16. Purchasing Practices To Maximise Profit With Ryan Lipchek

This is Professional Builder Secrets, the number one podcast to help you grow your building company safely and securely. Brought to you by the association of Professional Builders. Join us every week as we talk to industry experts and your fellow professional builders on everything you need to know to generate more leads, more sales and higher margins while improving the building experience for your clients.

Hello and welcome to the Professional Builder Secrets podcast, a podcast by the association of Professional Builders for building company owners, general managers, VPs and emerging leaders. Here we discuss all things running a professional building company from sales, processes, financials, operations and marketing. Hello and welcome. I'm joined today by Ryan Lipchuck, Vice President of Business Development for CB usa, a build a member network that has combined purchasing volume and buying power off a large national builder, allowing its members to gain purchase advantage and deliver increased purchasing volume. Ryan, welcome, welcome and thank you for being here today.

Hey Bosco, good to talk with you again. I appreciate the time. Always look forward to the chats with you.

Yeah, we've actually had some really cool chats in the last few months. I would say, you know, let's start off with CB usa. Tell us a little bit about the concept and what you do and your role out there as well.

For sure. Yeah.

Thank you.

We 17 year old company, CB USA, started out of Washington D.C. northern Virginia area. Bunch of builders got together and said, hey, we're going to work in unison. We're going to streamline what we buy, how we buy it, who we buy from, and long story short, they had a lot of success doing that on their own. They got great pricing, great service, a lot of things got better than they ever could have been getting on their own. And they said, hey, let's make a company out of this. One of the guys stepped away. A guy by the name of Bill Smithers stepped away from his home building company. These guys became the original investors and their buddies around the country started wanting what they did there in Northern Virginia. It was great as we've grown. Now, fast forward 17 years and I've been here 15 years of the 17 and now we've become the sixth largest residential builder in the country. We have almost 600 of the best home builders in the country that work with us. Together they do almost 13,000 annual homes and well over $5 billion in annual revenue. So we're able to leverage that type of massive purchasing power and help small businesses around the United States get better at what they do and more profitable. So that's it in a quick nutshell.

So tell me a little bit about you know, let's open the time capsule here, I guess. Tell me a little bit about you and what compelled you to get into this industry. Was this a career choice? You know, was it out of interests? Accidental, purpose driven?

I went to college to get a business degree and play football outside of Pittsburgh and didn't know exactly what I wanted to do and was recruited by a big national builder at that point. Building always fascinated me. So ended up spending the first 10 years of my career right out of college with a big national builder and built home, sold homes, costed homes, managed people and was. And I really love, fell in love with the industry, but knew I didn't want to stay in the production arena. And met Bill from cbusa back almost 15 years ago and really loved the concept of what he was doing to help small businesses. And the company was in the infancy at that time. And I said, boy, this would be a really neat career jump. Kind of in the same industry, but instead of production helping the custom builders, I got into it and it's been the biggest blessing of my life. It's a great industry to be in. I couldn't imagine spending the last 25 years in any other industry. It's helping people every day and seeing the progress of homes being built. I mean, I don't think there's anything more satisfying than watching these homes go up and being a part of how they're built and how materials are purchased. Very, very cool.

Tell us a little bit about the brand reach for CB usa You mentioned. It's on a national level now. How did the company grow and transform itself to be where it's at today? I assume when you first started out, it wasn't where it was and obviously they took some time to get there. So tell me a little bit about the challenges that you may have faced and the growth that came from it.

Boy, that's true. There was extreme challenges that came back, especially 089 10. I don't have to tell you what happened back. I mean, builders were decimated. Home starts were tough. I mean, that was. The Depression was one of the tough things that home builders had to go through. And it brought out the survivors. People that weathered the storm got stronger. And we see it every day today. The builders that went through that, they're different. They're different than what they were before that. Just like any challenge with anybody, I think in any. And whether it's family or life or business, you come out the other end stronger or if you come out the other end at all. But if you do you come out stronger. That's what I saw with all these building companies. And as we continued to grow after that Depression, we grew enormously. People really had an ear out for what can they do while the sun shines to prepare for the next downturn, for the next time that the waters are choppy? What can they do to secure their vessel now? And CUSA really was able to gain a big market share in those years, coming out of the Depression and put us in a position to where we gained national prominence. When we were small, we didn't have the national footprint, the national reach that we do today. And as we gained business, we gained builders. We put ourselves in a position to deal with the national manufacturers and becoming a big force in every market that we were in, which allowed us to procure materials at a better rate, at a better price. Our rebates, everything kind of took off as we gained mass. But I always say that gaining builders and volume in our business is great, but our network is made up of the best, and the type of home building companies that CBUSA has is the best of the best. And that's really what we're built on. And I'll say this then. Earlier this year, as you know, we were acquired by buildertrend, and buildertrend out of Omaha, Nebraska, is run by Dan Houghton and the Duggar brothers, and they founded the company. And it has been a fantastic experience with these guys. So we're the purchasing division of Buildertrend, and they have 27,000 customers. Their material or their management software is the biggest in the world for home builders, and we're a part of that now. And it's been a heck of a ride, and we're excited to see where that's going to take us. It's all positive.

Yeah, we had a really good experience interviewing Dan as well. Amazing guy, like you said, in the culture as well. And it's amazing what the company does as well. But we were really proud to have him on the episodes as well. Previously to this it sounds like you're on the right track here with growth. Ryan, looking back at your illustrious career, what do you love the most about what you do? And has it changed over the years or has it stayed the same?

Illustrious is a good word. I don't know if it's accurate, but it's definitely been a heck of a ride. Yeah, things have changed. I mean, that's what I love about homebuilding. It changes all the time. I mean, interest rates, material availability. Obviously, we've been going through that a lot over the last year, several years. And labor's been a thing for the last 10 years almost. Now it just keeps getting tighter and tighter. So the industry has definitely changed in the way that home builders operate. A couple things that jump to me right off the bat are builder trend and the way that technology has impacted home building companies. It used to be reserved for the larger companies. Now everybody runs their business smarter, much more technologically savvy in the way that they run their whole business, especially in relation to how builders purchased. That's a big thing that that's changed. I would say the other big thing is the way builders choose to procure materials on a local level. I mean, it used to be where builders would turn key a lot of things and their suppliers would do the buying for the builders, Their subcontractors would do the buying. Builders have a lot of just relationships and they bought from the same person all the time because that person took them fishing and hunting and that's just who they bought from. Now it's much more sophisticated in the way that builders make buying decisions for their company. It's still a relationship business and salespeople are very important, but that's really changed quite a bit over the years. How they buy, what they buy, the decisions that they make every day to run their company are much more sophisticated than they used to be.

Brian, what are the long term goals for CB usa? I mean, you just got acquired now and your bandwidth has increased, you know, just from that. But what's next for you on the horizon? I guess.

Wow, that's a great question. And you know, we're pumped. We're going to be a part of what's going to happen in the next bunch of years is fantastic. And we're taking over the home building world. Every facet of a home builder's, everything that they do, we want to be a part of it. At buildertrend and what we, you know, the CBUSA portion of the procurement and the way builders buy materials and you know, the builder trend portion, the way that they run their businesses, the way that they do their accounting, the way that they do their estimating, the way that they, you know, get your hammer, get your truck, get your builder trend and we want to be the one stop shop for small builders, large builders, you know, if you're a building company, we want to be your right hand in the way that you run your business. So I know that's pretty lofty goals, but we have a great set of leadership and people and I think the sky's the limit for BuilderTrend in CSA in the coming years and it's going to be exciting to be a part of it.

Well, this podcast is really dedicated to builders out there as well. And for the builders who are listening in, take us through the concept of group purchasing. How does it benefit the builders and what economic impact does it have for them as running a business? A day to day business as well?

Yeah. So GPOs, group purchasing organizations have been around for a long time. I don't know, many, many decades in many different industries. And we have people that sit on our board for four years in other industries to teach us how to run purchasing groups. A few that come to mind, hospitals, restaurants, office supplies. There's just so many. A lot of our commodities as we build homes, lumber and drywall and roofing, all of these things already have large purchasing group, large GPOs associated with every one of those industries. And that helps the smaller independent companies keep up with the big huge nationals. And in any gpo, if you're buying something, why don't you streamline how you buy it, who you buy it from? Buying buy it with other people who are buying the same doggone thing you are and let's go out and do it better than we could do it ourselves. So I think everybody understands the whole GPO now when it comes to. And I think if you talk to anybody in any of those industries and we have, the advantages are tremendous. You still maintain your individuality as a company, but now you're swinging a huge stick and not only are you buying better, tremendously better impacting your bottom line, but you, you put yourself especially in the home building world now you put yourself in a position for rebates, which I could talk to you for an hour and a half on rebates and I have a whole, a whole session that I've done all over the country on rebates and the importance of national rebates. And you know, a national rebate alone doesn't do you any good if you don't have a great price, but a great price alone. Without a national rebate, you're never getting all the way down to the best deal that you can get. So when you put yourself in with a whole bunch of other people into a gpo, not only do you get better pricing, but you qualify for different type of rebates and perks. And probably the biggest thing is equally big, I should say, is getting material to your job. Now all of a sudden you're part of one of the biggest everything you're One of the biggest purchasers of all these goods and materials in the country. So you're high up on the pecking order when it comes to allocation and who's going to get it when things get tight. And we've seen them get tight many times over the years, especially of late. Well, who gets it? And if you're part of a big, big, big buying group, you get it, you get it quick, and you get it at a fair, consistent, repeatable price that's locked for X amount of time, which all that lends itself to. Your question of the value is tremendous. I would recommend anybody in any industry being in a GPO if it's available to them. It just makes sense.

Now, Ryan, when did this concept, you think, take off? Because you mentioned, you know, back in the day, people would go to their fishing mates with someone that invited them to go, you know, hang out with them. Something's got to have changed for this concept to really commercialize on a national level. You know, can you look back and go, this was the pivotal moment when it took off in the U.S. you.

Know, I don't know if I know the exact moment, but I would say, you know, somewhere in the 80s, I think the home building industry started to get more professional. It started to get where more businessmen, business women became involved in starting home building companies. And, you know, there's a whole lot of different types of business owners out there now. Some started as framers and worked their way all the way up and owned great businesses. Others were plumbers and electricians and worked their way up. Some people are coming from the money side of the business, but just in general, I think people realize that home building has kind of been slow to adapt over the last 60, 70 years. It's always a little bit behind technology. It's always a little bit more set in our ways. And as things have started to evolve and more professional people and technology became a big thing in the 90s, and then Buildertrend was started back in 05 in Omaha out of their garage and just do this, I mean, to serve the need of a more professional industry that wanted to get more efficient, that wanted to get more organized in the way that they do it. And I'll tell you this, Bosco, too. I mean, there's 30 or 40,000 pieces and parts that go into a home, and it's built outside in the mud. And you can tell, you asked me earlier why I love this industry. How cool is that? I mean, what else can you think of that's that complicated to put Together it's the biggest purchase people ever make in their life. And we're going to build it out in the snow and the mud and you know, there's, there's all kinds of mother nature and theft and anything else that can go on. Very, very difficult to manage. And that's why home builders, you know, make money because that's what, that's what, that's what they do. They manage that very, very tough process. And as you get more professional, more organized, again, it lends itself to, to the companies like buildertrend and the software that they provide to help professional builders do what they do best and manage that whole process.

Now the association of Professional Builders provides a vital resource to all our builders and you know, whether it's coaching and training, support what builders need to do to leverage this purchasing power. Like, you know, someone, if a builder comes up to you and says we want to be part of the network, what do you tend to look for? And do they also need to adopt new systems technology wise to, to get on the group purchasing train?

You know, we, that's a great question. We look for builders that are first class, reputable type of builders that are open minded to some different ways of running their business, to different products, different supply chain distribution channels. You know, just somebody that wants to work in their business and you know, or work on their business, I should say, instead of in it every day. And that's a certain type of company. There's not much you need to do though, once there's a fit there and they're interested in what we do and they're a fit for our program in one of our 34 markets around the country. They don't need to hire anybody or do anything too different. They need to utilize our multimillion dollar software system that's proprietary. We made it, we reiterated it several times over the years. And it's easy for builders and suppliers to jump on and use. And as we continue to integrate with buildertrend and their massive, awesome platform, it's even going to get better. When a CB USA customer who's also a buildertrend customer is going to be able to do all that from one place, it even gets easier. But until that integration is complete, it's already pretty easy. And a builder doesn't need to change too much, just the mindset of working with their peers to achieve better results than they could get on their own and, and be willing to do some of those type of things. So that's about it.

Okay, well, what are the challenges that you may face in your role. I mean, as vice president of business development, you're probably on the phones a lot with the builders as well. Would you say is some of the challenges you've had to face or also what are some of the lessons you've had to apply in your role over the years?

There's definite challenges, that's for sure. That's the exciting part of the job, plugging yourself into somebody's business. And. And the truth is, you know, our builders are fantastic. Long before they come to CB usa, long before they're working with us and builder trends, you know, they're good people, they're reputable, they're making money. You know, we want to help them get more efficient and increase their. Strengthen their bottom line, you know, make more money doing what they're doing and make it repeatable. You know, there's a lot of builders out there that, you know, their profit margins aren't where they should be, especially in the day when materials are so volatile as they have been over the last several years and, you know, it's tough to manage a company and trying to get the material to your job site. I mean, those are really the lessons that I've learned over the years is approach. Approach builders very, very humbly, very open, you know, gain their trust that, you know what, we're all builders here. We're all supply chain people. CBSA was built with people by people that understand what a builder does. And we talk to them. You know, we have a sales team, we have an operations team that's second to none. We plug ourselves into the builder's world and help them be better at what they do, especially when it comes to purchasing. So those are some of the lessons I've learned, I guess. Be humble, gain their trust and let them know that, hey, if they're willing to listen to what we say and then do some things maybe a little different in their business, they can even get better and even more efficient and maybe have some extra time with their family. And as hard as it is to juggle all the balls that a builder has up in the air, that's the beauty of it.

You sure you're not a therapist as well? For them, sometimes when you go in humbly listening to what they have to do, I tell you what, there's some.

Times that we listen to for sure. That's right.

Well, look, it sounds like you've had a great career. When I looked you up the first time, it talks about how you've won a Master Builder Award and a Couple of other prestigious sales awards. If you look back in your co working career, what do you think is your biggest, proudest achievement that comes to mind over the last few years? You've been with CB USA as well for quite some time. Time as well.

Yeah. I mean, you know, personal achievements are great. I've had a few of those with different awards and different speaking engagements I've been asked to do. And that's great. But I think my proudest achievement is helping be one of the leaders of a company that ascended in a short period of time to become the country's largest, you know, purchasing group for home builders and put ourselves in a position where now, you know, we can be acquired by a company like buildertrend. And just everything that's, that's all the blessings that have come with, with all that has been, that's been awesome. So when I look back at my career and I Hope there's another 25 years in this, in this awesome industry, but that's, that's kind of the things I think about and being a team, part of a team, hiring a team and training the team, all the different people you bring on board in order to have the same vision, the same work ethic and have a lot of fun doing it. And I look back at my career and I've been in a fortunate situation to impact people. And now like I told you every day, working with small businesses around the country, I don't think it gets any better than that because that's the backbone of America, man. That's what it's all about. Start a business, get better at it and make money and have happy customers. And that's what we help our builders do.

What do you think are some of the blind spots that builders face? You alluded to the fact that it's a challenging business, but what do you think is their blind spot that they should be aware of?

There's so many different things and this isn't meant to. Builders are smart and they see a lot of things, but sometimes when they step back and they talk to us and they realize where some of their profits are slipping, that's always, it's a blind spot to be like they don't necessarily have the time to ever step back and take a look at it from a 30,000 foot view of how profitability is measured and how you can increase your profitability. One place I go to all the time is carrying cost. There's specific carrying costs of a home under construction that impact homeowners, builders, everybody. Somewhere that money is going. And when a builder really thinks about it, and whether that number is 200 or 400 or 500 or whatever dollars per day, there's different numbers out there depending on what numbers you factor in. But I think the last one Russell and I talked about was like four or five hundred dollars a day. That adds up significantly. So if somebody says, if a trade, if you can't find a trade right now, you can't find labor, and they say, hey, I can't get there for a week. Well, you're carrying that cost. Your overhead is being distributed among all of your jobs that are out there. You're foregoing other opportunities because you can't. You know, there's only so much bandwidth your team has. So when one job sits, the opportunity cost of other homes. So you start thinking about that in the way that you procure materials, the way that you procure labor. When you put yourself in a position to not have to wait 14 weeks for something, to be able to wait three weeks for something, to be the builder of choice in your market. And what I mean by that is, have the best labor, the best people in that market want to work for your company because you have jobs ready for them. They're able to make money on your job. That stuff's priceless. So not only do you save money, not only do you run your business more efficiently, which does a lot of great things for you, but the specific carrying costs that you can avoid, and I'll give you an example, a lot of these material delays over the recent times, over the last year, have lengthened time cycles of homes by, say, three months on a home that usually takes nine months to build. Maybe now it's taking a year. What does three months mean? Not good for you, not good for your homeowner. But start thinking about $400 a day times three months, that adds up significantly. So that's a blind spot that once we point that out and kind of put some picket fence around that and say, hey, here's exactly what's happening in your world when this happens. This is bad, this is bad, and this is bad. It kind of makes builders realize, wow, material procurement is very, very important for my world.

Are there any other financial metrics that you look at? You talked about carrying cost as being one of those key metrics that you look at is any other financial metrics that you look at.

I mean, from a CBUSA standpoint, profit is really the big one that we look at in any builder 20 group you're in through NAHB or any peer group. I mean, you really want to start with profit and make sure that however you go to market, whether it's a fixed price or a cost plus or however you're doing it, there's different, many different ways to operate your company. You need to be focused on profit, and a lot of builders aren't. And there's a lot of different things you have to measure in order to get there. But that's kind of the holy grail of why we do things. And if you can figure out a way through group purchasing, through better labor, through being more efficient with builder trend in the way that you run your company, if you can figure out a way to stabilize the profitability and not have one job here and one job way up here, and then the next job down here, and then you have to make up for that because you're here. If you could figure out how to streamline that, you're putting yourself in a position of strength relative to your peers and relative to all your competition out in the market, for sure.

Ryan, where do you think CBUSA really aids builders? Is it on the front end when you're onboarding them? Is it that sort of adoption of group purchasing? Is it that relationship after you secure? Where do you spend most of the time, I guess, to make sure builders are being efficient with their numbers? Is it typically, you know, like an awareness thing that you have to go through, or is it something that they gradually get better at over time?

I'd say all of that. All of the above. Bosco. I think when a building company comes on board with CBUSA in one of our existing 34 markets around the country, the first thing our operations team does is start to train that company on what our programs are, educate them on everything that we do, and figure out what's good for them, what's good for their business. Whatever is good for them is good for us. We don't force builders into anything, but we have a lot of great programs. Information is power. Data is power. Knowledge is power. And we start throwing them all this information about what we've learned over the years, what our 600 builders across the country do on a daily basis, what that building company can incorporate into their world to get a, immediate impact, and then B, to your point, if they continue to do this and this, they're going to continue to get more and more impact from the CUSA program on their business. And it's all about ramping up that builder as fast as we can, but realizing that change is tough. You can't just go implementing 10 different new supply chains and new national brands into a building company. There's some infrastructure that has to slowly adapt. And that's the best thing about our program, I think. We don't force anybody to turn their company on their head. Every business owner, as you know, is trying to juggle family and business and a million different things going on. So the best thing about our program is that, hey, look, there's some things that you could do right away and then we're going to show you over the coming months what else you can do. So they get immediate impact and then over the next three months they're going to get tremendous amount of impact and to the point where it's great. And our operations team works with them. They come to their office, they work with every one of our builders. We get to know their people, their staff, their job sites and really figure out how our company translates to them and how they could best take advantage of what we do.

Sounds like you're pretty much a one stop shop because you're there. You know they're coming to you to buy the things, but I'm assuming you also are involved in them making sure that the procured goods are shipped to the, to the builders as well in different parts of the US Part of.

National contracts, part of being a GPO in any industry is having the big, the big national contracts to where you're leveraging your purchasing power. And part of a national contract is price for sure. But there's a lot of other components to a national contract that we've got pretty good at over the years that we've been doing this and allocation is very important. How long it takes to get that product to a job site, by what means does it get there? What are our price locks? So yeah, you're exactly right. All that is part of it. If you just provide a price without everything else, the delivery, the supply, all the things you need to think about, that's the things that we think about all day. That's what we do. So when our builder jumps on one of our programs, they could forget about it because they know that we've done that due diligence. And then they plug it into buildertrend, the builders that are also using buildertrend. And that's the best of both worlds because you're getting the purchasing and you're getting all the, all the, you know, everything about how you run your company. You put your purchase orders through Builder Trend and that's really the holy grail of purchasing. When you're getting this price and you're able to be as efficient as you can with that construction management software. Now that filters right into your job. It filters right into your accounting. All ends of your business start to mesh and that's when it gets. That's when the smiles come out on our face because we're able to help builders get a lot more efficient when all parts of their company are talking together instead of being in silos.

I know it's hard to have a crystal ball and predict the future, but where do you think the construction industry is evolving to, moving forward? And how are, what are you guys doing to prepare builders for it, I guess?

Well, I think from a macro level I'd say that things are going great. Things are going to continue to take off. Housing starts are projected to continue to rise. Housing pricing is very strong. It's a great way to invest your money. I think that we're in a great industry and for the long foreseeable future, this is an industry that you want to invest in and be a part of. As far as where it's going. I think technology is a huge part of where this industry is adapting. I told you earlier that home building industry has always been a little bit behind some other industries in terms of adapting and adopting technologies and adapting to different climates. And that's good. We're strong and sometimes the turtle wins the race at the end. But it's adapting now and there's a lot of technology coming into it. And you know, buildertrend, we are at the forefront of all that. We're trying to position ourselves. And you know, Dan and Jeff and Steve are positioning our company to be the best of the best and be on the forefront of all that technology. I think specifically a lot of the off site construction things that you guys see or things that Russ sees, I mean, over in Australia and Europe and these areas where houses are being built off site and components are shipped and it's just, that's a whole new way of thinking for custom builders. I'm not talking about panelized houses for like, for the production guys. I'm talking about full custom houses where a lot of components are not built on the site. And I referenced that earlier about this is a awesome industry because you take a 40,000 pieces, throw them out in the mud and let's build a masterpiece out of that. Well, you know, BMWs are not built in the mud, they're built in a factory. And there's a reason for that because it's a lot easier to get a consistent product from A factory and then ship it out to the homeowner instead of building the thing in the mud. So there's a lot of technology. I think as we continue to watch what's happening in our industry, technology in the way that everybody does, everything is going to be really cool. I think the gains we're going to see in the next 10 years are going to surpass the gains we've seen in the last 50. And that's going to be fun to be a part of. Ryan, I was going to ask you.

A question because we, you know, one of the things that the association of Professional Builders loves is transforming builders into better salespeople. And business development and sales is your forte. What advice would you give a builder who is on the fence or doesn't necessarily comfortable with doing the whole sales pitch? What's the best sales advice you can give a builder out there?

Oh, I like that. I like that. I train salespeople. I've been a salesperson for a long time, and I like talking to builders about sale, about selling. It's not exactly what we do, but everybody, every home builder is always selling somebody on something. They're selling their homeowners on buying from them. They're selling their subcontractors on working for them. They're selling employees buying into the way that that builder does things. And specifically when it comes to homeowners buying a builder's home first, and this is something we always recommend. Tell them you're part of SEED usa. Tell them you're part of the biggest network of builders in the United States. And that means great things for that homeowner because they're going to get the best products for the best possible price put in their house, built by the most efficient technology builder trend, cbusa. I always lead with that. But a builder that's not part of our network, I think you'd be trust. Gain the trust of the homeowner is the most important thing that I think any good salesperson in any industry, I think, but especially in the home building industry, you know, there's some bad apples out there and it's, you know, over the years, home builders, and I think that's changing. But some home builders have given the industry a bad rap because they don't finish jobs. Their pricing doesn't come in how they say it's gonna. The old contractor walks off the job. The tail light warranty, once he pulls out, you're not getting any warranty, all that type of stuff. So the cream of the crop, builders, the ones that separate Themselves from everybody else in the industry, are the ones that sit down with homeowners, gain their trust, and tell them, hey, this is what I'm going to do for you. And then communicate all the way through. If you could talk to a homeowner at the beginning about the buy from me, because not only am I going to build you a great house, but you could trust me to do what I say I'm going to do on time, the first time, all the time. And we're going to communicate. When something goes wrong, I'm going to tell you, and we're going to look at it, and something's going to go wrong. I mean, that's why you pay me. If nothing else went wrong, homeowners wouldn't need to hire a builder because they would just do it themselves. But builders navigate, you know, all those different issues, challenges, delays, permits, trying to do all these things with all these people. Trust. Earn the trust and you'll get the sale. And it can't be fake trust. The only way you're gonna earn people's trust is by doing right, having great references, having great people out there that have built your homes before and sit down and talk to people honestly. So there you go.

Yeah. And it sounds like you have to be having a good delivery as well. And I think that's where your confidence with CB USA comes. Cause it sounds like you guys deliver on that end as well. So I'm gonna end with one final question. Cause I feel like I could chat with you for days. We've had some really good chin wags, as they say. But what advice would you give a younger version of yourself? And what advice would you give a new builder that's trying to make it big?

You know, if I'm giving advice to a younger Ryan, I'd say it's be humble. Be humble. Be humble and kind. Tim McGraw's song is one of my favorite songs out there. You know, every conversation you're in, listen, be a great listener. And I think be humble and listen and really, really master that skill. I think my favorite people to talk to are the ones that listen and they're not thinking about the next thing that they're gonna say. When you're talking, they're actually listening to what you say. And I think that's the key to. That's the key to sales. That's the key to a lot of different things in life. Be a great listener. So that'd definitely be the advice. I think I've learned that over the years, and I could have talked myself into that when I was 21, 22. I think that'd even be better. And then advice that I give to builders that are starting out, obviously get builder trend and see the USA right away. As soon as you could do those two things from a macro deal. Run your organization professionally, efficiently, with profitability in mind. That's how you'll have staying power. That's how you make customers happy. Do the right thing every time. Customer service is the most important thing you can have. Don't try to cut corners, they always come back and bite you. And have fun doing what you're doing. I think that'd be my most. You know what? I'd give myself that advice too. I'd give myself that advice and young builders and anybody going into anything. I tell my son who just graduated in high school, find a job you love, something that you have fun doing that motivates you, that you feel like you're making a difference in people's lives in the world and you can't go wrong. That'll be a job that you want or an industry you'll want to be in for the rest of your life. So that would be it. Words.

Well said, my friend. Well, listen, Ryan, we really appreciate you being on here as well. Thank you so much for your time and your energy. As always, we appreciate you as well.

Hey, I wouldn't want to spend the last half hour with anybody but you. Good luck in everything you're doing. Thanks for your time. Bosco.

Thank you for listening. Remember to subscribe to Professional Builder Secrets on your favorite podcast podcast platform and leave a review. To learn more about how the systems at the association of Professional Builders can help you grow your building company, visit associationofprofessionalbuilders.com See you next time.