Parade Pressure, 10,000 Walk-Throughs, and What We Learned - Jeff Tait

Jesse Sampley (00:00.334)

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

Jesse Sampley (00:32.238)

Yeah, so I, I didn't grow up in a construction family. My dad had no part of construction. I've got two older brothers that I look up to. They, they're both in sales. One sells insurance and one is in, you know, sells for another company. And I was kind of following in their footsteps. Out of college, I got my degree from the university of Utah and went into district management for free LA. So working for a Fortune 50 company, you know.

Very structured, huge company, great company and worked for them for a few years. And then in 2015, I kind of got rubbed the wrong way with the promotion. thought I was coming my way. And, and I just thought, man, if I really want to do this and work for a fortune 50 company, I'm going have to bounce around the country, you know, take a promotion out of state every two or three years. And I was like, no, I really don't want to do that. I've got young kids and I'm starting a young family. So

started looking around and I had a buddy that says, Hey, you should come work for us at this local painting company. So it was, it was a position for an estimator kind of sales slash project manager for a local painting asphalt painting company. Got that job at 15. Loved it. I just loved being on site, seeing the big equipment, doing large civil projects like painting parking lots and doing road base and seeing infrastructure get built.

that kind of thing. really liked that, liked, liked the guys that I worked with. There's, really fun atmosphere, good team environment. And so did that for a few years and here in Utah, you know, the painting business, especially shuts down in December until about April. So all the hot plants closed down. It's just too cold to pay the asphalt. And so I just kept thinking to myself like, man, we're so slow in the winter and they

The company was with would keep me on salary. And it's a lot. my salary coming in, but I would get so bored. I made my first winner. I drove for Uber to stay busy. My next winner, I started up, I did like selling sports cards online. And I kept telling myself, like, I need to build my family a house. I know the guys now. I know the concrete guys and all the excavation guys. I know the plumbers. I just need to...

Jesse Sampley (03:01.454)

build a house, know, throughout the winter. Finally got the courage in 2019, bought a lot, went and got a construction loan and most cities will allow you to build your own house, be your own general as long as you're gonna move into it. finally found a bank that would loan me the money. Talked to a lot of the bank down in there just like, you're gonna hire a general contractor? And I was like, no, I can do it. I know all these guys.

I'm in construction. So I found a banker that believed in me. He helped me get the deal done. We built a beautiful house. It's the house I'm in right now. We still live here and I just love the process. Like I was there every day. It was fun. I loved, you know, being with the guys. I'd bring them drinks. I'd bring them food and you know, it was just fun being on site, you know, not much different than what I was used to with our paving projects. it took me about seven months to build that house and

After I was done, was like, no, it's just pretty fun. know? And I saw the kind of equity that we gained. Like when I got the final appraisal, like, we sold food, we sold this house, we would have done pretty good. But you know, we moved in with So that was kind of where it started. I had no intentions of starting a construction business on my own, but after that point I had.

My wife's uncle reached out and was done several spec homes throughout his career. He's a real estate agent. He's like, Hey, what would you think about going and getting your license and doing a spec home with me? And I was like, that sounds pretty fun. And so the next one, I went and got my GC license and started doing a couple of spec homes every winter. And then from there, people started reaching out. Hey, can you build us a custom home? And it got to a point where I, was still working my day job.

in the asphalt business. And it just got to the point where I was like, okay, I got to decide if I'm going all in or not. I got to, you know, leave my benefits, leave my stable paying job. I do I just go in for this? And that was 2023 in the spring. I turned to my notice and went full into it. well, give me a snapshot.

Jesse Sampley (05:16.556)

What's the company look like now? How many homes have you built? Are you doing more spec? You're doing custom building, doing a little bit of both? Yeah, a little bit of both. We like doing specs just because we feel like we've gotten really good at them. And when I say specs, they're pretty nice homes. know, they're anywhere from 6,000 to 8,000 square feet and you know, pretty high end finishes. You know, we're doing hardwood floors, eight foot doors everywhere, pretty custom finishes in a lot of them.

We like doing the specials because they can move so quick. And when you bring out a homeowner, it's a different story. And we love our clients. We love our homeowners. We're careful about who we build with because it can. We've had some difficult ones and we've learned. We've learned a lot of things to look for when you want to take on a client. I mean, we can't build for everyone. Like we can only do so many homes a year with the types of homes that we're doing. So it's kind of a mix of both.

Generally have about two to three specs a year and anywhere from two or three customs in a year. Okay. What are, what are some of the things that some of more custom things you're doing in the spec homes and how are you making that decision? Yeah. So in our custom homes, the one thing that is unique about us is we have an interior designer that's Asia is her name. She's our VP of design. So she, she walks our homeowners. She also designs our spec homes. So picks out everything, all the finishes.

And our customs are obviously up to our custom homeowners. We're going to put in the house what they want to draw up and what they want to put in. But what we're seeing a lot here in Utah is cold plunging is a huge thing. Pretty much every house we have has a cold plunge in it. It's got a dry sauna. Exercise room is a big thing. We call it a wellness room in a lot of times. Yeah, we're seeing like waterproof decks, like, you know, an epoxy type deck off of the back of the house. Those are probably the things that come to mind mostly.

There are lot of custom home builders, semi custom home builders in your area. You know, I wouldn't say there's a lot. There's, there's, there's a handful of really good ones. Yeah. We've got some great builders out here in Utah. The Utah Valley Parade of Homes. There's also Solid Valley Parade of Homes. The Utah Valley Parade of Homes is kind of regarded as one of the top parades in the country. I know a lot of states don't do a parade of homes, but it's basically

Jesse Sampley (07:41.678)

You know, the home builders association has like a two week event in June every, every year. And there's usually anywhere from like 30 to 40 homes. And those are kind of the top end custom builders, you know, trying to have a home in there every year. And there's some amazing homes. Yeah. There's, there's a lot of custom builders do do a really good job here in Utah Valley. Well, I checked out your Instagram. You had a pretty amazing home. Tell me a little bit about that one.

Yeah, that was our first parade. You know, I even told our team, like, I don't ever want to do a parade house because I knew the kind of stress that it involves, you know. I've been a part of some parade homes as a subcontractor. But, you know, we decided to do it mainly because it was a spec house and we had total control of the schedule and not a homeowner making any changes on us. So we thought that was kind of nice, but our experience with the parade to answer your question was amazing. Like it was.

And that's why most players do it is just to get the marketing for it and to put their name out there. And it is a little gut wrenching when you got probably 10,000 plus people walking through the home and taking everything apart and telling you what they don't like about it and what they do like about it. So it was when I told our team, got to some thick skin, but it was an amazing experience. Yeah. We'll definitely do it again. And it was a lot of fun to be, to be a part of the parade. What do you think?

What do you think sets your company apart now or is there anything specific that you're doing to make sure that you are set apart from some of your different competitors out there? Yeah. I mean, I think the main thing that sets us apart is we have a design staff that can help with the interior design. And not to say that we would never welcome a third party designer. There's a lot of great designers that we would love to work with, but that is unique about us is that we have a design team that's on our staff.

is employed by us, they're part of our team. They know how we work. They know what we need to stay efficient. And that's, that's a huge part of the build is all the design decisions that need to go into everything. And so I think something that really sets us apart too, is just our organization with like our project management software, having all the selections where our customers can see them, where our project managers can see them, know exactly what's going on in every room.

Jesse Sampley (10:10.734)

had a plan for it. So there's just so many moving parts of construction and especially in a custom home where there's not two or three options, there's hundreds of thousands of options. Like I think that really sets us apart that we are organized and we have a designer on staff to help us move along pretty efficiently. Yeah, I'd imagine so, especially even keeping up with some trends.

You know, Hey, this may have been popular five, six years ago, but this is kind of fading out. So let's not pour all this effort into this because in the next five to 10 years, you know, this is going to be completely obsolete. No one's going to care about this feature whatsoever. You think there's any other, any other benefits that have an in-house designer helps with you guys? man. It's, it's been so nice for me because you know, I'm really not the creative type.

Like I'm more of the business type, the systems and keep the things organized. And so my first few spec homes, I was building those for investors. And then I was like, Hey, what do you guys want to do for design? And they're like, Oh, Jeff, you just, know, you just go ahead and do it. Just pick out what you want. And I was like, Oh, you're like that. Yeah, I guess I could do that. But it's just like overwhelming. mean, picking out flooring, lighting fixtures, plumbing fixtures, trying to make it all work together. Like.

So naive for me to think that I could put that together and I'm just, so that's what's been so amazing. I'm, and she's so talented. We've also got strap nine, our team, which, you know, he's working as a junior designer, but it's so nice to just have that off of our plates and we can just worry about building the house and, they can worry about the design. It's nice to have them on our job walks, you know, like when you're in

You know, we might have something drawn up on plans, but you know how it goes. Like when you're walking in and seeing that fridge there or whatever, like you're like, Oh man, we're to have to move that. looks great on plans, but like, it's nice to have our design team doing the job blocks with us, know, post framing or, know, pre-four way and, having their input and you know, their expertise on, I don't know we need to change something. You can, you can view a blueprint to your blue in the face, but until it's actually built.

Jesse Sampley (12:33.686)

And it's constructed and you're able to walk it in 3D. mean that. Yeah, it's totally different. Like, it is, you know, that's what I think a lot of people don't understand about construction is yeah, it's just not a perfect science. I would say that like, you know, you could have the best architect on the best structural engineer and still.

That could be something that gets missed. might be the first time it's a custom house. It's the first time they've drawn that house. You know, there's going to be problem solving every single day on the house. think that's important too, for the customers to know is that, okay, that is the reality is that there are going to be changes. So how do you guys work through those challenges? And I think that's something that probably even people listening to this would love to know is, okay, if we can already anticipate that there's going to be some changes.

What's the best way to work some of those issues out with the customer? Yeah. Yeah. We try and be really good to work with on that. You know, it's, it's their custom house, you know, on our specs, our project managers get pretty used to just move it along super seamlessly because there's no changes. But I have to remind them like, Hey guys, this is someone's house that they're going to move into. They're spending a lot of money on if they want to change. We got to, got to make the change. Well, you know, with that said too, like we.

It takes a lot of time to make a change. It's going to set back our schedule. It's going to take our project manager a lot of time to, to go through and maybe do some rework or maybe, you know, if drywall is already done, we've to cut down drywall or reframe something, or is it, is it an easy phase so we can just go in and make before we've dry walled or insulated. We do that. That's one, one thing we were working on is a change order process. And, you know,

the latest revision that we have and it's a work in progress, but like we give them a couple of changes, you know, on the house and we still charge our build fee or we have a percentage of which are most of our custom homes are cost plus contracts. But after the third change, like if they're, if they're making a change to where they're going to save money, like they're eliminated, eliminating something, we don't consider that a change. But if they're asking us to reframe a wall or to

Jesse Sampley (14:51.758)

to add something that's gonna require us to go to get bids and maybe send something back that's already been ordered. Then we have a change order fee for that. We'd have them sign it and have a fee that they have to get paid. We go all through that before they sign the contract and say, this is your home. Here's what the change order process looks like for us. We're gonna try and plan everything before we start the house. And if there's any changes, the first couple of changes are on the house.

third change, here's the fee, and here's what that looks like. And it's gonna set back the process. Like that's all I say. Like you guys really wanna make this change? Because it's gonna take us two weeks to push everyone back and then might take, know, however long it's gonna take to order back countertop or change those cabinets or whatever. could take multiple weeks as long as you guys are okay with the way, then let's move forward with it. And it really adds up.

You know, a week here, a week there, a couple of weeks here. mean, it's, could really delay it months and months. So it's not always just the money. It's the timing side of it too. Yeah. And if they've got a construction loan, you know, one month away, could mean 10 or $15,000 in interest with the types of homes that we're building. So it's like, it's not just a changeholder fee. like, you guys okay with this project taking another two months because of this change? I think that's what's, you know, you become a little bit more of a guide.

to say, hey, of course we're here to do, you know, whatever you want. But let's think tank this a little bit just so that you know, like everything that's going into it. And it's not just emotional decision of like, okay, let's just quickly change this. like, let's, I'm always going to be the guy that grounds you. You know, perfect example. So we just finished a home and beautiful home and they've got a couple of drinking fountains in the wall. And one of the drinking fountains is ride next to the gym.

And we put it right where the plan showed to put it. And now the home is finished. It's got shiplap all around the drinking fountain. It's got, you know, molding going around the top of it. And they're like, Hey, we don't like how close the drinking fountain is to the, the other wall in the corner. Can we, know, can we just move it over closer to the door? So it's centered on the door. I was like, Hey guys, we can totally do that, but just realize we're to have to have it demoed. We're to have to the plumber come out and redo all the plumbing lines. Then we're to have to.

Jesse Sampley (17:16.694)

I have finish work guy come out and they do the finish work and then we have the pay to come out and we do the pay. Just to remove a drinking fund is going to take like five different trades to come out and it's going to take multiple weeks and a lot of coordination. it's like, yeah, that is how we're about it. Looks great. know, I'm stuck in thought. It's in the perfect position. Yeah. Usually I'm going to explain like, guys, we can do it, but it's probably going to take several weeks and

The house is going to be dusty and it's going to be guys coming and going and five different crews. And they're just like, yeah. Okay. I would have to move in. you on your spec homes? Are you building the same house or are you, are you doing a new house for every spec? Yeah, we've never built the same house. know, it's, it's a different, different custom plan every time. So most of the lots that we're getting are, they're all different sizes, all the specs that we've built on and been very different lots. So yeah, we have.

someone draw out the plans, they've all been different. They've been beautiful too. I was looking at your Instagram and I'm in, I don't know if it's the most recent one that you guys, but it's got, I mean, it's just incredible. Thank you. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. For me, like I could probably make a lot more money if I was doing production homes and building the same plan over and over, we get really efficient with it, but I like the challenge of something different.

You know, it's just, think it's a lot more fun for our team too, to be on something different every day. sounds like you've got a good team if they enjoy that. Because I don't think a lot of people could say that honestly. They may say it anyways. Yeah. Our team is awesome. We've got a lot of great people and that's, that's been the funnest part for me is just, and that's one thing I never planned on. I never planned on having any employees, but just amazing people continue to come to us. And that's been the most fulfilling part for me is just like seeing them grow and develop and.

and grow into their roles. How are people finding you now? They don't want to work for you. Are they just seeing the homes or is there kind of a, you're building a reputation organically of just, you're doing things a little different? Great question. Most of the people on our team have been referred to us, just word of mouth, people that know me, people that I've worked with in the past that have seen what we're doing. I think a lot of our customers, yeah, that's all of our customers too is.

Jesse Sampley (19:40.428)

It's all been word of mouth and just referral based, which is huge in construction. know, especially we're doing these types of homes, these custom projects. I think every single one of them has been a referral from a previous build. Yeah. We'll kind of jump into the referrals because that's, that's kind of the foundation for a custom home builders, production builders, luxury builder. mean, it doesn't matter, but it's so much of that is, is reputation.

And you guys obviously have a huge Instagram. You're putting a lot of effort into your Instagram. And I would love to know, you know, what kind of, you know, referrals can be organic. They can be like, you know, I'm someone who had an experience and now I'm telling someone else, but now with social media, it can also be, I just know of these guys and I'm referring to these people, even though I've never even talked, you know, I've maybe never worked with them, never talked to them. There was a home builder I was talking to yesterday and they were saying, you know, they're getting referrals.

by real estate agents that they've never worked with. And, you know, they're making these Instagram reels that, you know, in the moment they may seem a little cheesy or a little corny or something like that, but they really work and they're really getting out there. And I'll tell you, the reel that I saw was you guys, you and your, don't know if he's, you who he is on your team, but you know, you guys are rolling on the ground.

I mean, dude, it's funny, but I think I went through earlier before this call. It's your top performing reel. You've got like, mean, it's just insane. And that's the real that popped up. What are you finding just on the, on the awareness and reputation side by doing so much on Instagram? Yeah. It's a great question. It's a little bit of both to answer the question. Like that reel that you're talking about. Yeah. It's our top performing reel by far. It's not even close. Like I'm saying, like I think right now it's.

It's over 220,000 views. And just to put in perspective, like all of our other reels that we pay a lot of money for, like, you know, that nice parade home, we had a lot of professional videos done on that. Each professional video costs around a thousand dollars to have, you know, a good videographer come in and do that and edit it, put music to it. Us rolling around on the floor, it took us, took us 10 minutes and our designer put some music to it.

Jesse Sampley (21:58.926)

and popped it up within a couple of hours. And the one that costs us a thousand dollars to make gets a thousand views. And the one or rolling around being a little silly, like entertaining people. was like, I think maybe six or seven seconds long. And it's gotten over, not only over 200,000 views, but people just keep sharing it and commenting on it. And it's, so it was definitely like, we did not anticipate that, but it's funny that you found me through that.

Yeah. I think social media is where it's at for marketing nowadays. Like websites are great. You got to have a good website, but people are on Instagram and TikTok and they need to get to know you there. Like, like I said, most of our customers are referrals and I don't think we've really gotten a build yet. That's from directly from social media, but it is nice when I can show up to meet a customer and they already feel like they know me.

because they've seen my videos and they've seen me describing the build process and that helps in the process when they already feel like they know what we're about. Yeah. See, I get this question a lot. was like, Hey, what should I be doing? What's like that one thing I should be doing? And it's that the answer is, well, you need to be doing a whole lot. And there's, there's reasons for all of that. You know, you can't only have a Facebook and Instagram page and that's all you have.

And you have no website because like a lot of that stuff is attention. But it's like, have to, you have to put that attention towards something and then God forbid, but you know, you get a ban on Instagram or some social media account. TikTok gets deleted off the face of the earth and it's like, what, you just lose all of that. You know, sometimes it's years and years and years. I was commercial, commercial video production for the past 10 years. And then we started this agency five years ago, right around COVID. And it was.

It was just around that shift. COVID really accelerated it. But just what you were saying is, you you would pour thousands and thousands of dollars into, you know, this 15 second, 30 second video. You would have lighting guys and audio people and account planners and an agency and a video production company and hair and makeup. And then you get into the post-production, you have editor and color correcting and then sound design and music and all of, I mean, just all of this stuff to put.

Jesse Sampley (24:26.348)

you know, a really short video together, sometimes a long video, but then you would hand that off to your media buyer to say, okay, now we're going to, you know, run this as a Facebook ad, Instagram ads, something like that. And what you would see is that someone that would shoot something with their phone that was actually engaging, that was really authentic, side to side, like it didn't compare it, blow it out of the water every single time.

And it's as we were, you know, a part of some of these different productions, I started to see a little bit of the light is that, you know, this is not where it's going. It's not working because Facebook and Instagram and YouTube, you Google, they don't want this. What they want ultimately is for people to engage with their, with their platform. So they're going to do whatever makes someone spend the most time on that platform. Yeah. So you spend all of that effort. Well,

sorry, but you're just wasting all that money. It is appropriate sometimes. You know, I think that, you know, kind of the legacy side of who, estate construction, what are their homes look like? Well, I'd rather not see, you know, a bunch of handheld walkthrough videos on an iPhone. You know, if I'm in the market for a home like that, I'd rather see these people are top of the line. You know, there's kind of that, that branding that makes sense for that.

Like you said, I think you got to do both, especially in the type of business that we're in, you know, it's more marketing to people that can afford a custom home. These are expensive homes. They are high end. So you got to have some professional videos done that shows our work, but I think it helps to show the real side of it too. That we're real people. We have a sense of humor. The build process can be fun. It doesn't have to just be all straightly business. This is a very intimate process building.

Custom home that could take one to two years you have to do it with someone that you're be able to deliver worth and be okay with Communicating with every day for the next year. So so it's also helpful too because You don't want to build what you're not gonna be a perfect match With everybody so it also kind of helps qualify these people and say hey if you are looking for Someone that's 80 years old and you know, maybe that's not us

Jesse Sampley (26:42.668)

You know, and we're putting enough out there so we're not wasting each other's time. you can go ahead and kind of pre-qualify yourself. And then if we look like we're a good fit and you know, then we can go from there. They have enough to digest before they're even picking up the phone or sending you guys an email or a DM or something like that. you'll see though, you'll see, you'll see these referrals coming through Instagram though. I've already heard it from, from other people, but it's that is, you'll, you'll start seeing it.

We've had people in Georgia. Hey, D-Builder Georgia. Hey, D-Builder in Phoenix, Arizona. Yeah, I probably can't do that, but yeah, we'll start getting some referrals from family that might be here in Utah or something. You're kind of a new company, you know, a little bit on the younger side, but what are you currently doing and what are you seeing that's working aside from Instagram? Yeah. So we just had our website redone probably six months ago. I wanted to have that done.

You know, before the parade at homes, which was last summer. Um, I think that's really big to have a professional looking website with our team bios on there. So you can kind of get to know us through that. Another thing that we've done is Google is big time. You know, I mean, people look for Google reviews. And so, you know, I haven't been very good at this lately, but I was, you know, asking for Google, you know, five star reviews from customers.

You know, to, build that up and get our, our rating on Google on our website too. We have just recently done, I guess you call it like a lead funnel to where you go to our main website page. Just go all the way down to the bottom. You can click and get my recommendations for like what you should look for in a custom builder. Cause we know that like people are finding us on Instagram and whatnot. We're not going to able to build for someone in Georgia or Arizona. Like we're just not set up to do that.

boutique custom builder here in Utah Valley, but they can go to our website and they can download the five main things they should look at when they're looking to build a custom home and trying to vet out a custom builder in their area. And so they have to put in their email address there and hopefully people in Utah are putting in their addresses and then we're going to start just kind of a monthly email newsletter, you know, that might just.

Jesse Sampley (29:06.966)

Some topics may not even be about home building might be, you know, the five best restaurants in Salt Lake City, you know, or just something that we can provide value and get a good email list. So when they are ready to build a custom home, they're going to think of us. Yeah. They call it lead nurturing, you know, which is I don't, a lot of people, you know, they're not going to click.

They're not going to click and open the emails, but that's not really the point. The point is that over the course of a year, I'm going to see this name as much as much as possible. I'm going to see it on my email. I'm going to see it on my social media. And I'm always going to be hearing from these people. know, they're going to be, like you said, it doesn't always have to be building related, but you they're just, you're always going to be a touch point so that when it's top of mind awareness, so that if they are in the market for something eventually, or they know of someone.

They're to be like, Hey, I don't know, but you're like, I've been hearing about, you know, Jeff and his team. They've been doing a ton of stuff, you know, maybe check them out. That's kind of so natural and people aren't even going to really are. They're not going to be able to articulate why, you know, over time, you know, sometimes people have in the form to say, Hey, how did you hear about us? A lot of times they're not even going to know, but it's, you know, they're going to have so much time and all this, all of this, you know, these little things that's just like.

I don't, I don't know why I've been just thinking of Jeff thinking about Jeff all day long. You know, if I'm thinking custom home builder, I'm thinking home builder. I'm thinking of Jeff. Why is that? You and it's, and it's, it's, you're doing really smart things, you know, and there's no accident, you know, and you're, if you stay consistent at that, it really builds a ton of momentum. It's like a snowball, you know, just build momentum over time. would say 90 % of our marketing is social media. You know, we're trying this stuff on the website and then Google like I talked about, like.

Go back to your point. I've been posting stuff on social media for five years about building homes and it's all about, like you said, being consistent. And I'm sure there's plenty of people that have unfollowed me because they're probably sick of seeing the homes that I'm building. That's fine. like most of the people it's top of mind. They know if anyone in their family is looking for a custom build, I know our name is going to get brought up and we're going to at least have a crack at it.

Jesse Sampley (31:29.003)

just because they know what I do. All my friends and family, my cousins, my previous neighbors, everyone I'm friends with on my personal social media, they see those posts and they know it's top of mind. They know what I'm doing for work now. Yeah. And that personal page will get a lot more traction than a business page. Yeah. Are you running any ads, Facebook ads, Google ads, anything like that? We currently are not. No, I just set up a call with our website developer that's going to...

Maybe talk about doing some SEO work and we have not done any Facebook or Instagram ads. are you guys looking to do for next year? Is there one, I mean, you mentioned already some SEO, possibly some ads, but anything that you've got earmarked for what you're wanting to do next year? Yeah. So a big thing that is, that is going to happen next year is we're separating out our excavation business. So we have currently been, you know,

doing all of our excavation in-house. And so that's all under estate construction and mainly for liability reasons and for bookkeeping and now I'm going to separate out the two companies and that's going to happen the first of January. I'm going to start off a new QuickBooks account. They now separate out the equipment and the employees around the excavation site to be a completely separate entity. So.

That's probably the biggest thing we have coming up. We have a lot of great spec homes that we're in the middle of that'll all sell in 2026. Two customs right now that are starting at the first of 2026 and possibly one more before the year's over. Another good year on the home building side too. you said paving shuts down. You said about halfway through building doesn't shut down.

Building does not know. mean, we're, you can usually pour concrete all throughout the whole winter. I mean, you just have to add some hot water to it and calcium maybe, and then just cover it with blankets so it doesn't freeze, but we're, you can pour concrete. The winter definitely slows it down. You know, there's, there's definitely winter conditions. It's more expensive to build through the winter just because it takes longer. And then you do have to cover concrete with blankets. There's a cost for that.

Jesse Sampley (33:48.888)

framers aren't going to work as fast if they're shoveling snow off the main floor on second floor to keep framing. A lot of times they won't show up, put the snow in and they're not showing. A little slower, but you keep that to pull up through all through the winter. Is there anything that you do that people don't see that you'd want to highlight and let people know, hey, even though you're not seeing this after the house is done, here's some things that we're doing? All the time. mean,

You know, people see the videos of the nice homes and they think it's, know, the sexiest thing to drive around and be a GC. But there's, there's just, there's a problem solving every day. I mean, we had that, that new house that we just finished up and they're maintaining sewer line like two days after they moved in, backed up, you know, at the clog almost at the street, which is a part of the sewer line that we didn't even touch.

So it their existing sewer line that we tied into. It had some tree roots growing into it. And so the water got clogged and backed up into, know, flooded a couple of rooms in their basement. Had to go through a tear out drywall and, and, know, probably do about $25,000 worth of work in this brand new home. I mean, just finished two days ago. so stuff like that happens, you know, it's why I always say,

David Windsor, if you don't follow him, you gotta look him up. He does a great job. He's got a podcast and he's a builder here at park city. He always says construction is undefeated and no matter how well you plan, no matter how good a job you do, there's always going to be issues. know, basements going to flood or you know, a guy is going to put a nail in one of the plumbing lines in the back of the cabinets and you're to have a small weak bag, whatever it is. Like there's always going to be something you gotta

You got to go back and fix and warranty. So sometimes it can be really not the sexiest in the world. And then you got to go back and tear out drywall and pull out what insulation. Then you're getting drywall splatter all over the, the nice finished closet windows. There's stuff like that happens quite often. kind of warranty do you have? So we do a standard year warranty, which, which is pretty standard here and for construction. that's.

Jesse Sampley (36:12.576)

On the entire house, a one year warranty on structural and cosmetic items. then what advice would you give someone doing the exact same thing as you, maybe not in the same state, but what, what advice would you give them? What, what things have you learned along the way so far? Yeah, I think the hardest thing is just getting started. You know, I mean, I continued on in my day job for about three years, trying to do both. And, and I think that was good for me to, to get my.

my feet underneath me before I was ready. But when I look back, I kind of wished I would have made the job sooner and just getting started, I think is the hardest thing. So if you know you can do it and you, you know, you got the itch to do it, I'd say go for it. And then to add to that, you know, don't be afraid to spend money if it's going to make you more efficient and really save you in the long run. Like one of that's implementing systems and paying for a software that's

It's going to structure your business and help you. know, you may not want to pay that few thousand dollars for that software, but it's going to save you 10 hours a week. Like how much is that really worth? You know, so don't be afraid to spend money on systems and software programs that, that can help you help your sanity. Really? You can't keep track of all this in your head. You got to have, you got to have some systems to help you out. you using a project management software? We are. Yeah. We, like using job trade.

It was kind of a new and upcoming one. We've been with them for about two years now and we're still getting better at using it every day. We use it for all of our budgeting, our scheduling, our project managers use it for their daily logs, kind of, you know, a job site, progress and pictures. And so it's, been really, really helpful that way. already mentioned that one, that one builder there in Park City, but are there other people you admire in the building world? For sure. Yeah, there's a lot of great builders here in Utah.

One that I have really followed closely in Arizona is Brad Levitt. He probably know him. He's pretty big time. I love what he's done. I'm a big fan. He has no idea who I am, but, I listened to his podcast quite often. He always has a lot of really good guests on his podcast and talks through a lot of really great points of construction and the custom home building. he's, I would consider him a mentor.

Jesse Sampley (38:34.03)

Even though I've never talked to him and he's the person before, but I love what he's doing. What about, what about their locally? You didn't think there's anyone else, you know, we're, talking to subs, we're talking to designers, architects. Is there anyone else that you think would be a good fit to be on this podcast? Just to kind of get a different perspective. It doesn't always have to be on a, custom home building side, but you know, sometimes there's a lot of good insight that comes from the subcontractors. Cause a lot of times, you know, they, they're holding onto a lot of knowledge that doesn't get released.

just because they're not really given a platform to share it all the time. Yeah. You know, just thinking about other custom builders, it's like I said, there's a lot of great ones and Raycon construction is one I look up to. Robison custom builders, RC debt construction is another great one here in Utah. Um, and there's a lot of others I'm not mentioning. Kind of jumping back to the, to the advice that you would give someone starting out, what are subcontractors you think the most

key relationship you could build starting out? Yeah, I mean, when I was on my own, just a one man show, like I still use a lot of the same subs that I was using back then. And this was back during COVID, you know, I couldn't get a call back on Footings Foundation, like forget about it. Those guys had too much work. They weren't calling back a one man show. And so it was all about finding a relationship.

someone that would respond to me and get with me. And I still use those same guys today. But you know, these are guys that I've been to battle with, you know, I, I've got the relationship with, you know, I've been given them hats for years, t-shirts, sweatshirts, know, lunch, rock stars, energy, all kinds of energy drinks. Like it's, it's those little things that build the relationship and that's everything for, for

A contractor, know, a general contractor is to have subs are going to show up. And we even talked to other builders and they're like, you know, we can't get ourselves to show up. the good builders are the ones that have the relationships and when something goes wrong, they can call us up and then they show up and come back and get it done. I've also heard this multiple times and it's exactly what you said. It's the small things. It's not having some real complicated.

Jesse Sampley (40:58.786)

you know, referral or, know, some people just like, to think it way too big. It's like, we're talking about bring them a box of pizza. Bring them some sweat, you know, just let them know that you're thinking about, but you know, a really small thing can go a long ways and to know that, you know, you always have to back. It's just like, we're always on the same team trend. If it's an issue, we're both trying to solve this together. It's not you against me. It's us against the problem.

Yeah. And I, I try and teach our project managers tech and be on site every day now to every single job. like all the project manager texts me and be like, Jeff, you know, I asked our framer to, to change up these windows and I had to make a couple of changes. Are you okay if I buy them lunch? 100%. Please order them lunch. Tell them thank you. You know, we're not asking them to do anything that we're not going to pay extra for or whatnot, but like just getting lunch goes a long way for them. And then.

The other thing that I tell a lot of our customers too is like, some people are like, we need to get three or four bids on every single trade. And I'll just tell them like, guys, we'll get a couple of bids on some things, but this is our framer and we're using him. And I already know that he's going to be competitively priced, but it's not just about price with us. It's like, who's going to show up when we need it and who's going to get the job done in the time frame that we have allotted.

Because yeah, if you want to go save 500 bucks on, on framing labor, go ahead. But if it's someone we haven't worked with before and we don't know the processes and they're going to take twice as long as what we're used to, that's really going to cost you another $10,000 of construction loan interest. Just let us use our guys that we know are going to show up for us. Not only that, but get the job done right. It's worth a lot. Yeah. Man, that's so good.

Is there anything you do for this would be more for your custom builds, but is there anything that you do to kind of commemorate the start of the build? Some people, know they'll write scriptures on the studs. They'll do a groundbreaking. there anything like that just to kind of commemorate the start of a build with your customer? know what? We need to be better about that. This last custom that we did, we invited the family out to the groundbreaking.

Jesse Sampley (43:23.894)

And with us performing the excavation, we let my husband hop in the excavator. He took the first scoop out. Nice. He was bouncing around, you know, pulling, pulling back and bouncing around pretty hard. That was really funny. We didn't kick out of it, but I think we could do better at that. You know, I see a lot of high end builders that'll break out the gold shovels and have me just go take a big out, which I think is cool. I, you know, I think we probably did a better process going for that.

Maybe something you can start doing in 2026. Yeah. No, think that's a good point. We should bring that up at our next meeting and definitely do something that's going to be memorable for them. Well, man, as we wrap up here, how can people learn more about you follow along with what you're doing? Yeah. I mean, our website is stateconstruction.com and it's, it's E S T A I T. You know, I spelled it like my last name, T A I T. You can also find us on Instagram as the name.

where we're putting out all of our content. That's the state construction on Instagram. Yeah, we're putting out a lot of stories there and they can see our almost recent build updates and progress there on Instagram. Good deal, man. Well, thank you so much. I'm looking forward to follow along too. Post any more reels of you rolling on the floor. I know my wife's gonna send them to me. Yeah, those will be few and far between, but we'll keep going, man. Jesse, thanks for making around. Appreciate you.

taking the time to get to the hospital. 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 ViridianPursuit.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.