From Production to Custom Homes: Builder Growth Lessons - Chris George Custom Homes

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Unknown

Welcome back to the Meridian Pursuit Builders podcast. I'm your host, Jesse Sam. And this is where we sit down with home builders, developers, real estate professionals and industry leaders who are out there doing the work.

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Unknown

You'll hear real conversations about markets, design mistakes and lessons learned, and how builders can position themselves in a way that brings more customers to the table.

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Unknown

Let's dive in.

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Unknown

for the listeners. Give, give me a some background on you guys. Tell me a little about the the company. You know, how it started, where you guys are today as far as revenue or as far as, amount of homes, just to give people an idea of of what size company and how it's operated today.

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Unknown

Yeah, we are a, a third generation, builder, here in Kansas City. My grandpa started it as a, more of a general contractor. You name the job, he'd do it. And, and then in 76, my dad, kind of started his own shop, really focused on, single family build. And so that's really what we've done for the last.

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Unknown

I mean, we're we're at 50 years now of of new home construction. We do some renovations as well. And he started more as a, you know, production builder. Back, you know, in the late 70s and 80s and really kind of hit a crescendo in the mid 90s, pulling 100 permits in a couple of years.

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Unknown

So we were really, churning and burning homes back then when, my brother and I were picking up trash on the job site. And, from, from there, we've kind of just transition naturally into some other product offerings. As my brother and I have taken the reins and, taking it more into, more into custom, semi-custom teardowns, custom rural builds.

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Unknown

So right now we're probably doing, we're averaging around 20 to, you know, 25 homes a year. Did the market it was the market is the reason that that made you guys make that switch or was it? I don't know, I'd say there's a couple things there. You know, Caleb and I moved into a different we grew up in a southern suburb, and then we moved to kind of we went to college together.

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Unknown

After Caleb graduated college, he bought a house in a different part of town. So part of it was just like living in this part of town is a little kind of a suburb that's closer to the city. And we start to see some of these tear downs happen. And we're like, this is interesting. Like this is kind of where we would want to live now, you know, and this has ended up being where we both are raising our families in this different, suburb.

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Unknown

It's a little closer to town, an area of town. We were maybe 40 minutes out or 35 minutes from downtown or where we grew up. And, you know, we're like ten minutes from downtown in this area that people tear down houses and build new. So that was kind of I think what I mean, I remember going to dad like when I was probably 28, I just took him some back of the napkin math of like, hey, here's what I think this looks like to do a tear down.

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Unknown

Anyway, he my dad was very much the kind of guy who would just be like, yeah, just sounds good, you know, go do it. He wanted us to learn he's he wasn't. I could tell you exactly how to do everything, but he just kind of show you. You just kind of learned, by osmosis, by being around him.

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Unknown

And, so, yeah, we started that, and then it just kind of just naturally led that way. And we started doing these custom rural builds. People would buy a tract of land way out there somewhere, all of us. So we almost just naturally stumbled into these two product categories. And over the course of 12 years, we just kind of got away from the production building altogether.

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Unknown

In the last decade or so, we've been more focused on this. And and we do. I'd say we're a 20 to $25 million like volume builder. Most of the stuff we build is a lot of it's land carry. So we do specs and design build. So kind of depends like price point. Are you carrying the land. You know, because that's a big thing when you're buying 300 400 and $600,000 lots.

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Unknown

It really drives that price. But most of the stuff we do if you include land is, you know, 1 million to 2 five is kind of our wheelhouse is where we end up so awesome. And then as far as the, you know, how you guys were shaping it, it sounds like, you know, your, your, your dad instilled a good framework, but you knew you guys really had the flexibility to to build it on your own and to say, you know, okay, this is, you know, we're going to shape this into however we want.

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Unknown

How many, how many people did you guys start off with? How many people do you have now? And you know how and what is the reason for that? And the the perception of this is the the end customer is like, why did you know you needed these people in order for the customers to see success at the end of a project?

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Unknown

Yeah. So when we first started, like when I started out of, college and I was project managing, it was it was a very loose project management, you know, set up we, we had, my, my uncle was, was kind of our a problem solver. He was kind of the head guy in the field. And then we just add maybe 3 or 4 what we would call finish, the finish crew, you know, they would help us wrap up the houses.

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Unknown

And so it was a I mean, it was a limited, staff. The houses were a little easier to build. The customers were a little less demanding, you know, this, you know, pre internet, pre HGTV, you know, just, you know, they would see our house and be like, this is great. And, you know, as things have evolved, we knew we needed to get more, you know professional in our hiring, more specific in our, you know, employment agreements.

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Unknown

So people are hired and they know what they know what they're going to be doing, not just general, labor or, you know, finished crew. It's it's now we're we're we're very specific, trying to enhance the customer experience to bring them a direct point of contact with the project manager, as well as somebody who's going to be in the field on their jobsite regularly with our our superintendent specific to their job as well as access to us as, as the, the owners.

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Unknown

Yeah. I think one thing I would say is when we joined, so we started picking up job sites at like ten and 12 years old. I always joke that it was more glorified babysitting probably at that point you may have thought a couple times on the job site, but but like I would say that what we've really done, like in terms of your question with our dad, he was very much the guy that like, if you just brought him an idea, he had a lot of belief in us and he was going to let us fail.

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Unknown

If we were going to fail, he's going to let us fail. And, that's just kind of how he was in every aspect of life. Like incredibly supportive but not restrictive. You know, he was kind of and he did. He was really good, too. He passed away like four and a half years ago. But he was really good, too.

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Unknown

About growing with the times. You know, he wasn't like, hey, this is how I do it. You're not. You hear those stories about family businesses? Oh, yeah. You know that resistance to change. And we had some of that. Just not much with our dad and, you know, so it's been. Sounds like there's a story in there, and there is.

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Unknown

Yeah, but it's, there are several there, but it's been a journey of probably a decade or so of just organizational change. And our dad was around for half of that or so. And, but just, you know, a lot of it's like we were doing a ton of change. Then we joined a coaching group several years ago, and that kind of accelerated our pace of change.

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Unknown

A builder group, and it's been a journey, but we're now, you know, have an org chart and we have, you know, more set up stuff. Everything's a work in progress. Like I said earlier, we're hiring a director of construction. Probably going to add a couple more members to our team. Maybe a fourth project manager for super.

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Unknown

So it's all growth, but I think we're a lot more comfortable now with hiring, which I think has been a huge thing. I was I was thinking about this last, last night. I don't know if if Chris George Holmes conducted an employment interview for the first 40 years of our existence, I'm fairly certain it was, oh, you're a friend of a friend.

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Unknown

Go ahead and show up on Monday at 8 a.m. and we'll put you to work. And, they would just stick around. And so it was it I mean, it wasn't a bad culture. We got a lot of stuff done, but it was it's amazing that when we started conducting interviews, you know, at first we were almost like, what are we doing?

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Unknown

And as you do more of them and you're like, no, we need actual strategic hires. Like, we are like, like people want to work for us and let's go out and find good people, that can build a great house and provide a, a great customer experience. And what, like once we turned our focus to that, it's really become, just easier, less daunting.

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Unknown

It's not as intimidating as it would have been, you know, three or 4 or 5 years ago for us. I think you hit a really good point, because I think a lot of people are in here, at this or have been at this stage. And a lot of the people I've talked to, they're they are in this transition phase of, you know, my dad did build this company for 40 years.

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Unknown

Now he's trying to hand it off to me. But there is just this, you know, I'm bringing ideas to the table. There hasn't been a whole lot of structure in place just because it's been, you know, whatever dad says, that's the way we're doing it. And then everyone kind of follow suit. So what would you say on a higher side, a strategic, higher side?

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Unknown

You guys doing personality test? Give me some framework around how you guys are doing these strategic hires. Yeah. We're, so what we've done, we've actually worked with a couple different, third party to help us with this. So we've, we've got two that we've used. We liked them both actually, but we're just kind of always wanting to see what's out there.

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Unknown

One of them we were connected with through Breakthrough Academy, which is that coaching group that we work with. And, so they conduct a personality profile test was kind of nice. It's like a little bit of a barrier to entry. It takes them 45 minutes. So they got to have a little skin in the game, not just throwing their resume at 100 different things.

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Unknown

And and then we've actually kind of grown and had a couple other people in our strategic management team that will interview them first if they come through the if they make it through that third party candidate, then we'll have Rachel and John from our office interview them. And then if they think that they're a good candidate, then they'll make it up to Caleb and I.

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Unknown

If it's a strategic hire, if it's like a labor, you know, field labor, then they won't even make it up to us. They'll just make the hire. You know, I would say that, you know, we've made a few strategic hires in the last four years that I think have been, you know, real game changers for us.

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Unknown

And so I think the thing I would just say is, look at those third parties. They don't all take 15 or 20% of the first year. You know, a lot of headhunters is like, hey, I want 20% or whatever you're going to pay him. That's the fee. So if you're paying a project manager 100 K, you're paying 20 K for that hire.

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Unknown

But these two services we use are like monthly, you know, so you can basically spend $3,000 and get a bunch of assistants and hire two employees and, you know, two months for three K versus paying 40 K. Are you okay telling us what those services are? Yeah. Gosh, I can't remember the new one. Contractor consultants is one of them.

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Unknown

I think they're out of Houston. And then there's one. If you look at Breakthrough Academy's website, you might be able to find him. That's who we're using now. And, I just can't remember the name of it. Because the good thing is, is because I'm not as intertwined in it. We've actually got other people doing that. But it's safe.

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Unknown

Yeah, we're we're a little over two years in the coaching and and, when my brother presented me, it, I was a little skeptical.

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Unknown

You know, we kind of think, everybody's business is, super unique, and homebuilding just its own. Its own the animal. And, you know, they just kept, you know, once we started, you see, the value immediately. And they, they really kind of show you what you don't know about your business. Like, you know how to build a house, but you're not in tune with the numbers.

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Unknown

You're not in tune with the finances. You're not in tune with the air. And so being able to to really have someone force you, into focusing on the business, which in turn is going to make your business and, and even the home that you build in the customer process much better. And they do that. I mean, it's a variety of things.

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Unknown

And just really diving into, every aspect of your business, like individually and really looking at it. And it forces you and they really, guide you into setting up, standardizing processes, hiring and making sure employees are aligned, with the company motto clear. Org chart. It's definitely one that, you know, everyone's got clear, you know, reports.

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Unknown

And because, you know, people don't know who's doing what. You can have the best team out there and still have so many issues. You know, when I was researching, I spent probably six months researching, like, companies and coaching groups and stuff, and I was really looking for builders specific because I do truly believe that, like, what we do is, is just is a lot different than a lot of other different types of contractors and stuff like that.

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Unknown

And, it's been interesting being in here for two and a half years. We just went to Cabo for the winter summit, and, it's been interesting to see, like, Caleb was a little skeptical in the now two years in. I mean, this guy's just updating our finances, like, I'm on there and just, like, constantly dialing into the numbers and I'm kind of more of the implementation item guy.

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Unknown

You know, the field. You know, I think we need to work on this next. And so it's been a nice like I think we're really lucky because we complement each other well. Like what are our swim lanes are pretty pretty natural and pretty. You know, even you hear a lot of times with like family companies, others, you know, a lot of issues can come with that.

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Unknown

But we it's not like we won't have disagreements, but it's always like pretty easy with us. Do you guys have that defined in your org chart? As you know Caleb is more visionary. And then we've got Chris over here. That's more of the implementer. It's so interesting that we've been talking about the iOS implementation, visionary with we've never really been able to figure out which.

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Unknown

I think we both have a little bit of a boat, which is a little abnormal from what we understand. One thing you're saying in early, though, Jesse, where we're at, you remember, we're in Cabo, and, Cameron from we started like, oh, you got junk, you started, you got junk and all these. He's like a crazy business guy, business coach, you know?

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Unknown

And he gave the opening keynote speech, and he he gave a bunch of characteristics and just as you were talking earlier about how you're kind of an entrepreneur and you're, you know, just a motor guy, go get it. And maybe not, like, naturally always going to be like super organized, which is, you know, how I think most entrepreneurs are.

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Unknown

But anyway, he gave a list of like ten characteristics. He was like, how many of those do you have? And everyone's saying like seven or 8 or 9. And he goes, congratulations, you're all bipolar or schizophrenic. Basically, entrepreneurs have like, you know, such a million things going in their mind at once. And so like that back to tie it back to the coaching is you got to like systemize some of that stuff.

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Unknown

You can't just have it be, you know, the owner operator. There's only so big you can grow as an owner order company. So and even for someone that's smaller, and maybe they don't have this in place, but what what advice would you give to those people with, you know, where where are you building these SOPs? You know, these just Google Docs or using a project management software, but where are you housing a lot of this information builder trend.

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Unknown

But I will say this. That's actually something that's on our list. We're hired an executive assistant. And one of the things we want them to become is, kind of our systems champion, where it's like, hey, we have all these recipes they're being adhered to at a pretty good clip. But, like, we need these things easily accessible for our guys in one place.

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Unknown

And honestly, I want to get most of our SOPs to videos, you know, so if I hire somebody new and they need to make a change order for the first time, it's a video clip, you know, instead of, you know, bland two page written document. You know, guys eyes glaze over. You know, a minute to read it.

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Unknown

So that's kind of what we need to get better about that. I think this is where the the AI conversation comes in real naturally and and and logistically it's so much easier. Like you just said, I want video clips of someone repeating what we have, but instead of them reading it, they're able to see it. You know, longer the days of hiring a video production company to come out and record all of that, and then just for three months later, for you guys to make an alteration, to have another crew come out to make an I mean, it's just it's it's almost it's almost a little silly.

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Unknown

Now when you compare that to, okay, we're going to have an AI avatar that's going to talk through our SOPs. So we're going to edit the script every time we make a change. And and then we're done. We're using Clickup right now where we're dropping all of our SOPs. And then you have a, a docs section, and then you can enable which doc is available for a wiki.

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Unknown

So a knowledge base inside of inside of the Clickup, which is the project management software. And then there's an AI chat there where you can say, and any of our employees can go in there and say, hey, what's the SOP for creating? You know, getting a website launched and then it will it will only read all of the information that is, you that you give available, because we're using it as a project management software.

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Unknown

We've got different tasks. Obviously, we don't want all of the tasks description in there as a knowledge base. So you can toggle those different things and then just be able to talk. They call it the brain, but you're able to talk to the brain, ask it questions. So just that interactive AI is going to make that so much easier to be able to interact with the brand, and just be able to pour, pour info in and then be able to get so much out of it and, and, you know, video will come soon to where, you know, right now you're just kind of talking to, to a chat box and through a

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Unknown

message. But real quickly this will change and it will become a lot easier to get the team aligned. Where you do, you know, one one bit of work, but then it trickles down throughout the rest of the company so much easier. I think that's a it was at IBS where we just came back. That was a, I was a a big topic of, you know, how is this working in the real world.

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Unknown

And I think, you know, kind of just been, you know, trying to adopt AI early in as many capacities as we can without without overburdening ourselves and saying, hey, this is going to cost more work. It's to to be able to do something like you're saying, I mean, my issue too is it's like we have these desktops that are posted on the wall or they're available and in a Google doc or on builder trend, if people don't know where they are or it's too clumsy to access them, you know, they're just going to go off what they know.

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Unknown

And yes, when they mess something up, we can go back and point at the scope and say, you know, it was written down here, but if they have an easy way of accessing it, it's just going to make everybody's life, you know, easier. It actually puts value in the SOP versus, you know, just having it on a piece of paper that that nobody reads.

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Unknown

I think one of the best ways that we're that I've been using AI the last couple of weeks, and this is not crazy sophisticated, but, you know, the Gemini drop that thing in the upper right corner of if you're using Chrome and you can open up a document. So like we build in all these different cities and they have crazy code requirements.

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Unknown

It's we make cheat sheets and stuff, but it's changing all the time in every city. It's impossible. All right. What is Leawood. What is Prairie Village? What is fairway? What is, Shawnee, you know, what do they require? And some of them have hoa's that have architectural requirements within the actual homeowners community, and they have an architectural board.

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Unknown

So, you know, you pull up those docs and you're like, all right, what kind of natural stone requirements they have for the outside of this house? And, you know, it's a 30 page doc. It would take me ten minutes to find the, you know, one damn passage that I'm looking for, and it'll just spit it out for you, like, so little things like that are just, like, crazy time savers.

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Unknown

Yeah. I'm not. I have used that exact same thing is here's a massive PDF and I am just looking for one specific answer and it's not making it up. It's actually citing the source and say, okay, well it looks like on page 145, here's your answer. Here it is highlighted. And then that's being able to give you a logical answer based on the entire the entire doc.

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Unknown

That is a huge one. And it doesn't just your employees can adopt you, you know, like, oh, you're looking for a piece of information in this 30 page sales contract or in this 12 page spec. Hey, do you do. Yeah. Now all of that stuff is, you know, to to Caleb. His point is you don't want to overwhelm yourself, but you do really kind of going back to SOPs and having a good structure is you need to know what your priorities are, and you have to have a good way to having snapshots for the different people that report to you to to know what they're responsible for, to, you know, because over time, when you

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Unknown

make a new hire, you know, the it's everything's fresh on their mind. But then how are they able to keep reminded of, you know, hey, this was my standard, of whatever I was supposed to be doing. We've got little snapshots that we have created, that aren't really so much for for them to report back to us, but more for themselves of like, hey, this was my my real quick snapshot that I'm just supposed to look at to see like, what are what are my metrics for my position?

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Unknown

Do you guys have anything created like that so that people can just realign real quickly? I think the thing is, I think that would go back to that system. Champions there. Like we have our job descriptions really locked in. Caleb has done a lot of great work on that. And, a couple people, members of our team.

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Unknown

But I think that having those easily accessible through like an AI wiki, like you were saying, that would be, you know, really great. Now I will say there on top of there, we do what's called GSR with our guys. So every Tuesday we either meet for a production meeting with our whole field team and our estimator and everybody, or we meet one on one with the project managers and do a GSR goal set review, you know, on top of that page where they're filling out their GSR says their deliverables on top, you know, hey, here's the five main objectives of your job.

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Unknown

Just to kind of keep your eye on that North Star. I mean, I love that. Would you if you were looking at the, you know, you're looking at your entire business. What you know, obviously the SOPs, what are some other things that, you know, again, this is kind of talking to a, maybe a newer construction company or someone that's, you know, really, you know, maybe they're in this handoff between a going to the second generation.

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Unknown

What are some of those things to really prioritize this? I mean, you got to know your numbers. You got to have the stuff locked in, maybe give a little insight into that. Yeah. I would say, kind of the thing that I feel like is propelling us and helping us evolve is just the the documentation, the systems, you know, the opinions go right into, you know, having defined roles for each employee, that is going to allow you to not, you know, I think we would live in fear of having a high level employee, you know, leave us.

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Unknown

And now it's like we know how to hire. We don't have to spend a ton of time onboarding because we have systems in place. We have documentation ready for them. We don't have to hustle and create a new role or define the role, because it's already defined. And so I think having having that in place is going to allow you to run your business with a little bit more confidence and allow you to, you know, to, to hire, to examine, you know, you know, deficiencies within your business at a much higher level than, you know, at least we previously were aware it was very much a steal thing.

00:24:27:11 - 00:24:44:09

Unknown

Like, I feel like we're busy. I feel like we're not producing, you know, building the house fast enough, but can I document it? Maybe not. What do they always say if you don't measure it, it ain't going to get any better. You know everything you want to make better, you have to measure with metrics. And it's a constant work in progress.

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Unknown

I mean, we're seven years, eight years into, like, really, really making change in every portion of our company. And it's like, God, we still got a laundry list of things we want to attack, but you got to prioritize them and you got to figure out what's going to get us. For us, it was and I think this is almost everybody from talking to people in Breakthrough Academy and stuff.

00:25:05:03 - 00:25:23:21

Unknown

How do we get out of the weeds? How do I focus on the stuff that's high dollar value? Like, for me, I want to be doing sales. I want to be doing initial kind of specs and estimates, like not even specs, but like kind of high level telling the estimate. Or here's what needs to be included in this, and I want to get out of project management.

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Unknown

And, you know, I'm always were there. We're accessible to the buyer. But, you know, we don't want to be having to visit our job sites. So we built a house recently, and I think I saw the house, it was far out. There was a custom rural. I saw it twice. I saw it was in a foundation. I came to it three days before closed and it was great.

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Unknown

It was a five star review from the customer. It was a great build time in that what to me was kind of like, you don't realize that you're making progress in your company, in this business, because a lot of the changes you make take six months or a year to see the fruits of the labor, and then you look back and you're like, oh, shit, we did kind of solve that problem, you know, with all your next problem or the next thing you can make better, you know?

00:26:05:08 - 00:26:20:02

Unknown

So it can be daunting. But I think, look at what can get you out of the weeds. Look at what you can change. That'll get you out of the weeds into high dollar stuff. So you're not doing the low dollar stuff. You touched on a really important part, which was, you know, the customer had a great experience at the end.

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Unknown

You only visited twice. So, you know, that's shifting. Your mindset of me mean, if I'm if I'm a lot more personable with this person, I'm spending a lot more time. This person is going to have a better experience. That's not the case. And there's it's definitely not a way to scale. And by having more people and having more processes and having a better flow, the customer at the end is the one who's, reaping the reward on that.

00:26:43:08 - 00:27:06:06

Unknown

You guys do too, obviously. But walk me through some of that experience of, of maybe from the customer perspective of, you know what what some of these different touch points that they're seeing to where, you know, what's an average build, how many months? Well, I'll say this, the iOS, the whole right person right thing that couldn't be more true.

00:27:06:06 - 00:27:25:06

Unknown

So in other words, when we have the right people in the right, you have the right team. That's when you can elevate and then start to still see everything running successful. You know what I mean? Like that's so key for that part. In terms of the customer journey, I would say our average build time is depending on the size of the house, depending on the municipality.

00:27:25:06 - 00:27:47:01

Unknown

Teardowns take a little bit longer. There's more steps and everything. But I would say, 10 to 12 months is where we set most things. If we, you know, we have one right now, it's like 9000ft² that's going to take it's, you know, going to take a little bit longer. But most of what we build is, you know, what 3500 to 4800 is kind of the wheelhouse square footage.

00:27:47:01 - 00:28:06:06

Unknown

And we have we have full basements in Kansas City. Everything's got a full basement. But yeah. And to be quite honest, like, I think that's pretty standard in our area for the size house we're building. But that is something that we really only started tracking very, very closely probably 2 or 3 years ago. And so now we have some data to work with.

00:28:06:06 - 00:28:40:21

Unknown

And that is something that hiring this director of construction is going to be tasked with is improving, trying to accelerate our timelines. But, as far as the customer journey, I mean, I think it's it is you got to have all these touchpoints. Here's another I example builder trend started an eye roll out last fall where if you're project managers and your superintendents are putting in daily log updates and they're doing, daily log updates and then selections, like everything that's getting put in in schedule updates is getting put into builder trend.

00:28:40:22 - 00:29:00:14

Unknown

On every Friday, our customers receive an update saying, here's what we did last week. Here's what's happening next week. Here's the selections that got finalized. Here's the change. All that need signing in. Our guys used to send those out manually and now they just click a button. They read it. They added, you know, added a couple things and then they send it out and it's awesome.

00:29:00:14 - 00:29:24:15

Unknown

We were like on the beta. They offered us to like do this as like one of the first builders last fall. And you know, it's been great. So that's awesome because it's, you know, as a as an owner, it's easy to have a new idea. And this is great. This is going to improve our business. Now we're going to stack another task on to you, you guys to do and and it gets a little overwhelming.

00:29:24:15 - 00:29:54:15

Unknown

And I think this is, exactly what you just said is, you know, some of these AI tools are going to accomplish the exact same thing, but it's going to make the system run a whole lot smoother without adding any more task or any more time or any more opportunities for slip up. And to create that consistency. You know, it's almost like there was a I forget who said it, but, you know, if you go to a fast food restaurant, you know, the, the, the consistency of what you get is the same as a Wendy's burger or a McDonald's burger.

00:29:54:15 - 00:30:27:04

Unknown

It's always the same no matter where you go in the country. And someone can have a really great experience and then awesome. That person's a referral. Maybe that person's worth, you know, 2 to 3 people on a on a sales side and then the next job, you know, just because of the cadence, just because it was a little less, you know, bogged down, that person didn't have the same type of experience because, oh, maybe this was, you know, forgotten or so that's where those those systems really come into play to say, okay, you know, we're really able to stack, you know, great experience after great experience, after great experience systematized.

00:30:27:09 - 00:30:47:09

Unknown

And not just because we, you know, happen to be thinking of it during that time. You know, you got to make sure you guys understand how this is going to make their lives easier and more effective. I think that's a big one. You know, once they buy into it and go, oh, you know, this does make my life easier, then it just rolls in kind of to play on with that, consistency.

00:30:47:09 - 00:31:09:02

Unknown

It's, you know, we've been working to, to kind of systemize our project manager communication with, with the clients and initially kind of when we rolled it out in terms of, hey, we need to be having, you know, this weekly email update, a biweekly phone call, you know, essentially meeting on site, you know, 6 to 8 times at set intervals during the project.

00:31:09:04 - 00:31:30:20

Unknown

They were kind of looking at it as this is a lot more work, and very soon after we implemented it, they were like, actually, no, this is heading off a lot of issues and a lot of, you know, frantic phone calls because a client, you know, hasn't heard from them in 4 or 5 days, and they went out on site and they saw something that they didn't think was correct.

00:31:30:22 - 00:31:50:20

Unknown

When they know that the communication is coming, or the meetings coming or the site visits coming, it puts them at ease and that it takes some stress off of it. And as a builder, you know, that's what we want to do. You know, we don't want to add stress to what is inevitably a stressful situation, you know, building your your forever home.

00:31:50:22 - 00:32:24:15

Unknown

And so if we can just make it where they know the communication points, they know what to expect from us, that's just going to align us and and just create a better process. Yeah. Being proactive instead of reactive is just it just everything and nothing's ever perfect. But yeah I think it's been it's been really good change for us when you have some bad news to deliver, do you, do you have any policies around that of, you know, how are we delivering this in a way that, you know, doesn't erode any trust or anything from from what we've already built with this customer?

00:32:24:17 - 00:32:45:21

Unknown

I think the biggest thing is do it quickly. You know, it's like a lot of times those conversations aren't as bad as you think they're going to be. You know, if you're just completely upfront, like let's say site costs, right? Every house that we build and probably every builder in the city has a site cost allowance. Let's say you run into peers, you know, you dig it up and it's like, hey, we got to drill, piers.

00:32:45:23 - 00:33:01:23

Unknown

You know, this could be 10,000, could be 30,000, and it's going to put us over our site cost, you know, clause amount that we have in the contract. That's awful. You know, that's just money that they're going to have to spend that isn't adding value to their house. But it's like you got to let them know as soon as you know.

00:33:02:04 - 00:33:21:12

Unknown

And you got to give them, you know, just here's the nuts and bolts of it. We don't even have the estimates yet because they have the engineers got to come out. But, you know, that way if they're making selections and they're tile at that point or whatever, they might make some different selections if they're, you know, if they're realizing, oh, I'm going to have an overage here.

00:33:21:14 - 00:33:50:15

Unknown

So I think that's probably the main thing is just transparency and doing it really quickly. I'd like to switch over to a bit of the, the marketing and the branding side and just how you guys are positioned in your market compared to your other competitors. You know, was that a distinct choice? Did you guys do, rebuild or, you know, how how did you choose to kind of position yourself more on a virtual online side?

00:33:50:17 - 00:33:55:18

Unknown

And if so, then how long ago did you guys do that?

00:33:55:20 - 00:34:20:14

Unknown

I think, that's been I don't know. I mean, we're very we know who kind of our competitors are in the areas that we build. You know, some really good builders in the area. I think that what we're somewhere, you know, we're not we never marketed ourselves as like, hey, we're the least expensive builder. We're going to win on cost per square foot every time.

00:34:20:14 - 00:34:41:13

Unknown

But we're also not the most expensive. But I think what we try to put out there is just the value that we deliver. In terms of I always say we're not perfect. Like when I'm taking a buyer through a design build process, the journey from taking them from that first meeting all the way to a pre-contract agreement to the contract and everything through the design phase.

00:34:41:15 - 00:34:57:06

Unknown

You know, we do design build. So a lot of times we're doing custom floor plans for them in-house. You know, we're we're we're doing every step of that process, helping them find land. And so it's a long process. I mean, sometimes it can be 3 to 6 months. We've had some that have been a year of just the planning process.

00:34:57:08 - 00:35:18:18

Unknown

And I you know, it's kind of like a dating period. You're trying to, you know, make sure that they trust you and make sure that they see the value of the communication. I mean, that's just like number one, I feel like and, in the knowledge, you know, that you are an expert. I always say as builders, we don't we're not an expert in every single cost code, every single vendor.

00:35:18:18 - 00:35:34:23

Unknown

You can't be. I'm not an electrician. I'm not an Hvac person. Our project managers aren't either. But if you can effectively communicate like, hey, I don't know that, but let me talk to my Hvac guy and I'll get you some answers soon. And you follow up and you have this consistent touchpoints. I think that's where you gain trust.

00:35:34:23 - 00:35:52:21

Unknown

And I think the way we kind of market ourselves is, you know, we work really hard to keep people happy. And, you know, I think you can see that through our reviews online. We, we started getting reviews online in like 2017. And I was a real visionary and thought Facebook was the place where, reviews were going to.

00:35:52:23 - 00:36:11:14

Unknown

I got to good. I think we had a good 55 star reviews, just dead in the water that no one will ever see. But between there, you know, Facebook and Google, we have a few on house, but I think we're, you know, 135 star reviews since 2017 or so, which in this business is it's not easy, you know.

00:36:11:14 - 00:36:30:16

Unknown

And sometimes that means sometimes it means eating profit margin. You know, it's just like, hey, something happened there. Unhappy. Do we really. Sometimes it's like, is this really our fault or is this something that was communicated to them? They didn't really understand it. You know what, let's just split it or let's just eat the cost, keep them happy, you know, keep things moving.

00:36:30:20 - 00:36:53:08

Unknown

And I think a lot of that was passed on from our from our dad, you know, long time in the industry. And we will still run into real estate agents, you know, homeowners from 20, 30 years ago and not an interaction. What happened with them without without them saying, you know, you know, your dad was a stand up guy or he always did what was right.

00:36:53:08 - 00:37:15:03

Unknown

And in terms of, our negotiations or our business dealings and, you know, I think we kind of take that to the, you know, to the current of of what's the, the current, I guess thing you'd say is like, well, we do that. We want to see that reflected in the reviews, you know, we we want people to stand up and say, hey, they built a great house or it was a really good experience.

00:37:15:03 - 00:37:35:21

Unknown

Or if problems came up, they solved it and we were happy. And I want our low end customer, you know, if there was some hiccups, I want that low end customer to be like they were honest. They were, you know, upfront they communicated. Yes, there was maybe some mistakes, but they did what was right. And in the end, I'm totally, you know, comfortable with that experience.

00:37:35:21 - 00:37:52:18

Unknown

Maybe they're not going to be raving to their friends. You know, not every single buyer. There's no possible way you can ever get every single buyer to become this raving fan of your company. That's going to get you through you girls. But that should be our low end buyer. And we tell our guys that all the time, and they understand how important that is.

00:37:52:18 - 00:38:18:18

Unknown

And we incentivize them on customer, you know, satisfaction and stuff. And, it's just I mean, it's top because like Caleb said, I mean, this is our 50th year as a company, and our grandpa and our dad did what was right. And like, we have to make sure that we uphold that, you know, reputation in the community, with developers, with real estate agents, with home owners, with, you know, everyone who you kind of work with in this.

00:38:18:18 - 00:38:36:12

Unknown

You know, what we do on a on a Google reviews side, is that something that's automated? Or is that something that your guys are at the end of the project? You're kind of making the choice of, here, we give this person the opportunity to talk about us publicly or, you know, maybe we hold off on this one.

00:38:36:14 - 00:39:00:01

Unknown

We we send it out manually after the fact. And, it is one of those things we're actually working on trying to get what I'd like to do is do a buyer exit survey that captures a lot more information, you know, because like in our review, it's not really an opportunity for them to say, hey, I had an issue with this one part of selections, you know, or I went to this vendor and I was unhappy with that part of the service.

00:39:00:01 - 00:39:25:12

Unknown

And they're going to 13 different vendors and making selections. So now there's just a lot of more information that I think we can get with a good buyer exit survey. And this goes back to the coaching thing. Like one of the things about the coaching group, it is the the builder members. I mean, we're with these awesome shark builders guy at a North Carolina Liberty Homes shout out to Brian and Scott and I mean Charlie, like our whole group is just these these great builders.

00:39:25:12 - 00:39:39:15

Unknown

And it's like, you can go to them and say, hey, are you doing an exit survey? Oh you are oh, send that to me. I'll make some tweaks and then, you know, cut my time in half to get that SRP and they'll do the same thing with us. Hey, how are you handling your bandwidth tracker for your project managers?

00:39:39:16 - 00:40:01:11

Unknown

Oh, we've already made something for that. I'll send it to you. So that's just another like, huge, I think, proponent or aspect of doing this, this builder group and this coaching group. That's awesome. Well, I love that you guys are prioritizing the reviews because it's Google really prioritizes those and it uses those as one of its signals that it's an active company.

00:40:01:11 - 00:40:25:19

Unknown

People are saying good things. The the more relevant a review can be, you know, if they call out specifics, which this kind of goes into the keywords of, you know, what keywords do you guys want to be known for? The, you know, construction, home building renovation, you know, teardowns, whatever. Those keywords are encouraging people to be specific in those reviews, because when people are searching, they know that's what Google Sites is.

00:40:25:19 - 00:40:44:23

Unknown

Hey, yeah, they you know, this is a reputable company. They're getting consistency in reviews, but then they're also getting specifics about what's related to this company. And then they match that to your website. Website says the same type of things. Google reviews as the same type of things. And made a social. But, you know, all of this stuff is starting to make sense.

00:40:45:01 - 00:41:15:03

Unknown

And then those are all signals to say, okay, well, let's boost this person, you know, rather than their competitor that maybe has some deficiencies or doesn't look as active or doesn't, you know, all of it's kind of this, this game that gets played. But at the very base it is just a consistency and, and, and relevant activity, you know, be it be at the blog or be it a video that gets posted or even this is where social media comes in, is that these are now in search results.

00:41:15:03 - 00:41:37:20

Unknown

So what you post on Facebook and Instagram, if it's relevant, it's matching your entire brand. Then all of that just becomes so, tight and integrated with each other, which is which is awesome. Yeah. I, you know, you heard in the chat GPT or complexity or any of these things, you throw your company name in there and kind of see what it spits out and you're like, oh, okay, cool.

00:41:37:20 - 00:41:55:11

Unknown

It's kind of taking a, you know, it's looking at all of our reviews and it's looking at all these things online. It's kind of telling a prospective customer just, you know, younger buyers. I'm going to I before I go to Google now. And that's where they're going to kind of get a summary of your company if they're thinking about potentially working with you.

00:41:55:13 - 00:42:15:20

Unknown

And and this is where I think there's an opportunity for us to really help these, these builders that, you know, they have they've got this amazing company, but online, it just does not reflect who they really are. You know. And it was like, man, the site was built, you know, in the stone ages, you know, and it's like, this isn't this isn't fair to you guys.

00:42:15:20 - 00:42:41:01

Unknown

You know, it's not fair for for a newer company or for, you know, even just for yourself, you know, for your own integrity of like, you just have to play this game. And some people, you know, they're like, hey, I'm, I'm retiring. I'm out of this. But then there's another aspect of that of, of the, you know, selling the company, selling the brand, you know, that side of things to that, that people don't really think about.

00:42:41:03 - 00:43:01:06

Unknown

But that's where the online side just really comes in, you know. But it's not that expensive when you look at the value that it creates in the market. And for someone to come along and buy it or to, you know, you just never know. So that's if you know your priorities and it's easier to make those decisions.

00:43:01:08 - 00:43:19:15

Unknown

Along the way, I wanted to ask, is there anything at the very beginning of a build or at the very end of the build that, that that kind of commemorates the the, the building project? You know, I've seen some people with the golden shovels or burying the Bibles or I don't know if you guys did anything like that.

00:43:19:17 - 00:43:39:02

Unknown

We have had so a lot of our work, involves demolition of an existing house. So we've had, you know, a lot of times it's just, hey, we'd like to come out and watch the excavator, you know, take that first swing at the house. Which is honestly, even after seeing it a bunch of times, it's still it's still fun.

00:43:39:04 - 00:43:56:16

Unknown

What would we thought out of my mom's house? We. So my mom and dad lived on, 80 acres out south, and we're going to be, you know, we moved there when we were like 14 and 16 years old. So we've been there in that house for almost 30 years. But anyway, dad passes away. Mom's on 80 acres in this massive house.

00:43:56:16 - 00:44:09:18

Unknown

No kids in the house. So she's like, I want to live closer to you guys. So we tore down a house and built my mom a new house within a few blocks of my brother and I. Not too far from one of our sisters, our other two sisters live out of town, but. So it's kind of it's awesome.

00:44:09:18 - 00:44:27:14

Unknown

Like we our kids can walk to, you know, Mimi's house and but anyway, when we tore it down, our tear down guy, we had Caleb's kids over and they got to sit on his lap in the excavator and pull the thing, like, knock down that house. Caleb, I don't know how Gibson was at this point, but, you know, some lady stopped and she's like, looking at.

00:44:27:19 - 00:44:52:07

Unknown

Is that a child in that excavator? You you're in Gibson. Gibson looks at me about these ten. He goes, he goes, okay, we got a Karen. There's one that's just the joys of being a, you know, kid who family owns a construction company, made a kid, and in heavy machinery, there's nothing like it. Yeah. If it's if it's.

00:44:52:09 - 00:45:13:10

Unknown

Yeah. I've been on skid loaders and tiller handlers and bulldozers and high lifts. I mean, as early as I can remember. And it's, the policy was if you can reach the pedals, which I found a way to reach the pedals, then you could drive it. My mind is is special, needs is nonverbal. And it's like one of those things that's just in his DNA.

00:45:13:10 - 00:45:32:01

Unknown

Like from day one, he just loves machinery, excavators. Any books about it? Like nothing. I push on. I'm even own in a construction company, but it's just like it's embedded in him somehow. There's probably it's probably embedded in a lot of people. They just haven't had the opportunity to to sit in a chair and dig a dig a water line or something.

00:45:32:01 - 00:46:13:23

Unknown

I mean, there's it's it's awesome. Is there anybody that you guys look to for inspiration? You know, I know you guys got this coaching program, and I'm sure you get a lot of insight and knowledge from from other builders inside of that, but anybody I mean, this could be business related, personal, but, you know, podcast or books or things that just kind of feed, feed you guys as you're going through the entrepreneur life, the book club game, one about our telling about our company book club, we, we, you know, we're trying to, just just dive into some more, you know, management, leadership books and engaging our leadership team and trying to,

00:46:14:01 - 00:46:33:02

Unknown

you know, basically have a little book club trying to trying to just, encourage everybody to get on the same page and, and push for, you know, just, just, improve in whatever way we can improve, which, you know, from, you know, if you had told us this, you know, ten, 15 years ago, it would have been laughable.

00:46:33:04 - 00:46:51:09

Unknown

But, you know, it's it's it's something that, you know, everybody's kind of embraced. And we were just like, yeah, this is, you know, this is a great idea. I mean, we were going to do it on our own. And, and, we were talking to, my cousin about it, and he was like, yeah. And then our controller was like, hey, I want in on that.

00:46:51:09 - 00:47:18:15

Unknown

And was like, awesome, let's do it. So, you know, we're nothing. I mean, inspiration wise, we we're really just focused on family legacy and, and kind of trying to, you know, find some inspiration in our past and, and just evolve into the future. We're reading Patrick on the ideal team player. Now, our coach, our business coach is read every, you know, every leadership book that's ever been read or ever written.

00:47:18:15 - 00:47:31:08

Unknown

It seems like. And, it's kind of funny, our financial controller like, what, four days after we started, just like, yeah, I'm done. I'm like, well, shit.

00:47:31:10 - 00:47:54:07

Unknown

That's awesome. Well, what does the future look like for you guys? You know, you're what did you say? You're 50 years in, you know, what's the what's the next ten, 50 years look like? So I think we we are very focused on, building up our, our design build. We love to do, the tear down infill building because it's in our neighborhood.

00:47:54:07 - 00:48:21:09

Unknown

And so it's a part of our community, our kids get to walk by the houses that, that we're building, building up the neighborhood. And it's exciting to see young families come into the neighborhood. And it really does feel like a, I mean, it's our home. And then, you know, and the second tier is we are kind of starting this legacy project of, of land development, a little bit further out south on on our where we grew up, the land we grew up on.

00:48:21:11 - 00:48:40:12

Unknown

And so those will be no similar product offering. There'll be about half acre lots, but it's a big undertaking. Probably breaking ground in the next year on it. But it'll be 50, 58 lots, you know, that will build on. And we're really excited, like, almost all of them are going to back up to green space.

00:48:40:12 - 00:49:02:20

Unknown

We have a nice park setting. It's going to be a really great development. So we're looking forward to that. And that's kind of a, you know, a new a new venture for us. We've done development in the past. So we're excited to kind of get back into it. And one thing that's cool about that is when my dad bought that land, you know, 30 years ago, he knew at some point that we would develop that land, you know?

00:49:02:20 - 00:49:22:20

Unknown

So it's like my mom and dad's house is out there. Our office is out there. Because when they bought that land there, an old farmhouse that was built in, I don't know, 1920 or something that's out there. And then we converted that to our office. So that's always been our office. And now it's like we're going to renovate my parent's house, so it's going to still be there, which is kind of cool, just big brick house.

00:49:22:20 - 00:49:41:12

Unknown

And it'll always kind of be the center of that neighborhood. And then we're going to build all these new houses and, this random story. But my dad used to hit golf balls in this one area, right? He just set up his thing and just hit golf balls and smoke a cigar to go pick him up with his little ball picker upper thing.

00:49:41:14 - 00:50:01:02

Unknown

And so we have this guy. What's the name? He's a big, Jason Meyer, Jason Myers, he does all this crazy architecture design and, lays out land for a bunch of the bigger developers in the city. You know, pretty known as, like, a talented guy in this space. So he goes and sets it up. There's, like, a pond that my dad built with, like, sand and stuff.

00:50:01:02 - 00:50:18:01

Unknown

And then there's the house and everything, and he goes and lays this out and he goes. He puts to, he puts like a driving range and maybe a couple par three golf holes. He's like, what do you think of this idea? And that driving range is exactly where dad used to hit his golf balls. We didn't this you know, he there's no way he could have known.

00:50:18:02 - 00:50:34:21

Unknown

And it was just like, oh, that's pretty cool. That like, I don't know, it's kind of gave me goosebumps as like, that's wild that he would put a driving range right where dad used to hit his golf balls. That is really cool. It's cool to see those, I call them Easter eggs in life. Yeah, well. Good deal.

00:50:34:21 - 00:50:58:13

Unknown

Okay, guys, is there anything else you guys wanted to touch on that we didn't touch on? I don't think so. I really appreciate you. You know, doing this, and, I think it's, we've been listening to some of the, episodes you put out, and it's just another we both listen to their podcasts and stuff, so it's just another cool thing to see how other people are doing it and glean, you know, a couple things from anybody who comes on.

00:50:58:13 - 00:51:05:06

Unknown

And I think it's been, you know, it's a cool thing that you're doing. So we appreciate your time. Absolutely. It's really Richard. Jesse.

00:51:05:08 - 00:51:22:05

Unknown

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 Meridian pursuit.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.

00:51:22:05 - 00:51:27:15

Unknown

So we can share this with more people. I'm Jesse Sampaoli. Thanks for listening and I'll see you on the next one.