Episode 123 - CCS Omaha Build Buzz - Building for the Future: How Contractors Stay Relevant and Resilient in Uncertain Times

Jul 20

#123 | Build Buzz at the Contractor Coalition Summit in Omaha | Building for the Future

In this episode of The Curious Builder, Mark Williams shares the Build Buzz panel conversation at The Contractor Coalition Summit in Omaha. The panel of top-notch builders (Morgan Molitor, Brad Leavitt, Nick Shiffer, and Tyler Grace all dove into highlights, including lessons on scaling your business, smart risk-taking, and the future of contracting. They share real-world stories about everything from onboarding key staff and leveraging AI tools, to future-proofing your business and building a brand that stands out. If you're looking to learn from people who've been through industry ups and downs—and want some actionable tips for thriving in construction—this episode is one you won’t want to miss!

Listen to the full episode:

About The Contractor Coalition Summit

An intimate four-day summit ( with pre-party activities starting the day prior) hosted by AFT Construction from Scottsdale, NS Builders out of Boston, and construction2style from Minneapolis - this conference is geared towards General Contractors.

Nick, Brad, and Morgan come from different segments of the construction industry, ranging from high-end luxury builders to interior residential remodelers, designers, and media companies. This diversity suggests that attendees can expect a well-rounded perspective on various aspects of the business.

They have spent a combined 40+ years in this industry investing hundreds of thousands of dollars to be able to get their brand and companies where they are at today. They will leave nothing off of the table at this intimate summit and are confident that you will get your value within the first hour.

Wondering how to address contracting systems, create organizational charts, billing, scaling, creating AIA docs, contracts, subcontracts, cost-plus percentages, scheduling, expansion on sales beyond the construction business, how to produce multiple streams of revenue through the construction industry, secure brand partnerships, or simply how to run a profitable construction business? We got you.

Resources:

Visit the Contractor Coalition Summit Website

Brad Leavitt 00:00
I was fortunate to work for a company doing this $300 million hotel, and it was as good as could be. Our company had 300 employees. Everything was great. And they quit selling in the best time of the economy, in Phoenix, 2000 you know, 456, they quit selling. And we all know what happened with the housing crisis, and then it just stopped. That faucet ended. We went down to 15 employees from 300
Mark D. Williams 00:32
Welcome to The Curious Builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host. Today we have a very special episode. So today's episode is going to be a replay of our contractor coalition Summit, which was in Omaha in middle of June, and we did something which we call build buzz. So if you've been to the contractor coalition summit before, basically one of the first nights, we'll have all the hosts basically do a podcast on topics that the attendees or common questions that we're getting on the podcast, and just some of the some of the topics that we'll be discussing during our three day events at the contractor coalition. Our next contractor coalition, if you after listening to this episode, you're interested, will be in Chicago November 7 through the 11th, and there's a promo code for $2,500 off if you type in curious builder, so you can go to contractor coalition summit.com. For all the information. The really, the intro here, of this is you're going to jump in on a hot mic. So right now, to set the scene, we are at builder trends headquarters in Omaha. There's an audience of about 50-60, people, and you've got myself being the host. You've got Tyler grace from the modern craftsman and TRG concepts. He's out on the East Coast in Philadelphia. Amazing question to ask her. I love the way Tyler's brain thinks when he responds to a question. It's like a wise man holding tea in Japan. I mean what he says, it hits you deep. I love the way he frames questions and responds. You've got Morgan Molitor from Minnesota construction to style. You have Nick Schiffer from NS builders as well as the modern craftsman. They co hosted together. He and Tyler, and then Brad Levitt from aft construction down in Arizona, who also has his podcast, the Brad Levitt podcast. And so it's the five of us up there presenting to the audience. The first question was really about scaling. We're gonna hop in right now, and Nick schifr is going to be coming in on a hot mic, and we'll pick up the conversation from here. Hope you enjoy the episode.
Nick Schiffer 02:31
You don't have to be comfortable with risk, but you do need to understand that that is part of growth. And if you can't get yourself to to get you know, essentially, take that risk. It's going to be very difficult for you to ever, ever level up. And one, one of the things that we talked about on the podcast, like, not everyone wants to grow or scale or level up. They're totally fine where, where they're at. This is just not a conversation around, well,
Brad Leavitt 02:55
it's interesting. I mean, just another pivot point to that. So a lot of you that follow aft? No. Paul Lundgren, right, so Paul, I mean, Paul reached out to me six years ago. He's in Colorado, in his 50s. He has nine kids, and he had his own trim company, his own cabinet company, and he wanted to work for aft. And so for me, the risk is I'm bringing someone relocating a dad who's a provider with nine children to Phoenix. And so I felt risk as far as I'm bringing someone that like now, I have to be a good steward of his family life, of his financial wherewithal, so that he can survive, and to relocate him, to make him move to Arizona. I mean, this was a major thing. And so again, I you don't want to be averse to risk, but at the same time you have to be realistic as well, that I'm going to have the back to have the backlog, that I'm going to do my part to make sure that have the pipeline for him to be successful. And with that said, I told him, I'm like, anyone in here knows how hard it is to build a custom home, and I remember telling Paul, and he's fine with me sharing this. I'm like, it's way harder than you think, and there's way more detail. And I remember about a year and a half in, he's like, I don't know. I don't know if I could do this like Brad. I don't think I'm like, a good part of aft. And I'm like, I know you're drinking through a fire hose. We're gonna get there.
Brad Leavitt 04:10
And so there's the patience of the risk and the onboarding. And now, six years later, I mean, I would tell you that Paul builds the most spectacular homes that we're doing at a of t and there's no one in my company that builds a better house than Paul. So that's well said, one of the things that we all do is we adopt technology, or we add tools to our business. And this question is, for everybody, you know, what is one tool that you've adopted? Say, in the last two years, let's make it sooner than that. In the last year, that has actually helped, because a lot of times, if you're anything like me, my poor controller gets a battle. Morgan will tell me something to buy. I'll buy the app. I usually like the discount, so I'll pay it for a year in advance. And then
Speaker 1 04:49
he also doesn't listen to me when he buys the app. I'm like, just try it for a month for free. And he goes, Oh, I just bought it for a year. It's just happened.
Nick Schiffer 04:56
Yes, way more tools if you just buy the whole. You get the whole
Speaker 2 05:00
so I will share my failed stories on your podcast, but for this one, what's one that succeeded?
Morgan Molitor 05:08
I'll share the one I shared with him is fixer, and I'm gonna go over all this tomorrow with you guys too, but it's I'm obsessed with just AI, everything, but f, Y, X, E, R, and it's just helped me manage my inbox. And so every time I go to my inbox, it moves it into the right folders. It drafts every auto response for me. I had someone managing my inbox for me, and I've actually now moved them into another position to help me with other things. So it's been super
Nick Schiffer 05:36
helpful. Yeah, I mean, we could summarize a lot of this just to AI, but I think for me, utilizing a AI to create tools, and a lot of that is the SOPs that we put into place. But for me, when I read that question, the thing that stuck out was really being thorough with not only our job descriptions and you know, their tasks and responsibilities, but how that ties back to a career ladder within NS builders and we put, I put together that document, and since then, every hire that we have that we're interviewing we give them, hey, here's the role that you are interviewing for, but here's the path that you can take and under so they can understand I'm not coming in just to be a carpenter or just to be a super or, pm, I have opportunity to grow. And it tells me right here, these are the things that I would need to accomplish in order to do that. So and then same thing for the team internally is, you know, when we're sitting down to review the review them biannually, we're looking at that sheet and saying, How are we doing compared to these KPIs? So I think that was one of the tools that, you know, I did leverage AI to build, but it's been the most. It has saved me a tremendous amount of time.
Brad Leavitt 06:51
Well, even outside of technology, which is technology, but I mean, we've implemented the Matterport. And I'm not going to share this story on camera, but maybe I'll share it later. Tyler loves this story about how we use the Matterport that I shared at the end of the last session. Oh, yeah, that is a very good I think I should share that. I'm not going to share it right now live, but we'll do it maybe later this weekend. But the point being is, we do a Matterport scan, you know, right before drywall, we do that completion. And I can't tell you, just in the last couple of years, how much we reference that in our builds, whether, again, some of these homes that are 35,000 square feet, stuff gets missed, hidden, covered by drywallers, you name it, and it allows us just to have a really good visual of the house. And it's protected us in
Tyler Grace 07:31
many ways. Yeah, it's, I mean, there's a million different apps and software that you can use. I think for me, a lot of it comes down to partnerships, vendors, companies that you use. And right now, I feel like we are in this, this point in the industry, where these businesses want to help you so much be successful using their product, because there's so like, there's market saturation with everything. So for me, it's just it's utilizing all your partnerships, all the brands that you know, you you work with, with your business, to the fullest capacity of them, because we're at this stage where they just want to help, regardless of what that looks like.
Mark D. Williams 08:13
How do you know what trend to pursue versus just let it be I feel like the rate of information is pretty insane right now, and probably will be that way for the rest of our career. You're constantly getting bombarded and being served, whether it's ads or Instagram or whatever is showing up on your radar. How do you decide which one you should actually operationally act upon? Is there sort of a trial period? How do you vet these things before you sort of implement them into your business? I
Brad Leavitt 08:41
was thinking
Speaker 1 08:42
about this one too, and I'm like, do you mean trends for like marketing or home construction,
Speaker 3 08:49
design? I think you can take this question wherever you want to go with it.
Speaker 1 08:52
Because what I'd probably say is, I jump on every single trend there is which is probably not the right answer, and then I learn very quickly, and I pivot very fast, and my team constantly, who's half of them are in the room. Think I'm crazy, but I'm also like, this is how we learn and grow and learn what works for our company what doesn't. And the thing I love about all five of us too, is that we all have different levels in our business. We all do different things, but we're all in home, and we're forward thinkers, and we're trying all these things. And something that might work for me doesn't work for Tyler and vice versa. So that's why I do jump on it. And I want to learn quick, and I don't stay around for very long. If it doesn't work.
09:32
Anyone else want to take that or you guys are good on that one,
Speaker 4 09:35
I don't have any. I feel like I'm not up on all the trends.
Speaker 1 09:40
One I also would say, which we'll talk about in upcoming days. But like, know your brand, because if you know your brand, I think then you know what's trying to hop on or not hop on. Because when it comes to a lot of like, social media marketing, things don't align with our brands
Brad Leavitt 09:55
well. And along those lines to Morgan sport, I mean, we speak about this a lot, and. Know, Nick and I spoke about this, is that I remember, early on, like all of us, I started and I was doing, like a deck, or like a kitchen, and I did a backsplash for someone, and the client's like, you should advertise this. I'm like, no, like, I this is the last thing I want someone to call me for a backsplash. I want to be building custom homes. Point being, is it like, not even outside of trends, but, you know, marketing strategy. I was always focused on where I wanted to be, not where I was today. So I was always advertising aft, whether it was like thought leadership or site cleanliness or quality or different details that'll allow us to scale to that level. So even outside of trends, it's really just forecasting how I wanted my marketing strategy to
Nick Schiffer 10:39
be, I think, from a trends perspective, playing on social media. But I think it's important, at least for me, to understand the trend, not necessarily, like, take it and look at what is. You know, marketing is a great example. Social media is a great example, where it's like, you have these viral trends, and you know, if you're if you're producing a ton of content, it's kind of hard not to want to do that. Like, Hey, we should hop on that and do our version. But reality is, it's, like, short lived and, but there's, there's lessons within those trends to take away from, like, why was it viral? Like, what, what was what could we take out of that, as, you know, as education, and I think about that with software as well, where, you know, we're in this age of AI, and we're in this age of, I mean, you look at the builders show, and I think 300 new software companies showed up at the builder show last year. It's crazy. And every single day my phone rings and it's like, Hey, I got this construction software. And I would love to sit there and listen to the spiel and see which one makes sense, because some of them might be better than what I'm doing, but it I don't have that I don't have that capacity and but more so my team was like, Nick, we have a system that works. We need to focus on our brand and what we're doing, not continually trying to a new thing. I think that's the lesson in the trends. Is it you don't have to hop on that good to understand it, but it doesn't mean that you have to implement everyone.
Mark D. Williams 12:03
I think that's well said, if
Mark D. Williams 12:09
you've been listening to the podcast for a while now, or even if this is your first episode, I talk about the contractor coalition summit all the time. Our next one is happening November 7 through November 10 in Chicago, and all the details can be found at the contractor, coalition summit.com You've got Brad Levitt, Nick Schiffer, Tyler, Grace, Morgan, Molitor and myself will all be there. We've got great content over three days. You've got builders from all over the country try to get it to about that 30 people number. And we'll have sponsors as well that add a lot of value to each one of these dedicated days where you're talking about contracts and spreadsheets and margin and whether you're doing fixed bid or cost, plus your pre construction agreements. Ian, the list goes on and on and on. If you haven't been following it yet, you should. The contractor coalition summit Instagram page is giving you a steady diet of the conversations that are being had, a lot of promo reels, a lot of the interviews that I've done personally at Omaha, which was my first contractor coalition, where I'm part of the leadership, interviewed all 36 people that attended, and we're going to be unveiling each one of their interviews over the next couple of months, so people that were not able to attend and would like to can kind of get a better idea of the value that builders are getting. So if you're going to sign up and come to Chicago, you can type in the promo code, curious builder, and get $2,500 off, and we'll see you in Chicago when it comes to quality craftsmanship and performance, Pella sets the standard whether you're building custom homes or designing a timeless space. Pella offers innovative window and door solutions that blend beauty and efficiency, with showrooms and experts around the country, Pella makes it easy to find the perfect fit for your next project and their team to support it. Build with confidence. Build with Pella. Visit pella.com to explore products and connect with your local rep today. For more information, you can listen to episode one or listen to episode 109 where we bring on Pella owners and founders at Pella Northland, as well as their innovative team behind the steady set innovation. I don't love this, actually, this question. Thank you. AI for generating it. Well, from the standpoint of trying to future proof your business, I don't think there is such a thing any business that sort of rests on their laurels kind of goes away like BlackBerry palm. It doesn't matter what you are. If you're not innovating, you can't be relevant forever. And so I guess my question is, what are you doing to be relevant, not only now, but next year, five years from now, a decade from now, and how far down the road are you sort of thinking about future proofing your business? Or do you have better word than future proof?
Nick Schiffer 14:43
I think for me, it's just that I'm constantly moving. It's not that I'm like, I have, you know, we have it spelled out. This is our one year target. This is our three year target and our five year target. We have that spelled out. We review it every month. How are we doing? Are we going to hit our goals? You know? And that's across. Ask the board, you know, revenue, profit, how many inquiries are we getting? We're monitoring all of that. Are you meeting with
Mark D. Williams 15:06
your team quarterly about this? Or, like, what is the case? How do you how do you explore? How do you showcase this to your team?
Nick Schiffer 15:13
Our leadership, our leadership team meets every week, but we we sit down and do a deeper dive once a month. And I'll, yeah, that's more or less how we were looking
15:24
at it. Feel like you could benefit from a little less moving,
Nick Schiffer 15:28
but maybe, maybe
Speaker 4 15:32
something shiny goes by Nick's like, let's do that. Cool,
Nick Schiffer 15:35
but, but I think more like that is accurate. I do have shiny object syndrome, which
Morgan Molitor 15:42
Where is Doug, because he knows you also have four very young kids,
Nick Schiffer 15:46
yes, so thriving in chaos, that's my mantra. But I think when I think about the future, it is that we consistently move. And it's not that I'm trying to pivot and do new things, it's that we are moving in a forward direction and preventing us from going backwards. I've went backwards a dozen times in my career, and it sucks, and that's what you know a lot about. What we're talking about this week is preventing those mistakes from happening and learning from those so for me, it's constantly moving forward and understanding, hey, this is the situation that we have. Are we moving towards our goal? Yes, great. Keep moving. If we're not, what do we have to pivot? What do we need to change? And let's pivot. You
Brad Leavitt 16:27
know, what's interesting about that? I think about future proofing, going back to the KPIs, right key performance indicators, one thing that we do is you have to understand, like, financially solvent, like, how do we look as a company, health wise, financially? Because really, that's what it comes down to, is if we get in a bind, or if we're in a lawsuit or litigation, what does this look like for us? And so constantly, we're checking if everything ended today and I had to return all my customer deposits, because we'll talk about this throughout the weekend. I take heavy deposits for my customers, and why? Because I'm in arrears. I want to make sure I'm financially in a position to be in a, you know, strength for my client. And so the point being is every job was canceled, and I had to return all those deposits. Where am I financially? Can't, you know, how long is that pipeline? Fast forwarding? Nick and I are in the same builder 20, and we were at one in Saratoga Springs, New York a couple years ago, and one of the top consultants was there, and he was looking at my backlog, because anyone that knows me like I'm always selling, like I'm always selling at because the projects we do, most of my projects, take 18 to 36 months in pre con, and then you get into vertical construction. And he was looking at my backlog, and he was literally, like, upset with me. He's telling me, like, you're gonna fail. This is way too much you have, like, all these jobs. And I'm like, You don't understand. I mean, I'm like, I know that half of these jobs, even though I have PSAs that we'll talk about and now small deposits on them, I already know how this business goes. Clients have job transfers. They end up saying we're going to buy in Park City. Now we're not living in Scottsdale. I mean, these things happen. And the reality is, even I may have all these jobs, like only 50% of them will go. And I learned this because in 2009 2008 before the recession, I was fortunate to work for a company doing this $300 million hotel. And it was as good as could be. Our company had 300 employees. Everything was great, and they quit selling in the best time of the economy, in Phoenix, 2000 you know, 456, they quit selling. And we all know what happened with the housing crisis. And then it just stopped. That faucet ended. They had no backlog, and now they're just trying to hit the pavement. We went down to 15 employees from 300 and the point being is, I'm always selling, no matter no matter how busy you are, you have to be selling, selling, selling, because not every job will pin out. And market conditions, tariffs, things happen, and as long as you have enough backlog, some of those will still always pan out, because people do want to build.
Tyler Grace 18:49
For me, it comes down to creating enough value with either your product, your service, the experience that you are isolating yourself from fluctuations within the market. So I would rather see people niche down, do something really well, create a really high quality value proposition for their clients, that you can build a robust sales funnel. I think that when you niche down, and when you focus on doing something really well, and you can build your business out from there. I think it's easier to bring people in, it's easier to train them, it's easier to scale, it's easier to market yourself, substantiate the leads that you need if you have focused on on one or two things that you do really well, rather than trying to be everywhere to everyone at the same time. So for me, it's just trying to create a product, a service, or a business that really resists and is independent to fluctuations within the market.
Mark D. Williams 19:50
Maybe just a quick recap here, because each one of you has said something a little bit different, but going back to brand, and I believe we're speaking about that over the next couple of days, and the power of a. Brand. But you know, Brad, you really opened my eyes three years ago when you said, you know, for me at that time, it was like, and a lot of us can relate to this, like, I'm focused on, forget three years from now, like, you're selling three years into the future. I'm like, I'm trying to put money in the hopper in the next 90 days. And so, you know, a lot of us have a hard time looking down the road. But this idea you talked about in the past, you've talked about Silent sales people, you know, people that aren't on your payroll that sell for you. I think your brand. One of the things about, you know, you talked about niching down, or niching down, depending on how you like to say it niche.
Speaker 2 20:33
You have to go back in the archives for that one. And anyway, what's nice is, you know, everyone has had maybe a real estate agent. We don't use them heavily, but all of a sudden, maybe once every two or three years, one will come in. Maybe it's a past client referral like sometimes you're kind of amazed at how powerful and how deep your brand has sort of saturated your market, that you've sort of empowered all these silent sales people to speak on your behalf. I think it all speaks to making sure that your brand is interesting relative and continues to sort of sell for you, therefore sort of future proofing you a
Brad Leavitt 21:06
little bit. Well, Tyler touched on this with like reputation. But the reality is, there is an element to like personal branding is permanent job security as well. Like so from your personal brand to the company brand, and the reputation you build in the industry is definitely going to impact that. Because when you know silent salesman for anyone that want, you know it's a term I use all the time, it's people that sell your brand, that aren't on your payroll, right? And you get to a point as a company, if that tipping point is when people promote your company and they're not getting sales commissions. So whether it's vendors, whether it's architects, whether it's designers, other industry professionals in Minnesota, Cambria, who you guys do a lot with. There's a few my Cambria, and fortunately for us, are like, huge fans of aft. And so one of them is, like, Brad, every single client that comes in Minnesota, like they'll never build, but I just talk about aft all time, and they go follow you on Instagram. And so you have these people that are just huge proponents of your brand, and it's the long game right in time. It just, and that's that business development that continues on. Ian,
Speaker 1 22:06
I just had to future proofing by being in the rooms like this, you know, showing up to not just contractor coalition, but I think a lot of things. But I do firmly believe, like the group that we're cultivating, and all the people in this room, like we are going somewhere. We are thinking different. I think of a lot of us had to get outside our comfort zone, be vulnerable just to show up here. And so I think just by doing things like that, you truly are future proofing yourself, because all of us met online, and there's no way I'd be where I am today without these guys. So I think that's a huge component for me personally.
Mark D. Williams 22:53
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Speaker 2 24:18
If you were given $100,000 today, what would you invest it in? Your company,
Nick Schiffer 24:27
real estate,
Speaker 2 24:28
okay, specific, specifically, like Airbnb, some land to develop. Like, what would you do? Because 100 grand is not going to buy a whole lot of real
Speaker 1 24:36
estate. I would. Jamie wants to do a custom flip or a custom home, but make it like what we want, which we've done a few times, but we want to do it without partners.
Brad Leavitt 24:48
So, I mean, you could take this a ton of directions, right? But I think if you're thinking just real estate, I would say, create an LLC, right? That you own personally, use that 100,000 build yourself an office. Your company pays rent to that which. Goes to you, and it's a way brick and mortar that you know, like a of t I could charge myself a heavy rent amount as a tenant that helps me on my tax burden, and then it goes to me personally on my LLC. So, but again, work with your CPA on that. So real estate must be
Mark D. Williams 25:14
really cheap in Phoenix is 100 grand, is gonna buy me an office. But here's
Brad Leavitt 25:19
the leverage. Is 100 grand, but, but this is the point is maybe that just gets the dirt in Phoenix, which it probably doesn't in Phoenix, but, but at least maybe you get a small piece of dirt, and then you work with your vendors and trades, because this is your your show piece, your model, your model, right, that people are coming in. So your vendors will work with you on getting product in there that they're selling and showcasing. And you work, you know, you leverage that, so you get a bank loan on it, which I'm doing, just, truth be told, I'm doing this right now. You get a bank loan you're in, you know, your your payments covering way more than that. You're still making money on top of that. So, yes, you're not paying for your building out, right? But in seven, eight years, that building will be paid off, and you have an asset now that's paying you, you know, mailbox money, as they say, so,
Nick Schiffer 26:03
completely other side of this, because I didn't even think of real estate, to be honest. And Ian Tyler and I actually chatted about this last week because we thought it was such a great question. And my initial, like, gut reaction, was marketing. I would put it into marketing, like I would immediately deploy the 100 grand into marketing, and we're in a competitive market. We're in Boston. There's, you know, if you listen to podcasts, you hear me talk about it, but there's five builders there that I compete with. And you know, we could have lights out, the best presentation and understand the job, the best, best price. It doesn't matter the fact that that guy's has 40 on his portfolio, and we have less than 10. That's how they judge, and they ultimately go with the guy that's done it 40 times over. And so that was my initial thought, is I would deploy it into marketing, and I would just completely saturate the market to the point where no one knew any other builder. We're already doing that, like we're already we're already created enough awareness where people know who we are. And so I thought of this a little bit longer, and I was like, well, what's the what is the pain point when a client comes to us and ultimately, like, where's the pain there? And I kept coming back to the fact that the most fatiguing time for a client, besides the actual construction when you're under contract, is from the time someone says, I want to build a house to actually building, starting to build the house. And free con, our process is really dialed, and it's a really thorough process, but it's too long and it's too fatiguing and and we we lost a $4 million project in the fall, which I returned a $400,000 deposit for and thankfully, my contract ended up covering it. We kept 40% of that deposit. But I sat down with a client. He was very sorry that he canceled the job, and I just I really wanted to understand what was why, and it really had to do with the process around the architect designing faster than we were pricing, and then it just was developing in a way where it was so much and it was so fatiguing, and they he felt as though we were so far off base where he wanted, he wants to start, that he just couldn't stomach doing it anymore. So the 100 grand I would invest into, uh, broadly, AI, but more specifically, technology to essentially take the data that we have, years of estimating projects, years of completed projects, with completed budgets, with really thorough budgets, and build a database where when someone does come to me and say, I Want to build a house, we're able to flip information back then faster and and there's a company that that actually did this, or started to do this, where they were building a database that they were pricing hundreds of projects a month, and they were building this database, and every time someone would price, it would update the database, and it was using AI to do this. So then some you could literally go on their website. And this was designed for half a million to million dollar jobs. You could go on their website and you would fill out a type form, and by the time you were done with it, it would give you a budget range of about $50,000 of what it cost, and you and at that point, if it made sense, you would, you would fill out the form, and you'd sign up, and they were getting 70% of their markets business because the information was media. And so that's that's how I would deploy the 100, is I would invest into the tech so we continue to further separate ourselves from the competition, which is ultimately old school body,
Tyler Grace 29:41
so I'm way different than them. And Nick and I had this conversation. I'm like, I feel like everyone in business is trying to create more work. Where it's like, why do you want more work? Is it to make more money? Is it to build, like, a different type of lifestyle, whatever that is. So for me, I'm always looking. At ways that I could produce more work from like an efficiency standpoint, right? So I would invest that money into some sort of systems or machinery or processes that allow me to produce the same amount of work with less input. So I could either create a lifestyle that I want with less work, or if I wanted to double down and make more money, I could make more money spending the same amount of time. So for me, it's a bit of the opposite, where I'm just looking for like, rather than selling more, can I work less to make the same amount? What type of efficiencies? How can I reduce my overhead? I don't do this type of work, but like, you can think of tree contractors now removal contractors who buy those robots that they can basically walk up and cut down trees down. It's like you just produced overhead. You're not paying employees, insurances and everything else, and you're able to produce more work with more efficiency. So for me, that's, that's the
Speaker 2 30:56
move. I didn't think you're going with robot tree cutters. I like that. Um, I'd love one. I thought you're gonna maybe say motorcycles.
Speaker 1 31:04
I thought he was gonna maybe say deer removals with his tractor massage.
Speaker 2 31:11
We'll talk about that at some point. That deer story is pretty legit. Okay, your brand and your business. Do you think your brand makes your business, or do you think your business makes your brand, and what do you do if they're different,
31:25
so confused?
Nick Schiffer 31:26
I think the I think, I think the brand makes the business, and I don't fully agree with the fact that is the case, meaning I think, yeah, yeah, because I think that it's, it's easier to say who you are and what you do and have this elaborate brand, but it's much harder to actually execute on that level. And I think social media has done a good and bad job of exposing that. And we had this conversation just the other day, I forget with who, but they were saying someone had toured one of our jobs, and I was showing them one of our projects, and they were like, I can't believe it's exactly the way it is on social media. I was expecting it to I was expecting to catch you. And I was like, I was like, that part of the reason I did social media eight years or eight, nine years ago was to keep myself honest. I want. I threw stuff out there, and when people would say that's wrong, I would take that and fix it and then put it back out. And that was always been my intent. So I think the brand is building for me, the brand came first, and then business kind of evolved from
Speaker 2 32:35
that. The origin of this question, I think you and Brad in particular, from my point of view, have done a phenomenal job of seeing the vision of what you want. I mean, on the bio, it's, you know, I'm Nick schifr. I want to build cool bleep houses with cool people around the world, right? And Brad had a very clear vision early on of what he wanted. I applaud you for that. For me, I did not. And the reason I'm bringing up this question is I had a my business was doing great, and I, you know, very much concentrate on my clients, and my wife, like a lot of our spouses, know more than we do. And they and she came to me and she said, your brand no longer represents the company that you are. So my brand and my business were different, and I needed to update my brand. And that was the that was when I went to the contractor Coalition for the first time three years ago. And his life has changed. And life has changed a little
Brad Leavitt 33:25
bit, yeah, well, it's interesting. I mean, again, this is back to the bio that Tyler was talking about. So Mark writes, he says, aft the high end the Ferrari of builders take that. You know, point being is the reason I bring it up. I remember, I think I'd been in business probably six years, maybe because we've been in business 12 years now, and there's a peer of mine, a friend of mine, a neighbor of mine, that he's like, Brad, you're just so expensive. Everyone knows you're so expensive. And I remember leaving that, and I was like, kind of offended a little bit. And I was like, we're not really that expensive. But then I thought about that. I'm like, actually, I like that. I'm like, good. I'm gonna own that. Because, like, really, what it made is, like, it put us at this position where customers are, like, when we when we arrive, we're gonna hire aft. And so part of that to the brand thing, we had built the brand first. However, we did that through different, you know, social media and networking and other things to now the business does match that, right, the execution and the people and the company culture and all those things and the scaling, but, yeah, it's it. You know, that's really the answer is like, to not be offended that, hey, we're expensive, and that's what we're trying to achieve. When
Speaker 1 34:31
I tell people to when I get asked, like, what's your biggest regret? Or, you know, when running a company, and I'm like, it's not necessarily regret, but I wish when we would have started our company, we would have invested in someone to launch with our branding. Because I think, I mean, our name is, I don't love it, but it's just like, we're just like, we need to get going. We want a website, you know, so we threw this name out, and now we're kind of stuck with it. And yes, of course we can rebrand and all that stuff, but I'm just like, oh, like to redo all that. And so I'm just like, I wish we would have hired a branding expert to get our name down, our logo down. And now too, they always say, which I'm sure this is most of us in the room, but they're always like, the one thing you're not supposed to have, if you ask any marketing company, is like, for us in the home industry, like construction shouldn't be in the name. The name shouldn't say what you're doing. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, construction, two style, that's exactly what we're
Tyler Grace 35:24
doing. Like, that's a good point. But I also am of the mindset where it's like, if you were to have hit the ground running with everything that you know now, you may have overwhelmed yourself with the type of jobs, caliber of jobs, or client that put you out of business very quickly. So I, I personally think that we should look outside of our industry for a lot of inspiration and motivation, where it's like, if you look at big companies with massive brands, it almost doesn't matter what product they put out. They're a marketing company and they're a branding company. And I think that if we, if we look to that, yeah, you have to step up and you have to deliver the product and execute and meet expectations. But I think that if, once you establish yourself and you learn the ins and out, if you then focus on developing that brand, you'll be in a much better place. But I also, I don't know if you day one, you should hit the ground with like the ultimate brand in place, because I think it may it may be too it might be biting off more than you can chew.
Morgan Molitor 36:26
Well, you just made me feel better. Thank you.
Speaker 2 36:30
What is something that you have outsourced too late that either hindered your growth or held you back because you weren't willing to give up either the control or you you basically just didn't realize that by doing it, it would really, you know, be a force multiplier to your business. I
Nick Schiffer 36:48
think for a lot of people, and for me specifically, was the accounting, you know, it was I, it was first few years. Was just me doing it literally once a year. Thanks for
Mark D. Williams 36:59
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