we go cut holes in it every four feet, and jam an ugly plug in there. Well, this angle power strip lifts that up under the cabinet and your backsplash is very clean and pretty.

Paul McManus:

And then also, we’ll put lights in them, so you can get a lighted angle power strip. So it’s an under cabinet light, and it’s all the plugs for your kitchen. So we like those, they also work really well underneath countertops. So on the end of an island, they tuck right underneath the end of the countertop for convenient plugs. So we like those a lot. Workstation sinks, another big one for us. I think those workstation sinks are going to take over the world. They are these kind of larger sinks with little recesses in them, so accessories like cutting boards or colanders, fit down into the sink and can slide around. Super efficient, very practical, we use a lot of those. I think more and more, the trends that we like, we see in kitchen, bathroom remodeling, that we like, are things that just let you customize it to exactly the way you want to use it. There’s so many great opportunities for that these days, so.

Tom Houghton:

Sure. I mean, I’m ready for a kitchen upgrade now with all those fun things. I do love the idea of keeping the backsplash clean, because it’s true, you put them every… You put them so close together. That’s such a great idea.

Paul McManus:

Yeah. The only time we wouldn’t do it is, if you have a coffee maker or something that will live on the counter forever in the same spot, we’ll put a plug right behind it.

Tom Houghton:

Sure.

Paul McManus:

It’s also fun because you invite friends over and you say, hey, do me a favor and go plug that, whatever it is, plug that radio in over there in the kitchen, will you? And they walk in and they have no idea. Yeah. We actually had a client once, we were looking at old pictures of kitchens with her… It was not a client, a potential client. And she pointed at one of our kitchens and she said, “Oh, I know a man designed that kitchen.” And I was like, “Well, why would you say that?” And she’s like, “There’s not a plug anywhere. Look at it. Only a man would do that.” And I was like, “Oh no, you got to wait. See, the angle power strips are hidden up here.”

Tom Houghton:

There you go. Next level. I love it. And then I’m looking forward to when we’re doing wireless power, at that point, right? Just forget all the plugs and just everything’s wirelessly powered.

Paul McManus:

All that induction, under the counter induction stuff, that technology is there. It might just be a matter of time. You just put your blender on the counter and it blends. Yeah, why not?

Tom Houghton:

That’d be cool.

Paul McManus:

Yeah, it’d be awesome.

Tom Houghton:

Good stuff. Well, Paul. McManus, that is, not other Paul. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. Talking about templates and some trends, and Paul Wurth throwing in some highlights on surveys, so that was a fun little sneak in there.

Paul McManus:

That was a good tip. I like that.

Tom Houghton:

That was good.

Paul Wurth:

There you go.

Tom Houghton:

So all good stuff. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. And again, we wish you the best of success for your business.

Paul McManus:

Hey, thanks so much guys. This was fun.

Paul Wurth:

Thanks Paul. Appreciate you.

Tom Houghton:

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.” Appreciate you.