Construction Marketing That Wins: How Top Builders Grow Through Branding, Systems, and Trust

speaker-0 (00:00.233)

you

All right, so welcome back to the Meridian Pursuit Builders podcast. I'm your host, Jesse Sampley, and today we've got the mastermind himself, Emerson Breden, founder of Breden Brothers out of Muscoke. Did I say that right? Muscoke. Muscoke, Ontario. Almost got it. These guys specialize in high-end water homes and boat houses, projects where there's zero room for mistakes and every detail matters. All right, man, welcome to the show.

This is Coca, bye bye.

speaker-0 (00:32.288)

save the math. I wouldn't save the master by, but thank you.

Man, you you guys up, very impressive. The stuff you build, extremely impressive. You're young. I mean, maybe you're Benjamin Button here and you just, you're not young, but you look young. But man, I would love to hear your origin story, how you got started and how you built what you've got today.

Yeah, so I just turned 27, so I am on the younger side, I guess. But yeah, we're custom home builders in Muskoka, Ontario. The way you say it, it's like I'm interviewing with a country singer here or something. yeah, we specialize in lakefront homes. So I think you call it waterfront or water homes.

Well, there's a bunch of beautiful lakes up here in Muskoka. So yeah, beautiful lake from homes. A lot of them have boat houses on them, which is basically a big steel platform that you're building right into the lake and then building a house on top of it.

When did you get started? What, you know, take me after high school, you know, how did some of this develop?

speaker-0 (01:46.54)

Yeah, so I guess going back to that out of high school, just went out on my own traveling a bunch, just backpacking. I did New Zealand for a while. I was farming over there and then backpacking. And then I also did Hawaii for probably half a year. Then I came back. I wasn't somebody with a university or college education. So I think the initial response is, I kind of have to get into the trades if I'm going to make any money.

So I moved up to Muskoka around then. I knew a couple of people who lived up here, but I didn't or had cottages up here, but I didn't know one person who lived up here or any of the trades or anything like that. So, yeah, basically just email one of the contractors moved up a couple of weeks later, living in some old lady's basement in the bush and work for one of the premier home builders up here for a few years.

Prior to that, I had a bunch of construction experience as well, even before the backpacking out of high school and everything, and a bunch of the jobs I did were for home builders while I was working over there as well. And then decided to go on my own after a few years of doing that, more so just on the carpentry side. So I had a few guys with me. We were essentially a subcontractor and we would...

do exterior, interior finish, framing, all that stuff for some of the larger home builders in the area. And then that was just kind of the natural progression after a few years of that into us actually getting our first lead or first project as a general contractor. So at that time, I think it was just myself and two or three other guys. then, yeah, basically in the past three years, it's gone from that to 20 full-time people.

You know, four or five people full time on salary in the office. A bunch of guys out on site, site supervisors, carpenters, probably 50 different sub-trades and suppliers that we use. Yeah, we're running about eight to nine active projects on the go at once. Yeah, I think that's, all kind of happened in a short period of time, but I like to think that we're doing something right to be a younger face and.

speaker-0 (04:11.554)

the industry, especially the Muskoka builders community. It's like you were talking about before with your buddies there. They're kind of the next generation after the family members started it. We didn't have that start. Like our family, they're not entrepreneurs and they didn't, they're not in the construction industry at all.

Not, not going to college. Did you have kind of, cause I didn't, I didn't go to college either. And this is what I experienced was there was, um, more anxious to get started. Like for me, it was right around 16, 17 of like, man, I'm, I already felt like I was behind the ball and looking back, it's a little interesting that I thought that way. But I wondered if you felt the same, which was like, okay, I need to start my life and everybody else. doesn't really start till you're 22, 23 years old, but for you,

You know, how would you say you were?

after

after you finish the backpacking, touring the world.

speaker-0 (05:15.5)

Yeah, was probably early, early 20s at that time. Yeah, maybe 20 something like that.

And you just, did you have an itch of like, hey, I need to get things rolling.

Yeah, I think so. I had a couple of buddies who were in a similar boat as me, but I knew they were just going to university to have a few years of drinking and partying. It just wasn't really what I wanted to do. And I definitely had an itch to get going and try to start something for myself. I didn't know what I wanted to do at the time. When I moved up here,

I hated it for the first few years. I didn't know anybody. didn't have any friends. didn't any of that stuff. didn't even, to be honest, like the carpentry that much. What I was really fascinated with was an actual general contractor and project management and building a business. Obviously, I love the carpentry because that's one of the main things that we do keep in-house. Yeah, I think it was just kind of the right

stepping stone of getting into the industry and sort of seeing what it's all about and get it introduced to some of these, you know, big mansions basically on the water that are people's third, fourth, fifth residents, whatever it is. But yeah, I definitely had an itch to get going. And I think my dad had a big role to play in that as well. You know, he would always encourage us.

speaker-0 (06:50.83)

knowing that at least a couple of us weren't sort of university or education bound of the trades are great and you might as well get out there and at least wait and figure it out when you want to do you're making money other than the other way around. My older brother, Quent, he's very highly educated. He was the one who got all the brains.

How did your leadership style kind of develop over time? Was that something when you guys were framing and you're doing your more as a subcontractor and you had guys under you, did that happen organically or did you, was that something you kind of had to train yourself on?

Yeah, I think it happens. Well, I guess you could say it happened organically, but only because it had to. you know, I was such a young face at that time in the industry, you know, here I am walking into the interior designers and architects offices saying, Hey, you know, give me your clients, multi-million dollar cottage here. I promise I'll do a good job.

So, like, that's basically what it was. And it's like, okay, you know, let me see your portfolio. Do you have any projects? It's like, well, no, I'm just just starting out here, but here's some photos of the work and the places that we've done and this and that. So there was there was lots of that. But with the leadership, yeah, I think it's I think at each stage, you don't go to the next stage in business unless you get to that next stage of leadership. But I think that.

So it's not like starting out, I had all these leadership skills and I was so good at talking to people and I was a good salesman and all this stuff. And I was new to the industry as well. Like for me, a lot of confidence now comes from, you know, we are experts in the industry, even though we are younger owner of the company. But that, but that means that like our site supervisors, they're

speaker-0 (08:52.43)

30, 40s, 50s, like our project manager Josh, he's in his mid 30s. Like have the experience with the team. It's not a of guys who are 27 years old, but yeah, I think as we got to those next stages, it came pretty easy to me.

Walk me through that first, walk me through that first build. this a custom? Was this is a, your first custom cottage that you did.

Yeah, it was a renovation. Okay. Even now, probably half the projects we're doing are still renovations for maybe a quarter of them. But yeah.

How come? that due to any storms or is this just?

No, don't like, weather doesn't really play a huge factor up here in terms of like buildings have been destroyed and now they need to be rebuilt and everything. I think a lot of it comes from, you you're up here in cottage country and it started at that time with people wanted a bit of an escape and they would go build themselves, you know, a log cabinet of the bush that's on the water. And so then that gets passed down from generation to generation and that's how everything got set.

speaker-0 (10:03.758)

up here in Muskogee. So as that gets passed on and because the areas and the lakes become more more expensive, you know, you could have a tiny little shack on this waterfront property and you could still be 3.5 million bucks just for the lot to tear it down and then build the four or five million dollar cottage on it. So there, I think a lot of renovations come from that just there's a lot of history and

generational progression up here and it gets to a point where it's either, we need to knock the place down and rebuild or, you know, it's not that old and let's just sink a couple million bucks into a renovation for it. Because what's most valuable, what's the most expensive up here is the property, is your location on the water.

I was about to say, they probably pulling out equity in what they have and using that for their renovation?

Yeah, yeah, doing that, or there's, you know, a bunch of big shots up here who they'll go and buy the six, seven million dollar property with the beautiful cottage on it already and say, don't like it and just tear the whole thing down and rebuild it. And Muskoka is not like Muskoka is known worldwide. It's not just a Ontario, you know, high end, lake, cottage country area. There's people from all over the world who.

who come to college up in Muskogee.

speaker-1 (11:31.534)

Man, that's fascinating. I've never been, but I would love to go. I was looking up some of the photos and I just, I was like, man, this is incredible.

Yeah, it's beautiful. It's nice to you because there's the main lakes up here like Lake Joe, Lake Muskoka, Lake Rosso, Lake Abaze. Those would probably be your big four that you would consider that you would call them. But there's thousands and thousands of lakes up here. it's and all that happens is the one lake, you know, starts to get too expensive or get full. And then it's like, OK, well, we'll go to this one that's less developed and is 20 minutes away.

And we're seeing we're seeing a lot of that with the lakes around Huntsville specifically, which is the town that we're located. So, like a base fairy lake, Lake Vernon. Those are all really starting to develop a little bit more. Because some of the other ones that I mentioned were just too expensive.

Yeah. Well, let's go into a little bit of the, what's the, average day look like for you kind of getting into the process side of things.

Yeah, I'm usually here first thing in the morning at the office, unless I have to be in a client meeting or a site meeting. And then. Yeah, I'm basically here on phone calls, video calls, emails. Probably probably for three, three full days a week or so. And then the other couple I'm out on site, either meeting with our guys or meeting with subs or meeting with new potential clients. And the.

speaker-0 (13:04.856)

You know, as you would know, there's always a mix of that as you're starting to grow into business. And thankfully, we're at a point now where I really enjoy that side of being an entrepreneur and business and trying to grow the business, grow the company. So I do dedicate probably 75 % of my time now just to just to sales and outreach and making new connections. So that's that's most of my my role other than.

click and send on the EFT payments to our sub trades and vendors. But yeah, it's nice to be in that position and I really, really enjoy doing that.

What did you have to do anything real deliberate to get there? Because that's not an easy transition, especially if you're process driven. It's easy to kind of just sink your head in and say like, I just, you you get me do the busy work. Let me do what I'm already good at, which is the process. But when you kind of step back and start working on the business rather than just in the business, you know, it kind of takes it to a whole new level. Did that come naturally or did you have to work on that too?

Well, I don't work on that too. That was one of the things I realized early on is, you know, everybody always says that you watch your YouTube videos, your, you know, whatever motivational videos that you see online and stuff. It's like, you know, you got to work on the book on the business, not in the business. It's like, well, yeah, but for the first four years of your business, you've got to work in the business so that you get to a point where you work on the business because working on the business takes a lot of time and money.

So you have to get to a point where everything's actually running as a business. Then you can focus on sales and keeping the funnel full and actually pushing things forward. But you know, when you're first starting out to say, Hey, I'm going to go spend $2,000 to make this little video of our guys working on site. It's like, not, you know, I'm not spending that money, but I, I do like, I think I have a good, good business sense and always.

speaker-1 (14:56.493)

Yeah.

speaker-0 (15:05.044)

having an idea of what that next role is and what that next step is. I knew early on too that I always liked the sales side of things and the actual growth. So I wouldn't say like from being on site to being the project manager, to being the payroll guy, to being the data entry guy, to being the marketing guy. Like I always knew my end goal was to try and get to where I am here. So I, you know,

I did those things because I had to, but I wouldn't say I was very passionate about a whole lot of them through the cycle. So now I'm at a point where I can actually focus on what I really love doing, which is building custom homes and then going out there and selling, hey, we've got the best team. We're the young hungry guys. And yeah, this is why you're going to go with us.

Yeah. What are you saying that works real well when you're in these rooms and you're pitching new jobs or different homes? you saying you having to go out there and sell yourself more or are you getting a lot of organic referrals coming to you?

we're starting to get a lot of organic referrals. Obviously at the start before that, it's you having to do as much outreach and selling as possible, but it is very competitive up here, especially in Muskoka, like the Muskoka Builders community. I still see ourselves very much just in a startup growth phase. We're just getting to the point where all of our projects are at least

two, three million bucks, but it takes a little while to get there. We're trying to chase what we call like a legacy build where there's people up here who want to spend 15, 20 million bucks on a cottage. So obviously you need a big, big portfolio behind you to be able to do that. So we're still, still trying to grow that and have lots of projects wrapping up, which will be added to the portfolio, which, which I think will really get us, get us into that stage. But

speaker-0 (17:12.46)

Yeah, so I'd say, I'd say probably well, what I realized too is once you get to this, this level of building, lot of clients, they they're going to the designer first. They're going to the architect or the interior designer first, because like you said at the start, they're the ones always on the social media. They're the ones who are really good at videos. They're the ones who are designing the beautiful places. So

I think when you get to a certain caliber, if you have the money to spend on something like that, you go and find the architect first and say, hey, this is my property. I want to design something beautiful on it. And then once it gets to the halfway stage of that, then the architect would say, hey, here's three builders that we recommend. Go out and speak to them all and figure out who you actually want to continue this process with. So I've really made it a point to.

to ensure that my outreach is to high-end architects and interior designers, even real estate agents. They're the very first ones who are even selling the property to people wanting to build. So that's a very important connection. Yeah, so I think between referrals and then me continuing to stroke the ego of these high-end architects and interior designers and trying to make some more connections, that's been a pretty good model for our success.

Yeah. What do you think the benefit is, um, bringing a builder in early, like, especially if you're an architect, you know, kind of what's the sale to say, you know, it just makes it much easier if you bring us in earlier because of X, Y, and Z.

I think so it depends what the architect is doing as well. There's architects out there where they say, we don't do the interior design as well. There's architects out there say we don't do the landscape design. There's architects out there who say, hey, we don't do any of the, the pre-construction requirements and zoning. So it all depends on the needs of the project. But I think, you know, whether you have a huge budget or not.

speaker-0 (19:21.804)

we're always going to treat your budget as something that's very important to us. So one of the big selling features for us is like we have a very, very detailed estimate and proposal breakdown. I think probably a lot more detailed than most local people. And we put a significant amount of time into building those and

What we ask for is, when you get to like the preliminary set of drawings where you have the concept together, let us put that proposal in front of you. Let us walk you through what all these allowances are going to be for. Let us show you that we're actually the expert in the contractor who's going to be building your new cottage because there's local logistics up here. Like you mentioned at the start that costs a ton of money. You you could be an extra $1,500 a day just in a boat charge for us to get our guys out to your island project.

Or you could be an extra 800 bucks a day because four of our guys through the winter have to go buy snowmobile across the lake to your project every single day. Or you could be $10,000 because you're out on an island and we have to sell your steel for the framing with the helicopter. Even winter heat, as I mentioned, we'll get minus 25 degree weather up here all the time with crazy snow storms and everything. If we know that we're building your place throughout the winter and it's say,

a full-size cottage, say, or four 5,000 square feet, we'll add $50,000 onto your budget just for snow removal and winter heat, because we have to keep everything going the entire time. Even the masons on the exterior of building, we really have to build the whole exterior frame to the building, tarp them all in, and run propane heaters the whole time so that they can continue to install their stone on the exterior. Yeah, and just the sheer physical labor. As I mentioned, last winter was a very

harsh winter and it wasn't even like the snow plows wouldn't even go down the roads anymore because there was so much snow. So if we were continuing on clients projects, which we were in the places that got hit really hard, we were going out and getting full on tractors, front end loaders just to try and shovel our way to get to the sites. And then we'd get there and then we'd bring out an excavator just to like literally shovel out the site to keep going and everything.

speaker-0 (21:46.382)

It's pretty crazy and it's very fun at the same time. Maybe the guys on site don't think the same thing, but.

I need to hear next. How are you showing your appreciation for some of these subs out there? Because I mean, this sounds pretty intense.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you got it. mean, it starts with our internal employees. You know, you have to treat them right. You have to have to pay them the right amount of money. Even something small, too, which I didn't even realize when I first started doing it is we've been active on social media from from the start. And then I started to realize, like, hey, our guys really enjoy seeing themselves on camera.

And then they see people liking and commenting on it, you know, they're posting it on their own stories They're feeling good about themselves. even some of our site supers, you know who are out there in their 40s 50s Whatever it is who are to know I don't do social media I don't do Instagram like some of have really gone out and got Instagram just to follow bread brothers because they enjoy seeing themselves on social media so just just actually recognizing your guys and putting it out there to

you know, hey, we're nothing without our team, without our employees. And it's the same for the stock trades, but there's, you know, there's a fair amount of internal employees to take care of. So, and then just, you know, making them feel involved when we go out to Muskoka Builder Association events. I think we're the only ones actually bringing, you know, say eight of our team members where everyone else is just paying for one or two of them to come out. Or if we go to other events or charity golf tournaments like

speaker-0 (23:30.85)

Hey, okay, you it's a couple grand for a foursome. I'll put two foursomes in there because it's for charity and because, you know, our team loves doing that stuff. We do a Brennan Brothers annual golf tournament each year. We do a Christmas party each year. We'll go out to the golf simulator together. We'll, you know, go have a couple of beers, all that stuff. So I think it's, you know, it's, it's a lot of responsibility, but you got to keep, you have to do your best to keep a conversation.

and a personal conversation with each one of your employees. It's hard to do. And sometimes they'll come to you and say, know, hey, I'm not feeling recognized or hey, saw this guy got a raise, but I've been here two years longer. And it's like, you know, thanks for bringing that up to me. I do agree. I apologize. You you are very valuable here. Let's figure out getting you some more money and all that stuff.

So you are, you have already said it all, but you see that, that leadership style now passes on down to your project managers that then they are passing on down to their subs. Now, whether you know it or not, but you know, just that cultural, um, just that culture, you know, passes down to like, I'm being showed appreciation. I'm showing appreciation. You know, the people that are under me, I'm going to show them the same type of example that's being set for me. That's awesome, man.

Thanks. Yeah, thank you.

Let's talk about communication with your customers. And I wanted to see if this tied in a little bit to your, you said, you you do a real detailed estimate. Is there a software that you're using that combines a lot of this stuff?

speaker-0 (25:13.762)

Yeah, so we use, I think like a lot of people, use Buildertrend. Buildertrend's pretty useful for us. It was kind of a pain when we first got it because I think it's more so tailored towards the States. Obviously we can use it over here, but we used to use a software called Co-Construct, which I think was like the Canadian version of Buildertrend and then Buildertrend, I believe, bought them out. But at least on that one, we could actually implement.

like our tax, our HST, everything that we have over here, where we have to do that manually with BuilderTrend, because it doesn't allow us to have those like pre-filled columns. So we have our construction management software, BuilderTrend, and then we're still on QuickBooks for like our backend accounting and invoicing and everything. yeah, one of our biggest selling, sorry.

I was just going to say, I think that should be easier now because I think that Builder Trend just did some sort of a partnership with QuickBooks now. I don't think it was that long ago.

Yeah, so we so they integrate like they speak to each other, but there's still a couple features that I think. That would just be easier for over here in Canada and other countries, but. So yeah, client communication, that's I think that's definitely one of our big selling features and it took a long time to to get it to this point.

Cause like a bunch of other softwares, you know, there's a million different things you can do with it, but you actually have to utilize it all and then implement it to your team and expect them to use it all. and so we use the client portal version of builder trend. And what that means is at any given time in a client's project, they will see daily photos of their project. They'll see who was there, what they were doing from what times.

speaker-0 (27:11.054)

They're going to see that estimate that we give them. They're going to see that in there in one of the tabs. Any scope changes or change orders that are happening, we're documenting those and uploading them against the budget. So they see all that in one column. Even our Gantt chart for our construction schedule, we update that one once a month. And so they kind of see where things are on that point as well. But what's important with that is

the aspect of Muskoka is cottage country. It's 95 % of the time somebody's at a minimum second residence, so they don't live local, but they wanna know what's going on with their multimillion dollar project. So if at any time of the day, you can log in on your phone or log in on your computer and see, hey, what's almost real time updates of my project and actually give that transparency to the clients, I think that's very big for us.

I think very common in the industry is the homeowner having to call up the contractor, you know, once a month or every two weeks and can you send me some photos? You know, I've heard from you guys in a while. Is everything okay? Like, but we are site supervisors. It's our practice now where every single day they do a daily log. So a client will see 10, 15 photos of their project every single day. even in just in the way that we build. we put these estimates together. but they're all at the stage where we.

get accepted to a project, the client usually hasn't picked anything. We know, okay, they want a standing steel roof. We know they want wood aluminum cloud windows. We know they want, you know, thermally modified soffits, but they haven't actually made final selections on anything. for your, when it gets down to metalworking cabinetry, you know, your kitchen allowance, we'll hold an allowance for say a hundred thousand dollars. And then as we all collaborate with the interior designer and we get to those places,

then we actually hone in on that, get the final quote, they approve it or disapprove it and it moves forward. And so we show that entire transparency throughout, even to where you sign our contract and we say, we're 12 % pre-tax markup plus our labor rates, because we build at a time and material format, which is similar to cost plus. We attach all of our vendor

speaker-0 (29:35.882)

invoices to our invoice to the client. So, you know, if they are some big wig where they send each one of those to their accountant every time, they could add up every single invoice line by line and see, okay, Bretton Brothers is actually being honest about their 12 % markup. You know, we're not seeing any weird kickbacks. not making an extra 15 grand for referring this person. Even discounts from our vendors that we get, we pass those on to our clients. And so,

That was something I recognized early on and started a business up here is there's lots of money. Most people build a time of material format. You know, let's not be the contractor that takes advantage of that. And there's there is a lot of that. I'm assuming worldwide in a lot of these, you know, big projects. But so our goal was we're going to be the most transparent contractor out there.

You know, there's always ups and downs and it's a long relationship with the client over a year and a half of building their place. But let's show them the effort that we're actually putting into their project and the data entry that we're doing to protect their investment and to protect them. Even with our subterrains, when our client says, hey, let's move ahead with that subterrain, we issue them a PO, a purchase order that gets signed.

And then that also has our terms and agreements in it. So if anything were to happen, we've protected our client because we have that agreement in place. It's there. Nobody can go after each other. Or a lot of the, think, the smaller mom and pop builders, they're not taking those steps and not realizing, hey, if something actually happened on this project, that subcontractor could go and put a lien on the property.

you know, just completely overpassing the contractor, even if it was the subcontractor's fault or the supplier's fault. So, yeah, just being transparent and making sure that we are protecting our clients.

speaker-1 (31:40.088)

Man, that's huge. Did you always use Builder Trend?

No, it was at the start it was just like Excel sheets and all that stuff. And yeah, I mean, doing our best to put estimates together and some of them I wish we would have done a bit of a better job on because those costs started to creep up and definitely some learning curves and being open and transparent with those clients early on. But

Then from there, knowing that we needed something to actually be in place. So we utilize the cost catalog, the builder trend. We've got thousands of items in there. We have full master templates of estimates for everything. And I think that's a big thing for us too, because on the sales side, when a client's interested, they're interested. But a lot of these people are so successful and busy that you don't get

You don't get their interest and then, we'll give you an estimate two months from that. Which I think a lot of local builders lose projects on because they're waiting for, you know, the window and door quote. They're waiting for the roof quote. waiting for, but once you do enough projects, if you are taking the time to update your cost catalog and you are saying, okay, we're going to continue to deal with these vendors, then we get basically

a very close price on cost per square foot on our framing packages on what our vendors cost per square foot is on standing seam, steel roofs, footings, foundations, ICF, waterproofing, whatever it is. So once I get at least a preliminary set of drawings, which isn't even a full architectural set, there is no lighting plan, there's no interior design, there is no engineered drawings yet, we're at a point where within three days we'll get that proposal back to them.

speaker-0 (33:33.038)

And by the end, when we get all the construction drawings, we're like so close to what it actually is. And that's come from doing a lot of estimates and making sure that we really take the time to build out that estimated proposal format. Yeah. And like I said, a lot of that comes from me transparently saying early on, there's definitely some clients we could have done a better job with on those estimates.

speaker-0 (34:02.958)

You know, I took that very personally. I mean, that's why, you know, 100 % of our focus is taking care of our clients' investment and their trust with us. So we took that to the next level. And it's been a goal of mine. You know, each month we update our templates and all that stuff. But it's always been a goal of mine that we're basically, you know, a leading

expert just in pricing out your project because it shows expertise too. If you get a builder who's not local, they're not going to know to add in all those allowances for snow removal, whatever it is. And then it's like, hey, this has been a really bad winter up here. You're to be an extra 50 grand on this. Yeah. It's like, well, no, the experienced local builder knows that every winter is about winter. And let's account for those things early on.

Yeah, no one likes surprise bills. I don't care at what level you are. No, everyone loves transparency. And I think it's huge that you put that in the forefront to say that we're committed to transparency because that's a real easy, you know, especially as these more organic referrals start rolling in, you know, these, there's going to be a topic that someone passes along. You know, it's a referral that says, Hey, these guys were great. You know, you should check them out, but they're always going to pass along a couple things of what made

them great. And I think those are the things to stay real focused on. And it sounds like you have done a great job of saying, these guys are super transparent. This was an issue that we had that, you know, we work through, um, you know, just having some of those stories, that is the referral that gets passed on to other people. You know, no one's just like, Hey, I'm trying to build a custom home. Like who's the people and they drop a name. It's like, no, they're, if they're, it's a real referral, then it's going to be someone that knows that person. And they're going to get a little bit more in depth with, you know,

Hey, what was the experience like? Cause what's your average build time for a cottage home like that?

speaker-0 (36:08.75)

like we've got one of the go right now, like a base, it's full main cottage, full guest cottage, a huge three slip boathouse and a garage. And so that'll be about a year and a half project for us.

One of those. I mean, a lot of relationships don't even last a year and a half. And those are people that are in an intimate relationship.

Yeah, but that's, it's been such a big learning lesson and a part of our main focus is, is exactly what you said. Like, how do you, how do you maintain, first of all, they're probably a wealthy entrepreneur. So they probably have a personality off, you know, no problem telling you to F off and go fly a kite and whatever. So you got to manage a person's personality like that. And then how do you do that over a year and a half?

Yeah. And get to the end of a project where they'll actually say, hey, great working with you guys. Here's a five star review. Happy to refer you like that. That is so hard to do, even if you do a good job. But but to maintain that person's excitement and engagement and pleasure for that long is very hard to do. We I always say to.

No, go ahead. Go ahead. You said you also tried to do it.

speaker-0 (37:32.43)

I would just say like we're in this tiny little area of Muskoka and then now we're making it even smaller by we're saying we're going to serve people who can afford these cottages. So now you're into the 0.01 % of the population. And then whether these people like each other or not, they all know each other or have heard of each other one way or another. So to think that you could screw

one person over and then that's not eventually gonna find its way back to you is very naive.

speaker-1 (38:12.93)

such short-term thinking.

It comes with a lot of compromise too. Like there's projects out there where a client will go ahead and do something completely out of our contract. it's, you know, then it comes down to like talk to the team and pick your battles and you know, what do we just let them go with it and say, whatever, or do we, you know, are we going to be the sticklers to say,

No, that's not a part of our contract. We're stopping things right now unless that changes or, hey, we're entitled to our 12 % markup on the windows and doors here and you undermined us and took our quote and when found somebody cheaper just because you didn't want to pay our markup. And those situations happen all the time. It's smart people that we deal with. But what's most important is getting to the end of that project.

We've still made money. We've served our clients. Everyone's happy and they give us a referral so we can keep on growing our reputation. So like any relationship, it does come with compromise as well. It's such a personal relationship when you're building somebody's custom home and it's a big lot of money. In terms of a personal expense, I'd like to imagine the most expensive thing, whether you're extremely wealthy or not, is

your new mansion that you've just built or your private jet. But like there's not many things kind of, I guess you'd yaw. There's no yachts up in the Scopus.

speaker-1 (39:49.216)

Yeah. A lot of yachts down here.

Yeah, I can imagine that.

Well, you told us how challenging it is, you know, to have a relationship with this person and for it to, for, know, to still get that five star review. what are some things that you've seen that has, has worked to, I don't know, help that for, for other builders that are listening to this, what are some things that you're doing that's making that a little bit easier?

I think it's the things that I've touched on. Like show them your effort and your service off the hop. For example, that estimate that I've talked about, there's a lot of other builders up here where when a client comes to them or an architect, you know, refers them, they say, yeah, no problem. That estimate's going to cost you 2000 bucks. You know, that turns away so many people. And I actually tried that for a short period of time. Like, am I the idiot who's just given out all this effort for free?

And I think it scared off a lot of people. And I was like, well, this is ridiculous. There's always a cost. There's always a cost to sale. And that's what they want to see. show your effort from the start when they're calling you on the weekend, when they're asking about estimates, when they're asking you to revise a bunch of stuff, but you don't even know if you have a project in, you haven't even signed anything. It's either you want the project or you don't. I think we've shown that hunger.

speaker-0 (41:21.07)

on every single project. I think between our systems and showing that off the hop, that's why we win a lot of our projects. If it's a half decent sized project and he or she wants to meet with us, I'll show up with our top site super, our project manager, our project coordinator, my brother. I'll pay for all of our time to be there just to speak with this person.

to maybe go with us. Like projects that come our way now, I'd like to say that we're closing on probably 85 to 90 % of them. there's maybe been, since we've implemented all these systems and grown this team, like we've maybe lost two projects in three or four years.

Do you think you're closing such a high percentage because of what you're putting out and out there in the world? You know, that when people are actually coming to you, they're able to see enough, they're be able to digest enough information to come to the table more prepared.

something.

speaker-0 (42:31.404)

Yeah, absolutely.

You think the I know you guys do a lot on Instagram, but what are what other channels are you focusing on or is Instagram your main your main source?

It's Instagram's probably the main one. mean, now, once you click post to Instagram and post to Facebook, too, but we don't put any time and energy into growing our following on Facebook. I would actually like to this year because a lot of our clientele, you know, Instagram might not even be something that they have on their phone or Facebook is and.

55 plus you're on Facebook

Yeah, yeah. So I think I was a bit naive to that being a younger person for the past few years and it's definitely something I want to focus on, but I'd say Instagram's probably the main thing. So we just closed on a project. It's out on Lake Joe and Boathouse is going to be, we're still waiting on the final designs, but Boathouse is going to be a million to 1.5.

speaker-0 (43:36.518)

and the main cottage itself is probably going to be four or five million bucks. I just, I got a phone call one day and it's a lady who says, Hey, so you guys on Instagram, I like the way you present yourselves. I'm just about to close on this property. I need to know everything about it. need to figure out the zoning. I need to figure out if I can actually build what I want on it. So I guess there's two perfect examples. So actually putting

And that just came off of Instagram. So, okay, whatever you spend thousands of dollars on your marketing and everything, it's, you know.

Yeah, your ROI is just...

our company just on marketing. Yeah. And so yeah, putting effort there. And then when I was talking about the cost of sale, that lady called me probably three times a day for two, three weeks straight. And I didn't blame her because she had a very short closing date and she was trying to find out all the information. But I think other people she was trying to call, nobody would pick up the phone. So I gave her the exact service that she was actually needing. And people need to realize that too.

You don't just give them a service. It has to be a service that they actually need. And I showed her our time. I showed her our effort. Closer to the end, she says, know, Emerson, why am I going to pick you guys as the builder? And I said, you're going to pick us as the builder because of the past three weeks we spent together. I said, that's what you want as your builder. There's plenty of people up here who can build a big cottage when it comes down to the service that you're actually providing while building that cottage, not to mention,

speaker-0 (45:16.458)

I'm arrogant and thinking that we have the best carpenters and sub trades out here. So, but if a client's asking you, why should I go with you? I think it's the most unwise answer to say, well, you know, we deliver the best craftsmanship. It's yeah. Anybody building a $6 million cottage delivers good craftsmanship. So, you know, show them something a little bit, a little bit different.

And making it all about them because it really is all about them. You know, you are providing something for that person. It is all about the other person. They don't really care about you other than are you going to give me what I want?

Exactly. It's a service based business. So you have to deliver that service and actually serve your client.

You mentioned earlier, you guys, had some people coming out doing Instagram videos. Tell me about that. Because I think this is a blocker for some builders is like, how much does that cost? How do we go about that? What is the, you know, are we supposed to just be shooting stuff on our phone? Can I just hire my niece to come out and do it? What have you seen work?

I do. So that was hard at the start. I hired and paid a good amount of money for. I want to say we went through like six different people who all said, hey, you know, we can make cool videos. The inspiration stuff you sent me, you know, we can absolutely do it. And it was nowhere near what it was supposed to be. So for the first while, because I couldn't find anyone, plus I didn't want to spend that amount of money. I just went and bought a drone and a camera myself.

speaker-0 (46:53.806)

and we would fly it around and make, and I would, you know, hop on Canva and make our own little videos. Nice. And so then we got to a stage where I wanted to obviously make it look a bit better. And there's a local guy that we use his name's Rob. He makes unbelievable videos. And him and I have a good relationship now. We're probably once a month, we go out and have a shoot day and maybe hit half of our sites and then we'll do the other half. But if

At the end of the year, and then we're at a point now too where I pay a company to run our social media and like run our accounts and do the posting and everything. So by the time I pay her, by the time I pay Rob, I spend a little bit on ads per year, not a whole lot, more of just like boosting a nice Instagram post so it gets out there.

This is Facebook and Instagram?

Yeah, just those two. I'm probably spending like 60, 60,000 a year maybe on that stuff. But in terms of an actual business and relevance to the revenue that we do, that's peanuts. Like any other industry, if you look at the split and the percentage that you're supposed to spend on marketing, you know, it should be $250,000, $300,000, not 50. You know, I don't really track that a whole lot throughout the year, but at the end, I always look at

Okay.

speaker-1 (48:15.544)

So.

speaker-0 (48:22.272)

some of those details on the finances that aren't necessarily so relevant to us growing as a business. But yeah, I'd probably spend like 60 grand a year on that stuff.

Here in Florida, there's a lot of older home builders that are now transitioning into the second generation. since they, all their business was built word of mouth, they developed all of Palm Beach area and people like that. You look them up, they've got 30, 40, 50 years experience and online, they're completely invisible. And it looks like they started their company yesterday.

So some of the stuff we've been hearing, especially as the second generation has taken it over, is a bit of frustration of, you know, we feel like we're so far behind. You know, we've got this amazing company, but referrals just aren't really, you know, cutting it now. You know, especially as people here in the Florida market, people are coming into this market, you know, they're, especially during COVID, a ton of people were coming down and it was just like, you know, where are we finding these people? Especially on a,

You know, some of these like semi custom homes, you know, these aren't like your, your second or third, your third homes, but these are people that are relocating. and they're pulling equity out. They've, they've got money to spend, but it's like the person that is really spending a lot of effort into making their online match what they're doing, what they are in real life. I mean, it's a, it's a night and day difference for those people. because if not, they're just.

You know, they don't, they don't exist. it's for, for an older generation, it's a little bit challenging to sell that. You know, when I, when I talked to these builders, you know, sometimes these older guys, you know, kind of look at me with a, you know, a little strange, a little strange. And it's like, you know, I'm not trying to pull something over you. I'm just trying to tell you the reality, you know, and you pull you up and you pull your competitor up. You know, this guy has been in business five years, you in business 50 years, but you know, let's compare the two.

speaker-1 (50:28.332)

Who do you think someone's going to go with? You know, someone that's 30, 40 years old, you know, they're looking up a custom home builder. Who are they going to go for? And you know, they're going to go with the person that shows up. you know, they're explaining their process. They're showing you their, their unique, market position. and a lot of builders, they, they need to kind of get up to two times and they need to test what's working.

you know, cause what works in one market doesn't work in another. It may be Google ads in Nashville. It may be, you know, Instagram for you. may, you know, you see, really have to spend a bit of time testing what works, but then the overlaying thing is just the, the brand, the overall brand, which is like, how are you presenting yourself? No different that if you go to a meeting, how are you going to present yourself? You know, it's the same for your brand. How are you showing up online? What's your website look like? What's your photos look like?

because if it's a lesser than quality, those are the people that you're going to attract to.

think that's the hard part too is like there's a lot of those older builders who could be unbelievable builders and then they get a grand kid who says, hey, I can do your social media. And then they see a couple of things go out there and they're like, no, no, no, no, no. This does not match what we. So I think it's kind of like with hiring, a lot of the conversation in the trades is, I can't find anybody good. Nobody young wants to work anymore. Nobody, this and that.

It's like, well, you know, a lot of a lot of people actually do. They're just looking for the right culture. And it takes a lot of time and energy like the same of selling a project to actually get those people and to retain those people. So it's the same with your social media. Like. It takes a lot of annoying time and money to get to a spot where, you know, you actually feel like you are creating a brand that matches your quality and you've got one or two people.

speaker-0 (52:24.234)

who are trustworthy to actually go out there and get that content for you. So it's a lot of effort to do that.

Yeah. Well, luckily that's where we fit in. That's what I also, it's also what I love to do. Cause my background was in video and high local photography. like the branding being in Kentucky, we worked a lot with bourbon brands and it was positioning bourbon brands a lot of like the way like spirits industry works is like there's a couple parent companies that own everything. There's like six of them in the whole world. And then, they would, they would

position a brand and say, okay, this brand is going to be for this avatar. Like let's build out this entire brand so that this guy's buying it on the shelf and the exact same product is going to have a different label, totally different vibe. And it's going to have a whole different type of person that buys the product. So we got to see the inner workings of that. And I really loved it. Just the, the brand building side.

Yeah. Well, are, you are right to even just with, what you're talking about with the leads, like you always have to keep your funnel so full and making contacts and like somebody in the business has to be the sales person, just shaking hands, meeting people. is who we are. This is what we're doing. because you know, there's so south of Muskoka right now, a lot of the real estate and building has been buried.

stale, like, you know, sort of historical numbers of nothing selling and not a lot of stuff being built. And luckily, we're in a bit of a different ecosystem up here where during those times, that's a good opportunity to pick up a piece of property for a better price and then build your nice cottage on it. But you can't be, you can't be naive and so arrogant to think that you ever get to a point where you have to stop selling.

speaker-0 (54:27.264)

In my opinion, unless you want to stay very small, like, you know, if you had three, four guys and you want to do two builds or one build a year, that's that's more than fine. But if you know, if you've got people's salaries and benefits and, you know, support people's families and everything to. To do. Sales and marketing is one of the number one things of any business. So just because you're in the construction industry doesn't mean that you. You know.

You can put that aside and then expect to be just set for the next 50 years.

Yeah, there's not much of a business if you don't have sales. A business doesn't last very long.

Yeah, that's true.

Well, tell me who, who are some people that you, you drive some inspiration from? this could be people in the builder world. This could be, you know, other people, podcasts, books you listen to things that kind of feed you on a, a daily weekly basis to keep you going.

speaker-0 (55:28.098)

Yeah, I will be honest, like it was a struggle getting into the industry even now a little bit because I think some people or even our competitors are like, you know, who are these young punks who think that they're taking our jobs here? There was a lot of pushback, which I think gave me a lot of imposter syndrome kind of at the start as well of, know, what am I really doing here? What am I trying to build here?

What do I think in my mid-20s, early 20s that I can actually start a contracting company and all this stuff? And I think that came as a bit of surprise to me because it was always like, you know, stories of, I found my mentor and I found this guy and, you know, they just, they helped me through things and taught me a lot of things. I haven't had one of those people at all. Like, and so it's been, it was...

It was a bit of a wake up call to me. think maybe a lot of people say that, but that's not necessarily how goes. And so I say that to, think a lot of it has come from, yeah, just a bunch of books I read, people who I looked, I'm trying to think of. In the building industry,

You know, people like yourself who are starting these podcasts or, you know, the big wakes like, AFT construction and, know, NS builders and those guys, who I think kind of started that. I look up to those people in terms of how they run a business and it seems like how they run a team, and how they portray themselves online and how important that is on a personal level.

you know, I'm a man of God. So spiritually, that kind of keeps me going every day. And then obviously my family and my wife and, you know, young daughter that we have and then another daughter on the way. So on the personal, I guess, spiritual side, that's what helps me through everything there. And then I think like, I think just our employees too, you know, we're nothing without our employees and we're not, we don't have any success without our employees.

speaker-0 (57:52.472)

So why would it not be my first priority to serve those people who actually serve me and allow me to succeed in life and my family? You've got a group of people right in front of you who are allowing you to succeed in life. And so why would you not put time, money and energy outside of business into those actual people as well?

Absolutely. I just heard this. I just heard the exact same thing yesterday from a good friend of mine and he was saying the, you know, the, kind of, gives a whole new purpose to your business when it's, you start viewing, know, yes, you're trying to be a profitable business, but you want to be profitable because you're able to hire more people, which means that you're helping more individuals. You're helping more families. you're instilling policies.

that help those people and retain those people. You're serving your customer. know, there's so much good that comes out of business. it is, it is, I mean, it's just an amazing thing. And you get to help everybody, you know, it helps yourself. It helps your family that you're building. It helps your employees. It helps your customers that hire you. And when you have a high integrity project, you know, it's kind of going back to your legacy side.

is, you know, this is something that will outlive you for years and years and years as that these guys built something that has lasted, you know, 200 years. So it really isn't, you know, an incredible thing.

And you think of it from like your employee's perspective too, if they see, you know, Hey, I just sat down with my boss to ask him for a raise, which I think I deserve. And he's now ghosting me for the past four months, but here he is giving $50,000 to, you know, whatever this, this charity is, you know, yes, that's tax deductible, but

speaker-0 (59:49.422)

you know, come on on a personal level here. Don't you think that I deserve to get to that next step or do you not want to see me grow or? So I think people need to. You need to be cautious of that, especially if you're going to grow a company like those are. You know, you could say that those values and morals are sort of outside of business principles, but like they all go hand in hand. You know whether.

your faith, believer or not, or whatever it comes from on your side. On a business level, the way that you serve a client and serve your employees, you know, it should match and be able to be passed on no matter where it's coming from on your end. So I think as the owner, as the leader, like you have to, you have to do your best to, to, try and do that and to put time and effort into it and understand it's hard, like, you know, growing and running a business is hard.

Yes, there's people you got to fire. Yes, there's people you got to let go. Some people just, you know, kind of causing issues all the time, but you like the person, but you have to get to a mental state where you're able to separate that a little bit. and then that all gets passed on to how you actually serve client. So, you know, you want your guys out there to enjoy hanging out with each other, enjoy doing the trade that they love, enjoy building these places and beautiful.

We definitely take that for granted all the time, like just the beautiful locations and environments that we get to actually build in. You we're not stuck down in the city with skyscrapers and it takes two hours to get into the job site because of, you know, one kilometer worth of traffic. There's lots to take a step back and look at. And yeah, just be thankful for, guess.

Well, I love that you said that you drive inspiration from God because I mean, what better inspiration is there? I mean, just take a look around you. Like you said, even where you live, I mean, it's, pretty easy to just look up and say, man, look where, look what's been created. Look where I live, look where I get to work. It's just, it's incredible. we've got a team of eight and it's, got a lot of the similar mindset as you is, is, you know, I really want to take care of our people, all of the growth that we have, you know, we want to.

speaker-1 (01:02:12.406)

It's to serve and to keep these people and to grow. And sometimes, you know, letting people go is a service to the people that you already have because you can lose really good people by one rotten apple ruins the whole batch as the old saying goes.

Yeah, they can even be a labor or carpenter's helper or whatever you want to call it. They can be some 18, 19 year old kid who's trying to figure stuff out, but it's just ruining the whole dynamic of the site. And yeah, you can love and have a heart for everybody, but that does have to go hand in hand with you got to take care of other people and run a business as well.

Yeah, you can love people and you can fire them at the same time. I still love you. just don't love you working with us.

Exactly. Yeah. That's, that's a way to put it. I could do that. Yeah.

What's the future look like as we wrap up? You know, we're new into 2026. What's the future of this year look like? What's the next 10, 15 years look like for you guys?

speaker-0 (01:03:17.622)

Yeah, I mean, we've we've doubled in terms of company size and revenue every single year, basically since we've since I've started the company. And we're to do that again, again next year. So some financial goals, I guess, like end of twenty twenty six, I'd like to see that we've done around fifteen million dollars in revenue for the year. That would be about double compared to twenty twenty five. That will involve hire a few more people.

My brother, who's a site super and all and like to transition him into becoming a project manager. We just hired a new in house construction finance coordinator. So she's going to take care of. Just just a bunch of the accounts payable and accounts receivable that we've we've kind of outgrown our system of doing at this point. So. Continuing yeah, so with bread and brothers, like, continue that continue that growth.

continue to invest in our team and into our clients and hopefully double for the year and continue to chase those bigger legacy projects. I want to get to that point and keep doing that. And then I've also started Bread and Developments, which is not going to be on the custom home side of things, but it's going to be sort of more affordable residential condos or apartments, whatever the project's going to be.

Got our first one starting here in Huntsville, right in town. It'll be 12 units, kind of stack townhouse style. So that's the first time it's kind of taking the funds that we're making and starting another business out of it and trying to chase that side, which is a huge need in Canada and especially Ontario, places that people can legitimately move into that are close to town.

The cost of build is the cost of build so we can only make them so affordable. I think there's a lot of misconception out there of, know, builders just take all this markup and these developers and how come I can't buy this place for 200 grand? Like, you know, at least in Ontario, you can't do that. So, yeah, that'll be the next step for growth as well. Bretton Brothers for the next decade will be main focus.

speaker-0 (01:05:39.118)

I wouldn't like to get it to a point where my brother Nolan sort of takes my position in the company. Maybe we get Brevin Brothers to a point where we're like 40 million a year in revenue or something. And then I'd like to, I'd like to, to fully take on and try to, try to tackle the development side, getting into raising some money and see what we can build from that. So yeah, that's kind of the, that's kind of what the next 10 years.

look like in terms of business. Personally, like I said, I've got my beautiful wife Olivia, we got our little daughter Lawson, and then another little girl on the way. So I think she wants more kids after that. I could be stuck with three, four girls, but we'll see.

Hey, that's okay. I've got four kids and I'm telling you it is great. It is really

We both want to have, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Well, good stuff, man. Well, I'm excited to follow along reinvesting your earnings into a development side of it. Super smart. Now, will you on the development side, will you keep those projects and start the property management side or will you just sell those off?

speaker-0 (01:06:52.686)

So the numbers don't really make sense to hold them as rentals. There's just not enough, there's not enough units and I think they're too big and, you know, according to what I'm planning. So they'll be sold as condos, they'll be sold off. I think once we get into about like 30 units or something, that I would consider to keep them as rentals.

And then like use of the natural progression would to probably start up a property management company as well. That's going to actually maintain them and plow the driveways and you know, have the shrubs and everything. I think it's a nice natural progression to like, say some of the older guys with bread and brothers, they get to a point where it's like, Hey, I just can't be out here in the middle of the winter, you know, hand framing this roof anymore. Lead in five guys. I'd love to be in a position where I could say,

you know, no worries. I understand. Here's a salary that's going to give you what you need. Here's a truck. You know, these are your two, three buildings and you're, you you're just able to kind of take it easy. Maybe it's four days a week. But you're a highly skilled trades person. You know, the building inside and out. You know, I just think it'd be nice to kind of be able to offer that to some of the people who want to.

Want to take that route because we're already having those conversations with some of the guys of like, Hey, you know, I can't keep doing this forever, but obviously finances and life is very real. need to still keep making money. And, you know, we don't want to just leave guys who aren't moving at a good pace out on our, on our custom builds there. So it'd be nice to find a way where we can retain those guys with, with a salary that actually keeps, keeps them going.

also would benefit the development side as well and keep trustworthy guys in those buildings. It would be my opinion that even if I have a bunch of renters in there, like it's still my job to take care of those, at least the building that they're living in and the amenities. So it would be very nice for me to know that there's now a guy or two there who've been with us for the past 10, 15 years.

speaker-0 (01:09:15.755)

You know, and they can kind of take care of that.

love that. Love where your head's at, man. That's really awesome. All right, that's a wrap for this conversation. If you know someone who should be on this podcast, send us an email at info at bradyandpursuit.com and nominate them. We're always looking for great stories to share. And if you got something out of this episode, please leave us a quick review on the show. And if you're watching on YouTube, tap like and subscribe so we can share this with more people. I'm Jesse Sampley. Thanks for listening and I'll see you on the next one.