226. Visibility Over Vanity With Trapper Roderick

Welcome to another episode of Professional Builder Secrets. In this episode, I interview Trapper Roderick from Roderick Builders. Trapper's a fifth generation builder and everyone can learn a little something from his story. He's seen what it's like on one side when a company can build incredible homes, but they don't understand or have full control of their numbers. And he's also seen what it can be like on the other side when financial discipline can deliver a highly profitable and successful building company. In this conversation, Trapper shares how he's improved the visibility of his numbers in his company and started running a business with better systems. I hope you enjoy the episode. 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 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.

If you're not marketing, then you're going to just going to treat the next job like the one before because you don't build out these systems. You don't have a marketing plan, you don't have KPIs. What an average contractor's fee is is really not enough to make a living. I don't think most realize the overhead that it takes to run a construction business, and they themselves are a cost to their business. They had approved all these change orders along the way, but they didn't really realize where they were at. When we decided to forego a lot of our profit on that job, you didn't really realize how much of our profit that we just foregone had already been spent on overhead. So it actually ended up putting us in quite a bind. No job starting scares me. The numbers are what really is scary because if you don't get that right, you're done. You don't just grind the way you've been grinding, you grind in the ways that you know are going to make a difference that scare you. To change, work on the things that scare you. Those are the things that are going to make the biggest difference.

Welcome to Professional Builders Secrets, the podcast for building company owners who want to grow safely and securely. I'm your host as always, Will Blunt, and today I'm joined by Trapper Rodrick from Rodrick Builders. Trapper, welcome to the show.

Oh, thanks man, it's great to be here.

Very good to have you on. You've been around the traps for a while with APB and you actually reached out and said, I'd love to come on the podcast. And once I heard your story, I was like, yeah, let's do it. This sounds like a really cool conversation.

Yeah, APB has been a huge blessing in my life. I'm glad I got in touch with them when I did. And yeah, I wish I would have done it sooner than.

That's all right. I want to hear more about you though. Let's go back and get a bit of background on your story, how you got into building, you know, all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, I can give you the down low. So I always knew I was going to be a builder right from a really young age. 5th generation builder on really both sides of my family. My mom's family was part of one of the largest commercial companies on the west coast and they grew it into this giant conglomerate high rises and they ended up selling to be an employee owned company back in the early 2000s. So I grew up like being around like all these really cool construction projects building, you know, LDS temples and high rises down in Salt Lake and kind of like all around the United, United States that they were building stuff. So that was really fun being alongside my grandpa. And he was just such like a cool carpenter. Like even though he was like running a cool business, you know, he was, he was just a carpenter at heart. You'd always spend his time like in the garage like building furniture and kayaks and whatnot. So I was with my grandpa a lot. But my parents were really young. And so when I was with my parents, you know, I, I typically was going to work with my dad, right? My dad was a framer when I was really young. And so Saturdays and Fridays if I was with my dad, I was, I was on a job site with him and he'd hand me a box of nails and tell me to build something. He's usually like a little lean to dog shed or something like that. But I'll never forget those days, you know, just being on the job site as a kid. And I have no idea what I did other than that I was just in enthralled with nails and hammers and how to actually put things together. And it was always fun watching that. And so, you know, life progressed. You know, my dad became a general and started building these really cool mega mansions and got me really interested in architecture. So I was like, oh, maybe I want to be an architect. So I kind of went down that path of some architecture schooling and still have a big passion for it. Today. I learned pretty quickly I don't want to be an architect. I don't want to sit behind a desk every day. I don't to want. Don't want to be responsible for it, for everyone's drawings. But I love the emotion of architecture. And so because of the market that my dad was in in Los Angeles, building these amazing homes with that were just designs that you would never be able to even imagine. Really, it kind of led me to want to, you know, build in my own market, which is, you know, Utah, and build like spec. Right. Because you can really kind of control people's emotions and guide them a little bit. So unlike a lot of builders, I don't just take the plans. I don't butcher the architect's plans by any means. I want to, I want to be an asset and a partner to architects. You know, I mean, I think I can be a good asset if I catch something on the fly of like, hey, I think this can be better. Obviously run it through the architect. But yeah, that's just like kind of the summed up version. And I really didn't know when I was going to be become one because I went to college, I started other businesses and it was just like, well, when am I going to do it? I know I'm going to, but when. And really when Covid happened, it was like, all right, let's go. Because I'd flipped homes before. I'd done some remodels here and there, but I didn't ever make it my full time job really until then.

And what type of homes you're building now, like, pretty high end ones, right?

Yeah, I mean, in the Utah market, we kind of focus like your 5 to $12 million range, you know. Right now we are doing a bunch of like three to six million dollars stuff. But in Los Angeles, we've participated in homes as much as like $85 million. Right. So some really, really high end homes that has been really great to be a part of. Like even the one behind me, it sits up on top of all the Los Angeles hills and it's, you know, it's an iconic house and really fun to be a part of. This is one of my dad's masterpieces. But you know, I got to help project manage and do some things behind the scenes as well. So really, really fun in the market that I'm in because people are coming from all over the Globe to Utah. It's a melting pot. You know, whether it's for religion or skiing or outdoors or mountain biking, it's just this massive mecca of all these people coming to Utah. And, you know, since COVID out of all the homes I've built, I've never built a home for anyone that is a local native to Utah. They're all implants to Utah, which is kind of interesting.

Yeah, yeah, interesting you mentioned the house behind you. Because I was actually just thinking this whole time, I'm like, where is he? What is this house in the background? Because it looks extravagant. It looks amazing.

Yeah, yeah. That's just. That's my background in my office, Right. Makes me feel like I'm there. It was probably my favorite project we were ever part of. Some that are like, maybe flow better, more, maybe a little more sexy, but, like, the refinement and the detail that the architect went into on this house, it's just special to me.

You shared quite openly with me that you've kind of seen both sides of business. Like, your mum's commercial construction company was super successful, but then, like, your dad built these mega mansions and often still had some troubles with profitability and that kind of stuff. So what did that teach you about running a building company?

It was always an inspiration for sure, right? Because, like, in my eyes, right, my dad's the most successful builder there ever was, right. Like, because he's built these amazing homes. But I got to see, like, if you don't build a team around you, and, you know, he had great teams, but it was always to make a great product, right? Like, he builds the nicest homes. He's got amazing carpenters or great craft, but he never, like, implemented the marketing strategy. So the amount of times that our homes have been featured in the Wall Street Journal or Esquire magazine, Los Angeles Times, Architectural Digest, featured in all these, you know, rich House of Beverly Hills TV shows. But never once does it mention Roderick Builders, which, you know, it always kind of made me sad. And I'm like, it's not like I want my dad to be famous, but, like, I want him to have some credit, right? You know, like, why is he always chasing the next job when the job finishes, right? And. And it kind of goes back to, like, the principles of apb. If you're not marketing, then you're going to. You're just going to treat the next job like the one before because you don't. You don't build out these systems. You don't have a marketing plan. You don't have KPIs. And, you know, he's made a great living. There's no denying that. But it was not like what the other side of my family was, where it was a sellable business, right? To him, it was always just a job and a craft and an art. I'm not saying I want to sell my business or anything like that, but, you know, if you're. If you're building these homes and they. All these homes mostly were for sale, why not participate? Why not organize the deal? You're already the consultant. You're already the one that's on site every day. Why not participate in some more of that upside rather than just a normal contractor's fee, Right? But it also taught me, like, what an average contractor's fee is, is really not enough to make a living. I don't think most people realize the overhead that it takes to run a construction business. It's just really sad because there's so many contractors out there across the nation who have an amazing craft, but they don't realize how much they're actually spending in their overhead. And they themselves are a cost, their business. They are not the profit.

You know, it sounds like you had a realization at some point around your numbers. Tell me more about that.

You know, I guess the story is, you know, I kind of followed in a lot of people's footprints that were before me and my dad included. Right? Cost plus 10, right? I mean, that. That's 10 profit. Right? You know, just we hear that all the time. You know, really your overhead is 10 markup. You know, so there really isn't a lot of profitability in just a cost plus 10 when you could take into your trucks. Doesn't matter if they're nice new or old, you know, like, I mean, it's still a cost to the business. Your time is a cost. And so, you know, we had, we had a customer where we were really generous to them. You know, they were, they were pretty over budget. And you know, they had approved all these change orders along the way, but they didn't really realize where they were at, even though they had approved them. And, you know, we use great software as BuilderTrend and all, all sorts of stuff like that. And even though they had approved these change orders, you know, why was it so painful for them in the end? Like, I get that they were way over their budget, and it wasn't that we necessarily underestimated, but it was that they didn't see the full scope. They didn't see how the budget was Changing. They didn't, they didn't. They didn't keep track of what they were spending to date, and they didn't keep track of all those change orders. And even though buildertrend has those all in different places, it wasn't really showing them the full picture. And so when we decided to forego a lot of our profit on that job, you didn't really realize how much of our profit that we just foregone had already been spent on overhead. Right. So it actually ended up putting us in quite a bind. It ruined our buying power. It ruined. It ruined a lot of things in our business. And it really made us like, take a step back, go away a sec. Like, what are we, what are we doing wrong here? And so we got involved with APB really aggressively. We had already been working with them, but at that point we started working with them, you know, on a coaching level and stuff like that and really diving into it. And, you know, we were always so good to our customers. We loved them, we hugged them, we did everything we could to take care of them, make sure they were happy. But really at the end of the day, like, you can build an amazing house, but if they don't understand their numbers, they're going to be upset and frustrated all the way through the very end. Right. That was a job that really shouldn't have gone that way because it was a great relationship up until basically the last two invoices. You know, that was really the beginning of the realization.

Yeah. I mean, if you're building any home, you're dealing with a lot of money, but especially if you're in that high end, there's so much cash coming in and out of the business. It's kind of scary.

Oh, it's terrifying. And I'm not trying to bash other contractors because I think they don't know what they don't know. Right. And I really just want to be a voice to others to help them. But I look at so many people in my market that when I hear that they were awarded a job for a certain price, I actually feel for the contractor. I don't feel for the client. Like that's their decision. Right. But because I'm like, oh man, you're probably going to lose money and you don't know it yet, you know, and there's so much money coming in and out of contractors accounts, and I don't think they've really realized until they understand wipe. Right. I mean, that's such a big, important part of what APB teaches. And a few Other people that are in that space, we use adaptive, Adaptive build, which is a great accounting software because it runs your wip. It tells you if you've drawn a million dollars, how much of that million dollars have you actually realized yet? How much have you actually earned if the job stopped tomorrow, how much have you actually made and how much are you giving back? Right. And I don't think a lot of contractors realize it. And that can go both ways. You could be underdrawn too. Right. The client could owe you money up to date. But I don't think enough contractors keep track of that. And you know, they're, they're financing their lives and their, their trucks and stuff like that. Especially in a market like this. Everybody's got a brand new truck. And I mean, I'm guilty of it too. I got, you know, I drive a nice truck and whatnot. But it's just crazy how many people don't know what money is theirs and what money is their clients.

I guess, I mean, just a bit of a sidetrack. Having a nice truck though, that's probably one of those small things. As a high end builder that, that's a perception thing as well. Right. With the clients like you, you got to look good on the front end as well as back end.

Totally. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's no denying it. I mean, but there is like a fine line. Right? Like, yeah, you know, you don't want to be. At least it's a nice truck and not like a nice Ferrari. Right. Like there's a, there's definitely a different perception. And so. But it's also maintenance. I mean, we look at it from a longevity and a maintenance perspective. I mean, whether our clients complain like, oh, am I buying your new truck? No, honestly, like, we're just smart with our money. We figure out what's going to be more cost effective and it's more cost effective for taxes and all these other reasons to get a new truck every year or two. But yeah, perception in this world, especially in this market, plays a big role on it. Yeah.

Yeah. So what did you start doing differently then? I mean, you mentioned Adaptive as a software that you implemented to help with tracking WIP and things like that. But what other systems and habits did you put in place to try and feel more in control of your numbers?

Yeah, so it was, we worked with Clint. Clint was our APB coach. So shout out to Clint for sure. He scared the crap out of me. He's like, you need to go to a fixed price contract. I was like, yeah, right. Like how do you fix price a 5 million dollar homes? Like you just do it. And I'm like, all right, like so we figured that out, right? It was such a great experience, honestly, because it changed our entire pre construction. Pre construction is so important and I always took it seriously and I would put, you know, a couple hundred hours into it. But now I would say we put like 3,000 hours into pre construction and that's probably a little too much. It's a little excessive. But like we live in fear. You know, we want to make sure that the client knows exactly what they're getting, that they're understanding. You know, we just. So we do things now like walk your plans where you get to go the floor. The plans are projected on the floor and the client gets to go walk that space. And even though that's a cost to us, it helps eliminate what they imagine in their head. Whether we designed the home or an architect did, they're actually understanding how those plans work. We want to pick every micro thing out down to like the face plate covers of a light switch. Right. Because we might have something different in mind. Yeah, we spec'd light switch cover but well, they were picking a $150 light switch cover and we expect a 19cent one. So we just get so granular in that pre construction and that estimating now that, you know, no job starting scares me. I mean I've already been a part of like the scariest builds. Right. Like cliffsides and whatnot. Right. But the numbers are what really is scary because if you don't get that right, you're done. And so whether we are a cost plus job or a fixed price job, that was probably like the biggest change is our pre construction went from 100 to 300 hours to literally 3,000. So just an insane increase in hours in that pre construction to make sure that everyone is on the same page.

How many light switches do you think there are in a ten million dollar home?

Well, well, you know that, I mean that gets really interesting because you know, now we're getting into like the whole wellness thing and, and smart home.

I wasn't going. Yeah, I was trying to figure out like if you're losing 150 on one light switch and you know how many you got in a home and then that's just one, gotta be one example,

three, 400 at least, right?

Yeah, I can compound like if that's, you know, if you're doing that across multiple different materials, like.

Yeah, exactly. I mean now with like smart controls and Stuff like that. Like, okay, well, what if they were expecting a smart lighting system and it wasn't spec? Right. Like, I mean, it's just crazy how out of hand it can get over the smallest little thing. And so I always tell a client in the beginning, I'm like, don't pick me because you like me. So pick me because you can have a hard conversation with me because anybody can build your home. I think we're going to build it really, really well and we're going to be really involved. But pick me because you can have a hard conversation with me because there's going to be hard conversations that are going to have to be had during this build. Whether that be something you want to change or are bad news or I want to change something, there's going to be something. And, and then, you know, we start talking about like the scenario of change orders and changing the scope. And I say the reason why we're doing this pre construction so aggressively is let's just say you have $1,000 change, but you do that thousand dollar change 100 times, which 100 times is really not that many. You just increased your budget by $100,000, which maybe for you is not a big deal. But you know, some people, that's what their homes cost.

You know, you, it could be a big deal though if you're, you're not factoring that in and then you're, you're at 100 grand at the end of the project.

Yeah, yeah. So we do both now. We do fixed price, we do cost plus, but we have a, that pre construction so dialed that it is what it is. We, we don't live in fear. We're ready to roll.

Talk to me about your pre construction process. When are you charging clients? During that.

Yeah. So before we're ever going to price a job, ideally we're involved really, really, really early on. We want to be probably their first point of contact maybe before an architect, so we can help them select the architect that is going to be the best fit for them. And you know, we've got recommendations and you know, they might as well, but given that most of these people are from out of town, they usually are pretty open to us. And so we've got a great list of architects we love here in the state and outside the state that work really well and we kind of understand what their strengths are. So we want to get involved at that point because we can charge for basically consulting throughout the design because it doesn't matter if you're building $100 million home or a million dollar home, like you still have a number and a budget in mind, right. And so we want to make sure that that architect also, although is likely gonna design something super beautiful. There's just nothing worse than when you get a set of plans that an architect's designed and the client has approved it and they're ready to rock and roll and then they can't afford any of it, it's over designed. And I see it all too often, even people I've advised early on, get someone involved early, otherwise this will happen. And it happened again last week to a good friend and I'm just like, dude, come on, I told you, you got a design to your budget because otherwise you're going to double it every single time. You're going to have these amazing ideas. So we want to get involved then from a consulting perspective. And then once the design's finished, we want to, we want to charge for pricing the model which, because we're going to put 3,000 hours into it, I mean that's a lot of weeks of work. Right. And you know, ideally we're selecting, helping select that engineer as well with the architect. You know, there's strengths to certain engineers over others per project. You know, we, we're really, we're good with the, the counties and the, the permitting process. So if they need our help getting that done, we'll, we'll just charge for that as well.

So we work with clients that come with architectural plans already pre done, depending on the architect or.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what's more important to me is is it going to be an awesome job? Right? Like, so there's, there's great design and then there's a great client and if you get both, I greatly. Cool. It's a unicorn, right. And oftentimes you get a little bit of both. Right. But that's the important part. We want to be a part of really cool projects or really cool people because we're not too good for someone who wants to build a million dollar home just because we built these really insane nice homes. Like we're, we're not too good for it. Right. And I think that's a big change we're working on right now is our perception is we are too nice. And we gotta change that because there's probably a lot of people I could have helped in that. We were maybe the best fit for them, but they thought we were maybe going to be too expensive, so they didn't even ask. So yeah, we love working with new architects that we've never worked with before. It gives us an opportunity to learn as well.

You know, I bet there's not a single builder listening that hasn't had a challenging client before. And the first thing I thought when you said, you know, good people or good design, I was like, I only really care about the good people because I don't want to work with people, you know, challenging people. But am I right in saying that the scale of challenge gets higher with the scale of build as well? In terms of the people you're working with, they're more specific, more detailed.

I think that there's. The middle range is the hardest part. You know, I think the. I'm going to say the starter luxury. Right. So the people who are. They're buying the $5 million home, but maybe shouldn't be buying the $5 million home. Right. Because when you get up into like that, that 10 million plus, like, it's likely, maybe a second home they've likely built before. So they've already had bad experiences. They know what they like and what they don't like, and they probably have it in a designer, which. Not saying designers are easy or are not. Right. Like, there's both sides of that as well. But the decision making becomes a little bit easier at a certain level. Now, have I had to tear out, you know, $100,000 floor before that? I'm like, you're crazy. You're tearing this out. Yeah, I don't like it. I want something different, you know, so, yeah, there's that, but it's the people that are stretched a little too much because they're trying to make that dollar go so far. They're trying to make their house look like this on a shoestring budget. That's the hardest client. And you want to help them the most you can, but there's only so much you can do.

You mentioned before that ideally you're getting the prospects at the very start of their journey before they've got plans, before they're really, like, getting through the whole process. How do you go about doing that? How do you meet them at that point?

Yeah, so we were positioned in a unique spot in our market, mostly because, again, of either previous businesses or family history. So we have a really good network of people, but we're not paying full real estate commissions or anything like that. But we do have a good referral program for real estate agents that are introducing us to their clients. And then we also. Some of those agents we've kind of set up as like a Roderick Brand. Ambassador. So we kind of give them the opportunity to market what we're doing with their client along the way via social media, which can only increase kind of what that percentage would look like is that brand ambassador, referral fee, whatever you want to call it. But on top of it, we're. We're doing some cool things that we haven't totally sent it out yet, but I'm really excited about it. So I have like, all my AI stuff. It scrapes the county records. Whenever there's a new lot sold in certain neighborhoods, I get alerted and I get the information of, like, what their mailing address is, if there is a phone number or whatever. So I have a lot of people's information in, like, my favorite neighborhoods in the state. Then we're starting to do handwritten letters to all of them. Right. And that handwritten letter has just a small QR code. It's got a message that's basically design LED construction mastered. And that QR code eventually is going to lead to a landing page of me talking with them about why we would likely be a good option to help them get that process started. Whether we end up building it or not, we want to be a source of information and knowledge to people. And I think that is something that all too many contractors don't take seriously enough.

Yeah, that sounds like a pretty cool idea that you got going on there with the QR codes and the handwritten notes and sending them to a page where you're doing video content. What's the rationale behind the video and educational content?

The whole thing is, you know, builders, they have so much knowledge, they've had so many mistakes, they've had so many unique experiences. And no houses alike. No, lots the same. No architect is the same. No house in all the circumstances will ever be the same. You can never replicate that exact house, and that is exact circumstances ever again. It will at least be different dirt, possibly a different client, you know, different team behind it. And so it's such a shame that people don't take advantage to. To educate. Right? Because I mean, that that's really why. What should set the difference apart when you pick a builder is someone that is going to be able to guide you through the things that you're uncomfortable handling on your own. Right. And so that's one of the best things about, like, our team, you know, even though we're spread out across a few different states, we have knowledge just of, about, like, kind of building any kind of product. And so someone on our team likely has an answer or has had something similar. It's just a great opportunity to be able to educate people. And, you know, as we're kind of doing this marketing employee, you know, I think all too often someone just hires whoever their friend or their real estate agent told them to hire. Right. And so I think, you know, a, the handwritten letter gets them to open the letter. Right. Number two, the fact of some of the messaging on it, it's going to make them probably too curious, not too scan the QR code and which then gives us an opportunity to get in front of them because likely if we're in front of them, we at least have a shot.

Yeah, I'm definitely interested to follow up on that one and see how it goes. But the other thing I'm interested about, your marketing. You do a lot of good content anyway, like on your Instagram, your socials and that kind of stuff. You're doing regular, high quality content. You got a bit of a following growing there as well. What's the intention behind all of that? And have you seen that bear fruit in terms of the type of clients you're working with?

Have I ever got a client free because of it? Probably not. But I think what the best thing is that it does is a client is going to do their own research before they even probably call you or meet with you the first time. And, you know, Maybe they're using ChatGPT to search or maybe they're taking a recommendation from somebody, but they're going to do a little bit of research. But the nice thing is they get to see how I already work. Right. They get to already get to kind of know me. And so I feel like usually when I sit down with a client for the first time, whether it be over coffee or lunch or something like that, it feels like we already know each other. And maybe that's because they're comfortable with me. And I mean, I'm comfortable with just about anyone, but it just really smooths that over. It makes it a really easy conversation. So it's not like this, all right, let's get to the numbers part. No, it's like, let's talk about what's important and the numbers are going to be what the numbers are. You know, like, I'm not going to be that much different than the next guy if they're doing it right. You know, I think I was afraid for so long because building is so important to me and other business ideas. I didn't really care that much. I was sure, like, I'll be the face of it. But I was intimidated with building. I really was, for the longest time. I waited five years before I ever even got in front of the camera.

Yeah, it's an interesting one because we recommend builders get on camera as much as they can in their content because to your point, it builds trust. It's like when you jump on a call with someone, they already know who you are, they trust you, they're comfortable with you. Whereas if you don't have anything available online like that, it's kind of like talking to a stranger. And if you're going to invest six to $10 million into a stranger, most of the time, that's not going to happen.

Yeah, I would completely agree. So I'm very grateful for her and a few others. And like I said, my wife and family have been supportive. It was really interesting when I started doing it. You know, like I said, I've probably never gotten a client because of it, but I've had amazing brand partnerships. I've had more support from people I already knew. I've had people that didn't even know I was a builder that I know well call me and be like, I didn't know you were doing this. You know, so, like, it's just exponentially grown my reputation throughout this state. And because, I mean, we are somewhat of leaders in this state, but only, like, the Home Builders association really knows that, you know, or the inspectors who are inspecting our homes, like, it's not the. The general public. And so it was actually pretty rewarding, you know, in the sense of just getting these people's feedback of like, hey, I love what you're doing. Like, even family members who. Who know me well, they're like, oh, you're doing some cool things. I had no clue you were doing that. And they're just encouraging it because it's fun for them.

Yeah, that's a great point. And you probably can't put a tangible benefit on that, but that family member or that friend that didn't know what you were doing before now gets exposed to it. They talk to someone, Someone else about that, and that just kind of builds momentum.

Yeah, exactly. We'll keep doing it. It's hard to keep up with, you know, you pretty much need a team and an army for it, but we'll get there one day.

How often are you doing content?

I only do content, like, once a week as far as, like, going and filming it. But I'm trying to find, you know, maybe. Maybe this person will find me because of the show, but I'm looking for someone who's really passionate about photography and loves people. Because building homes, you can put it together in a special way. You can make it look pretty. And I think that's what all builders are doing. But the story, the real stories are the people that are putting it together. So I really want a great photographer who is. Who understands, like, the shadows of architecture, but is great at capturing the human interaction. Sometimes show up to the job sites early in the morning, I see. Or late at night, I see maybe the drywaller walking out of the house, covering his head as, like, the snow's blowing sideways and it's dark outside. And I'm like, that's a cool story. You know?

Yeah.

Why aren't we capturing more of that? Like National Geographic, but for. For builders or for subcontractors, you know, that's cool.

That's cool content. And I think from a marketing perspective, there's something about the quality of that content which ties into the quality of the work you deliver as well. I'm just thinking psychologically there, but yeah, no, I agree. Well, back to the numbers side of things. You mentioned adaptive. You quickly mentioned build a trend as well. Are they the main tools you're using to track your numbers? And is it helping you make better decisions financially?

Yeah, I mean, Adaptive specifically is helping me make drastically better decisions. Buildertrend was great for our numbers, like, but I think the complexity of it, it was providing too much in too many different places. So we still use billertrend today for all of our project management and even our change orders. It makes it super simple. But when it comes down to adaptive, our whole team, at any given time, as long as we spend 10 to 30 minutes a day in there, you know, organizing whatever, you know, receipts have come in or purchase orders and stuff like that, it runs that WIP for us. We don't have to have like some other Excel sheet. And so I could be at a lunch with my business partner and, you know, we can discuss where we're at on a project, like, right then and there. And I think my favorite part, which kind of goes back to that first story I told, is every single invoice, which. This should be common sense throughout the entire industry. Every invoice at the very beginning, it says, here's your budget, here's how many change orders you've approved, here's your new budget, here's what you spent to date, here's what you have remaining to spend, and here's what you owe right now. Right? And then it gives you the breakdown of all the receipts and all the budget and which line items that you've pulled from and stuff like that. But the fact that it's just front and center. I asked our team, I said, hey, do you think that client that we gave back a lot of our profit to would have still made all these decisions if they had this at the beginning of every invoice where it's all compiled into one spot? And everybody said, yeah, I think they still would have made the same decisions, but we would have been drastically better off. We wouldn't have had to go into debt because of it, you know. And so I think that for me was just a massive selling point from Adaptive. Even though it's like, yeah, it's not that hard to do that part on your own, but the fact that it's just built in and there, I love it. And their AI is pretty amazing, you know, like the way that it recognizes workflows and how certain things should be approved or this vendor is always that cost code type stuff.

That's really cool. Yeah. Adaptifier, a rewards partner for any APB members listening in. They can go check them out there and get a cash rebate. But yeah, that sounds awesome. I mean, I think one of the things that makes a lot of contractors, builders push back their numbers is it's kind of overwhelming. Like you're not, like you're not accountants, right. So you don't necessarily want to get into all of that granular detail every day or every week because it's. You don't fully understand it and you don't know which numbers you need to be looking at. Whereas to your point, if you just have that clear breakdown, that's going to make sense to anyone. And that just makes a lot of sense to me.

Right, so, yeah, exactly. And you know, we currently do a lot of that work ourselves, you know, but we're getting to a point where we'll have a team of people and we outsource some of it to some of our other, you know, accountants, but we're eventually going to have that, that team in house. And where we aren't doing all that categorization. Well, when I say we are, where I'm not involved in that categorization, even our project managers aren't involved because every person should be focused on what they are best at. Right. But the ability to have those, those conversations, or you could be sitting with a client and you can pull up that information right then and there of where you're at that day in that exact moment, I think it's you know, really great. Yeah.

Talk to me about that specialization in roles in your company. Is that something you've always had?

You know, I mean, at one point, you know, I was swinging a hammer, you know.

Yeah.

So you evolve, right? And you try to hire within. And, you know, I've got the most amazing business partner. He hates being on camera. He hates being involved in any marketing. He doesn't really even care to be in sales meetings. He just wants to be a part of that pre construction. And then he wants to build the dang house. Right. And he's so great at it. And I would be so lost without him.

Right.

But he's like, met the perfect ying to my yang. Right. It allows me to, you know, have a little bit of freedom to go and market with my creative ways. Allows me to go meet with people and create brand partnerships, and I don't have to worry about what's on the ground. But we do have, like, a lot of specialization in our company. Right. Like, he's like, that's a perfect example. Like, he could care less about marketing. I'm the marketer. He's not. Right. He's the executor of building. I am not. Like, I'll dream up way too big. I'll be the architect and blow that budget, budget up real fast. But we've got a great group of, like, guys on the ground too. Not just subcontractors, but people that are part of our team that our family, you know, like, we do all of our own paints and plasters in house because it's such a important part of, like, the final end product that we want to really control that. And that way we have somebody from our team on every job site every day. You know, whether it be me or my partner or, you know, one of our employees, there's someone from our office essentially that's there every day. And I don't think a lot of people get that, at least in our market. You know, there'll be weeks that go by before I see anyone on someone else's job site.

What kind of impact did you notice from a personal perspective once you got clearer around the specialization? Like you mentioned that journey, you'd gone from swinging a hammer to being specialized in the role and you have in the company.

Yeah, I mean, we're still. We're still refining that every day. You know, like right now we're working on kind of building out like, that ultimate handbook. So if I died tomorrow, what would somebody take over? Right. But as you're kind of building that out, it makes you really, really hone in on the processes. Like, there's a million ways to waterproof a house, but this is the way the Roderick builders does it, right? Like every single time. So anybody can take over because that's what we do. It makes it just really clear and distinct because Zach, my partner, he can call me and when something's my job and we know who to hold accountable. Like if, whether I've done it or I don't haven't done it, or I don't have an answer, or I do have an answer, like we know who to go to and who's supposed to be there for it, rather than like, oh, well, no one did it, you know, no, Trapper didn't do it. It's Trapper's fault. The trapper pick up the ball, right? I'm using myself as an example because, I mean, we all have our pitfalls, right? And I, I can be the pitfall at time. But the nice thing is when, when it is your role to do something, it's really easy to own whose fault it is. And so you can not make that mistake again or figure out how you're going to adapt and change that so it doesn't happen again. So. Yeah.

Well, the other thing that's cool about if you do have that handbook, the company manual, you can refer back to that. So if something does slip through the cracks, maybe it wasn't anyone's fault per se, maybe it was a gap in your process, right? And then you can go back and refer to that and improve it, et cetera.

So, yeah, it's just, it's really hard to like, like maybe last week Zach and I were on the job site and we're like, this was awesome. Let's do this every time, making sure that that handbook actually gets updated right as you're doing it, you know, so that, that's a whole other animal of its own, Nick.

That is a discipline, which is hard to do in terms of making sure it's maintained and updated. But with AI, it's a lot easier now than it used to be. We're going to start wrapping this one up, Trapper. But what's one final piece of advice you'd give to builders?

Listening today, it's going to be kind of a two part. First off, you got to just believe in yourself, right? Like, because really the sky is the limit. I mean, there's things, times where I thought everything's going to fall apart, but if you just like keep believing and you grind and you don't just grind the way you've been grinding. You grind in the ways that you know are going to make a difference that scare you to change. Right? So, like, believe and go make those changes and then get someone involved in your numbers as early as you possibly can. Because I don't care if you've got the greatest CPA who does your taxes, if you don't know your numbers throughout the life of a job, you're leaving so much money on the table, you're hurting yourself, you're hurting your client, you're hurting your subcontractor. Everyone around. Like, your life can only be that much better if you just know that because, you know, maybe your subcontractor is not good at, you know, keeping track of their books. Hey, how much more do you owe me? What you don't know, like, that's scary, you know? So get involved with your numbers as early as you can to the highest level that you can.

Yeah, that's cool. I like the first part because what it touches on is, I mean, I don't think anyone listening to a podcast like this is not a hard worker. They're all working hard and wanting to be better. But sometimes you're working on the wrong things. You know what I mean?

Yeah. I mean, I'm guilty of it. I'll go down a rabbit hole on something I shouldn't. But work on the things that scare you for sure, because those are probably the things that gonna make the biggest difference.

Trapper man, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I've loved this conversation. There's been a lot of value for builders in there, and it was really cool to hear a lot about your journey as well. So, yeah, thanks for coming on.

No, thanks, Will. I really appreciate it and hope to see you again sometime soon.

Cool. Also, a big thank you to our listeners wherever you are in the world. If you like the show today, please subscribe to Professional Builder Secrets. And if you're feeling generous, leave us a review. But until next time, have a great day.