Live from BTU with Matt Troyer: Emergent Construction

Tom Houghton:

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

Paul Wurth:

I’m your co-host, Paul Wurth.

Tom Houghton:

Hello, co-host Paul. How are you?

Paul Wurth:

Again, I’d like to switch it up.

Tom Houghton:

You do.

Paul Wurth:

I’m doing well if that was a real question.

Tom Houghton:

I do care about you as my co-host.

Paul Wurth:

I’m doing great. You know why I’m doing great?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

A couple of reasons. Number one, we’re live at Buildertrend University and we have our first ever recurring guest on the podcast.

Tom Houghton:

True story. It’s very exciting. I’m excited. You’re excited. Our guest is excited.

Matt Troyer:

So excited.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah he hasn’t really said it because [inaudible]. Now he is.

Tom Houghton:

Well, let’s ask him.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Introducing Matt Troyer. Our first repeat guests from Emergent Construction, the CEO there. Matt, welcome back to the podcast.

Matt Troyer:

Thanks gentlemen.

Tom Houghton:

Hello.

Matt Troyer:

It’s been an awesome trip.

Paul Wurth:

It’s been a year.

Tom Houghton:

It’s been a year?

Paul Wurth:

It was last January, right?

Matt Troyer:

10 months. 10 or 11. Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Because it was in February.

Tom Houghton:

It was?

Paul Wurth:

It was in February this year, remember?

Tom Houghton:

Oh, that’s right.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Okay.

Paul Wurth:

The International Builders’ Show.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. We always got to clarify that for people not in the industry.

Paul Wurth:

Just in case.

Tom Houghton:

Do you guys make that joke too in your business? The IBS joke.

Matt Troyer:

I did have IBS 10 months ago.

Tom Houghton:

Oh okay. There you go. Whoopsy-Daisy. We’re not going to go there. There’s HIPAA laws there somewhere. I don’t know.

Matt Troyer:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

You don’t need to disclose.

Matt Troyer:

Yeah. But yeah, every time you mention that you’re going to that-

Tom Houghton:

People don’t get it.

Matt Troyer:

Everyone looks at you a little funny.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. There you go.

Matt Troyer:

Right. Yeah. It’s a true story.

Tom Houghton:

Well welcome back. We’re excited to have you. So a good place to start is, what’s changed in 10 months?

Paul Wurth:

Well, hang on. Before we get there, what’s changed? I feel we should start where we left off because when we left off back in February, you mentioned that hey, you’re going to come out to BTU maybe in June or something. It’s now December and you chose to come to Omaha, Nebraska, in December. So maybe let’s talk about that choice.

Matt Troyer:

I heard it was a beautiful place to be in the cold.

Tom Houghton:

It is.

Matt Troyer:

But the reality was, we’ve been trying to schedule this for at least the six months and every month I looked at the link, looked at the dates and realized that I just couldn’t make it work. So then we brought four of our team and I wanted to bring at least a handful of us so we could have half the team or so to be here, to get a lot of the value out of it.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome.

Paul Wurth:

And do you feel like bringing four people on the team, you feel that was a good choice?

Matt Troyer:

I do. It was really good. I didn’t realize you were going to do alternating classes, so it was good for us to divide and conquer on the two different classes going at a time to have people in all of them.

Paul Wurth:

Absolutely. So we’re here on day two, just to set the scene. We’re here on day two. You’ve got four people here. You’ve been through the whole experience. What’s your takeaway?

Matt Troyer:

Well, do I sound tired or no?

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

No.

Paul Wurth:

You sound like you’ve had a good tiime.

Matt Troyer:

I’ve had a great.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Matt Troyer:

It has been a whirlwind of information though but I told a couple of you after the first session of yesterday morning, I walked out of it and I was like, we’ve already gotten value out of the trip after the first sessions.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Matt Troyer:

It was enough to justify the trip after the first session.

Paul Wurth:

Well that’s interesting because a lot of people assume I’m not using Buildertrend. I should go to Buildertrend University but we were just talking. I would consider you guys a very good super-user style and you’re still finding value. That’s good.

Matt Troyer:

Yeah. We’ve been with… I looked it up, April of 2015 but then maybe we were 14 before and we gave it a trial and then backed it off and got back in it.

Paul Wurth:

Yup.

Matt Troyer:

But yeah. We can learn at every level of how to do things better or new features you guys have rolled out honestly, in the three or four years we’ve been doing it. You’ve changed a process that’s made it easier or something different that disrupts our flow, but once we learn it, it makes it so much better to change how we’ve done it already.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s great. Ideally we’d love for every single client to understand every single new feature, but the reality is you guys are running and gunning at your own business and we try to communicate but it’s impossible really to communicate all changes every time. You had mentioned when we were talking offline that just getting out of the office and getting the distractions away.

Matt Troyer:

It’s good for the team to do something out of the ordinary and to come here and actually focus on really just working. Joe mentioned it. Just working on the business, not in the business and just involving your team in that, which is awesome. And that’s a good way to… Because we’re big on culture. We want the team to be excited about what we’re doing and be a part of making decisions and how we do our process so having those key roles here have been great for that.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s awesome. I can tell. It seems you guys have been having fun, which is good.

Matt Troyer:

We have.

Paul Wurth:

So Matt, you’re huge on Instagram and social media. So I’ve been following your stories. You got up at 6 a.m. before the first day and ran when it was six degrees out.

Matt Troyer:

Yeah. We did track our adventure. The day we came in, we about missed our flight by down to 15 seconds and they about closed the gate on us. We ran through Chicago airport to get our connector.

Paul Wurth:

So home alone style?

Matt Troyer:

Home alone style.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah nice.

Matt Troyer:

We barely made it. But then yeah I met Daniel from Chattanooga and the two of us woke up the first morning and got out bright and early and 24 degrees, it was.

Paul Wurth:

Wow.

Matt Troyer:

Knocked out a 10-k so, it was good.

Paul Wurth:

Wow. That’s pretty impressive.

Matt Troyer:

So yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Love the dedication.

Matt Troyer:

He’s a beast though. He’s a former college decathlon’s, the guy so he was hardly breathing and I was huffing and puffing. But we did it.

Paul Wurth:

Nice. Then you guys went to some bar for golf simulation.

Matt Troyer:

Yeah. A little virtual golf bar and stayed out a little bit too late. Actually we did that before we ran, so I got about five hours of sleep and then we got up and ran so, it was a whirlwind.

Paul Wurth:

That’s awesome.

Matt Troyer:

I don’t have my three kids here with us, so it’s a little easier to… The five hours I do get of sleep are good.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

There you go.

Paul Wurth:

Exactly. That’s [inaudible].

Matt Troyer:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

That’s a good spin too. The value prop of Buildertrend. We always talk about getting out of your business and focusing on Buildertrend but also, it’s a team building thing if you bring it too.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely.

Matt Troyer:

It really is, yeah those moments are huge and we actually wrestled with… We were going to have you guys come to us and do customized training and I still would like to explore that but it’s nice to get out of our office and do a change of pace and everybody can see something different and the value that you get that’s a little bit different than the specialized even just one-on-one with us.

Paul Wurth:

Inevitably in the office even if we bring us, we’re just helpful but inevitably just day-to-day people are pulling you putting out fires left and right, but if you completely leave the office, that’s-

Matt Troyer:

Yep. Put up the vacation responder and tell him we’ll get to him on Friday.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Block the notifications, you’re good.

Matt Troyer:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

That’s good. That’s awesome.

Tom Houghton:

So two quick takeaways for BTU. First one I want to ask is, what was your favorite class?

Matt Troyer:

That’s got to be the, let me look at my list. It’s the advanced job costing 201.

Paul Wurth:

Oh. Well, I was just a little skeptical because Tom taught two classes. So I thought he was setting himself up for-

Tom Houghton:

No. I genuinely care about his experience at all of the classes.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. Good.

Matt Troyer:

I should have said the video one but-

Tom Houghton:

It’s okay. No hard feelings.

Matt Troyer:

… It was very good. Yeah. Content wise of Buildertrend process, that was a good marketing video session for sure. The Buildertrend related classes, Taylor’s job costing 201 was hands down my favorite.

Paul Wurth:

Cool.

Matt Troyer:

And that could be a little bit of an overwhelming class for some of the intro users or people that are just trying to adapt to some of the features but I feel we got to dig into some good, deeper stuff that was really strategic for us and how to do our workflow.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome.

Paul Wurth:

Because Matt and I were just talking about this before we went on air as it were, Buildertrend as a software. Right? And let’s say you’re Joe contractor and I want to level up my business by getting a software system that helps us automate our processes. That’s one piece of the puzzle. There’s also this middle ground of workflow as a business that you’ve got to commit to or reevaluate when you get a software. Is that fair?

Matt Troyer:

Yeah. One of your hurdles on the sales side is you’re trying to, yeah. Did we talk about disrupt our operations as a company. And it’s with a genuine interest and if people would adopt your services and your workflows, it will improve their business. And that you guys clearly know that and have customers that can back that up. But it’s a disruptor to change how everybody does their entire business and not just one piece of their industry.

Paul Wurth:

Right.

Matt Troyer:

That’s probably one of your biggest hurdles, but once you do that and you prove value and it’s… Every time we add a feature, we’re like wow, why did we not do that before? But it’s literally taking the time and committing to doing it and then it paying off.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. It’s that commitment from the owner and the team, because you can’t just drag them along. They’ve got to have a buy in like you mentioned and then it all works when you do that.

Matt Troyer:

Yeah. I mentioned in the first podcast, we put our news per say out there to hang ourselves. If we’ve said we offer this platform to our customers, and then we don’t update it and we don’t do it right, we’ve just said that we should be a premium because we do this service or it’s worth this because we offer these features. And then if we don’t, we look like fools and we fall on our faces.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s good pressure.

Matt Troyer:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Good pressure.

Matt Troyer:

Yeah it is.

Tom Houghton:

Second question about BTU. What’s one takeaway that you’re like as soon as we get back to the office, this is what we got to start working on.

Matt Troyer:

Leaving your office. I’ll talk business-wise, the beautiful culture you guys have here is outside of the software that we work with you guys on. Just hearing and getting more stuff in the office that’s culture-related and not just the fun, cool stuff that you have here. That’s awesome. But the words on the walls, the empowering stuff that you guys do with your employees and the positive feedback notes that are on the walls just to drive in home the fact that if we want to be big on culture, the value of that and what that can do for your business and all across all facets.

Matt Troyer:

That’s totally outside of your software, but that’s one of the biggest things. Obviously we have four pages of notes that we each took that are things we need to do to make our experience of Buildertrend better and how we can tweak it for our customers but I don’t, I’m blown away by you guys and I appreciate the partnership with you guys of a company that you’re not a Microsoft, and you’re not a big giant that we’re just buying a monthly service from. You’re a team of people here that’s literally passionate about being a partner in our business and it ties hand in hand and that would, because you’re trying to be a part of the company’s operations so deeply that’s why it also works. You have a team that really does that and does that internally here.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s really great to hear it. One of the surprising things we’ve gotten from Buildertrend University, this is our 20th one. Right?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

So it’s our 20th and we didn’t expect people to come here and like the stuff we have on our walls and what we mean by that is the things we speak with our team and how we hold them accountable in a good way. And we even talk about that when we’re doing the tour. We kick it off with a tour every morning and those are three things you can apply to your business for sure. If you talk to your team about bringing effort every day, have a positive attitude, because that’s what it is. It’s a positive attitude and you really care about what you do every day, that resonates whether you’re in construction software or building widgets, it doesn’t really matter.

Matt Troyer:

Yeah. And that’s such an important thing as the industry is changing. We’re trying to attract the younger crowd across the board with customers and clients and employees and all that. That’s where people see buy-in and I see the way you guys are also able to leverage different really young people that you’re trying to get here. In a market that’s probably not where you would not expect the best people to be. Right?

Paul Wurth:

Right.

Matt Troyer:

Or the most tech savvy people to be so you’re trying to create that environment and you guys are crushing it with that.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome. Thanks.

Paul Wurth:

Many people are always surprised by how young our crew is but also how much they care about construction. It’s weird to people. Besides us why do all these young good-looking people actually care about my construction business. And I’ve always wondered that, it speaks to our ownership and it speaks to those things on the wall. So we appreciate that you noticed that.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Matt Troyer:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

That’s awesome. Just to level set with the listeners in case you don’t know Emergent, you need to. Please check out episode four, that was when we first talked to Matt and it’s a episode. You can find out a little, I’m not going to give it away but we talked about the meaning behind your name of the company in that episode.

Paul Wurth:

That’s right.

Tom Houghton:

It’s a little teaser to get in there. Go back and listen to episode four and you’ll find out the details on that. Also background on your company because we usually talk about that when our guests come on, but then go listen to episode four for more details on you. But let’s dive in-

Paul Wurth:

A little teaser.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

I’ll just say you are from Indianapolis. Listen to the episode for everything else, but you’re in Indianapolis, right?

Matt Troyer:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Thoughts on the Colts season what are you thinking?

Matt Troyer:

It’s a little rough.

Paul Wurth:

… right now, but yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Off of episode four we talked to you nine months ago, you were talking about obviously coming to BTU which we’ve talked about. We talked about implementing the software a little bit more, but let’s just do a check-in and see where you’re at now. Right? So here we are. First maybe let’s start off with Instagram that’s a fact that it’s a quick hit. You were just getting ready to cross over 5,000 followers back in February and now I just checked you’re almost at 6,000.

Matt Troyer:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

That’s a pretty solid growth pattern for any business over that basically 10-month period let’s say.

Matt Troyer:

Yeah. So clearly there’d be more, but it’s been good. It all falls on me cause I haven’t handed it off totally to really anybody yet. So it’s pretty decent growth, but it’s still an incredibly valuable tool for us and it does tie down to a number that we’re going to track through Buildertrend’s leads a little bit better of where those come from but it’s at least over 50% of our business comes still from Instagram.

Paul Wurth:

It’s amazing.

Tom Houghton:

It’s crazy.

Matt Troyer:

The initial contact and maybe they follow us on all the other channels or they come somewhere and then we, but I filled messages all day from clients that are like, they love something or they’ve, I can’t wait. I’m saving up money so we can talk next year. That kind of stuff. So it’s a really valuable tool. We have a really young following which is nice because you can see the analytics but that age group is coming into an era of their second home or their next project that they want to do that’s a little bit more suited for where we want to be and what works for us. But it’s nice to build that following that we hopefully will pay off in the future with even more business.

Tom Houghton:

Nice.

Paul Wurth:

Instagram is just so interesting. I’m digressing a little bit, but I follow your story. It’s like I know you guys.

Tom Houghton:

It’s like, you’re a part of it.

Paul Wurth:

It’s like an episode every time. I was like, okay that’s what he’s doing. And that’s cool. Because that’s got to help when it comes to them actually being ready to come talk to you. It’s not as new to them. They’re like, “Oh, this is just Matt.” Now we’re just going to talk about my project.

Matt Troyer:

You finally got to meet them and they feel like you knew them for the whole time. Are you dating me for what we do?

Paul Wurth:

Right. And so that’s important to know. You can’t just post photos of your jobs. I don’t think that fully does what Instagram does for you. You got to put yourself out there. There’s got to be personality behind it. You got to do stories, right?

Matt Troyer:

Yeah. It’s gone through waves and I feel there was a lot of people that did it for a lot of technical stuff for tour reviews and that’s gone away. People get a little bit burnt out with that stuff, but it still needs to be valuable. So there’s still guys showing off really cool tools and what they can do, but it’s less salesy it’s more like the accounts that people really want to follow are more good knowledge or stuff that they’re teaching tips and tricks and things they’re doing or they’re telling a story of what they do. We’re clearly talking construction industry here because there’s plenty of other platforms that do it that use that tool and do really well with it.

Paul Wurth:

Sure.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

I know me, I’m scrolling through my stories when I’m on the couch, when I’ve done all my stuff and my kids are in bed. I’m barely watching TV and I’m on my stories so it’s almost like TV is really what it is and so it just needs to be entertaining. And just following a story is entertaining, whether their technical or not.

Matt Troyer:

Yeah. And the reality too is we’ve tried to portray that with our reviews and I’ve sent that to my customers of, don’t give us the TV version of stuff. I actually really like our reviews that come through the best that are like, it was a struggle. The process was a struggle but at the end of the day, they navigate us through a challenging process and we’re very happy and we would hire them again. We would recommend the team over again. So it’s not the falsify like how hard our remodel is especially if you’re living there. How tough that can be. And give people a little taste of the reality of hey you’re signing up with us for a difficult process because it is, but we’re going to make it as easy as we possibly can. But we’re also real people, we may mess up. We will mess up, but we’re going to make it right.

Paul Wurth:

I love that. I love the honesty. In marketing in general, that’s what people want these days. They don’t want the sugarcoated version.

Tom Houghton:

It’s true.

Paul Wurth:

They don’t want me as the VP of marketing Buildertrend going Buildertrend’s the greatest.

Tom Houghton:

Right.

Matt Troyer:

Right.

Paul Wurth:

Right? That doesn’t resonate with people. Obviously we love our software, but yeah there’s going to be some realities to our software like we just talked about. You need to adopt in your business. You need to commit to us as much as we’re committed to you for it to work.

Matt Troyer:

You’re balancing how much you can invest in these tools that people think they need but they really know that’s the most important feature, right? That’s not the best use of your 550 people here. So there’s an incredible team, but like those, it costs money to roll out features. So we get that. And it’s like, the three or four years we’ve had your service, how much it’s changed because you guys have grown too.

Paul Wurth:

Right. Yeah.

Matt Troyer:

So it’s a fine balance.

Paul Wurth:

It’s good. A little marketing tip for you, be real.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

We talked about that with our latest video that we just took on the .om. We put it up because we wanted real stories of people using Buildertrends.

Paul Wurth:

Right. Good, the bad and the ugly.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely.

Paul Wurth:

There we go. Good.

Tom Houghton:

So speaking of Instagram though, you had a post go viral.

Matt Troyer:

I did.

Paul Wurth:

Oh he did?

Tom Houghton:

Yes.

Paul Wurth:

What?

Matt Troyer:

It was technically on Facebook, but still social media and it’s funny because I pulled the stats up yesterday. It was about a year and a half ago and I posted the same picture on Facebook and Instagram, both. And it was a picture of a port-a-potty, it had flooded the house we were building. It was in the field and it flooded around the port-a-potty. So it was a foot of water, a huge area so it looked like a port-a-potty sitting in the middle of a Lake basically. And I just captioned best caption wins an Emergent t-shirt. And I was going to give out a t-shirt to whoever comes up with something funny and it did okay on Instagram. We had a decent hit and got a bunch of comments and stuff but on Facebook I just checked it and it was 4.5 million reached.

Tom Houghton:

Million.

Paul Wurth:

What?

Matt Troyer:

981,000 engagement and a 151,000 comments.

Paul Wurth:

151,000 comments?

Matt Troyer:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Matt Troyer:

And there was 3,200 shares.

Paul Wurth:

Wow.

Matt Troyer:

We hadn’t done a bunch…

Tom Houghton:

All for a t-shirt.

Matt Troyer:

All for a t-shirt

Paul Wurth:

People do crazy things for t-shirts.

Matt Troyer:

I gave out 10 t-shirts, but then I had messages for month of hey who got the t-shirt?

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Matt Troyer:

I never saw you give out the t-shirt.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. You got to follow up with that one or they’re just going to be hounding you for that t-shirt.

Tom Houghton:

Right.

Matt Troyer:

The funny ones are like, you’re the 5,000 people that hid all of our posts after that.

Paul Wurth:

Oh you can see that?

Matt Troyer:

And then two unlikes of our page.

Tom Houghton:

Oh nice.

Paul Wurth:

It’s all right.

Matt Troyer:

We didn’t have a very big presence on Facebook at that point, but we got about 2,000 followers from that post alone. It sounds hilarious.

Paul Wurth:

That’s awesome.

Matt Troyer:

One that didn’t get attraction on Instagram did really well on Facebook.

Tom Houghton:

There you go.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. There’s really no rhyme and reason to why things go viral. It’s like this weird, you’ve just got to hit the right thing.

Matt Troyer:

Then Facebook, their analytics are different because the way that the people post and reshare things, you don’t do that on Instagram. It’s more likely to go viral in that environment on Facebook because the way their platform is built.

Paul Wurth:

Right.

Matt Troyer:

I’m speaking from a guy that doesn’t really know much about the technical side of social media.

Tom Houghton:

And Facebook just changed their algorithm for how they track business pages and how they show business pages to consumers so that’s been a little bit of a game changer for our industry.

Paul Wurth:

In a good way or …

Tom Houghton:

It’s made it more difficult. It’s made it more difficult for business pages, so you obviously have a business page for your company on Facebook. And let’s see, probably about six months ago they changed the algorithm to… Because the problem is you would have consumers using Facebook complaining about how many businesses they were seeing posts so in order to show more people content versus business content, they made it harder for businesses to get in front of people.

Paul Wurth:

Right. That makes sense.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. It’d be interesting to run the experiment again and see.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Repeat. [crosstalk]

Tom Houghton:

Right? You can totally recycle that content. There’s probably something there.

Paul Wurth:

There’s no laws.

Matt Troyer:

I will, yeah.

Paul Wurth:

That’s awesome.

Tom Houghton:

Be interesting to see what happens.

Matt Troyer:

To your point in the video that you talked about, the class I did it organically and then I went and paid for that same post, I boosted and whatever and it didn’t do as well as the organic.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Matt Troyer:

Once it took off organically, they let the organic stuff happen.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely.

Matt Troyer:

Which is a little more peer but I watched the difference once I paid it didn’t really change it that much.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. It’s really you’re just paying Facebook at that point.

Matt Troyer:

You’re just giving them money.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah, exactly. Which they’ll take gladly.

Matt Troyer:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Awesome. Well, I feel we’ve talked our ears off about social media.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

So but if you’re not following Emergent-

Paul Wurth:

Do that.

Tom Houghton:

Do that immediately at Emergent indy.

Paul Wurth:

Dash indy. We changed it from a @_indy because it was just Emergent indy with no dash and everybody’s like what’s indy?

Tom Houghton:

Right. And everybody’s like what’s Emergent indy?

Matt Troyer:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

So it’s Emergent_indy.

Matt Troyer:

Nice.

Paul Wurth:

So it’s December. How long you been running your business?

Matt Troyer:

2007, but full-time at it 2012.

Paul Wurth:

Okay so is this around the time of year that you would plan for next year? Is that a part of your process?

Matt Troyer:

Weird actually. This has been a really good year for us growth wise so and I don’t say growth like revenue or anything. It’s been an okay revenue growth year, but structurally and foundationally, we’ve grown a lot. And we actually got our 2020 budget hammered out in November, late October and I will be truthful, that’s the first legit budget we’ve ever done.

Paul Wurth:

Right.

Matt Troyer:

And it feels good. So it’s poise for some growth.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s awesome. So you start planning, well so you should start planning in November but the reality is we all don’t do that.

Matt Troyer:

Yup.

Paul Wurth:

We all don’t set budgets, but what else do you look at around this time of year? What are the things you’re considering? Because I honestly don’t know and you’re a business owner, what do you look at for a plan of next year?

Matt Troyer:

Yeah. It was good we started that in October. It’s probably a good time of year to start thinking about coming to the fall. Obviously we’re in a market where the cold weather does slow things down a little bit.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Matt Troyer:

We’ve been fortunate for the last five, seven years that we really haven’t slowed down volume wise of work because we do a lot of interior work as well so we’re fortunate there, but it’s just a good time to reset everything almost and not to blow it all up and start over but it’s a time to peak at all the different areas of where we can improve. And clearly as fundamental as Buildertrend is in our operational flow, it’s a perfect time to come here. We probably would have preferred to come earlier just we could’ve done this six months ago, but it’s also a good time of year because everybody’s thinking about a reset. What can we do next year and what can we strategically plan out for the next quarter and the quarters after?

Matt Troyer:

But we’re definitely looking at, we’ve been strategic about the different segments of our business with remodeling, new construction, investment properties and commercial build outs. So I’m excited about continuing the pretty solid growth in all four of those segments and it’s really our growth plan to stay diversified enough that nobody wants to talk about market speculation or what things are doing, but if there’s a potential slowdown, we’re not seeing it and remodeling. Nobody has seen it too bad in housing, but something will shift eventually so it’s nice to be thinking about… And we’re diverse enough in those four different segments to stay busy in any market with our current team so, because we’ve been through one of those scary times. 2007 and eight and then 13 again really, for us.

Paul Wurth:

Do you get specific enough to go through revenue targets? And do you segment that in with the different styles of construction you do or is it just an overall revenue target?

Matt Troyer:

We have, yeah. This year is actually the first year. We’ve mapped out those four different segments to try to hit a target of our new construction goal for next year, our remodeling goal for next year. How many houses do we want to buy and sell next year? The commercial world as well and then maintaining our portfolio of rental properties. So there’s definitely strategy there of which buckets we want to be poured into more or so than others next year.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. And so for someone who’s never done this and there’s probably a lot in this industry and our industry, what’s the framework? Do you just say here’s a realistic revenue number and then we back our way into how we get there? I need to this many leads to get this many sales and an average project price of this. And then that’s the North stars let’s go.

Matt Troyer:

Yeah. We’ve tried to compartmentalize that out a little bit. A lot of it is our hard cost of doing business which is me, my partner, our office staff, our project managers, carry out selections, estimator, we know we have those costs. And then we got to figure out okay with these six or seven people, we’ve got to at least be doing x dollars a year. 5 million or whatever it is. We got to hit that number at the margins we’re projecting our work out and all that kind of thing. And then having field staff’s a little different because we use them as a cost of goods sold. So as long as we have enough work for them, we’re either going to sub it out or do it with employees so that funnels that. But yeah we try to back into, how does that check in the leads and how many… Because it’s a slow burn in our world. It takes me a while on a big remodel that somebody doesn’t reach out and they’re like, let’s get ready to sign next week and let’s do it.

Matt Troyer:

There are those, but it’s such a hard process. There’s a lot to wrestle through. So it is a slow burn, so we do try to wrestle with how many of those different types of leads there are but and I don’t have great numbers of what those look like, but it’s as many leads as we can take is the goal and then wrestle with which ones are the best fit for us. One is the customer, two financially and three is it a project that we really want to do? Is it a cool project that we want to be proud of?

Paul Wurth:

Absolutely.

Matt Troyer:

So there’s a lot of those things to wrestle with and the different segments of business allows us to do a few different things because obviously investment property work is a little bit different than a high-end remodel. But it’s also hard to adapt and stay on all fronts to be able to cover all those.

Paul Wurth:

The first step is literally just analyzing your business and saying, for this type of project it takes six months. Let’s just make that our lead to sale and then this one’s this and this one’s that and here’s the average revenue for these and then it all just works if you start thinking about it that way.

Matt Troyer:

Yeah. And we’re a cabinet dealer of our own Atlanta cabinetry so we have that a little bit that we do as well which means more design, more stuff in house with our team but and with the staff carpenters it’s yeah. How many kitchens do we have to install next year? How many trim packages do we need to put in to justify having four guys or six guys or people but what does that look like? So it’s a challenge of a lot of different math fronts to put numbers to it.

Paul Wurth:

Is it fair to say to some people, that’s a scary. And it’s intimidating to do and it’s a lot of planning so do some business owners just shut their eyes and go, let’s roll.

Matt Troyer:

There’s definitely some truth to that.

Paul Wurth:

Right. And which is understandable. Right?

Matt Troyer:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

That’s a lot of work and it’s scary.

Matt Troyer:

Yeah. Some days you just got to risk it and go for it. You’ve got to know what those people cost you and what the minimum operating is, but yeah. And at the end of the day if it doesn’t work, it’s coming out of my pocket not out of the profit. So I’m the one that loses if it doesn’t work. But yeah. There’s certainly an inherent amount of risk that have become a little bit more tolerant over the years, but it takes some time and some courage and it’s not easy. And everybody’s levels are different.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah and we talked about this in our first podcast, it’s scary to take that jump doing your own business and this is a part of it and so there’s just levels so you just keep making jumps. The scary ones. They get less scary though.

Matt Troyer:

They do and every new employee, like I said, “Okay, I’m committing to this salary. Okay, now I’ve got to produce even more. Can we do that?” And having that right person that really can produce value for the money you’re going to pay him and get them bought in on the system is really key because that can destroy your budget.

Paul Wurth:

Right. It just speaks to what we talk about a lot which is hiring’s important and if you miss, that’s a big investment for you to miss on and reset.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely.

Matt Troyer:

You have to adapt quick and change quick if it is a mess.

Paul Wurth:

Yep. Good. So nobody here that you brought is a miss though right?

Matt Troyer:

No.

Paul Wurth:

They’re not listening.

Matt Troyer:

Kara’s sitting about 10 feet from us so.

Paul Wurth:

She’s working out okay?

Matt Troyer:

She’s actually the Instagram master.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. So far so good. Shout out Kara.

Matt Troyer:

But she’s been a great addition. She’s an example of that. So now she does a design, a selection coordination pre-construction with our team so a role that we did, but we limp by and a couple of people looked at it and we finally had enough volume to justify a person that we could dedicate just to that. The beauty of running a business is that the bigger you grow, the more specialized your jobs can get. But it’s hard as a small business to, because you have to start off with more jack of all trades people and then you can, you can justify a little bit more money and better salaries and better people that can get more specialized.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. And just in general, we have to dive into it. Have you seen the return on making that leap to specialization?

Matt Troyer:

We do. Time after time, as long as we continue the growth. It’s every time we’re like, how do we live without that person? How do we live without this Buildertrend feature? How do we do the spreadsheets and selections before this system? It’s one of those things that makes you feel dumb looking back of, how could I not believe it was going to pan out.

Paul Wurth:

Right. Yeah.

Matt Troyer:

But there’s still a lot of, there’s times where it doesn’t pan out.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Tom Houghton:

Just real quick on that, don’t want to go too far down the rabbit hole on the hiring thing but obviously you people are looking at 2020, they may be thinking about adding somebody to the team. Would you mind sharing some of your thoughts on, how did you find these great people? What was that process like for you?

Matt Troyer:

Well, she’s a great example. We keep talking about social media, I met Kerry through Instagram. Actually our young carpenter that just started for us, he also came from Facebook or social media. So it’s also a tool that we’re not… It’s not just about company brand of the clients, it’s also an internal cultural company brand of the more people are excited about coming to work for a brand that has a following or just making those connections of thinking that not to act like we’re, it’s falsifying who you are because it doesn’t make you feel you’re bigger than what we really are but people see value in that and it gives them a peek to the behind the curtains like you said, of showing some of our flaws or showing some of what we do. That also attracts employees and showing off your employees. Right? When you guys rolled out the Buildertrend life it increased the light. It’s fun to follow. It’s like you see all the silly stuff you guys do around the office. It’s that stuff that builds culture that… You’re marketing to your team as well.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. We heard that on this stage from Nick from Ennis Builders. He said the exact same thing. He found two, three, and he named how it happened and they’ve been great employees for him.

Matt Troyer:

Sorry Nick I didn’t listen to your podcast.

Tom Houghton:

We won’t tell.

Matt Troyer:

We talk often though.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. You guys are friends.

Tom Houghton:

That’s awesome. I also wanted to follow up. You mentioned the rental side. I feel that’s something we don’t typically hear from the builders we talked to. Would you mind sharing a little bit more about what that looks like for your business?

Matt Troyer:

Yeah. So we have about 10 units that are rental properties, single families and duplexes, and we’ve set them up now as a job in Buildertrend for full functionality of repairs and maintenance and costs there. We did not click on the tenants to be the customer. I’ve thought about rolling that out, and we’ve also used it for our other side of the business the investment properties that are our own projects but we’re the developer on. And we’re going to start using the daily logs as our updates term investors and have them be the customer of the job. And they won’t look in and you see everything on it, but it would be a trigger for us to be able to send them a nice clean update with pictures and where we are on it.

Matt Troyer:

Learning this afternoon of other creative ways to use a Buildertrend, there’s a lot of tools there for whether it’s internal in a company management and we built out our office in the last year and a half. We’ve done a decent amount of last year so our office is a continuous job in Buildertrend that any costs related to maintenance or improvements in our space we use for that. And then we’re going to take back a lot of what we learned today and put it in the to do’s of that and create that as our team management landing spot in an assigned to do’s to that.

Paul Wurth:

A lot of people sign up for Buildertrend and go, okay… They look to us and say, “How should I use daily logs?” Well our job is to show you functionally, how you create a day log and where you do things functionally, but use it any way you want. And open your mind to that because it… A lot of our features can be used a lot of different ways.

Matt Troyer:

Yeah. All the sheets and data with adding your own columns, you can basically make it your own sales spreadsheets or something whatever you want.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah there’s so much customization to it that you can definitely dive in and do that. That’s neat to see your usage of it outside of the box a little bit.

Matt Troyer:

And I get it. You guys are trying to get your claws in everywhere [crosstalk 00:32:16] talked with Jeff about that. That the more you have us, the more we can’t leave right?

Tom Houghton:

We call it stickiness.

Matt Troyer:

We’ll pay what you want as long as there’s mutual benefit.

Tom Houghton:

Exactly. We just have equal opportunity business partner.

Paul Wurth:

That’s right.

Matt Troyer:

Sounds perfect.

Tom Houghton:

That’s awesome. Well Matt, I feel we probably should wrap up but first I want to talk about one more hot topic. Your car.

Paul Wurth:

Wait what’s going on with his car?

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. Well tell us where’s your car Matt.

Matt Troyer:

They saw on social media that Kara had posted our travel to the airport from Indiana. So I recently switched from a truck to a Tesla model three.

Tom Houghton:

That’s right.

Paul Wurth:

Test team Tesla. I’m feeling left out.

Matt Troyer:

The beard and it looked like I should drive a pickup truck. Right. So how about the new cyber truck? I mean, it’s a little out there. It’s a lot out there. I don’t know. We’ll see. I’m curious to see what actually gets released when it comes out. So yeah, it’s the future. It’s it is definitely the feed a little edgier than I thought he was going to go. So yeah. But yeah, the model three has been a fun switch and it’s, I mean, it’s the Midwestern thing to justify that it’s actually cheaper for me to own than a truck. Absolutely. I’m doing a service to the country to enter your own pocket, but exactly. Yeah. So it honestly does save money with fuel costs, with a fleet, with a truck around the city for a guy like me that doesn’t really need a truck bed all the time. Yeah. And then I have access to our company vehicles if I need a truck. So it’s been a nice, it’s been a fun ride. So

Tom Houghton:

A lot though, if you like fold down the back seats, you can stick a lot of stuff. Almost get a sheet of plywood in there.

Paul Wurth:

So are they a sponsor? Now this podcast, Tesla I’ll make a call to get them on speed. Dial can pay me back for mine if he wants to leave. I like that. Yeah.

Matt Troyer:

But Tom has one as well. I hear you. I do. Yes. Is it blue? Is it Miller? Chin blue?

Tom Houghton:

Well, it’s midnight. Silver, which has a little bit of the blue in it. Yeah. So

Matt Troyer:

I’ve thought about wrapping mine. I need to do something a little different. Maybe colors, yours. It’s black. Okay. I thought about wrapping. It are, are gray or a matte gray color to be more on brand. That’s cool. Good for you guys.

Tom Houghton:

You want to buy Tesla now?

Paul Wurth:

So when I get my test that we’ll have you back for the third time, it’ll be Tesla talk. It’s

Matt Troyer:

Kind of microphones. We could probably record in the car

Tom Houghton:

And it’s quiet too quiet. Yeah. So we get a good audio.

Paul Wurth:

Enough with the test

Matt Troyer:

That doesn’t have to make the cut guess.

Paul Wurth:

That’s okay.

Tom Houghton:

Hey, I’m the editor.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Trust me. It’s going to be it.

Matt Troyer:

If my customers are listing it doesn’t cost you any more money. Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

That’s true.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. That’s a good program now. It’s true. They start

Matt Troyer:

37,000. Yeah. It’s, it’s a review. If you’re out there

Tom Houghton:

Looking at a midsize sedan, like a Toyota Camry, which by the way, for the first time ever. So top selling car in California and the sedan class has been the Toyota Camry for years and two months ago. So in October that model three out sold the Camry in California. So I mean, cause the price, it’s not as expensive. Everybody hears Tesla and they think, Oh my gosh, it’s a $80,000 car, which they have those if you want them. But the model three 37,000

Matt Troyer:

And going from a 2,500 that I had, like you can, I mean a 2,500 quad cab leather, like you could spend 75 grand on a truck. Absolutely easily for some of the nice ones. So yeah, there you go. A little pitch. It’s a Midwestern arena. You got to justify your purchase and all that stuff. But I got a deal on exactly what you don’t get a deal at Tesla. Well, Hey, I appreciate that. right. You don’t have to hassle with all that. So put a deposit down and the car showed up in my house in two weeks. That’s crazy. That’s awesome. Yeah. Good for you guys.

Tom Houghton:

All right, Matt, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Again, we really enjoyed talking to you today. We of course appreciate your usage of Buildertrend and how much you’ve just adopted the system. So thanks for joining us. And again, we wish you continued success in 2020.

Matt Troyer:

Thanks so much for having me. I have a good friend in Nashville. Who’s doing a training with you guys next week. So he was texting me about how to sign up and what if he should. And I obviously encourage that. So I appreciate that, man. All right. Thank 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.”