237. Keeping Clients Happy with Cameron Jahn & Russ Stephens

Welcome to another episode of Professional Builders Secrets. This episode is all about keeping your clients happy. So a little while back, I interviewed Cameron Jahn from Houzz Pro in North America and Russ Stephens, the co-founder of APB, and we went deep into what are the mechanics of a building company that help keep clients happy throughout the build. It's a common challenge that builders face. There's a ton of value in this interview. Just to be aware, this was actually taken from a webinar series we ran for the launch of the State of Residential Construction Industry Report 2026. So there is a little bit of back and forth with the audience and a few questions, but for the most part, the information is highly valuable. Enjoy. This episode of Professional Builders 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 at ApparatusTeam.com or on the APB Rewards Partner Directory.

It's strange, isn't it, that when you're talking about sales, it wasn't leads, it's unrealistic expectations was such a a big thing. And this kind of stress, it peaks midway through the builds. And it's all because the expectations for the client was never set before things kicked off.

So it's not just the quality of the craftsmanship, but also setting expectations up front. Because if it's invisible, it becomes fear of the unknown.

Because you can't deliver a world-class service without having systems in place. And right now, agents are taking over. And by the end of this year, most admin jobs could be automated. This is an opportunity to go ahead of the game in one step.

Welcome everyone to the, this webinar. It's the final of a series we've been running for the launch of the State of Residential Construction Industry Report 2026 called Beyond the Data. It's about, it's called what the best builders do differently to keep their clients happy. And today we've got a couple of special guests from APB, Russ Stephens, and also Howes, Cameron John. So welcome to the show today. Looking forward to having a good chat with you.

Thanks, Will. Glad to be here. Always excited to have a chat and great to have Cameron here as well.

Yeah, so I'll do a bit more of an official introduction to both our guests, panelists today in a moment. But while everyone's feeding into the room, we've got a lot of registrations today. So I expect it's going to be a really full room. If you could just let me know where you're joining from today. I'm based in Sydney, Australia, so it's 8 AM right on the dot for me. Russ Stephens is up in Queensland, Australia. Cameron, you're joining from San Francisco, is that right?

Correct. San Francisco Bay Area. It's 2 PM on Thursday. Very good.

Well, let's see where all the builders are joining us from. We've got Brent in New Zealand. Brent, great to see you. Nice of you to join. Christopher from Seattle. Jordan from Utah. Adam's joining from Bundaberg in Queensland. We've got Jessica in Springfield, Vermont. Jason in Dallas, Georgia. Claudio from Toronto. Barbara from Nantucket. Prudent from New Zealand, the South Island. Carlos from Orlando. You're testing my eyes here. They're coming in pretty quick, so I won't read out everyone, but it looks like we've got a really diverse group. People from New Zealand, Australia, the US, Canada. Derek's from Canada there. Joseph from Union, New Jersey. So awesome to see a real diverse group of builders joining us today. What I would encourage you, as the conversation's going on today, drop questions you have in the chat. This is a fantastic opportunity to access two experts in the industry and get their perspective from so many other builders. And hopefully it could help you out in your company as well. For those of you that don't know, my name is Will and I'm the head of marketing here at the Association of Professional Builders. I'll be hosting the webinar today. I won't be doing too much talking after the introduction. Hopefully we'll be deflecting all of the chat to Cameron and Russ Stephens, who are the experts. But as I mentioned, drop your questions in the chat. I'll bring them to the floor at the most appropriate time and hopefully we can get them answered as we go. All right. Well, let me stop sharing my screen because this is going to be a little bit different than your average webinar. We are going to focus on the conversation. We're going to go beyond the data and have a really deep conversation with Cameron and Russ Stephens here today so that we can get you some practical takeaways on how you can deliver a better experience for your clients. So that's the number one priority today. If you stick around to the end, you'll get your questions answered and a ton of value along the way. So let's get the fun started. As a bit of an official introduction, let me introduce you to Russ. So Russ Stephens is the co-founder here at the Association of Professional Builders. We're a coaching company that works with builders across the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. And Russ is also the co-author of the Amazon number one bestseller Professional Builders Secrets. Russ, welcome.

Thank you, Will. Excited, especially as we've got another expert here as well that's going to have some great insights.

Yeah, it's going to be a very good chat, very good chat today. And it's obviously a topic which has hit the mark. This is our highest registration for any of these webinars so far, which tells me that builders are struggling with keeping their clients happy. So plenty to chat about today. And Cameron John from HowzPro. So Cameron leads product marketing at HowzPro. And HousePro is focused on helping the construction industry simplify the process, scale operations, and deliver a standout client experience. Now, Cameron, from the Bay Area in San Francisco, you're also into a bit of hiking and cooking, I believe.

Yeah, as you can see from my background, um, I try to get outside as often as possible and cook for my family. Sort of how I decompress and give back.

Very good. Well, excited to hear some of the insights from the HousePro customers. And what you can bring to the table today. So should be a very good conversation. Before we dive into the questions, let me just give a bit of a background on the State of Residential Construction Industry Report for those that aren't familiar. It's a research study that we organize every year, and I just wanted to recognize House Pros' contribution to the collection of that data. They help us get a broader industry perspective. We've been doing this for 6 years. Over 8,000 builders across those 4 markets I mentioned before have contributed to the data. And with advanced tools such as AI this year, we've been able to correlate data across years and across data points, which has given us some phenomenal insights into the industry. We'll touch on some of those insights today, but what we're going to do is go beyond that as well and really look at what's happening in building companies right now and how that is impacting the client experience. So we're going to go beyond the data and focus on that what the high-performing builders are doing differently to keep their clients happy. So by the end of today's session, you should have some really practical tips to take away on how you can do the same.

All right.

Well, I think I'm out of breath and it's time to dive into the questions. Let's get into it. So I want to throw to you to start things off, Russ Stephens. Why do some builders deliver such great homes? They build phenomenal homes, but then they still end up with a frustrated or stressed client at the end of it.

Yeah, this is a bit of an Achilles heel, I'd say, in the industry, and something that came out in the data in the, the latest Sourcei report where it was almost 35% of builders said that unrealistic client expectations is their number one sales challenge. Now that is almost always a pre-build problem that's surfacing through the build and It's strange, isn't it, that when you're talking about sales, it, you know, it wasn't leads this time. It's unrealistic expectations was such a big thing. And this kind of stress, it peaks midway through the builds. And it's all because the expectations for the client was never set before things kicked off. And that's when the quality of the build actually starts to become irrelevant because the client is looking at other things and getting stressed by other things. And we've been talking with a lot of builders lately at IBS and with the road shows that we do as well. And that's been coming out in those conversations as well. And I think one thing that was interesting was Summit last year. So the annual Summit that we hold in Sydney, we actually touched on this in a bit of detail about client expectations because there's a lot of data to prove or show that client expectations are on the increase. Ever since 2020, they've been going up exponentially. And unless builders have got systems like Houzz Pro, for instance, to actually manage their processes, and unless they've got processes in place to deal with situations, you're never going to meet your client's expectations. So client's expectations are going up. Unless builders are on the front foot and systemizing and being able to overdeliver, this is why we're getting that disconnect between what the clients are expecting and what can realistically be delivered.

Yeah, I would echo that, Russ. When I'm talking to builders or contractors all day long, the best ones, they're using their process as part of their sales pitch. So it's not just the quality of the craftsmanship, but also Setting expectations up front. Here's what it looks like. Here's how you engage with my team. Here, here's how you access all your documents. They're keeping it all in one place. And that way, like you said, on the front foot, in the very beginning of the process, they're letting clients know what to expect. You're going to get an email from me every week. We're going to do all of our communication through this portal over here so that there will always be a reply. And it's a stressful transaction for the homeowner. They're often living at the job site. It's also— it involves a lot of financial risk for the homeowner. And what we see in, in the industry data that we collect and you guys collect is that homeowners often haven't been through it before. So it's, it's sort of the scary unknown. So they're— they don't know what to expect. And when they don't know what to expect, you're introducing anxiety. So someone who lives in the industry all day long and builds homes as a profession, you know what this looks like. You've seen it hundreds of times. The homeowner it might be their first time. So bringing that mentality of let's keep the communication flowing, but you got to give it to them in a, in a way that they can consume, because if it's invisible, it becomes fear of the unknown. So, you know, the builder might be amazing at their craft and they certainly are, but if the homeowner can't see it and how it's happening, then at some point they're going to get, they're going to, they're not going to be happy.

And if you're not the one setting their expectations, well, someone else is going to do that for you. And what do they know about building a home like you do as the builder.

Yeah, exactly. There's a client of ours, Luke Thomas in New York, H&L Design and Construction. He uses a weekly survey, really quick, super easy weekly survey on a thumbs up, thumbs down. He just texts it to the clients on like Fridays. How are you feeling this week about what we delivered and how we showed up? And what it does is it heads off anything that happens down the road because it gets the client thinking about 'How am I feeling?' Actually, 'I wish they would've cleaned up the job site,' or, 'Oh, I'm concerned about my selections process taking too long.' But it allows Luke and his team to get ahead of it so that it doesn't manifest into something bigger down the road when the relationship is under more strain, for example. What he says is just that little tiny thing, checking in with them in an automatic way once a week by a text, it allows them to walk out of the project as friends. They're still on the texting basis. They can shake hands, look each other in the eye, and not have negative outcomes when they're, when they're handing over at the end of the project. It's just the little things that homeowners, they expect now, but we see it in our data as well that homeowners, their expectations are, they're much higher than they used to be and they just expect a lot more communication now. So what I would say to our builder friends in the industry, it's not as hard as it used to be. There's so much automation and AI out there and setting a safety net for yourself and your team that also translates to what the experience you can give to your client. Because often building someone's home, they're paying for the experience. Often homeowners, they're happy to pay the premium to get it done the right way the first time, but you're delivering an experience. It just happens to come through transforming their home or building them a new home.

I love that. That's a great tip, Cameron, about the weekly check-in because it's an early warning radar because it's not so much the thumbs up. The thumbs ups are nice, but when you get the thumbs down, I mean, if you don't address that, this is when the relationship spirals down. We actually encourage our members to run a regular MPS score. Some do it monthly, some do it at the different stages, but it's exactly the same thing. That's the standard scale of 1 to 10. How likely are you to recommend us to friends or family? It's an internationally recognized score. And what that does, it means the 9s and 10s, you progress them into reviews. So this is how you build your reviews. But the ones that are giving you any negative feedback, or even if it just starts to drop off, that's your early warning radar going off. You can get on the front foot and you can address how they're feeling before it spirals down and gets into those situations that we hear about all too often with builders.

The other thing I would mention is the early warning systems. You have to have that, but you also need to have an official system of record. A place that the client can access all of their things. And when the client can't see it, or when they have to sift through email and text messages or their memory to get the documentation for their project, that's when there's opportunities for misunderstanding. So if you can put it all in one place, that self-serve client portal where it has their estimate, their selections boards, their 3D model, their budget, their invoices, all the messages that you and your team have sent to them, there's one place where they can go. And then they can self-serve late at night when they have a question, they don't have to call you or text you. And it helps respect boundaries. You know, then you can set boundaries around during business hours, I will respond immediately. After hours and on the weekends, please go to this self-serve portal and I'll get back to you when I can so that they can have a personal life and you, you can have time with your family.

You both mentioned that client expectations are increasing. Is that something which is happening faster than the way contractors and builders are adapting to that?

I would say it is, because otherwise we wouldn't see this as a growing problem in the industry. I, you know, when you look at the results of the data on things like this, then you've got to be thinking what is causing this. And we're, you know, we're seeing an increase in builders that are saying that clients' expectations are becoming a bigger and bigger problem. So I think it's a safe assumption to make that, yeah, expectations are not outpacing the builder's ability to deliver, but outpacing a lot of builders keeping pace and utilising what's available. You look at the systems. We were right next to Howes at IBS, and I saw the amount of AI technology being built into their product now. And unless builders are making use of things like this, the expectations are that you can do so much more because You know, people know what is achievable now. So yeah, you gotta be delivering, you gotta be moving, you gotta be evolving.

The high-touch experiences, it's not difficult now. It used to be high-touch meant more phone calls or more face-to-face time with your clients. With the AI that, that's in the industry or inside of Houzz and other tools now, it's as simple as like, I can talk to my phone the way I would to send a text message and I'm gonna get a daily log. A note, I'm going to get tasks assigned to my team. So you're doing what you normally would do, walking the job site, looking at site conditions, maybe snapping some pictures and some video, but now it's captured in one place, shared with the rest of your office staff, the rest of your subcontractors, and then you can also share it with the client. So if you're capturing the information, you can do much more with it in an automated way. It doesn't have to be a manual process. So these AI tools are super powerful and it's amazing for the client experience because what it does is it makes the builder and the contractor look like they're super buttoned up when maybe they didn't spend hours doing it. But for the client, that's, that's what they care about. You know, like we just released some AI that'll do your weekly client summary. It'll look across the entire project, summarize everything that happened. It'll give you the forward-looking view of what's happening next week, any outstanding invoices that need to be paid, and it'll give you the quick summary, sends it to the client by email. And it generates it for you. You don't have to sit there and do it manually for a couple hours on a Friday. The system does it for you. You check it over and make sure it looks good, but then you're giving a super detailed weekly summary to your client on a weekly cadence, and then you're putting trust in the trust bank because inevitably in a project something doesn't go the way you think it's going to go. But if you put enough trust in the trust bank, you can spend that down and not get to a place where the client is upset with you personally. They might be upset with the scenario, but you've done so much other things to take care of that relationship that things still maintain positive momentum.

We went from a situation, didn't we, where maybe 20 years ago there was no communication really because it was all too hard. We then went into this period of automated communication where builders could communicate quite easily, but it was all automated and people are kind of over that now. What people want now is personalized communication and AI gives gives us the ability to do that on a level we could never have imagined a few years ago. It's absolutely astonishing. And yeah, that's what people love. It's what they want. And over the next 6 months, it's going to be what they expect.

Exactly.

Yeah, that was one thing that came out of the Saucy data, Russ Stephens. The use of AI for client communication went from 18% up to 60% in one year. Which is a huge jump.

Yeah.

Wow.

Builders are on it.

That's a little bit low, but nevermind.

Yeah.

Look, we'd like to see it 100%, but 18 to 60, that's fantastic progress.

But there's even small things you can do. Like when you're right, you can run your emails through something like ChatGPT or HouseBro if you want to give it a softer edge. If you're in a bad mood with your client, you really want to write something or text something that is spicy, run it through AI, get a cleaner, more diplomatic version, and then send that to your client.

Put a delay on it. It's gonna be a spicy one, but a 24-hour delay on it. You might change your mind.

Exactly.

Right.

Well, let's move on to the next question, and it's around the owner of the company getting dragged into a lot of communication with clients throughout the build. So I'm sure everyone that's on the, on the webinar today has probably experienced this at some point. Why do builders so often become the main point of contact with clients in progress of a build?

I would say often it's because the, the owner is the, the point of contact. Maybe they, they sold the job, and 20 years ago that was the way a homeowner expected to interact with the owner of the company. But again, it goes back to the expectations that you've set. Here's our process. After we sign these contracts and go through the selections process, I'm going to hand you off to our project manager And that is, that person is going to become your point of contact for anything that is, anything that needs a human response or something immediate. So it comes back to reminding the clients how to get in touch with you, but also giving them other ways to access their project documents. So you don't have to call them all the time. I have a, there's another builder, Chris Hendrickson in Aspen, Colorado. He does luxury, luxury homes that are very large, 20,000 square feet and whatnot. But if it doesn't happen in Houzz, it didn't count. So everything has to be in there. Homeowners will still call you, but everything needs to get logged in Houzz so that there's a single record of it for both sides, for the homeowner, for the office team, but also for after the project is done to make sure that things are documented in case there's a lawsuit or there's some reason you need the documentation. You got to keep it all, keep it all in one place. And it also makes sure it just gets your teams and your subs and your tradesmen trained on documenting things so that the owner can get back to delivering client experiences or selling additional projects and not have to be the single point of contact. Because single point of contact also means single point of failure.

Yeah, I think they're all really good points. What I'd probably add is that what we see, the builders that struggle in this respect, they've got no documented systems or not enough documented systems and no structure. Now, in terms of systems, a lot of builders might believe that they are systemised. However, what the data showed us was that only 6.4% of builders have all 7 core HR and communication systems in place. Now, that is a big reason why they're becoming the go-to person, the chief problem solver and the bottleneck in their own business. So even when they believe they might be fairly systemized, if they're missing one or more of these core HR systems, then it's, things are going to flow back to them. The other thing that a lot of builders are missing is an org chart. Now, an org chart will save a builder 168 hours annually. That's what we've been able to prove with the data. Yet, Slightly over half of builders, about 55% of builders have got an org chart in place. This is probably, if you haven't got an org chart in place in your business, this is probably one of the single biggest levers that you can use to really move the dial. So you've got to get all the roles and the job descriptions with KPIs mapped out. This will be a massive step towards, you know, taking yourself— stop being the glue really in your own building company.

I would echo that, Russ, because if you don't have a single source of truth, you end up with a few different applications. You might have 7 different point solutions that cover your key, the core parts of your business. But if none of them talk to each other, you end up with software overload. Your data is spread across different places and then there's no leverage in there. But if you keep everything in one place, an all-in-one system, like, like Houzz Pro, for example, then the data works for you rather than you working for the software, you working for the data. So think about the movement from the sales process into project delivery. If you can quickly scan a home that you're going to renovate, turn it into a 3D scan, a 3D model, click a button, turn that into an estimate, click a button, turn that into a ballpark job schedule, then you've done, you've covered 3 really key pieces of the process in one platform with a couple of clicks of buttons and it keeps everything together. So especially in this era of AI, what I see from our clients is quality of the data, it matters a whole lot more now. So if you have, if your data is scattered or it's not great data anyway, you're not going to be able to leverage the power of AI. And what I mean by that is AI at the highest level, it's taken the cost of labor down to zero for certain tasks. So if you can take advantage of that, you can look like you have 10 times more employees than you do, or you can look like you have a team of writers that write and document and then send things along to the client. You can appear much bigger than you are. You can compete as a new company versus against people that have been in the industry for decades, and you can win.

Yeah, I love something you mentioned there as well, Cameron— single source of truth. I'd encourage all builders to keep that top of mind because The moment you start having more than one source of truth, you're gonna end up in a world of pain. And this applies throughout the business. I think we often have conversations about this, Will, don't we? This comes up. Yeah, it's always something I know you're very hot on as well, to always make sure we only have a single source of truth for anything marketing, which is fantastic.

Russ Stephens, you touched on some HR systems there. I just wanted to push back on you a little bit to understand a bit more about what those systems are and how that's impacting the dependence on the owner and therefore the client experience. So some examples which we can, you know, don't need to dive into, which are in Sourcie, relate to recruitment process, employee handbooks, key performance indicators, and daily and weekly huddles. How is that impacting the dependence on the owner and the client experience?

Well, once you have these things in place, all these things that you mentioned, this is how you build a really strong team that actually can make decisions. Without you, all within the framework of the company. Because I mean, first of all, you've got to have your company manual in place. This is one of the biggest levers that you can pull because then you've got a framework for your team to operate without you. And having those roles clearly defined, you know, the structure clearly defined, but then putting in these communication tools like the daily huddles, the weekly huddles, the monthly meetings, the 6-monthly appraisals, the communication's got to flow two ways. Everyone's got to be aware of what's happening and problems can be flagged and manuals updated, processes updated to reflect the reality of what's happening out there. So, yeah, and we just see when builders actually do this. One of the biggest ones, this is interesting actually. One thing we did notice that a lot of building companies are doing daily huddles and weekly huddles, but the the huddles, the daily huddles actually dropped off when the building companies passed the $10 million mark, which was really interesting that once they got past that, they felt that they, maybe they were so systemized, they didn't, they no longer needed the daily huddles. So we dug deeper and analyzed, and I can't remember the numbers off the top of my head, which might shock you, but the builders that were $10 million plus that still did the daily huddles were way more efficient than the builders that had stopped doing them. So yeah, I think that really does underline the importance of these different communication processes that you need to have in place in your building company.

390 grand in lost profit, Russ, it was.

You knew that, didn't you? Yeah, it's unbelievable.

I've got the report up next to me. It helps.

Echo that. What I'll say is to create your standard operating procedures or your business documents, You can use AI for this now. You can talk to it, you can give it a rough document, you can ask it questions and it'll help you create it. So it doesn't have to be a burden to document all these things because as Will and Russ mentioned, it's going to help your business long-term. It helps you be more profitable and it'll help your teams be more effective. But again, to get the owner out of the loop, it doesn't have to be something that's burdensome to create and it doesn't, it doesn't have to take a long time. AI can help you start and get a first draft so that you can look at it and make sure that it's where you want it to be for your company.

Talk to me, and I'll start with you, Russ, about why this is so important. Like, what's the impact on the building company if communication's poor during the build and they don't have a lot of these systems in place? Like, why is it so important to get in place?

Well, I think any builder that's experienced this will agree that these situations lead to delays. Yeah, that's a fact. And delays will destroy your net profit. Now, there's kind of a hidden cost going on within a building company. You've got a job cost, or you've got a cost per project per day, which is your fixed expenses, because these have to be shared out across the jobs that you're running concurrently. This is how you cover your Xs. So it makes sense that a job that runs for an extra week means you can't start a fresh job. Therefore, it's affecting your revenue. So that affects the fixed expense ratio. And it's the reason why you get to the end of the year. And although you might have put the correct margin on to start with, maybe if you're in new construction, you're marking up by 33.3%, showing you a 25% gross profit. And that in theory would have given you a 10% net profit by the end of the year. But when you get to the end of the year, that net profit's down to 7% or even 6% or less. And it doesn't doesn't always make sense, you know, because it's not always in material cost blowouts up here. It's that hidden expense, your fixed expenses, the ratio increasing, and it all comes from delays. So when you have poor communication, whether it's with the client or whether it's even your subcontractors and subcontractors letting you down, that is what is destroying a building company's net profit. The other factor is the more communication, or I guess poor communication leads to more problems and firefighting. This is when builders end up working longer hours. And again, the cost of that is brutal because in the study we've been able to see that the builders that are working 60+ hours a week, they actually earn $15,000 less a year than the builders working 40 to 50 hours. So their hourly rate actually plummeted because not only were they working longer hours, they were drawing a smaller salary. And then of course on top of that you've got the net profit that is a separate issue as well. So this is why what appears to be just a communication problem, this translates very quickly into how much the builder can earn from their company.

I have a client in California, John and Sadie Wittner at Legacy Builders. They went from $2 million to $7 million in in top-line revenue in 3 years because they systematized, put it all, put all the communication in one place, and now they're able to spend more time with their clients, keeping them happy while growing the business because nothing falls through the cracks. There's a single source of truth and they're minimizing the, the sort of the scope creep. There's no more back and forth with the homeowners and the subs or the homeowners and the builder about, well, I asked for this and you're giving me something else. It's all documented. You can remind the homeowner, you selected all these things. Here's the paper trail. You, you clicked on it 3 months ago. Here you go. And the other thing I'll mention is the burnout penalty. If you do it all yourself, like Russ mentioned, you're working nights and weekends, but there's serious financial upside to keeping the communication flowing and keeping it all documented in one place. Other— another builder in New York, Brown Design and Construction, they're relatively new. They've been around 3 years, but they're already at almost $5 million a year. And they're able to win against builders that have been in their area for 40 years, 50 years. So they're kind of the new kid on the block, but because they're a tech-forward, process-oriented company, they're able to win very large jobs, double their project volume and project size in a couple of years because they're able to deliver a better client experience than someone who's been in the industry for 40 years, 50 years. They have their way of doing it. So they're kind of, they're able to come out of nowhere, take business away from what you would think would be the big dog in the area or the larger, more reputable builder in their community. Technology is changing that equation. It's not just how long you've been in the community now, it's the experience you give to your client. I have another client here in San Jose, George Shafazan from Elevated Edge. They're at like $7 million a year. He turned off his advertising spend. He does, he spends very little on advertising now because every one job turns into 6, 6 referrals from the people walking by in the neighborhood, from the friends of the owner, from the cousin of the owner, the dog walkers. They see the experience that they're able to deliver. Job site's always clean. Signage is always where it needs to be. Everybody on the job site shows up looking clean and professional with their polo shirts on. So every, then the work compounds on itself. One project turns into another 6. So his pipeline is always full. So focusing on client experience, it goes all the way through to the, to the healthier business into future pipeline for other additional jobs.

I think you've got a perspective on the advertising spend there, Russ.

On the advertising spend. Yeah, look, it's great when you can generate referrals and yeah, they obviously help the margin, but yeah, we're always wary of dropping the ad spend or turn it off completely because you never know what's ahead. And we've just seen it over the years, the builders that succeed long term, they're always advertising, they're always generating leads from paid advertising, even if they don't need them. And we saw this with a builder called Ryan Stannard, a well-known client of ours. During COVID he spent a fortune not just on advertising, but on his content marketing as well, actually creating more content. And I always remember what he said to me. Yeah, because I asked him like, why are you doing this? Because he One breath he told me they can't keep up with the leads they got and they're turning people away. And it's like, why are you doing this? And he said, because I'm looking 18 months' time, I want to be busy. This boom isn't going to last forever. So, but I love what Cameron said there and the examples he gave us because that's a very big factor as well. It's the referrals and the reviews that you're going to get from great communication. And yeah, those referrals, we always say they're worth a few extra percent because someone's coming in as a warm lead. They're going to pay more. So, uh, yeah, we're not talking about ripping people off, we're talking about builders getting paid what they're worth.

And then in the— with the rise of AI, we're also starting to see people starting their search process in ChatGPT or other LLMs. So we're starting to see the rise of not just search engine marketing but engine optimization, meaning how do you engineer your, your content on your website and your digital presence so that when somebody searches for best local builder near me in my community in an LLM like ChatGPT, the builder is able to show up and it comes from the backend content that sits on your website. So having digital footprints is, it's super important even if you're not spending specifically on Google. There's other ways you can build your brand in the digital realm. They're super important these days.

Yeah, that's, I think that's a whole topic in itself, Cameron. Maybe in the next, next webinar we can dive into that.

The next one.

There was a question from Claudio around whether or not all the, all The AI tools you've been talking about, Cameron, are incorporated into Houzz Pro, and you, you did answer it, but if you just want to do a quick summary of that answer just so everyone else can get the perspective there as well, that'd be great. And then we can, then we can move on.

Yeah, for sure. Thanks for the question, Claudio. Everything I've mentioned, it already exists in Houzz Pro. You can, you can try it out now from the 3D scan. Take out your phone, rotate yourself in a circle, and you'll get 3D renders that are 99% accurate of the existing space. And then Click a button, you can turn that into an estimate. It'll take all the measurements and all the products that you've gathered up in the 3D scan into your estimate, line itemed out. And then from there, you can turn it into a schedule, everything in the mobile phone. So the way we've engineered the AI in the mobile phone is that you just talk to your phone the way you would dictate a text or the way you would ask for something in your Siri device, and it takes it and translates it into financial documents, whether that's a change order, a daily log, an invoice. You can dictate an estimate with your voice if you'd like to just get a, a, a quick ballpark one when you're in front of the customer. What that does is it separates you from the pack when you're face-to-face with a client. It helps your sales process because you can be the first one to respond with a very comprehensive 3D model estimate and rough project schedule without taking 3 weeks to get back to them, or even 3 days. You can do it on site with the client and then maybe look over it later on to make sure it's where you want it to be. But very quickly, you're giving them documented proposals and estimates and a 3D scan from their, of their home. And it helps, it helps bring the projects to life. It helps them visualize what they're asking for and set expectations the right way. This is what, this is what I heard from you. Is this correct? Well, let's move some of the, the walls around or move some of the furniture around to get it exactly how you'd like it. But all of this stuff exists now. And the next phase for us is the ability to ask it to have the, your AI assistant, which is it looks across all of your projects and suggests things that you might need to update, sort of giving you— it's your business coach. It gives you insights on your business. Hey, it looks like your margin has been dipping because you are, you're a little bit delayed on this section of this project. Maybe tighten up this, tighten up the communication or send a note to your, to your subcontractors or investigate this specific project where we're building to later this year is to have an army of agents that do things for you with your permission, of course, but to recognize the problem, suggest the solution. And if you want it to, it can go send out emails or create documents for you. So we're building towards it, but everything I've mentioned so far, it does exist right now in Houzz. Houzz Pro, sorry. Yeah.

Houzz Pro, H-O-U-Z-Z. Yeah, there you go. Well, thanks, Cameron. Yeah. Just a reminder as well, if anyone has a question on the tip of their tongue, please drop it in the chat while we've got access to Cameron and Russ Stephens. They'll be able to answer it live for you in the remaining 20 minutes. Even if you're on the Gold Coast and you want to find out where Russ got his shirt, we can, we can probably figure that out for you as well. Let's dive into the final question here, and this is bringing it all together. There's been a number of practical tips that both Russ and Cameron have shared around how builders can improve their client experience and their communication and their internal processes. But what I want to do is round that out and put it all together. So let's start with you, Russ. What are the best builders doing differently to keep their clients happy?

Well, they're front-loading the relationship. Yeah, they're setting expectations, they're setting a cadence for communication, and they've got their processes in place. So escalations, they've got escalation paths in place, but they've got the whole communication channels opened up and running in two ways so that they can see these problems early. The builders that we see doing really well, they've got the core sales systems in place, which is documented sales process. They've got scripts. I think there's a lot of myths about using scripts in business. A lot of people don't like them. They don't want to sound like a robot. That's not the point of scripts at all. I mean, it's worked in Hollywood for generations. So, you know, you, everyone that wants a repeatable process and if you're doing something verbal, then you need scripts to outline it, but they're charging for quotes. They're doing regular training. They're able to, how to overcome objections because they got an objections manual. The builders that have these things in place are achieving markups that are over 50% higher than the builders with none. So we're talking about builders marking up their jobs by 20% because they got no systems and the ones that do are marking up by 32%. I'm talking about new home builders here. I mean, remodeling is even higher, but Those systems, not only do they help the builders become more profitable, but they create happy clients at the same time. And this is the whole purpose of APB. We believe that builders deserve to earn more money, but we also believe that consumers deserve a better experience. And those two things go hand in hand because you can't deliver a world-class service without having systems in place. And the end result or the goal for us is for builders to be able to improve the client experience, to improve the building experience for their clients. And yeah, it all comes down to systems. So that is in a nutshell what the best guys are doing differently to the rest of the builders. And it's no secret. I'm sure every builder realizes they need systems. It's what almost every builder tells us when they come to us. So they're well aware. But maybe they're just not sure how they go about it. But there's so much proof out there now with the builders that have done this and the results they got.

Yeah, what I would echo there is having a system is important, but also using it's important. Someone asked in the chat, how is HousePro different than Buildertrend? The ease of use is one big thing because your team is going to use it, your subcontractors are going to use it, and it's really easy for clients to use. Buildertrend doesn't quite as much stuff for your— it not as easy for your team to use and clients, uh, it's kind of, it's not as easy for them to use as well. And, you know, some stuff that we just released is around being able to communicate in multiple languages. So maybe your tradesmen or your subcontractors prefer Spanish. They can document the job site in Spanish, real-time translations, and it's documented, it's captured in-house in English. So if the owner of the company speaks English, the people in the field speak any of 10 different languages. They can still communicate together. It can all be translated so that you can then share with your homeowner. So what, what I see in, in the world of systems is document once, use it many times. You can use it with your, your field team, your office team, your client, your bank if you have a bank loan, because it's all documented, it's all in one place. It starts from a client dashboard that's a single place where, where your client can access everything, all the way from the budget. Some of the The strongest builders I know share the budget in that client dashboard so that the client always has real-time visibility into what is this project costing me, what is my monthly invoice if it's a cost-plus project, and what is my burndown rate, how much have I spent so far. There's never an open question about how much, how much does this cost, how much, how much have I spent. It's right there. They always know where it is. So financially, and then from the perspective of communication, to dictate daily logs that become a record of what happened in the project, but you're also sending, sending a two-way video to your client, walking them through the day, the progress in the day. I have clients that do that because the technology is easy to use. They now have 100% compliance with daily logs amongst their subcontractors. This is a new thing for me this year, like hearing teams that have 100% compliance on daily, on daily logs with their subs, because previously it was hard to do. Now that you can whip out your phone and just talk to it and have an official daily log with a video and some photos created, it's much easier to do. So now you don't have to fight your subs to create a daily log and take pictures and document what happened. They do it because they want to, and it's a game. They've gamified the experience. They're giving them gift cards and prizes. And because they don't have to chase subcontractors to do daily logs, they can spend more time serving their clients or finding new projects to work on. Pitching additional jobs. So the systems go through it all. It doesn't have to be difficult to adopt these systems. You can start with your, whatever pieces of your workflow are most painful and you can add to it over time. Of course, the best ones are using systems end to end, but just like you gotta meet your client where you are, you gotta meet your business where it is and transform it at your own pace.

I think we're in a very exciting time at the moment because I mean, project management software has been out for quite a few years now, but there's still a lot of builders that go from one to the other because they just find the interface too confusing or they're a big fan and they struggle, like you touched on, Cameron, get staff to actually use it and it's only effective if they use it. And right now we are in an incredibly exciting time in business and I would encourage any builder that's maybe behind the 8 ball at the moment, this isn't just an opportunity to match what the best builders are doing. This is an opportunity to go ahead of the game in one step because you, you want to skate to where the puck is going, you know, not where it is. And right now agents are taking over and by the end of this year, most admin jobs could be automated. That's the reality of where we are in the world and it's going to catch a lot of people by surprise. But In order to automate, you've got to have the process outlined. So unless you actually build the systems now, the processes, have the processes documented now, you're not gonna be able to go to the next step. So get your company, get your processes documented, and then you'll be able to just feed them into an agent who will then be able to run that process completely. And even if that's accessing information in HousePro rather than relying on people to go in and do this, maybe you're struggling to get them to do it. Train an agent, give the agent the process, and you'll be able to get ahead of the game in one fell swoop. And then this time next year, you'll be in a position where you'll have more time and less stress to actually Follow the example that Cameron's been sharing about their clients where you can improve the client experience and have more time and you're gonna have less problems.

Yeah, because one of the things I see from some of our clients is the ones that have adopted the system or a system altogether, they're able to double their project capacity. Chris Hendrickson in Aspen, that guy's at $40 million in revenue a year. I hope he's at $50 this year. His project managers can now take on a whole nother luxury home or 2 additional luxury homes because they're— everything is systematized and there's less administrative work by having everything in one place. Yes, we do integrate with Xero. Thank you, Prudent. There's financial gains, but there's also capacity gains. And what I'm trying to say is if everything is systematized, your team can take on more work. They can double their capacity to take on even more projects at the same time while keeping the same headcount. So if you are, you can take on more If you can take on more jobs, you're going to make, you're going to improve your top line revenue and improve your efficiency for the client.

Well, yeah, thanks for answering some of those questions that have been coming through, Cameron. There has been a couple of product-focused ones around HousePro. What I'd recommend for anyone, just so we don't get too sidetracked in talking purely about the product, reach out to HousePro and get a demo of the product. It's probably the best next step, I would say, just so you can see everything that's working on the back end there. Russ, I just want to go back to you. You've mentioned a lot about systemization, and that's been a bit of a conversation that we've had throughout here. The benefits of systemization, but there's also been so many different things that you've mentioned. NPS score, documented handover and client handbooks, post-project audits, sales processes. There's so much going on. Where do you start if you really want to start thinking about getting your company more systemized?

The part where I talk about APB.

Yeah, sure.

Look, Matt, I mean, you're absolutely right. There is so much and we can go off on so many different tangents. We could probably have this same webinar 100 times and fill it with different content because there is so much for a builder to do. And this is why we say to builders, you can't afford to learn from your mistakes. You will run out of money first. You've got to, you've got to follow what other people have done rather than trying to figure it out yourself. And the easiest way to do that is to access the documented processes that you can then implement into your building company, which will save you a world of pain. And that's exactly what we provide to builders. We provide them with access to those processes, which they can then tweak, they can adapt to suit their own particular style. But the structure is there. It's a great starting point. And the beauty is they can then just feed them into an agent and the thing, the task is going to be done for them. But a lot of it is around strategy. Like you mentioned, things like post-project audits, a very important process, a very important strategy to implement because this is how you get your estimating more accurate going forward. NPS score, simple things like this, you just got to put it in place. I was just talking to a couple of builders on Wednesday. We were down in Melbourne for an event and they were telling me how the NPS score had transformed their business because it was allowing them to keep their finger on the pulse and, you know, they couldn't figure out how to get reviews. This is how they come across it. They were trying to figure out how to get reviews, more reviews. And, you know, one of our solutions is the NPS score. So there's just literally, there's hundreds of things like that and you don't want to spend the next 10 years figuring out what they are and developing them. You'll only get a fraction of them. You just go to APB, they're all there for you.

That's a great point on the NPS score, Russ. Just for the practical point of view, what you're saying is you basically survey your customers on how they feel about the work they've done with you. And if they give you a high rating, you ask them for the review. Yeah.

And it's all automated as well. Because the next question is like, that's great. Why did you score us so highly? You've got your snippet there. And then, yeah, is it okay if we use this? They'll They'll say yes and it's send them a link. Would you mind sharing that on Google or Facebook as well? It's a very easy process, a very simple way to build up the social proof, which is so, so important now because the whole theme of this is client expectations not being met. What does that mean? That means people are looking for builders that they can trust. Where they're going to go, they're going to look online. So very, very important.

I think that really ties into what you were saying, Cameron, earlier about the thumbs up, thumbs down SMS every week and the consolidated email about where the project status is. That communication so regularly puts you in a great position to understand when you need to fix something and also ask them when they're, they're happy to, to give you a review and all the other stuff.

Exactly. You're building up your bank of testimonials. You're at your, you're pre-asking them for a testimonial at the beginning of the, beginning of the project. I would love it if you could give me a testimonial or a rating on my pages at the end of this project, so I'm going to ask you Mid-project, three-quarters of the way through the project, and at the end, how are you feeling? Or every week. And then you're able to maintain a 5-star relationship with them so that they'll give you a 5-star review at the end. Because it's very easy to sort now when, when homeowners are looking online, they can sort by, I only want to see the top-ranked builders in my area, or the top-ranked builders that do these, do this job for me. So if you don't have 5 stars or you have something on the other side of that spectrum, it's easy for a homeowner to skip over that.

There's a question from Wally here about adding a link to the score item. I think, Wally, you're referring to the NPS score. The NPS score isn't just a centralized scoring platform. It's just a concept, which is recognized worldwide. So you'd do that through a survey tool or something similar. That's right, isn't it, Russ? You'd set it up manually in your own—

Yeah, that's right. Hopefully you've got a CRM already, Wally. We use HubSpot that has NPS scoring built in, so it automatically goes out. But yeah, you, in terms of, you know, your building company, you want to set this up. I, one thing I would say to builders is you don't want to do this once. There's not enough volume going through your typical building company for you to just hit the clients once. You want to hit them multiple times with the NPS scoring. That was a very hard concept for a lot of our builders to get their heads around initially, but when they started doing it, that's when they got real value out of it. But yeah, like Will says, it's a strategy rather. I mean, there are NPS platforms out there. I would encourage you to avoid them because they cost a fortune and they're really not worth it. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's practically just a survey tool. Yeah.

I was going to say, we, we do it inside of Houzz for our own customers all the time. Email is easy to send where the homeowner gets just an email with, and they can click the button 0 to 10 or 1 to 5. Yeah. You can also text it to them and they can just respond 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. There's very low, low cost ways to do these now, but make sure that the NPS score is tied to the customer record in HubSpot or whatever CRM you use, like Russ mentioned. So you can see historically, has it changed over time? Are we getting better?

Yeah, that's a great point. We actually talk about it every month at APB in our team meeting. We've got the NPS score from the previous month in there to hold us all accountable to making sure our customers are happy. And I think that'd be something which would be a great practice for builders to implement. If anyone wants to find out more about HousePro or APB, they can scan the QR codes on their screen there and dive in. And Cameron's also dropped his email address actually in the chat. Out to everyone. So if you did want to reach out and get a demo with HousePro, then Cameron's the guy to talk to. If you want to find out more and reach out to APB about some of the coaching things and the systemization that Russ Stephens was referring to, the best next step is to go to our website there and just book in a call with our team. They'll be able to help you out and answer any questions you've got about all the content we covered today.

One more thing, actually, I just want to add a bit of value here as well. I've been working on developing a business valuation tool for builders. It's coming out, pretty excited about what we're creating here. So just as a thank you for the builders that have attended this, if you would like a valuation on your building company, be happy to provide that to you free of charge. It's a very comprehensive report, but just drop a comment in the chat, business valuation, and I think we'll get a copy of the chat, won't we, Will? And we'll be able to send you out the link. And so you can submit that and then we'll be happy to provide you with a free valuation report and even a chat if you want to book in, happy to chat about why it came out like it did and how you can improve it. So yeah, just off the cuff, a little value add I wanted to offer.

Yeah, great. Thanks, Russ. And if you're listening to this replay or you don't get an opportunity to drop that in the chat, feel free to just reply to the email that we send out with the recording and Russ will get access to that email as well and we can take the same same, same method. So Claudio, looking forward to seeing you in Toronto in May. That's a wrap. Cameron, Russ, thank you so much for your time. Thank you to all the builders that turned up today. We had a great attendance rate and a lot of people stuck around all the way to the end. Lots of value on how you can deliver a phenomenal client experience and I've really enjoyed it today. So all the best to everyone in improving their client experience in this world of AI and technology and thank you very much for attending today.