119. Building With Purpose With Dave Phelps

You know, I joke that we have a lot in common with YETI as a business because YETI offers a premium product for insulated cups, coolers or whatever. We're offering a premium product for custom built houses.

Welcome to Professional Builder Secrets, the podcast for building company owners wanting to grow safely and securely. I'm your host, Will Blunt, and today I'm joined by Dave Phelps from ICF Homes in Virginia. Dave, welcome to the show.

Thanks Will. Thanks for having me.

I'm really excited to have you on the show today. We were just having a chat off air about all the amazing marketing you're doing, but I've got to hold myself back and talk about some other great stuff you've been doing. First, before we get into that, did you want to start by giving me a background on how you got into the building industry?

Sure, sure. So I don't know, a little over 20 years ago, I was looking to build my own dream home. And I looked at all the different ways you could possibly build a house. Two by four, two by six, even staggered wall framing, post and beam, sip, structural insulated panels, even steel frame. And I came across insulated concrete forms, icf. And in looking at how they come together, I immediately recognized both the structural strength of a steel reinforced concrete wall, but also the thermodynamics of it with, you know, the concrete wall encapsulated and rigid insulation. My background's in physics, have a degree in physics. And immediately when I, when I saw what, what that system, that, that exterior wall system, what that could do once it was fully built and encapsulated, it immediately struck a chord with me as, wow, this, this is really the best way, I think, to build a house. And, and so, you know, no one in my area really knew anything about insulated concrete forms. So I hired a team of people to kind of help me design it. I built it and then once I, you know, had the knowledge of pulling it all together, I developed a business around it and from there just move forward into more and more projects. And you know, here 20 years later, we've got a, a full team of project managers, engineers, architects that, that were able to, you know, really take from anyone's idea and time build them a custom one of a kind home. So it's super exciting.

I love that. Could you go into more detail about what your point of difference is with the concrete homes there?

Sure. So a lot of people might think about a concrete home or the foundation of a house as being concrete. What we're able to do is go from the footers and the ground and take it all the way up to the roof. The entire perimeter, the house in concrete. So it's, you know, I joke when I was a kid I played with Lego blocks and, and today I'm still playing with Lego blocks. The Styrofoam forms, insulated forms, they stack like blocks and they have depend upon where they're being used. For the most part they're, they have a six inch void in the middle. And so you've got two and a half inches of styrofoam and two and a half inches of Styrofoam on either side of the concrete. And there we stack our rebar vertically and horizontally in the wall and allows us to pour concrete in from the top. And that pour actually goes from the ground all the way up to the top of the house. So the entire perimeter of the house is a concrete encapsulated vault. You know, I joke that we have a lot in common with Yeti as a business because Yeti offers a premium product for insulated cups, coolers or whatever. We're offering a premium product for custom built houses.

Yeah. Funny you mentioned Yeti. I don't think it's as prevalent in Australia as it is in North America, especially in Canada. I was over in Canada for Christmas and everyone's crazy about those products.

Yes. So it's really fun actually. I should have had one out. I can go. But one of the gifts we give our new clients is we have a custom Yeti cup with our logo embedded on or engraved into it. So they get a Yeti cup for their Yeti of a house. Very good.

I mean it's a good comparison because like the, from my understanding of the product, the Yeti product, like just really high quality, right?

Yes, yes. It's a premium product. It's a high quality, long lifespan product.

Has that messaging around the concrete homes and the energy efficiency. Has that resonated with your customers?

It has. Most of our clients right now are coming to us. They have seen or somewhere they saw, they learned about insulated concrete forms and more. They now are doing a Google search to find someone who knows how to build a concrete house. And you know, that had a lot to do with why I named the company ICF Homes. That's the insulated concrete floor homes. That's kind of the name that goes with it. And so we are usually, you know, pretty, pretty high up on any organic Google searches for either a concrete home or an ICF builder. But we're able to take that client who generally already knows something about the product, that's looking for someone who can help them build the house and design the house and get them into. Into it. And that has been for many years. Our, our growth was based upon the client looking for us. And just here recently actually with, with part of my joining to ABB was to expand that to actually proactively start doing some advertising. And that really expanded the content with the YouTube series. And we're trying to use that as a platform to educate the public, if you will, that there are other ways to build high qual other than out of two by fours or two by out of wood. Most particularly in North America. It's kind of tunnel vision that the houses have to be built out of wood. And we do have other really good products that are in my opinion much better that that. There's just not a lot of market awareness. And so that kind of goes to the whole philosophy of education for the ICF homes.

Yeah, I guess we're almost going down the marketing path already, so maybe we can.

Well, I'm trying not to do it just yet. That's right.

We might as well talk about it now, seeing it's front of mind. I love that the approach you've taken there with organic search, because what you've done is you've found a highly valuable niche and where there's people searching for it and you've then become an authority on that. And that kind of has fed into not only the name of your business, the content you've produced on the website, but now obviously your YouTube channel as well.

Exactly. And again expanding on that, it was going back to the early whiteboard series and continuing my whiteboard series where it's like again, I don't want to go too geek, but I go into thermodynamics, I go into structurals and I go into what fundamentally makes a house energy efficient and how do we squeeze the most energy we can out of the house that's there? With an ICF house, they are passive geothermal. They will actually heat and cool themselves based upon the energy that's coming out of the ground. So the footers are staying at steady temperature, they're deep down in the earth, and those footers stay steady temperature. Just like with a passive or not a passive, but a geothermal heating and cooling system, we utilize that energy and that energy radiates up the concrete wall all the way up to the top of the house. And so the steady earth temperature is what's actually adding energy around the perimeter. Of the house that allows us to heat and cool the house with virtually a fraction of the energy as a conventional frame wooden home.

So when you're. For anyone that hasn't seen your YouTube channel, highly recommend checking it out, Especially the whiteboard where you do these educational videos about a lot of these topics you're talking about here. How do you come up with those topics? Are they questions you get from clients? Are you doing research to identify what people are searching for?

Yeah. So we will expand upon what clients have asked us about and for how do you design a proper H vac system? How do you think about what are the differences? And some of it is also just where we understand and it's part of our niche. And part of our niche we have to be able to educate, if you will, the market about what we're doing and why we're different. And some of that is going to the technical side of it, which we have an audience that likes the technical side. We also have an audience that likes the finished homes that are pretty. The deep, detailed decorations, how the homes are trimmed out. And so we're balancing that technical structural side with the beautiful finishes, the design side of it.

How have you found the. That content side of things has affected your ability to be compared to other builders that do similar things?

Well, again, good or bad or different, we are a niche. And so we don't have a lot of virtually have no real competition as far as it does ICF or insulated, you know, concrete forms houses. And in Virginia, or even in the mid Atlantic area up and down the east coast, we are pretty much one of the main, biggest, if you will, of a very small market that we do do this. Now I do compete with other custom home builders, wood framed. And so what I try to do is just differentiate. We are comparing a wooden structure to a concrete structure. The end result, they look the same. The house has the same exterior finish. It has the same flooring, same cabinets, countertops. Everything's the same in a wooden house. You don't see the wooden studs in the wall. You don't see the insulation in the wall. You see the drywall. The drywall that goes on our wall is exactly the same. The drywall that goes on any other house, it's just the framework is different. And so where we try to differentiate ourselves is the quality of the bones of the house, the structure of the house. And that's where we really try to differentiate ourselves from our competition, is what we're providing to the end buyer.

Well, I can tell you right now, from a personal perspective, if I was comparing two builders or numerous builders and one of them had a YouTube channel like yours where you clearly come across as the expert in exactly what you do, it's a no brainer to want to work with you because it's obvious that there's going to be a great outcome from that experience.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, we try to. And again, throughout the whole design phase of it, we work with our clients on good designs. Something as simple as where do you put your dryer?

Right.

Something is minute and boring as where is the laundry room? Right. And so many times I see some designers put the laundry room in the middle of the house. Well, that may be fine as far as how the house lays out, but now your dryer has a very long run and your clothes never really get dry. And so we're going to design a house around. You want that dryer to work. Again, that may sound boring, it may sound insignificant, but if you've lived in a house and you want to dry your clothes, you want them to dry them quickly. Same thing with good H Vac design. You want to make sure that in many cases I work with some really wonderful, talented architects and the H Vac layout is really one of the last things they think about. And when we're designing houses, we are, you know, we definitely want the floor plan for the owner to be very happy with. But in that design process, we're looking at where do we run our central H Vac system, where does it live, where do we run our zoning system so that we're not retroactively thinking about this at the back end of it. And again, that is another thing that may somewhat differentiate ourselves because how the interior of the house is typically with what we do is wood frame. We do do concrete floors, but for the most part we're interior wood frame. That's the same as any other wooden house. And what we do with our H VAC systems could be done with any, any kind of house. But you've got to design that in the early stages to get it to work right and work efficiently.

But that level of care as well is just showing the customer that you know what you're doing and you're dedicated to providing them a great outcome.

Yep. And we do, we, I, I take immense pride in every single house that we design. Build that it is, you know, it's one of those, it's, it's, you know, it's a job that, you know, at the end of the day, when you're done. 20 years from now, you can go back and say, I designed and built that house and that that I have tremendous pride in every single house we design, build. And I hope I know my owners, my clients know how proud I am. And I tell everyone when we finish a house, I hope you are half as proud of this house as I am, because we put our heart and soul into it and we want our clients to feel like we did that as well.

So, Dave, you mentioned that you have a whole team of project managers, architects, and everything that you work with now. What role do you play in the business? Obviously, you're the face of the brand on YouTube, but other than that.

Yeah, so I'm the face of the brand on YouTube. I still probably do more than I really want to with the company, but as far as overseeing marketing and sales, that still lives in my court. I'm still highly, highly involved with the customers on the early stages of the design. Again, a lot of the time a client's going to hire us, they want to make sure that I'm still involved with the good designs, layout, structurals. So I'm still very highly involved on the front end, the creativity side of the house and then again the design. But once we get building, we still have to deal with some technical questions. My project managers, I'm still involved at a high level with the actual build of the houses, and I still say in direct communication with our owners during the build.

Okay, so you've just got that, I imagine, as well, because you are the face of the brand, people somewhat expecting you to be involved.

Oh, yeah.

Okay. So the reason we actually organized this interview in the first place is because you reached out as a new partner of the One for One Project. So the One for One project is a partner charity that the APB is working with. But do you want to just give a bit of a background of your experience with the One for One Project, what they do and how that all came about?

Sure. So as an APB member, I received an email notification about for every either renewal or new membership, APB was going to sponsor $100 towards one for one. And for basically every 25 homes, they would sponsor a home. And I thought, wow, that's awesome. That's incredible. One of my early whys while I got into building homes is I feel home ownership is extremely important to families, to individuals, to better their life, for safety and security and also an economic means of development. And I just philosophically, my whys, I think home ownership is extremely important. And one of the Goals I had my life is to be able to give, give a house away a year. And you know, with One for One, not only can I give one house away a year, I can give away multiple homes a year. And in a part of the world where extreme poverty where, you know, totally different lifestyle than what we're used to and we can dramatically, dramatically change the life of a family in another country where what we take for granted that they're living in structures that aren't even, we're not even sheds and that's, that's unfortunately what they're living in. And we're through the One for One, we're able to build a masonry block house with a concrete floor and a structure and a permanent roof over top far and above what, what they could ever have. And the family itself, they have ownership in the house. They have an equity stake in the project as well. So I am just excited as I can be that for every custom multimillion dollar home that we build, we can help a family out and get them into a permanent, sustainable, safe structure where they can raise their kids. And you know, the background stories for these projects are just heartbreaking. It's just amazing where the families are coming from. And it's just, you know, I laughingly said, I said I am glad I am not the person who gets to select who gets, gets the next house because I couldn't do it. But the project's wonderful actually. When I first saw the information from One for One or from apb, the I went and reached and started doing some research on the website and I looked at it and I'm like, wow, this this really looks promising. And then I noticed that the founders are actually a custom or custom builders. And I took the time and I made a phone call and I called Sven and asked him more about One for One and kind of just get a feel for what his. Why was, why was he doing this? Why would he take the time to create this charitable organization? And had a great conversation and you know, from there I was sold. And the very first project that, that we did, it was already an existing house and we just. So it was almost through the handover part and I actually surprised the homeowner with the handover of the gift that we had made in honor of another family. And they were just excited and as happy as they possibly could be about the gesture and what they were able to help. And then the storyline, I was able to share with them the link on the One for One site, the family we sponsored. And it was Really a lot of fun. And so we've made a commitment that actually already four more projects that are underway, they'll be funded and then we will continue to fund those as we move forward with more projects.

Yeah, that's really powerful. And you can see that you're passionate about it, which makes a huge difference to the work you're doing. For anyone that wants to check it out, the one for one project, we'll share the link in the show notes. But they have all the amazing stories of the families that have built these homes in Guatemala on their website. Are you incorporating that. So just to clarify, as a handover gift with your new homes that you're building?

Yes. So we've made a decision to make that part of our handover gifts for our clients and so along with some other gifts. But you know, when you do a handover gift, what we try to do is find something unique and special that that client would find fun to them. But giving a family in Guatemala, third world country, a lifeline, that's a gift that I can't replicate any other way through some kind of tangible material gift here in America, it just went over very well and we expect it to go over very well with our other clients.

Yeah. And I think that's where the whole idea from Sven came, didn't it? Because the. I think the cost of the home is what, two and a half thousand USD, which is around about the cost of your typical handover gift for a new home. So.

It is. It is, it is. It's. Yeah, it's. It's not much to think of the good that you can do with it. It's pretty incredible.

Very good. So from a more business perspective, obviously there's a strong why behind why you're working with the one for one project. But have you noticed that you want to incorporate this into your sales process as almost a selling point?

Yeah, it will be. We are starting to roll that out in our website where we were going to put it into our about us and again, it's not going to be front and center on the homepage, but the client's going to dig in a little bit, find it in their about us. And I'm going to incorporate it into my, as the business owner philosophical why I build houses. It goes back to my why I think homeownership is so important. I think safe, sustainable homes are equally as important and we're able to kind of facilitate that why, both in my custom homes, but also on a charitable process, a why as well that fits back to home ownership is extremely important to us and we're able to do a safe, sustainable house. I just for what we do, it was just the right match. Completely the right match for us.

Yeah. And you can share all those amazing stories of the families that the homes are being built for on social media or whatever it is as well, which is powerful.

Yep. And again, I would recommend any builder to look into it. It's not a huge cost and what you can do for good for another family, but again, maybe a little bit of marketing as well. It's a great. It's a really good opportunity.

Yeah. Taking a bit of a shift now to talk more about your business. Again, Dave, to be honest, it seems like you've got it all figured out. You found a really high valuable niche. Your marketing's on fire. You've got to this point where you're like looking at the focusing on your why a lot more and being very purposeful about your business. But has it all been smooth sailing? Have you reached any challenges at all in your journey?

Oh, yeah. So I think a lot of us, Covid was a big challenge for us and one of the things that happened for us, us with COVID was we kind of blew up as far as demand. And one of our biggest challenges was to manage the growth through Covid. And again, everyone has their own unique experiences through the COVID phase. But one of the big challenges we had was with growth and maintaining customer expectations. And that was a challenge for us. We have weathered that storm and set up a lot of system and processes to help us facilitate the, the growth we went through and the growth that we are still seeing. But one of the biggest challenges was to maintain that really high end customer experience with building a custom house. I know a lot of people listening to this may be custom builders. They understand that there is significant communication, if not even hand holding as far as keeping the client's expectations in line with what is the borderline between perfection and obsession. Keeping that client's dream home in place but still maintaining realistic expectations and communications during the build is one of the things we work through. We solve the problems and we're very happy with where we are today.

Have you been able to maintain that? I guess there was essentially a boom during COVID Right. Where there was a lot of interest in building new homes. Have you been able to maintain that in the last 12 months where there's been some challenges in the market or.

Yes, we have. One of the things that happened with COVID here, I think probably globally was the price of lumber went through the roof and it went up so much that even building lumber pushed homes to where they were actually a little more expensive than a concrete home. And so that forced people on a very large scale to start looking at alternative building methods outside of wooden. And that was a marketing boost that I could have never created. It's a small company, you know, North America. You know, we were, we were getting leads from all over the country looking at and I actually literally had to change my website to show just the small geographic area of Virginia that we operate under. We were getting literally leads from other countries as well. And so that, that really was an eye opener for us. And we have seen, you know, latter part of mid to LATTER Part of 23, we saw a little bit of a slowdown. And I think that was a lot to do with the interest rates going up in North America, in America seeing a little bit of retraction of demand. But we've seen, I think the market has kind of stabilized as far as expectations of interest rates. And the other side of it is a lot of our clients that we're using right now are paying cash. And so they're not really so driven by interest rates as others are. But so we did see a little bit of a dip, but it didn't last long. And we're back at to pretty aggressive design schedule for ourselves.

Yeah, very good. So how far in advance are you booked out for 2024?

We are into. We're hitting third quarter right now of 24 starts first. First two quarters are pretty much full.

Okay. And you're just continually trying to fill that pipeline with. Now you're looking to invest more in marketing as well?

Yes, yes. And so now we're looking at. We've started, we started, I mean again, for 20 years I didn't do any marketing. And then the last, my very first time putting any kind of advertising together was in July of last year. And so we've got six months under our belt of paid advertising, which is a very small window. And it's, it's. We're seeing an uptick in leads and we're seeing an uptick and a lot of better qualified leads. And so at this point now we're starting to refine where the leads are coming from and refine our message. And so we're kind of learning as we go through that refinement of messaging where and what YouTube, if you will, the whiteboard series, technical series versus finished homes, trim just to see where the market wants to. We get the most response from our marketing approach with YouTube.

Yeah, very cool. So yeah, just testing concepts out just to dive a bit further into that. So advertising for six months, what channels have you been advertising on?

Sure. So we primarily advertise on Facebook, Instagram and then Google Ads. We haven't even started the YouTube advertising process. The entire YouTube is organic. That's going to be my next phase of expanding the advertising dollars is going to be into YouTube advertising. But with there, you know, some of that is also a learning curve for me. A lot of this is new for me and to, you know, kind of figure out where we want to put those and what content and really to look at the zip codes that we want to push to or the counties, the areas that we want to actually do the advertising. Because we are still getting responses literally from all over the world. Most of it is from North America, but literally all over the world. And so that's not a place where I can advertise all over the world. It does no good. And so we just have to refine where we are.

What type of messaging are you using in your advertising? Are you using some of that video content, educational content, or are you focusing on the finished product like you mentioned?

So great question. We are actually doing a little bit of both and it's fascinating to look at even down by age. We can look at age again, anyone who's looked at a Facebook or meta marketing results, advertising results where you can look, it gets back to age and gender. And so it's fascinating for us to look at whether it's a technical presentation or a more beautiful, if you will, finished presentation where we're getting our feedback from and visibility. And so we're looking at that and trying to get those numbers up as far as it tends to be more heavily technical right now. And we're trying to get the viewership up as far as the finished products. Again, we definitely want to be known as an expert in insulated concrete form houses. I think we have a very good grasp of that. The next step is to expand that onto the more finished and beautiful side, which we've been doing for a long time. But that's tapping into a much more competitive market where you're looking at finished products to like I said earlier, a concrete, an ICF house when it's finished, looks like any other wood framed house. And so we're, we're diving into that world where we're getting to a competitive situation with the finished of the homes.

And you mentioned some targeting options there like age and demographics and things like that. Do you have a really tight, I guess, definition of your ideal customer? Are you still learning a bit about.

Yeah, so we have a lot of historical information and then also with what we're getting feedback on. But our majority demographic is probably late 40s to 70s and that adds to, you know, an age wise and that's really where we are currently. We're really lined up for someone who's building their dream home, whether their last home. And they have built different homes before in the past and they've lived in their house they've in for a while now and they really want zero maintenance. They want a house that is they can age. We do a lot of aging in place and they, they, they understand the maintenance with what's. And involved with a wooden home and they've lived in older wooden homes. They've lived in the house they're in right now for a period of time and they understand that they don't want to deal with maintenance anymore. So we do a lot of metal roofs, we do a lot of exterior finishes that are very, very low maintenance and they understand the benefit of that. And that's really our demographic is, you know, my age and older that they're doing their really their last home. And it's something that they'll also look at generationally where it could be something that would be handed down to the next generation as well. So some of these are larger projects that would, that would potentially stay in a family for generations to come.

Great. Yeah. I mean all of that understanding of your customer and using that in your marketing is going to be really powerful to connect with the right people.

Absolutely. Yeah, it's very helpful. It actually affected us and some of the marketing as far as the images that we're using on our websites and other marketing pieces that we're making sure we're hitting the right age bracket for our clientele.

Dave, I could probably talk about marketing all day, so I got to reel myself in. But one question I'd like to ask you, which is one that a lot of our listeners are very interested in, is what software tools do you use in your business to help, I guess, run it better?

Sure. So we do use buildertrend. We're a big fan of buildertrend that we were using exclusively with client communications. Again with the custom world. We still see a fair number of change orders. We run internal communications within our project managers between the sales manager, project manager myself. A client may ask us for a. They want to do make a change. We see that all the time. And so internally we have different team members that have to talk to each other. So we actually use buildertrend as an internal project management software, for lack of a better word, both internally for the project and then I'll say externally for the clients to actually visit or to see. But we use utilize the build schedule. The client can see the build schedule, we utilize the build schedule. We definitely utilize buildertrend very highly. Recently again, as we're expanding our marketing, we're having to do a better job of tracking and managing leads and the number of leads that are coming in. So I recently just invested in HubSpot for CRM management tool and we're going through an onboarding session right now with one a third party integrator to be able to put all the marketing together on a central platform. So we can see all of our meta posts with whether it's Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and the Google Ads, all on a central platform, a central desktop that we can see age brackets, time on site, did they bounce to different platforms? What platforms are our leads coming in and just able for me to be able to fine tune where I want to spend my marketing dollars, where we're getting the best bang for our bunk. And so as we're growing and evolving that that data is coming back to me and I can make better informed decisions.

Yeah, that's really important and really powerful. HubSpot's a great tool. We use HubSpot at APB as well. And the amount of data you can collect and the insights you get and the decisions you can make based on that is amazing.

So yeah, it's like I'm just starting to learn what it can do and I quickly learned that I cannot figure this out. So like I said, I hired an integrator to kind of help us pull all that data together.

Awesome. Actually, that was another question I had with all of your marketing. You mentioned you had some internal team, but do you use other external parties as well?

No. I am very, very lucky to have a great marketing team in house that creates all of our meta. When I say meta, that's Facebook and Instagram content. It does helps me with all the YouTube channels. Those and house team members that are really their knowledge is always oppresses me every day that they come to me with new ideas and new content. I'm I will say unusually blessed and lucky to have that those, those team members with on our team.

Yeah, that's awesome. It's nothing like having a good, good team on hand to be able to work on it. Rather than.

Absolutely.

But there are options if you, you know, for people that might be at an earlier stage and looking to get, you know, an agency or something involved too.

Absolutely.

Okay, Dave, so what's the biggest thing you've learned since working with the association of Professional Builders?

Probably the scariest thing. I learned a lot of things. So I'm a numbers guy, physics guy. So I like the numbers, the KPIs, you know, they're very important and they do take. Again, granted, they take time to keep that data in there, but it's very, very important to keep that in and tracking. And so I work with Eric, coach Eric, and he has been a big help with me working on all my KPIs. But one of the biggest eye openers, and I knew this existed. I just never sat down and did the math and never really either wanted to spend the time to figure it out. And it was the cost per day per project overhead that was a scary one. And I knew it existed. And I kind of like just avoided that number for a long time because I didn't really want to know. But one of the things that in going through, through with the private mentoring was forcing you to do that math. And once I did the math, I was like, oh my gosh. But it was scary, but it also was very informative, helping me make decisions. So, for example, if I have some kind of material delay and I have a choice of an expedited order or an expedited fee for a trade partner, and I know the fee is X amount, but I also can look at if my house sits, I won't say vacant, but if it sits stagnant for a week, I know how much a week of stagnant activity costs my business. And I can use that data to make a decision whether I pay more to have something done sooner or not. And you know, again, it really helped us as a team make good decisions. Something as simple as if we wait two days, how much does that cost us? If we wait seven days, how much does that cost us in delayed productivity? And that was a big number, if I can say. One thing that really woke us up was how much slowdown cost. And again, we went through Covid. We had all the material slowdowns. And once I realized that again, a lot of us realized how expensive that was. But for me, the cost per day for project overhead was a big one. I also realized that the WIPA was out there. And I kind of in the back of my mind knew that I had, you know, again, as a Custom builder. We want to stay ahead of. Draws ahead of. We want to stay in the black. But how much were we actually in the black? I had some ways in my mind that I was kind of doing the calculations, but I wasn't certain if it was accurate. And again, that was another major number for me to track. Track closely is our WIPA number. And it's so very important because it can have a. Either you're. Either you think you're doing great and you then all of a sudden you realize that maybe you're not doing as well as you think. Fortunately, we were doing well and there was a confirmation that we were doing well. But it was nice to be able to have that confirmation.

So you feel like you have more confidence in your numbers now?

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And a little bit more confidence in looking at projection, future revenue expectations, future expenses at any given time. Workflow. We talk about workflow at any given time. I know how much workflow I have in front of me as far as revenue, covering expenses and just giving me the ability to make higher level decisions.

Yeah, well, now you've got the confidence. If you know your numbers, your financial numbers, then you can invest in advertising, you can hire more people, you can do all those things that you've been talking about.

Exactly. And those were things I really didn't know. So I was conservative and now I have some data that gives me the confidence to make those decisions. Hiring people, hiring marketing, spending money. CRMs aren't inexpensive by any stretch. And that was a huge investment to go through the CRM and then the cost to get the system set up, the integrator, that's a huge investment for us. But I see that the value and the information that will give me, well, more than the cost of the software is nothing. Once I do something with the data.

Yeah, yeah, it'll pay itself back eventually.

Absolutely. Hopefully sooner than eventually. Yeah, maybe eventually.

At some point very soon.

Yes, exactly. That old, that old thing is if you just sell one house from xyz. Well, I'm like, well that, that's true, but you still got to sell that house.

That's it. That's it. But I think it's all, it all just feeds into each other.

Right?

You know your numbers. Well, you feed, you invest into marketing, your company, you get the leads in, you pick the best quality leads, you work with the best clients and it all just works together.

Absolutely.

Well, Dave, I know you've got a busy. Actually it's the end of your day. But I'm sure you want to get back to your evening, I've really enjoyed our chat today. Is there any final advice you want to give to other builders out there listening who are running custom home building companies?

Well, you know, again, I did it for a long time and I knew that I needed at a certain level of growth and or expectations of growth. I knew I needed some kind of expert advice, coaching advice to grow my business because I was at my knowledge base to grow what I could do. And you know, the first leap of faith was to join apb. And you know, I started, you know, the old analogy of drinking from a fire hydrant. Just the volume of information that is given to you day one you join it was overwhelming. And that's when I quickly realized how much I didn't know. Which is always scary when you start realizing how much you don't know. And what was the best and fastest way for me to get that information into the analytics that I need to run my business better. And that's why I chose to go with the private mentoring and to really just accelerate how quickly I can grow my business again. Because the end goal, I assume for a lot of people is some form of exit strategy and that is my end goal is trying to form my exit strategy. And I believe that the investment in APB will accelerate that.

That's awesome, Dave. Well, thanks so much for sharing your experience with apb but also just your experience with your business. You've really got a strong purpose for why about why you're building homes and now you've, you know, connected that with the one for one project. Your marketing is, is top level and I think anyone, any builder out there that wants to learn about marketing and building company and targeting a specific niche really should check out all the content that you're producing and everything like that. So really appreciate you coming on the show today.

Thanks, I appreciate that. Have a wonderful day.

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