Episode 130 - Concrete, Culture, & Cosmetics: Michelle VanVolkinburg’s Unlikely Path to Construction
#130 | Michelle VanVolkinburg | Baldwin General | Concrete, Culture, & Cosmetics: Michelle's Unlikely Path to Construction
What do Nordstrom cosmetics and concrete pours have in common? Turns out, a lot. In this heart-filled episode, Mark sits down with Michelle VanVolkinburg—Baldwin General’s head of marketing and HR—to talk about company growth, the power of people-first leadership, and how Baldwin scaled from a pickup truck in Oregon to multi-family towers in Washington. It’s equal parts inspiring and tactical, with culture tips, hiring truths, and one surprise helicopter pitch.
Listen to the full episode:
About Michelle VanVolkinburg
Michelle VanVolkinburg is the dynamic force behind Baldwin General Contracting’s people-first culture and powerful brand presence. As the company’s Marketing Manager and Human Resources Coordinator, Michelle plays a dual role in shaping both how Baldwin is perceived and how it functions from the inside out. With a background that spans cosmetics, retail leadership, and small business ownership, she brings a unique blend of creative marketing savvy and empathetic team leadership to the construction industry. From revamping Baldwin’s website to crafting print materials and driving HR initiatives, she’s helped transform an undefined role into a cornerstone of Baldwin’s growth strategy.
Resources:
Visit Baldwin General Contracting’s Website
Visit Baldwin General Contracting’s Instagram
-
Michelle VanVolkinburg 00:04
We're human first, and to get to the human side and and if it's with an owner, or with your super or with your project engineer, it doesn't always have to be so cold and business like, get to know them a little bit, you know, talk to them about who they are as a person, and then you can loop business into that today on
Mark D. Williams 00:31
the curious builder podcast, we had Baldwin general contracting on and it was a great episode. I got to talk to Michelle Van volkenburg, but it was just delightful to talk with her. She's Head of Marketing and human resources, and just really talking about the expansion of the company from Oregon up into Washington, and really just how the inner workings of a company culture can really lead to an expansion, not only of the team's culture internally, but also how other people perceive it on the outside. You're going to love this. Without further ado, here's Michelle. Welcome to curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host. Today we are interviewing Michelle. Let me give this a try. Michelle Van volkenburg, did I get it? You nailed it? Yes, that is an awesome last name. Baldwin, general construction out of Oregon. Thanks for coming on the podcast.
Michelle VanVolkinburg 01:14
Oh, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. So your role is, you're
Mark D. Williams 01:18
the head of marketing and human resources. Is that correct? I am. Yeah, we had someone on your PR team. I think it was Wendell reached out to us to set up the interview, and we had a light minute audible. But honestly, you know, sorry, Ian, I think I got the better interview here. You look like you're going to be a great one. I'm sure Ian is great too. But I was like, it's actually really fun to interview other people on the team, because a big part of the podcast is to celebrate entrepreneurship, but it's not very often I get to interview, you know, other people other than the owners. And so it'd be really funny or not funny, but fun and interesting to hear your point of view of why you joined the company, your career path as you weave it into the story of, you know, Baldwin's general construction story as well. So sure, yeah. Well, yeah, what? So you're in Oregon. I was actually just out there. I was mentioning in our pre deal. I was actually pre deal. I was actually out there last week. My sister was running hood to coast, and I was out there for my 100 mile. It got canceled halfway through the race because of all the wildfires, which actually is a great, great deal you've I feel like Oregon is known for its wildfires. Like, lately, am I wrong in that? Like, there's so many wildfires out
Michelle VanVolkinburg 02:19
there. Sadly, you're not wrong. I'm I'm from Southern California, and I thought I was an expert on wild, on fires. But as it turns out, we have a lot here. And in fact, yeah, our home was just we were in a stage two get ready to leave watch just a couple of months ago. So
Mark D. Williams 02:36
really, yeah, yeah, where, where and where is, where are you guys located?
Michelle VanVolkinburg 02:41
We're in Salem Okay, yeah, just right inside of Salem
Mark D. Williams 02:45
so interesting. Yeah, I was in my area. I was, you know, bend to the sisters, and they had, that was it the flat iron fire. They name them. It's, I feel like it's hurricanes, you name the fire, you know. And so, yeah, they keep going up the ladder. Well enough about that awesome fire nest. Tell us a little bit about Baldwin general. You know, what's interesting is, I haven't had anyone on the podcast. Most of them have been smaller operations. We've had a few. I had one down in Texas that I had 100 employees, and they did some like commercial but man, your repertoire. You guys build everything. I mean, I've seen you guys mentioned you build schools, you do residential homes, you're doing retirement communities. Like, what don't you build?
Michelle VanVolkinburg 03:22
Well, you know, I think our motto is in John's motto is, if bring it, bring it on. We'll, we'll do it. We'll figure it out. We will absolutely what do you want to build? We will make your dreams come true. So we do have a wide, a wide breadth. What would you
Mark D. Williams 03:37
say your split is, when you because you guys been in business for about 25 years. Is
Michelle VanVolkinburg 03:41
that right? Yeah, we're 2727
Mark D. Williams 03:44
years. Okay? And what did you start residential or walk us through a little bit where you started to where you're
Michelle VanVolkinburg 03:50
at today? Sure, I love like you. I love telling stories. It's it just, it's the most captivating for an audience, and just to hear they want that real side, they want the human side of a business, is what I what I have found over the years, and we can get into that later, but it's it's such a great way to just let your audience know. Let our customers know, let our ownership in the ownership of projects that we do, let them know who we really are, and create a relationship and a bond and make it real. And that's, that's something that we strive for every day. So, so, yeah, Ian started this business when he was it was 1927 years ago. Yeah, a while ago, yeah.
Mark D. Williams 04:39
So, 1998
Michelle VanVolkinburg 04:40
98 Yeah. Thank you. I get the dates because he, he started this with his in 1988 pickup truck, and had tools in the back of his truck. And just needed to, he was coming off of a career of being a musician in a band and traveling, and needed to figure out, hey, I need to be. Home with my wife and kids and put food on the table. And this is, I know how to do this. It's generational. His grandpa, his his dad taught him they were finished carpenters, and they taught him very meticulously how to create and how to build. His mother did some amazing work with with textiles. She was also very innovative and so creative. And it just, I think is it's innate in him, and so he just knew what to do. So he started doing projects around his neighborhood for neighbors. And you know how that goes? A neighbor goes, oh my gosh, you do this? And he's like, Yeah, what do you need? Can you, can you do my redo, my bathroom? Absolutely. And he's not done that before, but he's not going to let them know that to them. He's a specialist. So, so he just started very slowly, like that, by word of mouth. And a really neat thing that I just I love early on, it was in that first year he had it a gentleman walk up to the house, look in the neighborhood that he was in, and say, Do you need help? I'm looking for some work. And Ian said, Absolutely. And this gentleman is still with us to this day. Wow, yeah. I just love that story, the loyalty that Ian has for His people, and that and vice versa is, is,
Mark D. Williams 06:25
how big is the company? Now, in terms of people, we
Michelle VanVolkinburg 06:28
have 68 people. Oh, my, that's each company between our organ office and our Washington Bellevue Washington office.
Mark D. Williams 06:36
When you know you'd mentioned even before, we were just talking a little bit before we started recording. You guys were starting to expand into other states. How long has that expansion kind of been underway? It's
Michelle VanVolkinburg 06:46
been two years, and we've approached a little over two years. We were approached to do this really large, multi family facility in Bellevue. Beautiful, beautiful job. And again, yes, let's do it. Let's, let's take it on. And so he assembled a team up there of some really, really amazing professionals, and they got, got to work, and we just finished this project.
Mark D. Williams 07:15
Is that the elder housing project? No, this one is
Michelle VanVolkinburg 07:18
called our nuovo family housing. I don't have it on the website. Yet. I We just wrapped it up, and I actually just got pictures back. So wonderful, putting those to our website because it is absolutely breathtaking. It's, it's beautiful
Mark D. Williams 07:32
just for, just for frame of context, would you say? So what percentage of your work is commercial versus residential? And then let's throw in Remodeling in there. If you do any
Michelle VanVolkinburg 07:42
remodeling, sure, we're 100% commercial. Oh, okay, yeah. He started out doing residential early on, and realized that commercial was easier to for with client, you know, interactions and residential you're dealing with. Oh, I don't want this sink. Can we change this? Can we change that? And it was just kind of the back and forth. And forth. And he just,
Mark D. Williams 08:04
I've always wondered about that. I've been in residential construction my whole life, and I guess I love it, and a lot of the Yeah, we like people, but I've often been told that I'd be curious, from your point of view, the pros and cons, as you understand it, compared to residential is, when you're going business to business, there's probably less emotion. Is that? Do you think that's true?
Michelle VanVolkinburg 08:25
Yes, on a different level, there's emotion. It's just on a different level, because with commercial, you are dealing with ownership and then their their team. So you you have just different layers in your meetings every week that you're that you're speaking to
Mark D. Williams 08:40
with their in their prime, I'm guessing, but their primary goal to have someone build something is it probably for profit, like liquidated damages would be something that you probably have to deal with, that most residential builders do not and you're I've heard it before, like, Hey, we're building a restaurant every day or week that this goes past opening day. Costs us X number of dollars where, like in residential construction, while we obviously try the best we can to stay on on a schedule. It's not that we can't, you know, I've been told by our lawyers, never agreed to a contract with liquidated damages, with a with a customer, but it seems like commercial that's a pretty standard protocol. Is that, is that pretty much normal in all of your contracts?
Michelle VanVolkinburg 09:17
It absolutely is. And our scheduling then becomes very important, right? Well, imagine and so we we now have something that we've implemented in the last year and a half. We now have a scheduling coordinator in our office who who partners with our project teams, the superintendent, first and foremost, and the project manager, so he doesn't create the schedule. The superintendents create the schedule. But what our what our scheduling coordinator does is sits in and he'll, he'll look at the look at the schedule when it's all said and done, and what he's looking for is following that critical path. Are we following the critical path? And if. We bump something if a sub goes over, or if a sub doesn't show, or that's going to delay that's going to cause this. Number one, who pays for that? Number two, what does that do to our substantial completion? So he is just a wizard at at this whole process, and he really watches that along with the team. Again, he's partnering with the team. So you know, when he sits in in meetings, the team is going through their schedule and what's gone on that week, and he'll kind of perk up and say, wait, wait, wait, what was that? Was that a delay I smell, or, you know, something along those lines. And he's just very much in tune to each project. And what's I've always
Mark D. Williams 10:38
wondered about that? I didn't mean to dive into it, but I guess I might as well, because I'm very curious about it. So maybe I'll dive a little bit into how that works. Because I get asked, we're building a house right now for someone who's a very large business, and I'm sure they've done commercial buildings, and he asked us specifically about liquidated damages. And I said, you know, that's not something that will entertain as a residential builder. And I just explained why, and then he accepted it, and that was that now that obviously, at a future date, someone might push harder. And I was kind of curious. So the last couple of years, you know, we used to tell a homeowner, hey, this house is going to take 12 months. And you get to, you know, of course, we usually say we'll lock in that actual move in date. Call it 60 days before, because, you know, there might have been movement things like that, and they lock it in because they're scheduling movers and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, you do your final walk through your punch list. I mean, this is how we did it for probably 17, 1819, years. Not the best way, just sharing out dirty laundry of how we did it. So we'd come in on a Monday. They're moving in on a Friday, because the house, like we're literally, they want to move in as soon as it's done. And so we get done, we get the CO Monday, we do our punch list. You know, we come up with the 1015, 2030, whoever, however many items. But then we have to do that in four days. Like, good luck. No one can do whatever is on this list in four days. They move in on that Friday, because that's what you told them. And then you spend the next six months working around their schedule to get into these, you know, silly little punch items that, if you had more time, you could have just taken care of them. And so at the contractor coalition Summit, this was actually brought up by somebody else. And so we copied it. We add a 30 day window to all of our jobs, and we say that whatever this, whenever we get the CO from the city a certificate of occupancy, for those that don't know what the CEO is, we have 30 days from that date to when you move in. Now we do our walk through, and we have 30 days to finish it, and now the client is moving into a home that has zero punch list. If you do it ahead of time, it takes 30 days. If you do it after, it takes six months. Anyway, where I'm going with this is we tell our clients ahead of the time about this, and now in the last two years, we've had zero issues with it. They totally understand it. I explained the reasoning, and they're totally on board with it. Where, I think if you told a client 75 days before they're going to move in, you need another 30 days, they might have issues with that. My question on commercial and liquidated damages, you can't you just set the schedule to whatever you want out there and say, like, hey, you know your team tells you it's going to take 12 months. So do you just say, Hey, this is going to be a 14 month contract. So you allow yourself two months of window. Or how tight do you have to be to avoid, you know, this kind of guillotine of like, oh, man, we're gonna get whacked. I don't know what a normal rate is, 5000 10,000 whatever it is, a day. That's insane, because then I would worry about, like, quality control. Like, now you're warring with quality versus completion, and you are sort of disincentivized to for quality, because you're like, man, if we hit this and it's not done like we've got problems. Sorry, it's a big question, but I'm kind of curious, like, how commercial contractors navigate this?
Michelle VanVolkinburg 13:30
Well, it is tricky, but that's what liquidate liquidated damages is set up for in the very beginning. Number one, clients, owners will give us a time frame. They, they typically come with a time frame. I need this done by this date because they, they have plans. They need to start making money on that property.
Mark D. Williams 13:49
Is it up to you to push back? If it's unrealistic? Like, what if someone said, hey, I want to build a school in 12 months? You're like, Dude, this is an 18 month project at minimum. Like, how do you how do you push back.
Michelle VanVolkinburg 14:01
Yes, that's within the our pre construction phase. We'll push back. And then the project teams, they all, we have this great collaboration, and we have an amazing vice president of our pre construction, of our estimating team, and, gosh, he's just brilliant. And he knows, he just knows he's done this for so long. He just can like this and go put a bit of bit of and, you know, get these numbers out. And it's, it's amazing to watch his brain work. So, so yes, there, there is pushback, and there's a lot of negotiating. It's, it's a longer process. It sounds like I've never built a home. Well, the home I'm in, yes, we had this one built, but it was easier than this, this world because of that. So you have some, you have this, this tango, if you will, with with clients, and what, what can we do in a reasonable time, because you want this done right, the liquidated damages is set up at the very beginning. So there are no, there are no surprises, and then you it also really. Ian, I think, points out how important your project team is, that you have the right project team on the job. And, oh my goodness, how important a superintendent is they that is their job. They are running and owning that job, and they're running their subs. They're looking at this schedule and follow, following it to the day, to the nose, to the hour. Sometimes, if like, on our new logo job, just what is happening by the hour. Because this was five levels of movement going on. And absolutely, absolutely amazing how it is orchestrated. And very important to have, again, the right project team on the job.
Mark D. Williams 15:39
How would you say so, the evolution over the last 27 years from I'll do Ian saying, I'll do anything with a great attitude and figuring it out, the evolution into commercial and now, would you say 68 employees? What do you think has been some of the keys to that growth and that success over that duration,
Michelle VanVolkinburg 15:59
his with his entrepreneurial mind and just this can do attitude, he just grew this himself, not really knowing he didn't have a business plan. He didn't start with a business plan. He just needed to put food on the table, and knew that he loved this, loved this work, loved creating, loved building. And Ian is someone who also loves relationship. He is a very, very big on relationships and loyalty, and very, very important to him. And so he's creating relationships with his his residential clients. And we, we have some beautiful photos of of the projects he's done. And gosh, when it's just this award winning, award winning project. It's this home is beautiful, and those lead to something referrals, you know, the, gosh, the impact of word of mouth and networking and how that works. And so that's really how it was started. Hey, can you do this? Can my sister needs this or that sort of thing? But it was once he realized that, once he got into the commercial work and dealing with the different nuances of commercial, it was, oh, this is where I would like to head. And that's just where he started to kind of phase phase, the residential out. It wasn't really a clean break, it was just a phasing. And then it just was a more, a bigger focus, and then that that required more people because he couldn't do all of that on his own, so he just started gathering and gathering people.
Mark D. Williams 17:33
This episode is brought to you by Pella windows and doors. I've used Pella for 21 years as the exclusive window company on every one of my builds. When people ask me who I trust for windows and doors, it's Pella every time. Their craftsmanship, their innovation, the top tier service, make them a no brainer for any custom home builder or designer who demand the best, whether you're designing something bold or building something with timeless elegance, Pella has you covered. They're also the only window company that has a lifetime warranty on all of their windows. I've gotten to know all their people at Pella corporate, as well as locally. Here at Pella Northland, I'm proud to call them our partners and our friends. Visit pella.com to learn more and connect with your local reps. Today for more information, you can also listen to episode one, where I interview the Pella Northland founders, as well as episode 109 where we talk all about their latest innovation with the study set window. 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 Lean 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. I'd love to shift into your role. I think you've been there for a couple, just one or two years. How long have you been there now? Just over two years. And I was reading a quote that you sent, and I just love this. It was skin skincare, lip gloss, or 30 tons of concrete. The principles of business are the same as like that is awesome. So clearly you have a colored marketing background. What was kind of, what was your story, and why did you want to join the Baldwin team?
Michelle VanVolkinburg 19:26
This is a fun story, I have to say. So buckle up.
Mark D. Williams 19:29
I'm ready. Buckle up. Okay,
Michelle VanVolkinburg 19:31
all right, buckle up. So for the first you know, part of my career journey was I was a business executive for Nordstrom and for clinic cosmetics, and I did that for 12 years along the west coast. And so fun. This was pre, you know, pre kids, and just living this great life of travel and going to new spaces states that I hadn't been to, and working with these amazing Ian. Two amazing companies, and my role was, was kind of a pseudo in house, HR, you know, coordinator, and working with people, gals and guys that I'm helping. I'm coaching them, selling. I'm coaching, you know, in HR and in their world, and really coaching to their strengths and just finding their strengths and really just honing in on on that, and at the end of the day, how is that going to affect our bottom line, and we need to hit our goal. And so I, I really, I just really enjoyed that, and I was, I had these, you know, really high hopes and aspirations and wanted to, I had this goal of my, my personal goal that I wanted to get to, and was to be an education manager of this company. And it required a lot of travel. And when I had interviewed for the job, the job came open. I interviewed for it, and I passed the first, the first step, and it was ready to go to the next step. And found out that, hey, you're going to have baby, and I thought, oh my gosh, this is, you know, two things that I wanted all of my life, and the the baby was more important. So I did not want to spend my life traveling and having, you know, a nanny raise my child. So that was a really hard decision. I to leave once, once I did make that decision, very tough. Fast forward. Then my husband and I owned a business with his parents, and that was up in Oregon. Now, the first part of that story was in Southern California, and then grew up in Oregon, and his his family had a vineyards in the law in the valley here. And so my husband, we had 36 acres, and he was the sole vineyard manager and helped his dad with the wine making. And for a long time they just, his dad just sold grapes as a hobby. And then when my husband started, it was a full time thing, and then it became, hey, let's, let's make our own, let's make our own wine and sell it under our label. So we did that. And so then I became Marketing and Business Manager, and you know, all of the hats that you wear as a business owner, as you know. So that was very funny. We did that for a long time, and we just, you know, just five years ago, had to, had to hang up that those hats due to some health issues with within his family and so again, another very, very hard chapter to close, because it was something that we all just enjoyed so much. And then I found myself going, Okay, now what where do I what do I want to do? My boys are older. Where do I want to go? What do I want to do? So one of my very close friends, who's like a brother to me, was also in this journey with us, and, you know, seeing the pain that in struggles of having to close this family business and and move forward to something new. And he works for Baldwin, and he's like, Oh, I there's something something for you. Something something here. I just know it. Anyway, he got me in front of Ian and for an interview. And I interviewed with the with the accounting team first, and it sounded amazing, great. And yes, I can do this. I can do accounting, but this is not where you want me i It's not my it's not my biggest strength, honestly, and I will get so bored sitting behind a computer all day, which is crunching numbers. I'm a people person. I need to be out. You want me out with people. You want me to sell your you want me to sell your brand. You want me to represent your brand. So I said no to that, and then Ian called me personally and said, I'd like to look at this further. Can I meet with you? Absolutely. So he and I had our first interview and talked for over an hour, which for him to give me over an hour, was amazing, because I now know how busy this man's life is. So that was an honor. But, and again, it sounded so good, so like, oh my gosh, this company. I just, I love how we built the company. Coming from a family business. I know what it takes. I know how hard it is, and it's a passion of mine. I love family businesses, and I always want to support a local family business. And so that really hit home for me. And then just his drive and his passion, just again that can do we? Can we get this figured out? We'll do it? Attitude and I, but I had this kind of lingering mind chatter of, gosh, I don't know if I can do this full time, because I have some obligations to my family at home. We care for my in laws as well. So I wanted to make sure that that was going to be conducive. So at the end of the day, I had to, sadly turn him down, and I am so sorry. I just I can't do this at this time. It's an amazing job. I Oh, I do this would be so wonderful to do and to partner with you, but it's just not right at this time. And he didn't know why. I just had to say no. And. That didn't settle well with him. I know again. I know now that you know, until Ian know. So he said, Oh, Michelle, there's more here. I know it. You know. Can we meet one more time? So talk about a salesman, right?
Mark D. Williams 25:13
Wow. You really, yeah, you must have really impressed him. I mean, he really, not only did for the hour, but now he wanted to do it again. He didn't want to let
Michelle VanVolkinburg 25:19
you go, right, so we met again, and at this time, I thought, okay, Michelle, it's time to come clean. Let him know the why, let him know what's going on. And you know, you don't want to talk about your personal life in an interview, right? But I did. I said, Okay, listen, I owe you the why, and it's there's some personal things I need to still attend to, along with doing this amazing job, and I just don't know if that would be conducive to this schedule. And he said, Are you kidding me? When I told him what I do for my family, like his jaw dropped. He's like, Are you kidding me? Does your family know how lucky you are that you do all of that for them, and you do this and you do that, and you know, he says, of course, you can do that. Of course, will make things happen for you. This, this is your place. This is, this is the place where you need to be. And at the end of our meeting, I think it was an hour that time around, I said, I think you have your girl. I think I'm going to do this. That was too little over two years ago. And here we are. And the whole plan was, what he needed was marketing. He has, he had window in place, but he needed a marketing director to really just look at the website in a big way and really manage that, because that's he, as you know, that's a monster in and of itself, and then manage social media and all of those marketing efforts. And so that was a big one. And then in the back of our of our minds was human resources. And so marketing was first. That was kind of the fire of the moment. And so we did that. And really, so
Mark D. Williams 26:48
that would have gone, that would have coincided with your push to Washington, yes, right? I mean, that probably was a big was that a big reason why he was looking for marketing? Because if he's pushing up into there, he's gonna want to market what you're doing and kind of expand their your footprint,
Michelle VanVolkinburg 27:02
right? Yeah, exactly, exactly, because these you lead all of your your clients to your website to look at what you've done and look at your portfolio. And your website is very, very much a big deal in how you sell yourself and position yourself in the industry. So is
Mark D. Williams 27:16
that, where would you say historically? Let's say the last 510, years, and I guess, how do you contrast it with the last two since you've been there, where do most of your leads come from? Are they website? Is it Google? Is it referral? Is it architects? How are you accounting for where your leads are coming from?
Michelle VanVolkinburg 27:32
That's a great question. And you've you've hit a couple of them. A lot of it is word of mouth and referrals. For sure, we are we really work hard to work on those referrals architects, yes, we keep, we keep great relationships with architects, and they will let us know if something is is available and they're working on something we want. We'd like you to bid this, because we have to bid the jobs and then win them based on the lowest. Who is the lowest? Your race to the bottom, I guess. But it's your face forward, it's your website, it's your marketing outside of what you have, because then those clients can go and look at what you do. So they just go in tandem. And
Mark D. Williams 28:12
how often, I guess two things to dig in. One is it's very common that people use that term, so I'd like to dig in on that a little bit of race to the bottom. You know, I try to combat that all the time in residential construction, but I probably, I would imagine it's true of all business, frankly, that we're in it for value statements. And really, how do you differentiate yourself? Because, you know, everyone thinks that they do it a little bit different. But at the end of the day, this has been what I've used for a long time. Now it's, you know, if you're if you're going to choose a builder, a general contractor, of a similar strata, so similar quality that you can put forth, and all the materials are the same, then it really shouldn't be about the price, because the price should be within a percent or two of each other. It should really be about the relationship and the journey. I feel like most businesses, for sure, residential construction, we don't talk enough about the journey and about what the partnership is, because it's a long it's a long design could take six months to 15 months of just design, depending on the size and complexity of the home, and then the build can take anywhere from 10 months to two years. And I feel like how we talk about the process and how we talk about the partnership and what the expectations are, how clear we are with that is really something that doesn't get talked about enough, is that, do you feel like that's true also in commercial construction?
Michelle VanVolkinburg 29:32
I do, and one of our biggest key components is that we have a vice president of business development, and he's been with us for just over a year. And so he's been able to to just drive, drive our mission, and drive that relationship piece, and sell Baldwin to these owners, reps and to these clients. And so he he really bridges that gap. And he's just, he's a born salesman. He just, he sells Baldwin. He sells what we do. He sells our value, he sells our relationship piece, and he uses our referrals like crazy, just in showing, look, look, look, here's, here's what people are saying about Baldwin and why you need to look at us. So we have a we have a great partner in in that as well, to get to that, get to that the sale, and to win that job, and to say, okay, if I'm we just did one recently. We were one of nine. And then the because, yeah, because of Todd. And to your point, everything cost, everything is the same. Every nail is the same, every piece of wood is the same, but you're working on relationship, and so Todd just really builds those relationships in a huge way, and really makes these connections. He's another amazing guy. Again, you said Ian is a collector of great talent. Ian knows talent when he sees it, and he wants it for himself and for his company. And so that's really the end of the day, besides getting to maybe we're the lowest, maybe we're just almost the lowest, but man, that relationship piece this team is great because by this time, they've met your project team, they've met they've met Ian, they've met a lot of your internal people, and they're, Oh, I like this. This is a good relationship. It's a relationship sells.
Mark D. Williams 31:14
What is, would you say is the normal amount of people that would bid on a project?
Michelle VanVolkinburg 31:21
It depends on the project. The one that I just mentioned was a another multi, multi family housing unit, and there were nine, and now we're down to three, and the owner says, I like Baldwin out of the three the best, but he still needs some key pieces. So we're constantly to your point, this has been a long process. I mean, we've been working on this one client for just about a year. Sometimes Todd has his clients he's been connected with through networking for three or five years. He just knows him, and they reach out to him because of that relationship. So, so now that's it's just a
Mark D. Williams 31:55
lot different than residential. I mean, and maybe I'm wrong on this, but I think a lot of builders I've talked to have felt this way, like, you know, if a client we for one, rarely do we get, I shouldn't say rarely, maybe out of five, six projects a year, maybe one or two, we'll have multiple bid. But honestly, it's a red flag for me. If a client wants more than three bids, I like, I'm usually out unless it's a project that I really want, or it's an architect we're trying to work with, or something that the house is just really special. Because if someone wants, like, nine bids, like I would, I would say, I'm sorry, we're just not a good fit for you. And this is, I'm just comparing it to residential. So I don't that's why I'm kind of trying to get to if commercial is different this way, because I would just say, You're devaluing the relationship. You're looking at nine bids. First of all, I don't know, do you guys get paid, I would assume, for pre construction bids, or what does the bid process look like commercially? Do you get paid for
Michelle VanVolkinburg 32:49
those? Yes, we can. We can get those in there. We can get some finances in there. But it's, it's a, yeah, it's a process. I we have this great VP of estimating, and again, he can, oftentimes, it depends. There are so many different layers, but he can oftentimes look at something that they just want to know, how long will this take to build, and about how much he can go months and, you know, 5 million Sure. He knows he's done this for so long, and he knows about what it'll take. And then if they want to dive in, then we get into the nitty gritty, and our guys take it apart, we have four reconstruction and they take it apart, and they do their needy
Mark D. Williams 33:27
and I get that. I mean, if you're being I think maybe I'm just speaking to builders out there that do work for free, which I've been a large proponent of not doing like I think people should be paid for for bids. I mean, yes, everyone, including myself, there are times where we do not, especially if we're not leading design, if we're leading design, you know, I mean, we have a pre construction agreement in place for that very reason, and then if the client wants to, at the end of that process, get another bid, obviously they're welcome to. Almost never does it happen? Because you build up this huge relationship when answering all their questions and going through the design. I mean, it's like they know you so well. The only reason it really happens is you get to the end, and if the number is just so far off of where they want, they feel like they've either lost trust or they just like this can't possibly, right? That's usually the only reason why we see a second bid come into it anyway, just trying to compare commercial versus residential, because I do know it's different. I mean, as a business owner, if I'm hiring you to build my space out because I want to be profitable, like, I get it if I can lower my my cost burden of whatever business operation and Nordstrom, Taco Bell, Panera, whatever they're building, or a home housing unit, like, I totally understand why they might look at that differently. I think that speaks to the emotion. Because I think you know, from, if you're looking at from a business, business lens, yeah, like less. Less is really, I mean, that is one of the number one ways to make more money, right? Is pay, you know, have your cost basis be lower. Of course, for a home, it's a little bit different, because I feel like people really taken to account residentially, like value and the process and they're living there. So it's super emotional. So maybe that's the positive side of it, being emotional. All, not that they're not concerned about price. They certainly are. I've never had a client that isn't concerned about price, but I feel like when it's their decision to add money, or it's their decision to spend money, versus if it's my decision to spend money, whenever it can be the client, they're fine with it. I'm sure you've gotten into builds where you know the client wants to either change something or upgrade, but as long as it's not you coming to them saying, Hey, we hit bad soil or concrete, that's the concrete is not sexy. But if they're like, Hey, I'd really love to add a swimming pool to this common area, like, great, they totally understand that they're asking you to increase scope. I mean, does that seem to resonate with you?
Michelle VanVolkinburg 35:35
Yes, 100% and if change orders are a way of our world, it's a very commonly used term. So, but yes, if our customer wants a change order, absolutely, we're happy to look at that, and we're happy to get that figured out for you, and that that adds, that adds to our to our benefit. And then if it's something that we do, I have concrete, a concrete crew that is our it's a sister company, and they, they're within our building. They do think concrete is sexy, and they make it sexy. So they do, you know, they are a subcontractor, so they do have to bid as well, and they have to be the lowest. But they we have that. We have those options, of course, not in Washington, but we have that here. And to your point, you should bring Nordstrom back into it. I looked at it like like that, through that lens of as a customer looking for something nice to wear. I am going to this event, and I want something nice to wear. Sure I could go to a B or C, and it's probably going to be less expensive. Maybe it might not be apples to apples, that it might be something similar for less money, but you better believe that if I'm going to something special and have a special event, I want this to be very memorable, I am okay to pay more for maybe a higher priced brand or something, but I'm going to pay more, and I'm okay with that if I if I'm going to get the service and the attention that I would get and that I do get when I go shop at Nordstrom. So I do this with Ian a lot. I compare the two, and he is, oh my gosh, you know, how are we comparing Nordstrom to Baldwin and building here? But it's Customer Service at the end of the day, it's customer service and how we take care of our customers. And I that has been a mission of mine in this role of just really tackling that, and he did a great job before, so it just me embracing that even more and taking it further.
Mark D. Williams 37:28
You know, from the Human Resources part, like I get marketing, I think most people understand the marketing side. We can talk about nuances about that, but I feel like I talk a lot about marketing, so maybe we'll switch it up. From a Human Resources standpoint, what does that look like in your role at the company? Yeah,
Michelle VanVolkinburg 37:44
it's another good question. It's been an organic, revolving evolution here. At the beginning, it was just having someone for Ian to be able to I'm kind of the filter, so I people come to me first with anything that they have. It can be personal, it can be job related, whatever they have. And I take it in, they filter it and process it. And okay, who, who does this need to go to? And if it's me, that's that's one thing, and if it's Ian, okay, then I need to schedule this with him, or get that figured out. But what it's really turned into is is a bigger piece of that is the culture within our four walls. And it's been lovely to see this blossom over the last couple of years. We have a culture now that is that is more than I from what I hear, because I've only been there for two years, but is more than they have had in the past, and it's very, very different and very positive. You know, I
Mark D. Williams 38:44
wonder if it is in a little bit. I wonder if Ian knew when he was hiring you. Maybe he did, you know, the fact that it was your personal story that sort of cemented the deal, right? It was your at first, it was your hurdle, and then it kind of became the thing that sealed the deal, because Ian valued what you were doing for your family. So he knew you would treat, you know, the company you know, probably very similar. Are your values? I mean, if your values are in one place, they're not going to change to another. If
Mark D. Williams 39:15
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 schifr, Tyler, Grace, Morgan, Molitor and myself will all be there. We've got great content over three days. You 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 account. 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.
Michelle VanVolkinburg 40:36
I do care, and they know that, and I think they saw that straight away, because when I was first hired, remember, I was there for marketing, and human resources wasn't talked about yet. We just Ian, and I knew in the back of our minds that's where we would head. But I had, I had employees say to me, I really need we really need you to be our human resource person. You just you get this. You're a natural problem solver. You care, you you show care, you show concern, and you want to help solve problems, or teach us how to solve problems, that really, that's what I want to I don't want to solve your problems. That's a lot to do, but I want to guide you in the right way and ask you a lot of questions and and be curious about what you're doing and what you have done. I love I love that about your the name of your brand, the curious builder, because we are very curious at Baldwin. We want to know we ask a lot of questions. And get to the bottom of things. So that's really what it is. And it was just honoring again, because they didn't know that that was a plan, and for them to say that to me, was very humbling, to say the least, and very honoring as well. And I, I always want to honor them and their privacy number one. But again, build our culture and build our environment within our walls, so that we can then go out and do our best and be our best. So really, that's what I strive and aim to do every day.
Mark D. Williams 41:56
One of my favorite quotes is actually came out in the first podcast ever did on the curious builder with the owners of Pella windows, but Ed inglebreck had shared culture eats strategy for breakfast. I always thought that was super funny. I was thinking of like, you know, Pac Man, just eating strategy, like our where I'm going with this is it feels like the culture, you know, at Baldwin is very, very positive, especially if it has anything to do with you, which obviously it must have had. Which obviously it must have had something to do with Ian as well. What do you do in a more I think a lot of times people want to know, like, how do you build culture? I think people recognize it when they see it. I think people are grab it, gravitate towards it, but sometimes they don't understand what it is that they're gravitating towards. I think certain people have magnetic personalities, and you sort of feel like you're being pulled into their orbit. But like, a company is something different. Sometimes a company takes on the personality of the owner, which happens very often with entrepreneurships. But you know, when companies get bigger, it's hard sometimes to maintain the culture, because as the company grows, you need a culture calendar. You need like touchstones. You need like an actual prescriptive method to make sure that a culture is not lost. How have you sort of seen that sort of demonstrated? Because I believe, just based on you talking and your attraction to the company, it was probably happening either organically or planned. Is that something you're involved with now that you're part of HR and marketing, it seems kind of like a dovetail between the two, like you can obviously market to, you know, other companies that would hire you, which is and talk about your culture, which is wonderful, but I have to imagine you're also marketing to talent into your own team, and that's also equally important.
Michelle VanVolkinburg 43:29
Yes, oh gosh, it is. And, you know, one of the things that I saw in accepting this position was, was the the cohesiveness and how it did dovetail with what, what I know are my strengths, you know, in my from my career and from the very beginning with Nordstrom, into having our own business and building relationships, those were just natural strengths that I that I have, and something that really has, that I do Is it people are important to me, and I want them to feel, I want you to feel like you're the most important person in the room when we speak. I don't want to be preoccupied. I don't want I want you to know that I'm here, I'm listening, I see you. And I think that having that culture and modeling, that it's something that comes again, naturally to me, but it's really neat, because something that we're, I'm wanting to lean towards is we're very big fans of the Arbinger Institute, and they this is what they preach. They preach treating others, understanding others, and putting others first, understanding that people are people. We all are human. And yes, we have these jobs to perform, but we're human first, and to get to the human side. And if it's with an owner, or with your super or with your project engineer, it doesn't always have to be so cold and business like, get to know them a little bit, you know, talk to them about. Who they are as a person, and then you can loop business into that. And that's what, that's the way that I do, and I've always done it, and where, what I example on the job, and what would now understanding with the Arbinger Institute, which is, again, it's a great company, where we're, you know, really quietly building these layering these principles in, and it's their principles that we've all done in the past just kind of changed in a little bit as as time has gone on. But it's wonderful, because what it does is it really gets you out of yourself, and that's important to management, to just working and having a relationship, is you can't, you can't be self deceived and think that you are more important than everybody else in this room. You were all the same. We're all the same at the end of the day. And really, that's what we're what we do.
Mark D. Williams 45:59
Would you say looking forward you had mentioned earlier about expanding into Washington, is that, right now it accounts for what 10% 20% of your overall work? Yes, and are your teams and crews from Oregon going up there? Are you finding talent locally? Does I mean, I'm guessing you're obviously using subcontractors, but from a management standpoint, that's always where, you know, geographically, things get difficult for companies that start to expand what is sort of the not only marketing plan to what you can say yes to. But logistically, how do you handle expansion like that?
Michelle VanVolkinburg 46:35
We always look for talent. Always, always, always. We always have our eyes and ears open and look through our our platforms of talent that you know applies, and we just try to have a a grip on who's out there. And it's you probably realize this as well in your world, that it's hard to find talent. And when you find them, you boy, grab them. You know you gotta keep them. So with our Washington team, we do find talent locally there, and sometimes some will travel it. There's certain circumstances that they feel like they can travel a bit. But our Washington team is all, is all from that area, and we've been able to, you know, with technology, be able to find that talent we do have. We do have one gal in our office who is a project engineer for the Washington team, so she travels up there every every few every other week. Now that we have an official office up there, I'm, I'm traveling up there a lot more to be just to have an office there and to be present. And to try to bring that culture that I bring to our office here, into that Bellevue office, and Ian is up quite a bit more. We're just trying to be more present in in person, because there, there can seemingly, not intentionally, seem like there's a in these two islands. And I really, I really am trying to bridge that gap, because I don't want there to have someone that feeling it doesn't feel good, and that kind of that like you like them better. You like them better. I don't like that at all. And so we just try to bridge the gap as best we can.
Mark D. Williams 48:19
What's the drive time between the two?
Michelle VanVolkinburg 48:23
Boy, it's about a four hour drive. That's if you we when I go, I leave really early. I leave at four in the morning and just drive up because Bellevue, Bellevue traffic is bananas.
Mark D. Williams 48:34
Well, it's funny. I had a room my old roommate in college lived out in Seattle, and I think their first home was in Bellevue, so we went to go visit them. And I mean, I don't know, the West Coast traffic in general is pretty nightmare. I mean, obviously California, my wife did residency before we were married in San Francisco, so the Bay Area is wild, the traffic. But if I had to take a guess, and maybe I was only a visitor, I don't know, the Seattle area might be the worst place I've ever been in traffic. It's just there's bridges everywhere. There's no there's nowhere you can go. It's like it bridges to everywhere. Although I heard when I was in Portland, someone said it was the city of bridges, that there's a lot of bridges there too. I just, I guess you have so much water, which is great, but, man, you got bridges all over the place. So it certainly makes traffic difficult.
Michelle VanVolkinburg 49:16
That's right, I said to play Southern California, the 405, has nothing on this traffic up here. This is crazy.
Mark D. Williams 49:21
You know what you need? You have to talk to Ian about getting a helicopter. You know, you could make that a lot shorter, you know. Plus, if you're doing funny enough, we have a gentleman have to make the expense report. You can blame it. You can blame that idea on me. So bring it to him and say, hey, the Kearse builder says you need a helicopter.
Michelle VanVolkinburg 49:38
Like, here's what works as well. So we have our a business manager in our office who is, interestingly enough, getting his pilot license, and I can't get that quicker, because that would be really great to just fly up and fly back.
Mark D. Williams 49:50
Now, that's pretty funny. What, I guess. What are you What personally? What are you excited for here? You know, we're obviously over halfway through the year. What are you excited for to close it? In a third and fourth quarter. And what's exciting for you in the future?
Michelle VanVolkinburg 50:04
Personally, for my job growth and my personal growth, something that I have been able to implement this year, mid year, was an HRIS system that is a smaller company. We didn't have. We just We did everything. We have a server. We have papers on a server somewhere. Sometimes we can find him
Mark D. Williams 50:23
good. I'm glad to know I'm not alone in that one. Oh gosh. I sent an email to my marketing person the other day about the curious builder stuff. I'm like, hey, where do we keep like, the Arizona and Atlanta pictures? Because we have these hubs for collectives and and I was like, I'm looking at my drive. I can't find him. And she sent me a link. I'm like, I don't know what to tell you. I looked in the drive, can't find them. So
Michelle VanVolkinburg 50:42
that's the bane of our existence, is our photo drive. Ian is always like, our photos are a mess. I'm sorry. I try to keep them organized, but that was a really big thing for me to take on. I researched, you know, different systems. We don't need something so complicated, but yet, we need something. And so we implemented that. And boy, that has been so nice to have everything in one place for from onboarding. Everybody has their own hub. They can go in and look at their look at their time off. They can they can request time off. They can have all of their all of their insurance information in one place. They we our reviews are done through this. Now I'm telling you what program is this market has made such a huge difference. It's called Bamboo. HR,
Mark D. Williams 51:28
oh, that's so funny. You mentioned that I met, I met one of their sales rep at the Sun Belt. So I went down to the Sun Belt builder show down in Texas, and we had to give a little speech there, and I was on a panel, and I was walking around meeting some sponsors and and anyway, this guy from bamboo, and I don't even know, I don't know what our team, and we're a small team of five, but that's so funny. The only reason I know it is because this gentleman was, like, a, it's a panda bear, so it like it, you know, on the bamboo, right? So it's like, good marketing. It's like, okay, what's this all about? Is this catchy? So that's so funny that you like it, okay? It's
Michelle VanVolkinburg 51:59
been great. And we're even doing compensation through bamboo. They it's just it has made my life so much easier. You know, now, to be very honest and transparent, I'm not 100% you know, fully set up. I'm, we're still, I'm getting there, but, man, it is amazing. It's game changer. I think the
Mark D. Williams 52:21
technology shifts have changed so much. I mean, one of our, you know, kind of a shout out to one of our main sponsors, adaptive. They do all, all our bill pay is through an AI platform. So all the PMs, all our project coordinators, everything can be, not only streamline, you can set permissions right in it, and it just makes Bill face so much faster. I honestly can't remember what we did without it. I mean, obviously I built for, I don't know, 1819, years before it existed, but I think we're going to keep seeing technologies that come forward. And I do think someone had mentioned I was at a conference, and they were talking about just AI, and a lot of builders in particular think that construction is not early adopters. And he said, No, absolutely. The opposite. He said, You building construction world is, is actually one of the, you know, the world's, you know, foremost industries that is constantly adapting to new technology. So you're talking about energy and glazing on Windows and steel beams and engineering, and we're constantly building new things, and the laws keep changing. California's got who knows what they're doing, but Minnesota, where I'm at located, we're really cold. So there's a lot of reasons for our codes, and they're constantly changing. So I think builders don't give themselves enough credit for being technology advisors, I mean, or adopters, I should say, because we think like, hey, it's manual labor. Are you still putting stuff together? Or you'll heal the adage of like, well, we don't have to worry about robots. You still need humans to put this stuff up. And that may or may not be true. I think what people are missing in construction is that technologically, we are actually quite advanced. Because a lot of the companies that we work with, you know, they're very advanced. So like, someone might say, well, I don't need AI, yeah. Well, the companies that you like builder trend, like adaptive, like whoever you know bamboo. I don't know enough about their platform to comment on them, but honestly, every software is going to have AI in it some way or another. So by simply virtue of who you're working with now, you as a business owner, are also adopting AI through the partners that you choose to work with. So I actually think we're a much forward facing industry than many others. Would you agree with that?
Michelle VanVolkinburg 54:23
Yes, I absolutely do. I've I love AI. I think it's a great productivity tool, and I use it when I'm creating marketing tools, website stuff. I use it. It's amazing. And so we just had our AGC summer, you know, summer event here in Bend where you're, you're, you're familiar with, and H I'm sorry, AI was a really big component of that. And Ian was very excited to be in there and listen how AI can help with even estimating now. And what a great tool to have. And time saving, even, even if AI can help, help our estimators with 20 or 50% of what they're doing, that is 20 or 50% of the time that you have back to put someplace else. Or maybe that's going to get you to your bottom line quicker. And now you can move on to another project. We're going to be able to estimate more quicker with these tools. And so we, we're we embrace it. I wholeheartedly. Now, not everybody in our world, in our building, embraces it. There's a few of us that are more on board than others, but it's because they don't quite need it for their job yet, but they don't know what it can do for their job yet. So
Mark D. Williams 55:36
it that's so that's funny to say that we're a small company, and I've, you know, I use chat, GPT quite a bit, and a few other AI platforms, and I'd like to do more. And I think, you know, I actually think I need to dedicate specific time in my schedule, like time blocking, to explore using it, because it's kind of like you don't know what you don't know. And as the owners of the company, especially you guys are bigger company. I mean, maybe you have a technology officer that can roll out platforms and SOPs, and then at your inner team meetings, you can say, hey, we're going to use this over the next quarter a year. That's you too. Okay, you're okay, well, you got all the hats. Where I was going with that is, you know, a lot of times the people are playing with it, we see the value, but it's sometimes hard, because you go to your Pm, you're like, hey, we've got this new software. And, like, we it's a it's a common owner issue, where the owners will go to a conference, or we'll go talk to someone. I'll be all excited about this new technology, but maybe I use it, but maybe it's more like the team needs to use it. And, like, Great, another platform to use, another thing to learn. And like, I do believe there is somewhere, you know, that KISS principle of Keep It Simple Stupid. Like, you know, sometimes we can get too complicated, but you just mentioned bamboo, that actually is both. It's technologically advanced, but it's also keeping it simple, because it for you, it's keeping it all in one place, am I right? Yes, yeah. So
Michelle VanVolkinburg 56:53
it was amazing to have, yeah, have everything in one place. Everybody can find it, and everybody knows where it is, and their AI integration is great as well. We are absolutely, you know, plugged in with that. And they, they, I put in all of the information that I want available for AI and so our employees can go to the AI assistant and ask the AI assistant something, and it will spit out an answer that, you know, relating to what they're asking based on what we've put in. So, yeah, no, it's great, and there are so many things that it can do. And I use, you know, for an example, and you probably do this too, but I use an AI note taker in all of our meetings now, it's just there. And at first, owners were kind of questioning, what's this? They were a little skeptical, and Ian was on board, and we were all on board, it was just something nice to have as a backup, so that if one of our PES maybe they maybe they didn't hear something right, or they miss, they missed something, or they could look back at this transcript and see exactly who said what. And boy, it's just nice to have us back up. And so now that more and more people are getting on board with this, we have a project we're doing in Bellevue, another beautiful multifamily building project, and they have each they have a quite a big ownership team, and they have three AI note takers. And then mine
Mark D. Williams 58:17
becomes like, Well, it's funny. There's been jokes that you have more note takers than you have people in the meeting. But it is funny. It's like an honor sometimes, like my team will have a meeting and I'll miss it for whatever reason, another meeting went long or whatever, and then I'll get a summary of it. That's pretty nice. You can scan stuff pretty quick, and especially the summaries of it. I have a little warning tale to tell on that actually, not too long ago, a month or two ago, I was on a call with the architect, and we had one homeowner that was going to be coming on late, virtually, and one in office. And nothing bad, but just the architect and I were just talking shop and but it was being recorded by our note taker, and we were being pretty frank, like, Hey, this is this is difficult that we're I'm not sure we're gonna be able to get this the client might not see it this way. And then the client came in anyway. We had a great meeting, pulled it around. Client was super happy, and that night, the homeowner reviewed the notes because they were looking for plan updates, which weren't in there with their 12 year old daughter, and they listened to us talk again. Nothing terrible, but my heart, I was actually in a podcast like this when I got this text from my homeowner, and my heart just sank, and I just felt like I'm somebody who doesn't remember what I say, but I know that I didn't say anything terrible, because I'm just, I just don't talk terribly. So I didn't, I wasn't super concerned, but I was like, he just made me feel like it's not a good look. I felt super bad about it, and like, I know they're like, Hey, we thought things ended really well, and now we're right back to where. And I was just like, oh man. So I know I felt terrible, so I caught so I went back, and I I looked at the transcript to see what I did say, and I actually felt better. I'm like, well, it's not terrible, and it needed to be said. It was honest. It and and we worked it out. And, you know, we're still moving forward. But it was a real lesson to and the reason I'm sharing it on the part. Podcast is a warning of, you know, I messed up. Don't do it too. So, like, when you are, especially the world we live in right now, I feel like, I think there still needs to be a place for freaking conversations, and that's okay, but, like, everything's being recorded. And so, you know, make sure that you know what you're saying you are you're okay with. And, yeah, I mean, even we do it on purpose with, like, I actually have my phone so we use otter when I'm, like, out in the field, we'll awesome, set it on a on a desk, or keep it my shirt pocket or whatever, and just say, Hey, I'm just recording, just so you're aware, mainly just so I can do recap notes. And everyone's fine with it. It's more just a courtesy to let people know. And I think pretty soon, I mean, at this point, you know what isn't going to be recorded between video and audio, but it's the world we live in. But anyway, it was, it was some humble pie I had to eat, and I share it just because, be careful, because you're being recorded sometimes when you don't think you
Michelle VanVolkinburg 1:00:50
are, that's right. Well, and I was able to, if I can give this example, I was able to use it recently as a coaching tool, because we had a meeting where we had some tensions that were high and emotions were high as they typically are. It The End of meeting, at the end of a project, or, you know, as it's closing out. Yeah, so tensions were high and some emotions were were were really just put out there and let, let, let go. And it was something that I spoke to somebody about and it was great, because they came back to me the next day and said, You know, I was thinking last night, I lost sleep over this. And you have the the notes on on this meeting, right? And I said, I sure do. And the question was, can we go through that I'd like to really see and listen to how I came across and how I said it. Wow, that's impressive. That's a great idea. It's a great idea. Let's do it. And so what a great coaching tool there. Wow, that was pretty
Mark D. Williams 1:01:51
self reflective of that person. Just, I mean, I'm pretty I don't know all the circumstances, but based on what you just said, I'm pretty impressed with that person, because not too many people want to face their faults and use it as a learning tool. That's I'm super impressed with whoever said that.
Michelle VanVolkinburg 1:02:05
Yeah, me too. I because it was, it was because it wasn't their intent. There wasn't there in the intent wasn't to hurt or to sure come across. And so it was just that self reflection of, boy, how did I sound when I said that? So, yeah, it has, it has its positive sides too, but we certainly do have to be careful with what
Mark D. Williams 1:02:25
we say. Yeah, well, I want to respect your time as well as the audience. Thank you so much for coming on. This was a pleasant surprise. And yeah, I guess we'll get you down the life's road, and I'm excited for your future. I'll keep an eye open on how you guys expansion is going into Washington and other states. And thanks again to the audience for tuning in to another great episode.
Michelle VanVolkinburg 1:02:43
And thank you for having me and this last minute switch up. It's been very, very powerful and just a great experience. So I greatly appreciate it. And yeah, I would encourage you keep an eye out on our on our website. Wendell really helps me, and he does an amazing job and really highlights our projects well and and leads people back to our website, and that's really what we what we want. So yeah, and I'm keeping my eye on yours too. I really love what you're doing.
Mark D. Williams 1:03:08
So thank you very good. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Michelle VanVolkinburg 1:03:11
Thank you. Thanks for
Mark D. Williams 1:03:13
tuning in to 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.
This episode is sponsored by:
