Episode 110 - Burnout, Boundaries & the Builder Brain
#110 | Heather Tankersley | Tankersley Construction | Burnout, Boundaries & the Builder Brain
In this episode, Mark sits down with Heather Tankersley—builder, business owner, mom, and all-around powerhouse. They talk about how high-performing entrepreneurs in the trades can manage burnout, set boundaries, and protect their energy while leading growing teams and busy households. They also discuss the importance of building a company with heart, the impact of the Contractor Coalition, and why giving back to your community is just as important as turning a profit.
Listen to the full episode:
About Heather
Heather has always worked for Tankersley Construction, however she joined full time in 2019 as the Vice President of Operations. Prior to her current role, Heather managed complex electrical projects for some of the largest electrical contractors in the United States.
Resources:
Find Tankersley Construction’s Website Here
Follow Tankersley Construction on Instagram here
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Heather Tankersley 00:04
Ian, I always joke about how like everybody should whether you take whether you are gonna own a business or anything like you should take a business, like the business minor should be required for everybody, because at the end of the day, like you need to know, like, what's Profit Loss, right? How, like, what is overhead costs? Like, you need to know these things. Because even if you're not gonna own the business, but you're gonna be employee, right, that could be the difference of knowing, hey, is this company solvent? Am I gonna have a job here? Like, are we making money? Like, is the company making money? Like, I don't need to know the net, but you should probably at least understand what the costs are, no matter where you work or what that looks like. So I think I like your idea of just life 101, I think that would be I think it might help a lot of people today.
Mark D. Williams 00:53
In the careers builder podcast, we had Heather tankers Lee on the podcast, and we got a great podcast. We've known each other for a few years, since we met at the contractor coalition, and really dove into how our business has changed since we met a couple years ago. What is the value of your personal brand, and really the value of scaling a company, and what? How do you hope to sell it or not sell it to your children without further ado? Here's Heather Tankersley. Welcome to curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host today, I'm joined with Heather Tankersley out at Sacramento, California, with tankers Lee construction, her and her husband own remodeling, a new home company out there. And welcome to the show, Heather. Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to have you on we've known each other for a couple of years. We first met at the contractor coalition down in Huntington Beach, and with Brad and Morgan and Nick, I talk a lot about that and what it's done for my career, and just some of the things that we've done. So I thought that'd be good place for us to start. You've been on so many podcasts that most people know your story will obviously do a brief intro at some point, but let's go when we first met, you know what? What drew you to the contractor coalition? Why did you and Steve go down
Heather Tankersley 01:55
there? Yeah, definitely. Well, you are very easy to spot there because you were the guy to ask 4000 questions. So of course, you had to come up and talk to the guy. To the guy who was asking 4000 questions. So, but yeah, we met Brad through social media, and then come to find out we had a lot in common with our commercial construction background. We actually kind of put it together that the company I used to work for him and his dad, a few years way before he ever started, had actually worked for that company, so we had actually known some of the higher ups and leadership. Oh, wow. So it was interesting that we had a lot of parallels. I came from an electrical background, that's what Stan did. So it was already knew Brad, and it was like, Okay, we got to go check this out. Brad was such a resource for us before contractor coalition even started. And so it's like, okay, well, we got to support our friend. We want to go check out this kind of cool mix of people that he's got going here. And so it was such a cool vibe, and it was just a great energy room to be in. So
Mark D. Williams 02:52
I actually had no idea who Brad was. I didn't even know, actually, I didn't know who Morgan was. I didn't know who anybody was. My wife manages our social media account. We actually just recently hired a company to take care of it, because she has a full time because she has a full time job, and she's a mom of three, and just busy with all the stuff. And anyway, it was like, now it's what's been three years since the first contractor coalition in Nashville, and then the Huntington Beach one was in that fall, and she's like, I think you would really enjoy all these people. I just feel like, how much my life has changed since that one pivotal event, but especially because I didn't know anybody there. I
Heather Tankersley 03:22
thought, for some reason, I thought you and Morgan had the same background, like both being
Mark D. Williams 03:26
I didn't even know who she was. I called her. I've talked about this. It's been a while now since I've talked about it, but I because it was not an inexpensive journey, right? And I remember calling her and be like, I don't learn by people sitting up in front and just talking for three days, like I just, if that's what this is, I don't want to be a part of it, not for any con. It's just that's not how I learn. I need to ask questions. That was her anyway. She said no. And her going line was, you'll make your money back in the first hour. And she was right. The first hour was all about contracts, and Nick and Tyler talk all about it. So much right now, in the modern craftsman about pre construction agreements so important. And I think I started doing pre construction agreements maybe seven, eight years ago, so I was familiar with it. I had just it was a little nuance where I used to credit that PSA agreement to the contract. And Nick brought up, he's like, No, you're giving away free money. You're doing work for free. No wonder you sign that so often. And even now, I still have a hard time untraining My brain to like, think like, that's normal, and not that you can't negotiate your with your clients. Sometimes they negotiate it back in but anyway, just little things like that. But anyway, that was, yeah, I didn't know who Morgan was. I met her for the first time in Nashville, and then now we, we talk and see each other all the time. That's
Heather Tankersley 04:36
awesome. I love that. I think that's what's the best part about being a part of that group. And it's like, once you're in, it doesn't matter if you were the first attendee or you've done the latest, it's like you're in it. I don't know if I want to call it a colt, but let's go with fraternal organization. Yes, there you go. It sounds a little more PG, exactly. You're part of it, right? You're in the family. You're in the know. It's like, Hey, if you came and you put yourself out there, it's like you got to know all these people. And. So I think that's what's so cool about that.
Mark D. Williams 05:02
What are some things that you learned that you've applied now? If you were to look back three years ago and say, Where were you at as a company, then to where you're at now, and what are some of the things that you applied? Because Don't you feel like sometimes you're at these classes or seminars and you and maybe you're more organized than I am, but like, I write down pages and pages of notes. But then you come back and you're like, back into your regular job and putting out all the normal fires that I consider that any owner does much less construction owner and then, but I find like, for me, like it just sits in the back of my head, and then after a year, you sit down, and you actually ended up doing a lot of the things that you wrote down, because they were just living rent free in your head. And me, anyway, it was just kept going through on the washing cycle, and eventually would make its way into our operations, or make it our way into our marketing meetings, where I would just make changes how mine was more just organic, sort of bleed in. What was your process to adopt new information or new technologies or new ideas into your company? I
Heather Tankersley 05:58
like that. I think we were the same way in that there's things that you hear, you're like, oh my gosh, that's so overwhelming. Or when, how am I going to implement that? And I think hearing it, taking it in, saying, okay, that's probably something we should do, but we need to figure out where that's the right opportunity. So I think for us, one of the biggest things we did is just having the template, I would say to maybe, like, do the things we know we need to do. Labor burden, for example, that's a we all need to do it right. We knew what ours were, but we did not have this, like, elaborate spreadsheet. And so it's like we got access to that. And I dove into Nick's labor burden spreadsheet, and I tweaked it, and I made my own. And then I think, I think I've edited like 70% but I think is, no, I've recreated and tweaked it to my own, but it was just having that place to, like, jump off from. I think that was, like, the first thing I came back and did, and then it's just been these other resources that we've been able to pull from as we've grown as a company. So before that, when we were in Huntington Beach, we were getting ready to start our first new build, and so we had primarily been in just the residential remodeling, and we had not done a ground up construction. So for us, it was interesting going from remodeling to new build. I think it's harder for people to go from a new build to a remodel, because you're trained to you've inherited other people's mistakes, problems, whatever they've done in a build. So you know how to pivot on the fly a new build that's your own problems. You can't blame it on anyone else, exactly. So I think for us, it was interesting just pulling together some of the resources that we might need for the new build, and then where we wanted to go as a company, and what jobs we wanted to do and what kind of work we wanted to chase, and then knowing the right people to have on our team, the right consultants, the right experts that we might need in that field, that we could call and run a detail by them. Of, hey, we want to do this net zero type house. What would we need? Where should we start for this? Who should be our consultants? So that, I think, is the one of the bigger things that we're seeing now, almost two and a half years later, that are still twofold, right? Like Mark Levitt has come out to Sacramento, and we've met with him on, consulted with him on a few of our jobs. We met him in Huntington Beach, so that, I think, is like the I want to call it the gift that keeps on giving. But it is that connection that you made that now can apply to projects that weren't even on a radar two years ago. I
Mark D. Williams 08:32
think one of the things about having aspirational friendships and builders around the country that you can model their behavior or see what they do, or resources. I There's a lot of cons to social media, but there's so many pros as well, right? And to your point is like, do you get now when you go to the international builder show, I sometimes have a hard time understanding, like, do I just follow these people and know them, or have I actually met them in person? Because you see people's feeds show up so often on your own feed that you sometimes lose touch? Do you have that? Does that happen to you too?
Heather Tankersley 09:01
I think a little bit too, right? You like Converse so much, commenting on their work, or, oh my gosh, some funny reel that they did that it's now. You're like, oh my gosh, yeah. Like, I finally get to meet you in person. Or you're like, holy cow. You feel like you really know them because you've had this chance to interact with them on some day to day items, right?
Mark D. Williams 09:19
Yeah. But anyway, going back to the your network is just so much bigger, because you can ask people, or you see stuff, or Nick will post. In fact, I just got an email today. We don't use or I don't use, are you familiar with stego? They're like an underlayment underneath your foundation. And Nick just did a big Actually, today's bot, or today, his post today was, it's like this green membrane. It's all natural. And we're doing our first spec home in 16 years right now. And it just happened to it just happened to get an email from the stego rep saying, Hey, I'm following up on an email. I don't recall previous email. It's a pretty common cold email line, but I'm like, Hey, it's your lucky day. I literally just saw a video, and I want we're doing this home that's all based on wellness. I said, this is you hit the me on the perfect day. I said, let's talk. And so anyway, the point is, like that all came because I've seen it applied somewhere else, with someone else that I trust, and now here you have a company. It's just kind of funny how small the world gets. I don't know, maybe it's always been that way, but it just more. You can remark on it now, because it's like, as you age in your career, it just seems to happen more and more often.
Heather Tankersley 10:19
Yes, everybody it's it's crazy how much it like folds over. And even though we're so geographically far apart there, the industry is not that big. I think that's what it just it ties it back to that you already know it, but it just puts it even smaller. I think, you
Mark D. Williams 10:35
know, Morgan used to always say, Your vibe attracts your chive. I've said that so many times, and you actually were just, we just we just had a podcast, what, two weeks ago, and it was the 75 hard recap. And so for those that haven't listened to that episode, we got a group of builders, maybe, what, 1215 of us that started. And anyway, we just stayed together every, every, every day we would send each other a text of what we were doing for workout, and you and your husband were doing it. And it was really fun. If you want to listen to that deep dive. We talk all about mental health and wellness and all the things that we did and lessons learned in that particular one. But one of the things I wanted to bring up in this podcast was you guys are a husband and wife team. And one of the things that Steve mentioned in that recap was he really enjoyed that for your second 45 minute workout, you guys would go for a long walk together, maybe after dinner, sometimes the kids would be there. Sometimes they want and it was a way for you guys to connect, both personally, sometimes on work as well. I was just curious, it's been three months since we finished 75 hard. Is that a habit that you guys have kept as part of your daily routine?
Heather Tankersley 11:32
It has actually, yeah, we've kept to it, but we're still doing our walks at night. We're maybe a little fair weather now that if it's raining, we won't go, whereas 75 hard, it's like, you gotta go, right? But no, we've, we've kept that up. I think it's such a great outlet for us to be able to connect and figure out what's going on, and just circle up when it comes to the kids and business and what happened today, and just all the the recap that, I think, as a byproduct of 75 hard, we've transferred over to our marriage and business partners, and being able to connect on that and making it intentional. But also it's something that we both feel better afterwards, too. Especially I carry maybe some stress from the end of the day, and I'm still flustered about it. I'm worked up about it. It's like, okay, went through a walk. We talked it through all right. Now I
Mark D. Williams 12:20
feel better. Walk it out. Walk it out. It reminds me, actually, I don't know if this ever happened to you, it just comes back to me now, we had a long road to our home that I grew up in, and when my mom would pick us up as kids, if we didn't take the bus, or whatever the bus, it was about a mile walk to our house. And anyway, if my mom would pick us up from school and we were fighting, she would say, she'd say, get out the car. You got to walk home. And I remember my sister and I would walk on opposite sides of the roads all the way up to our house, but then by the end of it, we usually we'd figure out what we were fighting about it, brother and sister, and by the end we but it was pretty wise advice. Now, my driveway is like 10 feet. I live in the city, so I can't really do that to my kids. But anyway, the point is sometimes just walking it out a little physical exertion, and just allows to walk off the stress of the day. I think that's great. When we had little babies, we used to do that all the time. We'd have dinner and then we'd push the stroller. And I used to do a lot of running in the afternoon, and so I used to run with I'd come home, grab May when she was a little one, throw her in the stroller and just run around the lake. So all my kids are like stroller running babies.
Heather Tankersley 13:18
So same. I We did the same when we lived in town, we did the same our kids, like, grew up, like napping in the stroll I swear that's the only way that they napped for the first, like, two years of their life, was if we put them in a stroller. And since then, we've moved to the country, and we're on 10 acres. And so where we're at now is basically like, okay, let's traverse the property, or we traverse somewhere along the bottom of our road that we're able to go back and forth on, but now we just have the, let's make sure we bring pepper spray and no mountain lions.
Mark D. Williams 13:46
Oh, that's funny. We used to have, we had a cabin in Montana, so we'd have pepper spray for the bears, but the mountain lions were not a big deal. Is that? I mean, it's a pretty common and in California to have a lot of mountains where
Heather Tankersley 13:57
we're at, we're more towards Sierra, Nevada is going towards Tahoe. And so, yeah, there's a pretty big amount online population up
Mark D. Williams 14:03
there. I was just, I was out there last summer. I went to visit my sister. She was managing one of the forests out there near Truckee, and so I did some training in it's not called Squaw Valley anymore. It's been renamed. What's the new name of the ski resort there? Anyway, anyway. But it's beautiful, beautiful country. How? What are you guys from California? How did you guys end up in Sacramento? Yeah,
Heather Tankersley 14:22
so I'm originally from Sacramento. I grew up here, and I went to school in the Bay Area. Moved back after college. Steve grew up just outside of Silicon Valley in Morgan Hill, California, and he went to Sac State for school, and so we met when he was still in college, after I had finished school, and we met on a construction site. So did you really we did, yeah. So I worked for an electrical contractor. He worked for an general contractor, and we ended up running a job together. My co worker was like, You should go on a date with him. He's cute. I was like, I don't know, but he eventually won me over. I went on a date, and that was it. We're coming up. Ian that will be married 13 years this year. Oh, man, we're
Mark D. Williams 15:01
gonna have to get Steve's side of the story of here, because it's gonna be like, love and construction. This is, like, this is made for Netflix right here,
Heather Tankersley 15:08
right? I know that's what everyone says. They're like, Oh, you guys need a show. I'm like, Absolutely not. Like, I'm out. That's not, that's not my gig. But yeah, we and even when we first met, I don't think it was ever, it was always on Steve's radar to want to own a company that was never really on my radar. Nor did I think I was going to be a business owner that I didn't see that on my my life bingo card. But it's as you've as you've gone on, and we're almost eight years in now. It's definitely, I think, where, personally, for myself, where I needed to be. I just took a long time. It was a long road and journey to get here.
Mark D. Williams 15:43
How are you were working on? Was it a hospital or it was a nonprofit you put? I should have known before the interview, I meant to look it up, and I forgot the you guys just posted some work that you were doing. I was at a commercial building, or what is that project that I just saw probably a month ago?
Heather Tankersley 15:56
Yeah, we've done, we do a little bit of commercial work. We do it mostly on referral base. So we did last year we finished what you saw was our moonshine project. And it was actually a pretty high end salon with both, like nail hair an event space to rent out, but they had a full bar, which is the first in California that has a full bar liquor license. But they their really mission behind it is that they really wanted to be able to have higher wages within that industry. And so we actually knew the owners. They knew. We knew them from our commercial construction days. And so they have this great mission of wanting, there's a lot of human trafficking associated with that particular industry. So a lot of their big push was wanting to be able to have higher sustainable wages give back to that industry. So it was a really cool mission. It was really cool project. We finished that last year. This year, our commercial project is for the Rancho Cordova Community Food Hub, so it'll be the first of its kind in California, and it is local. We our office is in Rancho Cordova. The Jobs about five minutes from our office. And so they're actually doing a full build out right now, the Rancho Cordova food locker, they actually just serve out of a church parking lot. And so they have to manage all their donations, limited resources from this basic place of this rented space they have through various grants that they've gotten within the state of California, they actually were able to purchase a building, and now we're going to go through, we actually start next month, full rehab transportation. But the model is that they basically modeled it off of a grocery store. So people will be able to come in, they'll be able to shop for the food that they want. Make it a little bit more of a humanitarian aspect of coming in to shop for your food when you're in a place of need for meal services, those kind of things, and rather than this kind of cattle call of like, Here's your food in a bag or in a box, and just making it this very human approach to what's probably already a hard situation of being okay with lining up for food services.
Mark D. Williams 18:02
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Heather Tankersley 19:24
Yeah, it's going to be an amazing project. And we actually, we took our kids and we came and we passed out food, and we packaged food at Christmas time. And it was so interesting watching my children's perspective of packing this food and then putting this together, of like, were they made their six and nine, and so they are packing all these bags. And my littlest is packing two at a time, and he's so into it. He's like, Mom, he's like, I put together 50 bags, right? And the director there is telling us, like, tomorrow we'll pass out 5000 of these. Like, that's insane. And for. Him, he's like, I'm so proud that I made 50. And it's like, that'll be like, it's like in reality, but like that, those will be gone in like, less than two minutes. And so for him, it's like, just this need. And so it was so cool for us to be able to share that with our kids and to see that and just goes back to what our core values were are within our company, but then personally, of being able to give back to our community. And so for us, we're working with a bunch of great partners to come in to help take off some of that financial burden that the community food hub is paying for the project. And so it's just, it's a good piece, and I think it's always a good reminder of we do a lot of really cool projects, we build a lot of amazing things and a lot of high end products. But I think there's also this other side of building that if we can help in the ways that we can, let's do that.
Mark D. Williams 20:46
And I think every industry, or not every industry, I should say every area, has different associations. We have in Minnesota, we have something called housing first, and they have a non profit arm that helps a village for veterans. And there's different opportunities to serve in your local market. And I think the biggest thing is still time. I mean, yes, you need money, but time is always a big one. And I think it's always neat when you can have your children be involved and show it to them. Right now, just listening to you talk about it makes me inspired to see what else I can do with the kids. We have something coming up here in a couple months called The Joy collaborative. His name is Mark Ostrom. He's been on the podcast before, and I think in Minnesota, there's 66,000 children with life limiting disabilities, and basically every month they have a fundraiser, a charity outreach. And so last year we did it. This year we're doing it again, where we'll do something at one of our past homes. And some of our past homeowners are pretty generous with their time and their space. And so we're going to host an event at one of the homes that we've built. Let people do a home tour, tour. We'll do some games. We'll invite kids hear stories, and again, just a way to try to use the homes and the things that we're active in our community, whether it's building and providing it or showcasing a home to draw people in for a good cause. I just, I agree with you that the home is so fundamental to the American to anybody's dream, forget the American dream, but anybody's dream having a home. And I think it's really important to highlight I think as builders, sometimes we do it, we get in the grind and we forget what an incredible thing that we're a part of and what we're doing. And I do like to highlight it whenever I can, to take a time out and say, Hey, if you're a builder, bring your right hand up and slap your back, because you know you're doing something that's very, very needed in this country. Completely.
Heather Tankersley 22:19
I always tell my team, it's like, people are passionate about two things, their homes and their kids. We have one of them, like, we need to keep that in mind, right? It's like, you think about things that people get energized about, or possessive about, or worrisome. It's the most somebody's financial asset, potentially. And so I always try to keep that in perspective. When things get heated or elevated, or clients not happy with us. It's like, well, why? It's like, this is one of the biggest assets.
Mark D. Williams 22:45
Yeah, no, absolutely. You had mentioned, I think you're really involved with your community. You won an award recently 40 under 40 for Sacramento. Was that? Is that just for business owners in general? Or how did that award come about?
Heather Tankersley 22:58
Yeah, so the Sacramento Business Journal recognizes outstanding leaders in the area. You have to be nominated and tipped by somebody and the individual who nominates you, basically. Why do you deserve to be featured as somebody who's under 40 that's an influential person within their community? And so it's the basis of voting and submission is collaboration within your community service, what you've built, if you've built a business, or where you may be excelled in your career, you don't just have to be a business owner. And so it's a pretty prestigious award, and it's they had over hundreds of applicants every year. So I feel I was very honored to be recognized last year was not something that was anticipating, and it was a cool milestone, especially growing up here in Sacramento, and then having, oh, two fold, and having people who get the business journal publication, and we're like, Hey, I know you, or I went to high school with her, that kind of thing. So it was interesting.
Mark D. Williams 23:53
Yeah, that's funny. She's a business owner. Wait, how did Yeah, that? It was always funny when you get articles published about you, or however they come about, obviously, as we're into marketing and trying to promote our brand and our business. We had, we recently had a Sonny Bowman on and she owns a lumber company here locally, and she said something that was really investment sticking in my brain. She said, basically, talking about yourself isn't bragging, it's promoting your brand. And I just thought that was an interesting turn of events. And she was just talking about being women in construction, and just like, I want to, I want people to use my company because I'm the best at what we do based on merit. Is during COVID, they had her in front of pictures of lumber yards behind her, because it was a good photo op to talk about COVID pricing. And she's like, I've now understood that I can lean into being a woman who happens to be an owner that also happens to be a great at a business owner. I can do all of those things. And I'm really just promoting my brand. I'm just curious one of the reasons I love to bring husband and wife teams on, or what pretty much everyone is just to talk about their story and how they understand their personal brand. How do you use awards like 40 under 40 or the other building, awards that you and Steve have won together? How do you balance promoting your own personal brand, your. Company, brand, because at the end of the day, like, you want people to know that you're very accomplished, you're very good, but like, you're not doing it for accolades. You're doing it because you want people to know that they can trust you to be their partner on their project. How do you balance that?
Heather Tankersley 25:16
That's a hard one. I think Steve is much better at this than I am. I am the person that always puts it back to the team, and the team's done this, and I have, I have a hard time putting it back on myself. That's just not really in my nature. I don't love being the center of attention when it comes to that kind of stuff. Steve's much better at being able he jokes about, like, tooting his own horn, or that, you know, if you don't toot your own horn, nobody's gonna hear your music, or something along those lines. Oh, I like that. I think a lot of it for us is putting out what we do, and then your your client sees that you're that name we I can't tell you how many people are like, do you know so and so Tankersley? And it's like, no, it's actually a pretty common name. And people, we get it all the time. It's like, do you know Scott Tankersley? No, I have no idea who that is. Oh, I went to high school with them. I've, they're like, I just remember that name. It's very funny. And so it adds to that brand piece for us unintentionally, when we couldn't get creative and name it anything else, but it's, it's helpful, I think, for clients to see that you do care about what you do, right? You're willing to put it out there, you put it on social media, you submit for awards, you do all these things because you want them to see what you can do. I think it also is a transparency aspect of it, right? I'm not gonna, I'm here in the community. I'm around like, my standard is always, if I run into at the airport, is it gonna be weird? Is it gonna be weird and I'm going to be wanting to hide behind a bag somewhere. Be Right. So it's always like, do the right thing, and you never want somebody to not be happy with what you did at the end of the day. And so I just try to say that we put those things out there so that clients can know that we're here. We stand behind our product. We're going to be around, we'll be around here to warranty your project. We're not going to drive away, and you're never going to see us again, and you can't get us to come back because you have a problem on your project.
Mark D. Williams 27:04
That reminds me, actually, of a warren buffett quote I saw recently where he was talking about, he does famous for his letters, but I think he talks to his managers. And I think the letter went something, paraphrasing it like this, that he would write a letter to his managers every couple of years, and he said, and we could, we can afford to lose money. We can even afford to lose a lot of money, but we can't afford to lose a single shred of our reputation. Fight for your reputation. And he said, if you're wondering what to do, just imagine that your email, your comment, your interaction, is going to be on the front cover of The New York Times journal or whatever. And if you're comfortable with that, then I'll probably be comfortable with it too, and I just anyway, it speaks a little bit to what you said be I think when you're authentic in all parts of your life, it just makes it a lot easier. I used to joke that I told my wife, because I repeat myself a lot, evidently, and and I said, but is it a nice to know that I repeat I say the same thing? And she doesn't find this nearly as humorous as I do, but I guess where I'm going with this is like when you don't have to remember what you say, because you say the same things, or as you show up with your clients, you show up in public or the your mission core values, I think so. The reason sometimes it's hard for us to create mission values for a company is because most business owners and founders, they are their company, Tinker sleeve construction, Mark Williams, custom homes, on and on it goes. I don't know why we always thought it was a great idea to that's a separate conversation. Maybe later in the podcast we can talk about things we would have named our company. But it doesn't change the fact that we are as leaders of your company, Heather and Steve, you guys embodies you. And so therefore, like the things that are the most unique about you come out in the company. And I think that's what I found as I interview you know business owners. The thing that I'm most interested in is their stories, and each story's a little bit different, and each company's run a little bit different, because news flash, everyone's a little bit different. And I think that's what makes it unique. I think that's the unique selling proposition as well, because there are other people that do good work. You do good work, but what's the experience? What's the journey like? Who do you want to spend the next couple years of your life with and that ends up coming back more to your core values. I think that's why you feel like you hear core values and mission statement more now than you ever heard it your entire life. I feel like everyone's talking about it right now. I definitely feel
Heather Tankersley 29:13
like there's this push to have it. And you know what? It's not just this piece that you put on your website, and I think it ties back to like company culture as well. And we did this exercise about, Gosh, I think it's like a year and a half ago now. And so we had a facilitator come in, and he sat with Steve and I for a couple hours, and we came up with our vision. And so we drafted our vision. It was like four statements, four sentences for what the vision overall is for the company, and that we want to make this we want to be a leader in our industry. We want to be one of the top performers in terms of a place to work, advancement in career, upholding safety and the overall professional development of the individuals who work here. And so the team got to come in, and they saw what we drafted, and then it was. Okay, this isn't just the mission. Now the team's gonna make the vision and see that was the vision. Now they're gonna make the mission. So it was interesting, because then we all sat down as a team and we made the mission, and it was two sentences long, and it was perfect, and it fit, and it still fits. And I think what really embodies that, and I thought about it as the people who have been here longer and we have a longer tenure now we've been in business longer. The people that have been here long, the longest, and have thrived working here are people that make that mission, that it's not a stretch for them to do that. That's not it's who they are, and it mimics what we do. And so I think, as a team and a culture, it's really easy for everybody to be on the same path and rowing in the same direction, because the that mission isn't something you're having to force out of people. You're not having to pull it out of like, Hey, this is what we do. Or if you have to question it, I always tell my employees, it's like, if you have to question it, or you have to call me and be like, ah, should we do that? You already know the answer. The answer is, Heather's gonna say exactly what you already said. No, if you're questioning it
Mark D. Williams 31:02
again, I feel like you could also, you could also be talking to your children with that statement.
Speaker 1 31:06
Yes, I probably could. I could be like, what is mom gonna say? Come on, how
Mark D. Williams 31:10
old is your oldest? Again? My oldest is nine. Nine. Okay, it was funny because we haven't aired the episode, but we did over Christmas break, or whatever break it was, I had my daughter interview. Your kids are a little bit and it was mainly just for practice, but it was really as parents, it was just fun to watch them interview each other as who would. If nothing else, I should send you. I was trying to figure out, like, how to make it fit within the constructs of the business or the podcast, so that it wasn't just, I'm sure you and I would listen to it. But does anyone else want to listen to our kids chitter chatter? But it was still pretty sweet, and I think so I think you have so many small businesses that are family owned. I feel like a lot of businesses are very familiar. It just there has there's a lot of the representation of the company seems to follow a family structure, at least it does for us. I don't know if you feel that way. I
Heather Tankersley 31:55
do, and I'd so much about and it's not just my family, it's my employees family. It's what are they doing? What? What can we do with their school fundraiser we can donate to? Right? Does your daughter, who's a sophomore, need some work experience, right? What's her summer look like? Does she want to come in the office and work for a couple hours, learn something that she could take on to future employment, of how to show up on time, how to be a good employee? And so it's not just about, well, my kids get to experience being the kids of business owners. There's also, what can I give back to help my employees and their kids, right? And sometimes
Mark D. Williams 32:30
I would imagine I haven't thought about until you just said it. And my kids are still pretty young, so that they haven't really been involved at all with the company, other than some marketing stuff, running around the job sites and me getting videos of them. But as they get older, having their friends be apart, because I would imagine a lot of people, their parents or they're not exposed directly to people that are business owners, or at least a business that they could easily, you know, summer work and things like that. Work ethic, most of us in the construction industry anyway, at least for me, I grew up sweeping the floors and cleaning out the studs before insulation, or just doing general cleanup, or whatever it might be. It doesn't have to be anything special. It's really but it's empowering. I think I've had a few people, a few kids, that have said, hey, could I shadow you for the day? And you don't really even have to have a plan to them. It's all just a new experience. And I think we've done different things to try to showcase that. We did this thing recently, where I guess it was last summer. Now I want to do it for every tear down I do where it's actually a good marketing idea too, but I that's where it started with. I'll send a letter to an area where we do a tear down, and I'll say, hey, appreciate your patience in advance. We're going to be tearing a home down and building a new home in the community. By the way, if there's any children under the age of eight, we're going to be doing two site visits with little kids, because little kids love construction probably more than anybody. And at the digging day who doesn't want to get a chance to sit in an excavator come get photos, that kind of thing. So we do a couple different opportunities where kids can come to the job site. It's also a great way for the parents to come. And so I think you can do a win win there. And so we're still playing around with what that looks like. We did one where we did like a scavenger hunt at Ruffin phase, but I made the questions a little too complicated, and the kids were a little too little, and so I had to, I had an audible on that one a little bit, but we had a great time. And I've made these little, these little plastic hard hats that you can get for 20 cents or whatever. And anyway, the kids had a ball. So if nothing else, I had a great time. I
Heather Tankersley 34:16
love that. I think that's so cool. I love that aspect of bringing him in to see that and be a part of it. And I, my perspective now, is a child of business owners and growing up in a business, and it was expected. I You came to the office and I stuffed envelopes back when all the bills only went in the mail. And so I grew up that way. And I My first job was at my parents company, and I did accounts receivable, and I took I answered the phone. I remember being 16, and would take a service call and figure out how to book it. And so it's you, it's shapes you so much that in the it looks like such a minor piece of this time, but in my perspective now, it really made me a really good employee, and it really. My parents, it's like your employee, you're expected to be here on time, you're you're gonna get a paycheck, you're gonna get taxes taken out, like all the normal things that you're gonna have to do, but you might as well experience it now before you get out in the real world. And I think if you have that opportunity to to help somebody else with that, it just gives them such a leg up.
Mark D. Williams 35:16
I think the the child like thing of learning. I know a lot of schools have talked a little bit about it, blah, at least when I there were shop class, there was home ec class when I was a kid. And now it sounds like a lot of schools don't have either one of those things, which is very sad. And so how do we, if anything? And I'm not, this isn't meant to be a political show, but I was thinking, like, Wouldn't it be fun if you had a class called, like, life 101, and you would bring in, like, a parent or a business owner, like, once a week you'd have a three hour thing, like, I could come in and talk about I mentioned the other day, what are, like, three things that are probably the most important respond when people call you, call them back. Not really that difficult. Like, open doors for old ladies and for women and like, say please and thank you. These are things that just being a good human revolves around, much less a business owner. But it's funny how even those basic things like you mentioned about where you learn some of this stuff, like, I learned that from my parents and you like, we have an opportunity to teach or model or adopt people into the business to try to train them new skills. And I'm not, I don't need to be everyone's parent. That's not where I'm going with this. But just life lessons. And going back to the school analogy of life lessons, it would be so fun, like balancing a checkbook, or how would you if you were to write out a schedule for building a house? What would it look like? Or just simple stuff? And I think kids would love that. What? Who wouldn't want to get and you could bring in people from all kinds of industries. It'd be fascinating, like an airplane mechanic, or, I don't know, I think that would be such a fun class. I can't imagine someone not wanting to sign up for life. 101,
Heather Tankersley 36:42
yeah. And just, I always joke about how, like, everybody should whether you take, whether you are going to own a business, or anything, like you should take a business, like your business minor should be required for everybody, because at the end of the day, like you need to know, like, what's profit and loss, right? How, like, what is overhead costs? Like, you need to know these things, because even if you're not going to own the business, but you're going to be employee, right, that could be the difference of knowing, hey, is this company solvent? Am I going to have a job here? Like, are we making money? Like, is the company making money? Like, I don't need to know the net, but you should probably at least understand what the costs are, no matter where you work or what that looks like. So I think I like your idea of just life 101, I think that would be, I think it might help a lot of people. I'm
Mark D. Williams 37:25
thinking of like a way to this podcast is going off the rails with ideas here. But there was one where I read somewhere with my little kids in daycare, and it was across the street from a nursing home facility, and they, I think, like, once a quarter, they would do a field trip over to the nursing home, which I thought was so cool. As older people, you'd love to see younger people just so much life and vibrancy, and it's good for them to mix. But I've heard of some situations where they actually have daycares within nursing homes, which is genius, because you have this interaction of these multiple generations that get to learn from each other and help each other. And I just feel in the world that we're in, which is construction, there's so much knowledge that is leading the industry just based on demographics of you know, what is it like? 10,000 baby boomers are retiring every day, and there's so much great knowledge that is in those minds to talk to people about it and to learn from them. I think, like some of the other trade programs, like electricians have the journeyman program, and like some of these trades, I think the reason that I think that their onboarding is so successful when people want to go through the program is like they have a very defined I don't know if it's union or if they also have it for just your general electric license, but I just I like that idea of journeyman. It doesn't seem like you hear a lot about that anymore. Even though we're in an industry where it should be very common. It seems like everyone has to sort of re learn everything if they don't already know it. They got to learn from scratch, or you and I are left doing it where I feel like if we had a more established way to pass on that knowledge, that would be really helpful to not only our industry, but honestly, most industries.
Heather Tankersley 38:51
Oh yeah, I think that's I think that would be huge
Mark D. Williams 38:55
along those lines. Have you and Steve talked at all about your children someday being involved with the business? Do you guys have any I know it's a long ways off right now, but now, but have you even thought about what that looks
Heather Tankersley 39:06
like for us? It's interesting because we've we were part of a peer mentoring group, and we saw so many people who had companies that they either were holding on to their kids or they were transitioning, or the the children already taken over, and they weren't as successful. And so we saw that, and our baseline has always been, go out. This was our dream. You do your dream, right? If that is it, you want to do a construction company that is great. You have a lot of great resources. We have. Could be a great advisory board to you, but you need to do it, because this was our dream, and again, having parents who also owned a business, that was something my parents always said that you don't, you're not going to take this over. You need to have your own ideas, thoughts of what you want to do that's going to drive you. I'm not going to saddle you to something that I made. So we've never said, We've never told the kids, like, this is yours. Like it's your for you to take. Over if that's not in our long term plan either for Steve and I because, and ultimately, I don't want them to feel obligated if you want to do that great. I think it'll be way better if you go work for somebody else and then start your own versus coming in and thinking you're going to run it at 25
Mark D. Williams 40:22
Ian This episode is brought to you by adaptive. If you're still chasing checks and juggling spreadsheets, it's time to upgrade. Adaptive is revolutionizing how builders get paid with AI powered bill pay, automated draws, one click payments and built in lien waivers, Faster Payments, fewer headaches and total visibility. Adaptive takes care of the back end chaos, so you can focus on what you do best, building. We've used adaptive for two and a half years, and trust them to keep our projects moving and payments flowing. Learn more at Adaptive dot build and simplify the Pay Process today. For more information, you can also listen to episode 10 and episode 15, and we've had a number of multi generational business owners on. One of them was, I think, episode like five Mark shear his they're, I think, a four or five generation lumber yard, and they actually have something where you have to work somewhere else for three to five years or get a major promotion before you're even allowed to work for the company. I know there's a lot of companies that do that. I had the Marvin family on and for the window company. And they had a similar thing, I think, and then you had to determine whether, by, I think it was like 33 whether you wanted to be you're either in or you're out in terms of the family structure. And so I just think it's, I like the idea of new ideas, but you have to, they want you to go out and get ideas. And I've always heard that, like from the first to second generation is one of the hardest bridges, because so much that goes into generating it is really that that's what makes you successful, that struggle to figure it out, those all the things that you learn, not in school, but just learn by doing it and making a lot of mistakes, frankly, like making a lot of mistakes, I look back and it's almost comical at how many mistakes I've made. And I think the biggest thing that Don't you think the biggest thing as entrepreneurs, you tell people is like, Brad Robinson often says this, and now I quote him all the time, which is, if you're going to fail, fail fast. He said that was a superpower, failing fast. And then when he talked about he's it made a lot of sense, he's like, Well, if you fail fast, you can fix it fast, but if it takes you a long time to fail, it's going to be a long way to fix it in this quick fixing cycle. Can learn a lot, yeah, oh, it is painful. There's no I think I use this quote all the time that parenting is a contract with failure. I think being a business owner is a contract for failure too, because as an entrepreneur, you're basically, you keep on finding new ways to fail, then fixing it and getting better. And that's just, that's what being an entrepreneur is all about. Do you for the you'd mentioned, your kind of, your long term plan? Have you guys thought about, how long is that even on the radar? How long you guys, what is the end goal for you guys?
Heather Tankersley 42:50
I think for us, long term is, I think we're all for us. It's really like ramping up for what we want to get in in terms of the types of builds we want to do the revenue. We want to be at our team structure. We're really focused on the team and like, where our team's going. We have a really young team in terms of our lead carpenters, my site superintendent, my PMS. Like all of us are relatively close to the same age, so we have a long runway in terms of how long we could want to work. So for me, I really look at it as like, Where does the team want to go? And how do we do that, and how do we scale to where we want to get from revenue? Steve always jokes that he wants it where he could come in and sell a couple jobs, and then he could be able to go and do what he wants to do. And I think eventually we will get there. But there's so much of like, our heart that we're putting into it and building the business that I don't see that end date anywhere in sight for me, because I like what I do, I like my job, I think maybe just the the kid aspect, and being a parent, right? And just being able to balance all that. Sometimes, some days are easier than others. So for me, it's always like, Okay, can I give everything I want to my business? And does my family get? You know what they need? And it's always a trade off. It's always an internal struggle. But I think as long as I can balance those two appropriately, I want to keep growing
Mark D. Williams 44:07
what and when you say, keep growing, I always think. I used to always think scale was nothing I didn't want. And now I finally, after 20 years of doing this, I'm more interested in scale, because basically what you just said, buying back your time, you mentioned your team. Are you right now? You're at nine people. Or how big is your team? Yeah, we're at nine people right now. At what rate do you sort of adopt people and walk us through your kind of your growth plan is it? Do you wait till you get a sale and then you backfill the talent? Or, I know Steve was big on building a structure so that you can size sort of organically. How have you guys navigated that? Because I feel like that's just such a tricky I don't know. Everyone has to figure out how to cross that that bridge or make the bridge. How have you guys navigated it?
Heather Tankersley 44:47
Oh, I feel like that's back to that planning film, failing to plan piece, and how painful that is. I think that's hard. I think for us, it was really we scaled, and we've grown very fast in seven. Years, I think most people would look at and be like, holy cow, you guys are crazy. But from where we came at from, from commercial construction, and our bandwidth of what work we were running, and the amount of work we were running, what we do now, doesn't overwhelm us. So our perspective as business owners is okay. We know we can get to the certain revenue piece, I know how much I have within my bandwidth. The biggest challenge has always been, not, not all my employees are clones of Heather and Steve, right? So we've had to learn along the way of who's the right person. Is this the right person that's, you know, got on the bus when we were x revenue, right? And now we've grown to why, and is that person still want to be on the bus, or is it still the right person to be on the bus? So we did a lot of kind of internal struggle with that over the last two years, and just trying to find that. And I think what we have found for us, and this year's part of it is like we we were very strategic, of we brought on a new superintendent, we were very strategic of who the hire was. It was a very long list of qualifications. And now it's like we're just getting more granular, of like, this is what we need. We need this person to do this, and we're okay with maybe this job needs to wait six months, because we really need to have this person in this role ahead of time before we do that. And so we've been better at that. I could say we have not. This is still a learning curve for us, because we have not done it right. We've brought people on too fast. We haven't brought people on fast enough. It's like, there's never a happy medium, right? And so you're always like, Okay, do we bring someone on now? Like, it's just, it's, it's a hard balance. And so I wonder if
Mark D. Williams 46:36
it, I wonder if it ever gets I wonder if it ever gets easier that way. Because I feel like every business owners ask this question to everyone, you struggle with it. I look back for myself, and it's three, four right after COVID, and you're really hot. Yeah, a lot of stuff going on. And I should have hired someone right then and there. I didn't. And then at the end of the project, I hired someone, and then we didn't have stuff to refill it, and then I had to let that person go after a year. So no one wants to hire someone to only have to let them go. And then, like, right now we actually we hired someone because we have a bunch of projects coming up, and it's like, I'd rather train this person in I think they're working part time right now, and we're getting into that role. But now you've got all this tariff nonsense going on, and you've got all this uncertainty in the market, and you're like, well, if a couple of these jobs change, I just brought on this person because I have a bunch of work coming down the but if a bunch of them slide now, it's like, you're right back in the situation. So it's like, either way you're I mean, there's so many things that you can't control, and I think maybe the answer is just as it always, just control today. Control. Try to do your best to control tomorrow. The future is just so far in advance. It's hard to know the right thing, and then only time will really tell if it was a good decision or not. And sometimes you can make the right decision, but you just got unlucky, and I don't know what else you how you navigate that? Yeah,
Heather Tankersley 47:44
I think for us, we've really pushed to try to hire for the culture aspect of it, too, and making sure that if there's somebody who we find or organically comes to us, that maybe we don't have a position ready for right then, but like, culturally, they're such a great fit, and they're gonna thrive, and you can really do that. We've brought them in. And so my project manager, Janae, is a perfect example of that. Like, she built her own house. She We met through social media, commented, she built her she was an owner, builder, ran her own project. Was getting done with her own house. We were chatting, and I were like, Hey, if you really like this, like, why don't you come over and do it for us and do it for other people. You know exactly how the client feels. It's just someone else's money. And she's like, actually, I think I could do this. And she came from a lending background, so she's got a great grasp on the finances and what that looks like. And so brought her in, and she's with such this, like, great personality that it's like, okay, you're going to gel with the team so well, right? And so it's like, brought her in assistant PM, maybe didn't really have the capacity to be able to, like, train her. We were super busy already. We could use the help, but I don't have time to train you. So it's like, just kind of like, throw you into the deep end, but it's like, I know you're going to fit, and it's going to be a great stick. And so, and she's great. She's a pm now, and just thriving So, but it's like, when you feel, when you I think that's my biggest thing is, like, if you feel like somebody might be a good fit and you don't quite have the seat on the bus yet, like, get them on the bus and like, they'll figure it out.
Mark D. Williams 49:13
That's funny. You say that I enter someone right now, we're not actively looking, but you know, people reach out to you LinkedIn and social media, and this person asked to meet and met, and I, soon as I met her, I was like, oh, man, she's a rock star. Like, this is like, a level up. The salary is about double what I could afford. But I basically, because I asked her, I said, we don't have a spot for you right now. But I said, What would I have to save up to to hire you someday? Because I do, she'd be an amazing director of operations. We're just not big enough company for a role like that. And so she told me what the number was, and I said, All right, well, I said, you're on my radar now. I said, let's stay in touch. I said, it's probably gonna take me two to three years to get there, but you'd be amazing. And so to your point, it's like, we can't do it right now, but there's certain people that just have a special attribute about them. The other thing I've tried to do is I'm. Too much of an optimist. I decided I'm no longer hiring anybody, so I let my team hire people. I just I think everyone's going to be great. That makes me great at remodeling, because I always see like, oh, we get this remodel is going to be amazing, but it makes me maybe a suspect judge of character, because I just like people. And anyway, so that's actually worked out pretty good the last couple hires my team, Joel, my controller interviews everyone, and he's a little bit he's my Ying to my Yang, and so he's a little bit more just like, nope, not a fit. Nope, not. It's like, perfect. I think everyone's a fit. He thinks nobody's a fit. So someone, if it slips through him, it's gonna be thumbs up. And then basically, have the team. And then my joke is, like, Guys, if you hire this person, you don't like them, it's not my fault. It's your fault. So I'm not sure how the team will react to that, but I says, I guess I still have to be the one that lets him go if we have to fire somebody. But we've never had it since I've made that rule, which has been about a year. We'll see how it goes. Check back in a couple years, we'll see how it goes. What for the rest of this year? What are some things that you're excited about where Vinda, we're just hit a q2 here just a few days ago. But I guess what's the things that are the most exciting for this year?
Heather Tankersley 51:05
I think for us that's coming up is we've got another ground up new build that's coming up that's in a area of downtown Sacramento that we've never built in before. So really excited about that. We've got a historical restoration in downtown Sacramento as well that we're going through right now, we're actually actively in the planning department with city Sacramento historical home that we're getting ready to redo that's going to be an amazing project with a cool design team. Cool finishes looks a little different than work that we've done in the past. So I think the team's really jazzed for that. We have a full home remodel that we've been we've been actively working with this client for two years. We've been in construction on the remodel for a year. We built their adu last year. We're going to wrap up that job this fall. So really excited to see this kind of package close for this amazing client, and just this big vision that they've had for this property. So just a lot of really cool projects and really good clients that either jobs are getting ready to, like, come to the finish line and then get to see all the hard work, or getting ready to kick off. So we just got a lot of really, really awesome projects in the queue when
Mark D. Williams 52:09
we were talking a little bit before we came on. I've interviewed a few people in California, and I can't determine if it's just coastal commission or just like the coast where permits take so long, or if it's just the state of California, Sacramento is a little ways away from the ocean. Do you when you build a new home? Are you looking how long of a time frame do you have to plan for? Let's take the historical one out of it, because I assume that's a lot more hoops to jump through. But like a new home construction, are you waiting six months to a year to get through permitting? Or what does that look
Heather Tankersley 52:38
like? Yeah, depending on we have about five different jurisdictions that we work in, and it is anywhere from four to seven months. Typically, it's just, it's California. We make everything complicated. You know, from the amount of taxes that we pay to just everything is just incredibly complicated here. And so I think the big push, and the thing that's probably one of the most challenging for us right now is everything related to fire. And so there's a lot of fire prevention, a lot of building standards that have been updated because of fire vegetation requirements. There's just, there's a lot of additional reviews that are coming in in regards to that. So that's probably an RA the biggest, one of the biggest factors that are, you
Mark D. Williams 53:14
know, materials I get, I assume that you can't do any seed or shake roofs or anything like that, or I assume you can't use probably even natural products on the outside. Now, can you use any sort of natural products on the outside of the home? Or does everything have to be manufactured or non flammable? I mean,
Heather Tankersley 53:28
there's definitely like we have to have within the standards, within the building envelope if we are going to do that. So there's a lot of different factors that we have
Mark D. Williams 53:35
to jump through. Okay, okay, it's not that simple. What do you mean by vegetation? Like, what kind of vegetation are they requiring? Oh,
Heather Tankersley 53:41
there's a lot of like, in order to get fire insurance here for your home, after the fact, like, you can't do plantings, like, next to the house, there's a lot of, if you don't have any fire hydrants within, like, a community aspect of it, you have to have a reserve tank on site. Has to be a certain amount of gallons that it has to hold, that you have to have, you have to turn out radiuses for fire trucks, like we build in some rural areas. So there's a lot of there's a lot of fire influence factor that are coming into into play. Do
Mark D. Williams 54:06
you think it's gone too far? Do you think it's the right amount? Or what's your feelings on it? I
Heather Tankersley 54:10
think part of it is it's definitely a problem, right? We've all seen, there's multiple fires that have happened within California, so I think it's definitely necessary. I think the thing that is hard as builders, and what we've experienced sometimes is we'll get a set of drawings approved, it'll be stamped, it'll be signed by fire, and then it'll come out, and then it'll be subjective review by the jurisdiction, local enforcement officer who's now coming out to look at your driveway turn radius. And it's like, even though this says four feet, like, No, you need to increase it, because this is really tight right here. Now, it needs to be six, right? And you've already got the base down, and so that's where it gets hard, right? Because the goal line moves so that where I feel like it's like, okay, we gotta, we gotta work on some stuff here. So, yeah,
Mark D. Williams 54:50
interesting. It's funny. We're doing this spectrum, as I mentioned, and I wanted to do a cedar roof. And I don't know if it's true across the country, but I suspect it probably is, just because the insurance. Companies are quoting Everyone. But to my understanding is, if I do a cedar roof here, like on, let's say a Hampton style home, or a real Cape Cod type of thing that insurance won't cover it even here, where there's no fires in Minnesota. And so now we're starting to look at, we're looking at Da Vinci shake, which is a synthetic that looks really nice. And so it is a lot more money we have to basically, it's just another way that we have to educate our clients and say, What do you want to do? This is just the reality that we live in. Someone asked me, actually this morning regarding tariffs. He said, are Am I able to look at the bids? Because we do all costs plus. And he said, Am I able to look at the bids and understand how much of price fluctuation may or may not be tariffs? And I said, I think it's too early for I don't have any information. We just had someone on we were talking about that a lot of our lumber comes from Canada, and so we're going to get tariffs, I assume, on a lot of our lumber goods, like anything. But I don't think they're going to call it out in their bid, like, Hey, here's a x 5% bumper on for tariffs. I think you're just going to see the bid adjust. I haven't seen anything personally as of this day, April 7, when we're recording this. Are you seeing anything that a question that your clients are asking you, and how are you responding right now? Yeah, we're, I mean,
Heather Tankersley 56:04
we're definitely getting the question, but we're not, at this point, we're not seeing anything, I think, for where we're at geographically, we have some other resources that we pull from lumber, those kind of things. So it'll be interesting to see. I'm with you. I think it's just going to be here it is. Here's the increase, and it's going to be like, it wasn't COVID very much, like down to the date the price is only good till then, right? Having your proposal, have it as the backup in the proposal. And if the client drags their feet, like we're subject to that, and whenever that goes into effect,
Mark D. Williams 56:34
yeah, in some ways, it's no different than any other day. I tried to explain to the client too, that, at least in our case here, the lumber is a bit it's not a Ian, I should say, an estimate. They don't actually lock in the lumber number, like they're not guaranteeing that number. And I know there's a lot of builders that do fixed and, man, I'd be very nervous right now if I was doing fixed fee construction. Unless you're obviously you better lock in every single one of your contracts with your suppliers too. But if you have a I know they can do an escalation clause and things like that. But I think that's one of the huge merits of doing cost plus, I assume, in remodeling you guys do probably, would you say 70% remodeling and 30% new home? Would that be the rough sprint? So are you guys do all cost plus on your remodeling?
Heather Tankersley 57:15
No. So we do fixed price. It depends on the client, the scope of the project, historical restoration, right? We're going to be cost plus. Cost, plus, we can't examine everything that's in the walls up to a certain point, right? So there's some risk factor that we need to share with the client. If it's an early 2000s remodel, like we can do fixed price, it's we know, typically, how those homes were built, and we've built, we've remodeled in that area, those kind of things. So really kind of depends on the project and also the client, right? Some clients like having fixed costs, and I'll just write the check, and I know exactly what my job is going to cost. Me. And other clients want cost plus, so it we kind of vary on how we want
Mark D. Williams 57:51
to do that. Have you ever had it where a client is trying to tries as a business owner, a lot of times our clients are business owners. Have you ever had it where they do cost plus and they basically try to run your business?
Heather Tankersley 58:03
Oh, yeah, I think everybody has had that client where they want to question what the Home Depot receipt for $6.40 was, and why is this being applied to my job, and what we've all had that and yes, I think it goes back to trust, and the client trusting you, and then them just also looking at it sometimes. For me, I always again, it's transparency. You want to see all the here it is. Here's all of it, right? This is the cocking. And it went on on this date. And here it is in the daily log. And we got all these things in here, so it just Yes, people will love to tell us what we should and shouldn't make. And it's just funny, because I don't see anybody any other industry. It is
Mark D. Williams 58:43
pretty wild. I would love to have another industry come on as a guest to talk about it, because you buy cars, airplanes. I can't think of a single one where it's even go to a restaurant. They have a menu, but they're not telling you what their taco ingredients are, their insurance on the restaurant, what their P and L is. They're not, I guess we don't show people their P and L either, but they're not showing what their hourly wages to this. I just, I can't, I don't know, like, why did that become a normal thing for construction? Any ideas on, like, why did that ever become something that was normal for construction?
Heather Tankersley 59:14
I i There's this, I always say that there's this overarching stigma about this industry, especially in residential construction, that there's, it's like this, like, lesser than and coming from a commercial world, it's so funny. When Steve and I moved over to residential it was like, Oh, you guys are slumming it up over in the residential world, right? Because commercials like the prestigious so you're building hospitals, you're building jails, you're doing cool stuff. And it's so interesting to me, because I think it's the same mentality. It's like, you're, it's, you're just building a house. I could do that too, but can you Right? Like you could right, what's it going to look like? Is it going to stand up if you get a big storm, is it going to blow over? Like, what does that look like? And so for me, I just look at that as there's just the. Aspect that people don't value it, and I don't think until we get more people leaving this industry that don't know how to do this, that don't know how to make repairs, that don't know how to fix their homes, that that is going to change, because all of a sudden it's like, well, I have to call somebody to go do this because I don't know how to do it. Whereas I feel like our my parents generation and their generation before it, they had no other options. They didn't have any money. That's
Mark D. Williams 1:00:23
a that's an interesting take. I hadn't considered that before. There's a lot of stereotypes within every industry, but, and we won't, it's like a whole another podcast right now. We just opened up the Pandora's box at the last minute, but I was just thinking about like, I wonder if cost plus didn't first start because people thought, let's say builders or remodels were untrustworthy. And so if the industry is fighting a stereotype of people that they either want to demean or think that have less knowledge or less skill than it's somebody else, maybe it's a maybe it's a cultural thing here in the US, it'd be really interesting to bring on builders from overseas, like in Europe or anywhere the UK or Australia or wherever, and just see if it's a cultural thing. Because I don't ask, if you go into the doctor, it's like, You're not asking for itemized receipt of, like, the hospital bed and everything, and they probably give it to you, because it's all medical stuff anyway. But anyway, I think you're onto something. I think it's because it probably is. They want to know, like, hey, is this person trustworthy? Is this person going to value my dollar the way I do? And I think it's so personal. Building a home is so intimate, other than, like, your personal family, getting married, some of those big emotional things, like, you spend more money in a house than you likely spend on anything else. And so there's the added heightened trust level with something so personal on top of it. It's
Heather Tankersley 1:01:35
so true. It's so personal. And like people like, remember that I can remember my parents remodeled their kitchen, and I remember Dave and Ted were the two guys that did it. And like, Dave and Ted were at our house every day for, like, I don't even know it was a super long amount of time and so, but it's like, I remember that, and I was like, 10, and so I just, I think about the same things, of like, we meet our clients and their kids, and I'm like, I wonder if their kids are gonna remember, like, you know myself, or my superintendent or my foreman, who have been out there every single day, and they see us when they have cereal in the morning. The morning.
Mark D. Williams 1:02:03
Yeah, you're Dave and Ted. That's actually pretty funny, very relatable. Want to respect your time. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast. We'll have everything in the show notes. And yeah, if you want to hear more, you can check out they'll have Tinker sleaze website, and their social game is pretty strong, and they'll have everything there. And if you want to hear more, about 75 hard go back a few episodes, and you can hear Heather and Steve a comment about their journey through that as well. Thanks again for tuning the curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host. We'll see you next week. Thanks for tuning in the curious builder podcast. If you like this episode, do us a favor. Share it with three other business owners. The best way that we can spread what we're doing is by word of mouth, and with your help, we can continue to help other curious builders expand their business. Please share it with your friends. Like and review online, and thanks again for tuning in. You.
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