215. Outsourcing That Works With Scott Groschel

Welcome to another episode of Professional Builder Secrets. In this episode, I interview Scott Groeschel from SG Construction. Scott has reshaped the way his company operates by embracing offshore team members. He was unsure about the whole process, but once he dove in and started researching it, it has totally changed his business, helping with everything from drafting to estimating and even project administration. If you've ever wondered how an offshore team member may be able to help your building company, this episode's a must. Listen, enjoy. This episode of Professional Builder Secrets is brought to you by Apparatus Contractor Services. Apparatus provides full scope, end to end QuickBooks, Precision Construction accounting, and CFO services for residential builders. If you feel like you can't completely trust your weekly and monthly financial reports or you feel like you're flying blind, Apparatus will rebuild and operate your QuickBooks accounting system and give you precision construction accounting capability you can trust. Learn more@apparatusteam.com or on the APB Rewards Partner Directory.

As the pandemic started, a lot of the business moved to online. Shortly after 2020, I got hooked up with Jobtrad. It put all of our paperwork into a platform that anybody could participate in. I was really strugg with my time management. After we finished the time audit, you know, there were some pretty glaring problems. And that's when we thought maybe some offshore help might work. Like, hey, it feels like I'm hiring a stranger. You have to give them immediate access to your files. It just. I was uncomfortable with that. There was a big challenge. The first candidate I hired did not work out, but there's the opportunity to grow, and they were immediate in solving them for me.

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Builders Secrets, the podcast for building company owners who want to grow safely and securely. I'm your host, Will Blunt, and today I'm joined by Scott Groeschel from SG Construction. Scott, welcome to the show.

Hey, Will, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to join you today.

Yeah, great to have you on. All the way from San Francisco. I'm in Sydney, Australia. So good to be able to connect.

You're right on the other side of the world.

Tell me about SG Construction and how it all started and what you guys do.

Yeah, SG Construction, we specialize in outdoor living. So we're the general contractor in an outdoor living project. We build decks, pergolas, pavilions, cabanas, outdoor pool houses, and all the elements that surround these structures. So fire pits, kitchens, you know, the whole nine yards in a backyard project. Now, when I say general construction, we don't do pools and we don't do landscaping. So we, we specialize in the accessory structure of a backyard project. You know, so it's very much outdoor living and California. We have excellent weather. It's very popular to spend three quarters of the year outside enjoying your space. So that's our specialty. We started in 2009 is when we opened the company and it's been a long, you know, a ride. We didn't start in outdoor living. We were close. We started in FENC specifically and we transitioned to decking and it's grown from there. You know, I was looking for more challenges and me, me personally, I started in construction when I was 15, so that was 1997, and went right to digging holes on a deck project for a local general contractor. And I stuck it, I stuck with it through university and after university went into custom home building, you know, as a, as a lead carpenter. Learned a lot about custom home building and increased my skills and then spent three years as a project manager for an outdoor living company and got a lot of project management skills. And then after that, you know, opened SG Construction.

Interesting. Yeah. You mentioned in our pre interview chat that all of the outdoor work you do is fully custom as well. Are there any parallels with a custom home building company that you've. You've found just from being exposed to both?

Yeah, I'd say the, the type of client that we have is very similar. So our target audience is upper class, wealthier, and it comes with, when we're dealing with the customers and the clients, they have those tastes and they want it specific to their project, how they want it, and a lot of times they don't know exactly how they want it and they're looking for our guidance. So the demands on the project are very similar. There's really a lot of overlap. I'm not a custom home builder, but you know, it's very similar clientele and it's still construction.

Dealing with some big personalities, no doubt.

Right.

Well, one of the reasons I wanted to get you on today, other than just to share your great story, was you've had some great success with offshoring. So working with team members overseas to help you run different parts of your business. What kind of got you started with offshoring initially?

Yeah, to give it some context, we have to go back a few years probably to the pandemic. So during, as the pandemic started, a lot of the business moved to online. I've always been on computers. Everybody's been on computers for a long time. But construction here was delayed. So, you know, the municipalities and permitting Offices started, everything, you know. You know, everybody knows what we're talking about. So that kind of was a transition that opened the door for me. You know, shortly after 2020, I got hooked up with Job Tread, and that's our, you know, construction management CRM software. And that really gave an opening for us to onboard somebody offshore. It put all of our estimate, all of our paperwork into a platform that anybody could participate in. So with those two things that really got us closer to onboarding somebody offshore, it gave us an opportunity. I was working with Clint, and Clint is my coach, as you know, and I was really struggling with my time management, so he put me through, you know, a time audit. And I think I remember the acronym DAD is delete, automate, delegate.

Yep, you got it.

Yeah. So, you know, the time audit was amazing. I learned some things that I had never really realized. And, you know, after we finished the time audit, you know, there were some pretty glaring problems, and that's when we thought maybe some offshore help might work.

You must have been a pretty early adopter of Job Tread. I mean, everyone's. Everyone's jumping on board now. But 2020, well, they must have only just got going or close to.

Yeah, I think. I think I was at the end of 2022. So, you know, the setup was in 2020, but that started all the changes. Right. You know, I was adverse to changes before 2020, and, you know, Job Tread, that implementation was a pretty big ask for me to do, but I saw the need and went for it, and it's been an exciting ride since.

Talk to me more about this Time audit. What does that even. Like, how do you determine all the things that you're doing and try and figure out whether or not you should delete, Automate or delegate?

Yeah, the process was pretty simple. I don't know that I did it exactly right, but it accomplished what we needed it to accomplish. I looked at my daily schedule. I kept track of what I was spending time on, and after two weeks, I was like, yeah, that, you know, I don't need to do site visits every day to every project. You know, I don't need to meet with the customer every day if I order my day properly, schedule properly. And, you know, I started delegating some responsibilities to our foreman and making sure they were able to handle it properly. Job Tread actually was a big part of when I was working with Clint. I wasn't using all of Job Tread's features, and I started realizing, hey, the automation in jobtrad can take care of this.

When you say automation features in jobtrad. What are some examples of things that you were able to automate that you were doing manually before?

Yeah, so you know, the invoicing process, we have budgets create the budgets create proposals. Proposals go out to the customer. You know, instead of going back later on in the project and looking through the proposal and determining what kind of invoice we need to send and what would the dollar amount was. The proposal is actually able to auto generate the invoices when you're ready. When you hit your milestone, they can auto send to the customer. In fact, with the scheduling function, when you reach the milestone in your schedule, it can auto send the invoice based on your schedule that you built at the beginning of the project. So if you're on time. Yeah, that's I guess easier said than done. But yeah, that's just a, you know, a simple example. I wasn't ready to take advantage of all those features in the beginning being a smaller company. But you know, as we've grown, we've been able to take care take advantage of more features.

So when you were looking to start offshoring, is that the first place you started? Like you got someone in to manage things within job trade?

Yeah, yeah, actually that's, that's exactly right. It wasn't intended to be job trade management. We do a lot of in house building plans. So the actual structural plans we draw ourselves. And I would my design, my drafter was somebody I subcontracted with locally and with a couple projects that's okay. But with 5, 10 pushing 15 projects, sometimes it was overwhelming for the subcontractor. And in the time audit we were able to determine that this was a rock that we needed to work on. So I originally started looking for a drafter that could draw the plans the way I wanted them to be drawn without, you know, pulling teeth with a structural engineer. And I said, hey, let's look for a drafter, somebody that can do 3D imaging, drafting. That'll really solve a problem. That's a time sink for me. And I went looking for that and I was a little bit worried because I'm like, man, maybe I only have 20 hours a week, maybe, maybe 25. How am I going to get my value? You know? So I pursued this position. Clinton told me, interestingly, he's like, I don't think you're going to have a problem finding somebody just enough to keep somebody busy. And sure enough, that's true. I was like, yeah, that's probably right. You know. And so we we found a drafter, and I. I was able to. I had enough of an open mind to look for somebody that would be willing to do data entry, possibly, you know, pulling details from the plan and putting them in into job shred for me. But I found a really nice candidate that, you know, could fit a lot of the office management boxes. So now my office manager is handling the drafting as a side job. Does it really well, but, you know, it's really an office manager position for me.

Okay. And they're. Are they based in the Philippines? Is that right?

Yeah, that's right. So I connected with Go Recruit, and I believe Go Recruit sources a lot of their offshore help from the Philippines. So that's where the resumes came from. And, you know, pretty. Pretty easy for me to work with Filipinos. There's a lot. There's a lot of Filipinos here in California. Had lots of Filipinos in high school. Some. Some of my classes in high school. So, you know, it's. The cultural difference for me has been pretty negligible.

Did you ever have apprehension in terms of working with someone in a different country, you know, that you couldn't have in the office, that kind of stuff?

Yeah, I would say before the pandemic. And then, you know, got comfortable with zoom. So, weirdly, I didn't consider an employee as an. I don't know where I missed the gap, but in the past, for instance, on, you know, I've used Reddit to hire freelancers to edit photos for me, and I think it was. It has to do with job tread. But, you know, I had a platform that I could have an employee, you know, use.

The biggest question on my mind, which I'm sure a lot of builders have as well, is how do you build that trust with someone if you've not done this before or it feels a little bit of a foreign concept and feel confident that, you know, you could throw them into job tread and let them start managing things.

Oh, yeah, you reminded me. Thank you.

Yeah.

So that trust was a pretty important aspect of this offshoring for me. I was uncomfortable with the idea. Go Recruit really made me feel comfortable as the medium. I think it's fiverr that I looked and I'm like, hey, it feels like I'm hiring a stranger, and you have to give them immediate access to your files. It just. I was uncomfortable with that. And, you know, I. I interviewed with Go Recruit, and I felt very comfortable with their plan.

Yeah.

And I decided to pursue it. So, you know, working with strangers, I feel comfortable with but yeah, like give them access to job shred. That was a large ask. And you know, the interview process went very well.

Yeah, I guess it's like hiring anyone in your business though, right? You've got to extend some trust. And if you do a good interview process, then you should be, you should be confident.

Yeah, right. The, the candidates they presented me with were exceptional candidates. You know, if I was interviewing or view, you know, looking at resumes for, let's say Americans, I would have been just as impressed. So, you know, highly educated, excellent work history. They send videos of the candidates before you can see them. And the interview process, they can handle conversations, really. I mean, Ray, Ray, my office manager, his English is probably better than mine.

Yeah.

You know, yeah, there's some different words, but he speaks English. You know, there's, there's no missed beat.

And what kind of setup does Ray and the other offshore as you work with, what setup do they have? Are they working from home? Are they working out of an office which is managed by Go Recruit or how does that work?

That was interesting to me too. Once I decided to hire. It's like, how does that work? Go Recruit will set it up. There's actually different types of candidates and you can have a candidate that works from home or they will set up an office space, a cubicle, a dedicated cubicle for that employee. And it's actually up to the employer, me, to decide what kind of arrangement that I want. Gorecruit handles all of that. And that takes a lot of the guessing about what you're getting out. Depending on the position, it might be important to have somebody in a, you know, office space and a cubicle right now. Ray, my office manager, started in an office space and, you know, his commute was pretty large. I have lots of trust in him and we've built a good relationship. And I said, hey, you know what? Work from home. And it's been really good for both of us.

Yeah, exactly. So it sounds like it's just like any working relationship at the end of the day.

Yeah, right. You know, I think back to my drafter that I was subcontracting with here, that lives 10 minutes from me. And you know, initially we started seeing each other, you know, once or twice a month. And after a year or two, I never saw them anymore. It was like, hey, this is a no brainer, you know, why, why are we overpaying? When I have struggle getting her to do the work that I needed her.

To do anyway, what would you say to someone? I imagine there's A premium that you pay for working with someone like Gorecruit, who's the in between, they set up the relationship, all of that kind of stuff compared to if you were to try and find someone directly offshore and then try to work with them. So what do you think the balance is between those two things? I mean, naturally it's typically going to be less expensive than hiring someone locally in the US anyway, but I guess there's a premium.

I've thought about that a few times and it's a premium I'm definitely willing to pay. I'm spread thin on time and Go recruit is handling 100% of the HR for my offshore employees. So, you know, I get an invoice from them at the end of the month. I pay the bill. You know, if there's any calling in sick or sketch, you know, I don't worry about the calendar, the days off, you know, holidays. I just reply to their, their messages. So even though I look at my offshore employees as, you know, part of the company and part of the team, I don't actually have to worry about the difficulties of them not being in my office. There are some difficulties, but Go Recruit really takes care of all that. All of that for me.

Yeah, you can't put a price on that peace of mind. I think that takes a lot of load off your. In terms of thinking about all those logistics.

I see the value in them doing that for me. I did look at, you know, some online classifieds and I just see it as pulling teeth trying to convince somebody that I have enough jobs for them to keep them busy. Will they dedicate. I really needed somebody specifically for, for myself and I'm really happy with how Go Recruit made me comfortable with the.

Feeling what does it actually look like? And you've touched on this a little bit, but how do the offshore team members fit into your culture and how have you found the day to day working with them and how it's different to working someone locally so they are.

Part of the team. I onboarded them using APB's onboarding lesson plan and I followed it to the T. I just couldn't see them in person, but I used that. It was really a crutch for me. You know, I was uncomfortable with the idea. I've, I've onboarded many infield employees and you know, that's something that I'm pretty good at and comfortable with. But you know, office position, what is onboarding? Right. You know, how am I going to keep them busy? And the lesson plan worked really well. To implement them into the company. And I've put. Ray is in regular contact with the rest of my team. So it's all done via WhatsApp and cell phone. They have regular communication with each other and it works well. Now, my offboarding team, they communicate with each other as well. So the communicate. The culture that we've implemented infiltrates the whole entire company. You know, something important to me over the years is for everyone to feel comfortable coming to work and actually making it as enjoyable as possible. You know, construction is a difficult job. It's difficult. Customers are demanding. Sometimes the conditions, you know, it feels impossible to work with. And we can be short with each other. But I've really tried to build a culture that people enjoy showing up and we smile at each other. And, you know, one of my offshore employees, Katie, handles my marketing department. She's a joy to be around. You know, even though I don't see her in person, I'm seeing her on the computer. Our interactions amongst the company. She's very bubbly and joyful and it's part of the culture. It's what we want to present to our customers. And, you know, it's. It's really good.

How do you balance, like, for example, if you were to want to do like a team culture building day or something where you, you know, you went out for a lunch or something like that, how do you incorporate the offshore team into that?

I would say that's been a challenge for me and have not found a great way to address it. That's something that I will be working on. I've thought about maybe bringing them to the country and visiting. You know, that's crossed my mind and I'm not sure behind the logistics, but I'm sure Go Recruit is going to have suggestions, but I would like to do that. You know, I would like to see them in person, shake their hands, introduce them to the crew. Now, I can tell you my crew is very comfortable talking and working with them. You know, sometimes they just out of old bad habits will come to me for some questions and it's like, hey, go to Ray. And you know, they'll go to Ray. Ray will make them feel comfortable and confident. In fact, they actually can appreciate the access to somebody that can get them, give them dedicated time and information. You know, me, spread thin sales meeting or not being able to tell them the exact detail. They can appreciate somebody else knowledgeable that did the design that can answer their question.

It'd be a fair expense bringing them across, but that would have a huge impact on their thoughts about the culture as well as the integration with the rest of the team. I think that'd be quite powerful.

We have small things like I've prepared an apparel package to send them our hats, our gear, our mugs. They are part of the company and, you know, this is their Christmas gift. They are important to me. I feel like I know them and I feel like they're friends. We're also co workers, but yeah, not having that physical, you know, interaction in the office that's missing. But it helps. Being positive in the messaging, you know, in our WhatsApp texts and, you know, being patient and respectful with each other really helps to stay close.

It sounds like it's all been smooth sailing working with Gorecruit and hiring all these great people. I'm sure it hasn't been perfect though. Is there any challenges that you ran into and how did you overcome them?

There was a big challenge right about three, four months after I started working with Gorecruit. The first candidate I hired did not work out. And it was frustrating, you know, to do an onboarding program, find out that the candidate and the person that I decided to hire did not fit. You automatically go to the, hey, is this an offshore problem or is this a my problem? So that's a challenge to get over mentally. But there's, you know, there's in adversity, it gives you the opportunity to grow. Instead of looking at that situation as like, oh no, what am I going to do? I talked with Go Recruit and they, they confirmed my, you know, my doubt and my, you know, my problems. We decided to go in another direction and it was a challenge trying to understand like, okay, Go recruit did a good job. Now what's going to happen? Like I'm in a contract and you know, this guy didn't work out and where do we go from here? And to go recruits credit. I guess I would say for me, you know, an example is like a warranty claim. You know, how do I handle a warranty? A customer calling from three years ago, you know, am I going to take care of that warranty and how well will I perform in that warranty? Will it be immediate? Anyways, when the problems came to go recruits attention, they were immediate in solving them for me. So they jumped right in and found new candidates. And I was still, I was skeptical, you know, like, okay, are we just, are they just trying to fix this? But I put some thought into it. I think I realized that it's in Gorecruits best interest to connect you with the Right candidate.

Yeah.

So their cost must be associated with, in finding the candidate and then, you know, setting it up. And if they can connect you with the right candidate, you know, you're smooth sailing and they're good. So they did a really good job. You know, the replacement was, you know, exactly what I wanted to in the beginning, but that was, it was a challenge, you know, but we, we made it through.

Well, yeah, well done. Sticking with it because it would have been. The easier route would have been to say offshoring doesn't work for me and kind of, yeah, cut ties from there.

You're exactly right. I'm somebody who historically has been adverse to change. And I look for reasons, you know, I like knowledge and I like to learn new things. But if I hit roadblocks and road, I think, okay, I need to change directions or that's not possible. It's not work. You know, I guess I was so far into it that I was like, okay, I gotta try again.

Yeah.

But the growth part of it, I was able to learn a lot with the first training in training the first candidate that I was able to apply, and the training process went much smoother with the second candidate. You know, it had to be. The candidate was better. And also I was a little bit better as well.

What's one piece of advice you give to other builders and contractors who are looking to Offshore for the first time?

You got to try it. You got to at least explore the idea. So I look around me and in the network of contractors that I'm around, I don't necessarily know all of my competition, but any similar sized companies to mine, I have a tremendous advantage over. It's clear, my margins. Well, my margins are better because I'm able to budget. I have more staff helping me, my fixed expense is lower. I'm providing more service to my customers. Something that I'll get at real quick is, you know, there's a little bit of apprehension. I don't know if it's the same in other countries, but in the United States, I would say historically there's this idea. Maybe it's something with, you know, so many large corporations has been sending, you know, jobs overseas. You know, that's, you know, we're losing jobs. And I think there was a little bit of reservation on my end because of that. But here's the thing. This is the truth. I hired one offshore employee and I added three Americans to my staff. So that gave me increased capacity to hire Americans. And it's like if, you know, so in the microeconomic scale, it really works well. I mean, there's actual growth that's happening in the company. So my advice is at least explore the idea. You need to do an interview, you need to take the sponsor small steps to get you at least, you know, find out what it costs you, compare it to, you know, what you have and what your opportunities are.

Yeah, that's a great point. So what you're saying is by hiring the offshore, that kind of gave you more time to work us on the growth, focus on the growth of the company, which allowed you to then hire more Americans and grow more jobs, et cetera, et cetera.

Exactly, exactly. We're, we're right now looking for a. I, I just signed up with contractor staffing source, I believe just yesterday. So we're looking for a project manager. So I can't handle as many projects as we have with the additional capacity. I think it's 25 open projects, 27 open projects and I just can't project manage them. So I'm now looking for more. You know, before this office staff in offshore work, I really struggled to how am I going to manage a project manager? You know, how am I going to teach him how to use our system? But this is much clearer path for me to take.

Cool. Well, for any APB members out there, all of the services you've mentioned are actually partners, so they can get a rebate for being a member. Go to our rewards directory to check them out jobtread, go recruit and contract a staffing source as well. So thanks for sharing them. Scott, before we wrap up, you've mentioned Clint a couple of times and there's been an underlining tone of that. Clint Best is your coach, obviously one of APB's executive business coaches. Can you tell me more about your relationship with Clint and how that's developed and through app?

I love Clint. I'm excited.

I love Clint.

So do I. I see him once a month. We talk a couple times during the month, maybe in via email. I've been working with him for a couple of years. It's been a ride for me. When I started working with him, I was really, to be honest, embarrassed of my books and system and process and it's very, you know, private. I don't really share the details with, you know, many people, but Clint made me feel very comfortable to share and, you know, the first few months I was learning a lot, but he was also learning a lot about me, I would say. There's something I read you guys sent me a book by John Maxwell And I hadn't heard of John Maxwell before, but I've read a ton of his books lately and one of his books, he says something like, the gap between knowledge and action is bigger than the gap between ignorance and knowledge. And that gets to the point that I could get all this information from the lesson plans, but I always look for a reason not to implement something. And working with Clint, he takes a lot of the doubt away and then I can take action. And in fact, sometimes he may suggest, hey, you should take action in this area. And that's been a game changer for me. I really appreciate and highly respect him for, you know, the way he handles our relationship. And he's a joy. Joy to work with.

I love that, that saying actually, because it's so easy. Well, it's not easy, but from ignorance to knowledge, like you said, a lot of people can get to that point, but it's action which separates the high achievers like yourself and others.

Exactly. Exactly Right.

And shout out to Clint for setting us up for having a chat as well, because this has been great.

Very nice talking with you, Will.

Yeah. Scott, thanks so much for coming on the show today. I really appreciate you sharing a story. And there's been some phenomenal advice for other builders out there that might be looking to offshore and just take inspiration from your journey.

Happy to join.

Cheers. A big thank you to our listeners as well, wherever you are in the world. If you like the show today, please subscribe to Professional Builder Secrets on your platform of choice. And if you're feeling generous, leave us a review. But until next time, have a great day.