4. Creating Buildertrend With Dan Houghton

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To industry experts and your fellow professional builders on everything you need to know to generate more leads, more sales and higher margins while improving the building experience for your clients. Hello and welcome to the Professional Builder Secrets podcast, a podcast by the association of Professional Builders for building company owners, general managers, VPs and emerging leaders. Here we discuss all things running a professional building company from sales, processes, financials, operations and marketing. I'm excited to have Co founder and CEO for BuilderTrend, Dan Houghton with me today. Dan, welcome.

Thank you so much. Glad to be on the podcast. Thanks.

Well, dad, let's start off with how did buildertrend start? You know, how did the brand come to life? Take us down memory lane.

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty wild. It was over 15 years ago. Where our headquarters are here in Omaha, Nebraska was my, it's my hometown, where I was raised and where I've had my professional career. And so my first job out of college, I worked at a technology company and early what we'd call software as a service business that was in the insurance industry. And then two co founders of now what is Builder Trend, Steve and Jeff Duggar, two much smarter guys than me, were very entrepreneurial, doing tons of cool projects and really were software consultants. So they would go, you know, they were helping small businesses build websites, but they were also building back end tools for these companies. In 2006, home building across the United States especially was just, you know, it was on fire. The peak, I think of more home starts in 2006, 2007 than any year prior to that. And they had a handful of builders asking them for really the same tools here in Omaha, Nebraska. And where I came into the picture was we were 25 and we didn't think any of us had any girlfriends at the time or. And so we were sitting around the basement office and I said, there's a lot of builders and I think we can sell this. And so I went to a couple meetings and that was the beginning of Builder Trend. And the name Builder Trend is kind of funny. People always ask, where'd you get it? It was just the domain. We had probably 10, 20 names that we'd picked out. And Buildertrend's domain was available, you know, on GoDaddy in 2006 for $12. And so that's how Buildertrend became Buildertrend.

Well, I actually have a fond Memory of Nebraska. My sister went to Creighton University and I'm a big Steelers fan, so there's a lot we have in common there.

Yeah, that's awesome.

What inspired the need to develop this sort of cloud based digital platform? I don't even think we called it that back then, but what are some of the core unique functionalities that come with the product?

Yeah, so cloud was not a term that was not used when we started this product. And one of the largest barriers that we had to get over with customers in 2006 was this is an Internet based program, so you have to have an Internet connection to utilize our software. You don't download anything and probably for many of our listeners who are younger than us, they don't remember downloading, you know, a CD or a piece of software to their desktop back in the day. And so that was actually a hurdle for us early on. But obviously our biggest strength on how we've become who we've become over the last 15 years. But if you think about what I always call vertical market software, so there's a lot of vertical healthcare construction, you know, I mean, you could say property management, you know, something that's kind of a little close to our space. But those are different vertical markets. There wasn't a lot of software available to the SMB. So the small to medium sized business that really catered to construction companies. And if you think about most of our customers, they're home builders, remodelers, like commercial contractors, specialty contractors. And so we just saw this niche that was being underserved and it's real basic things, basic saying out loud. But critical parts of their business. You know, I call it mission critical. So things like scheduling, customer communication all the way into like financial tools like purchase orders, estimating, bid management. But we're also doing things that I think are like kind of table stakes for a contractor, like change order management. And so, you know, many contractors are just really good people and somebody says, hey, I'm willing to pay $10,000 if you do this and that. And they don't have a contract for it. There's no approval process of it. There's a good chance that contractor will get taken advantage of and we'll be able to actually collect the money that they earn. So those are the things that we're helping our customers with. And today, now Bosco, it's pretty wild. We've got 27,000 customers globally that use our product to manage their business every single day.

When you look back at where you are and where you are now what's really contributed to the growth and allowed you to become the gold standard in the building space as well. I mean, 2006 was just around two years before the great American recession at that point. So obviously there was a lot of obstacles to come through over the years, I guess, too.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting in hindsight. I think the financial recession that, you know, obviously America was on the forefront of but affected. It was a global recession in a lot of ways. But the lending standards in the United States had gotten so loose on new home constructions. I mean, that's really where kind of the bubble was. But I think the Great Recession really helped us as an organization. And I talk to contractors about this all the time and really all business professionals, because one, it gave us an opportunity to really, like, take a look at what's happening in our industry, what's happening in our business. How can we make our customers more successful now? Because they need. They need anything, you know, I mean, our clients, folks that were building 50 homes a year, all of a sudden we're doing 20 remodels a year, and they were becoming pool builders, and they were going into different. Different trades or different kind of markets within the construction vertical. So we had to adapt our market and how we built our products. We weren't just building our product for a single family home builder anymore. We're building our product for larger kind of audience within the construction industry. So they think that was a really good thing. Whereas we weren't venture capital back either, which a lot of people, you know, for the listeners that don't really understand what that means, but it's a kind of. Basically somebody gives you a bunch of money for a piece of your business, and they will do that with a lot of companies. And the goal of that is, is maybe that 10, 20, 30% of the investments you make get a 10, 20, 30 times return. And so a lot of companies get pushed into moving really fast and kind of growth, growth, growth, growth at all costs. And since we were bootstrapped, we didn't have that mindset. And so we were financially really stable as an organization. And what that ended up doing for us is all the competitors that we had in 2007, 2008, 2009 somewhat disappeared. I always used kind of the analogy of like the Forrest Gump scene, like we were the last shrimping boat, you know, and then all of a sudden, after the hurricane, we started catching shrimp. It felt a little bit like that for us during the recession.

How has the partnership between all the co founders been, how has it transformed you guys? And what does thought leadership look like to you today in the building industry?

Yeah, so the co founders and I, we're still active in the business. I act as a CEO, they're still co founders, they're here every single day. And what made us, I think, a successful partnership, again, something I always tell anyone that's going to start a contracting business and you're thinking on bringing a partner one. It is a lot like a marriage. And there's going to be tough times and there's going to be really great times to celebrate good things that happen. But, you know, I think trust is a big part of that. But also finding a partner or partners that don't have the same skill sets as you is a big advantage. And so my strengths in many ways are not the strengths of my partners and vice versa. So, you know, Steve and Jeff, again, way smarter than I am, have skill sets that I never have or probably could never get. And so we were able to lean on each other throughout the last 15, 16 years to be great partners. And over the last 18 months, our world's changed a little bit because we brought on capital partners, we brought on Bain Capital, but we also made one of the largest acquisitions in our industry. We bought what some people look at as a competitor was coconstruct, we acquired co construct. And so we've become much bigger organization, almost a thousand employees now. And so it's become a different business, but it's a great business. And so as we think about thought leadership, Bosco, as you think about thought leadership, we think we believe we have an opportunity to support our customers. And there's a lot of great thought leaders in our industry, whether they're product marketers because they're putting products in your homes, or they're folks like you at the association of Professional Builders. I think that's the one thing I love about what's happened in our industry over the last five or six years. I think because of technology, because of podcasts, because of blogs, there are more voices than there were call it 10, 15 years ago than we got in. You know, 10, 15 years ago, you had to almost be like a celebrity, someone really special to have your voice heard. Now we're seeing some of our customers who are great thought leaders, have 100,000 plus followers on Instagram because they care about what they do, they care about the industry, and they don't need some fancy credentials behind their name to be a thought leader. And we think we have a place in that because we're the largest technology provider in this industry. But I love personally listening to our customers and the contractors, whether it's Australia, Canada, US, you name it, tell their story. Those are the real thought leaders in my opinion.

You seem to keep your eye on the pulse. You seem to be paying attention to the front lines. Tell us about the landscape of smart tech. Before build a trend there was obviously a gap and now the space has transformed even so much more evolving landscape of technology. Where do you see it going?

I think it's endless, honestly. I mean, you know, 15 years ago we were living in a world without iPhones. I mean, think about that. So I mean, you know, I didn't have an iPhone 15 years ago. And if you walk anywhere around the world today, all you see is people staring at their iPhone. I mean, can you imagine a world without an iPhone? So it's hard to imagine what's going to come and change our industry, specifically our industry or the entire world with, through technology. But I do think where I see places we solve a business need we help our clients run a better business through efficiency, through managing their finances, through customer communication. But overall, if you look at the industry, I mean you're starting to see some of these homes, you know, 3D homes being built. I mean that, that stuff seemed pretty far away three, four, five years ago, but it's happening today. And so how does that change the landscape of our industry? I'm not a visionary. I can't tell you how it's going to change the, you know, something like 3D Homes. But I do believe the amount of technology and the amount of investment that's going into technology in our industry is an all time high. And we've got some real problems. We've got a short, we've got obviously labor issues. So it's really hard to find quality. You know, folks that come out and want to do some of these jobs. We've got product shortages and I don't know if that's just a. Obviously it's been a function of because of the COVID pandemic. But is that going to stop anytime soon? I don't know. So whenever there's a problem, there's usually somebody behind the scenes trying to solve that problem. And that's what I think, especially kind of in the modern world we live in. That's what's so great about our world. So a lot of fun things I think coming our way.

Yeah, I mean it seems like it's an unpredictable landscape and everyone's sort of trying to find their way. What's contributed to the success of the international expansion of BuilderTrend?

You know, I think that world's gotten really small. Right. It used to be if, you know, in our world as a software company, if I want to sell software to someone in Tanzania or in Australia or Canada, I usually had to have an actual physical presence. I had to be able to see someone shake someone's hand, have an office in that country. Today, that's not the case. We're. We're signing up well over a thousand new customers every single month. And those customers are finding us because it's easy to find things online. Right. And so just like our prospect's going to find a home builder in Brisbane or a remodeler in Vancouver, they're going to go online. Most likely they're going to ask their friends, they're going to ask their people they trust about who they should potentially work with. And the same thing happens in our industry. And so we do benefit from the network effect. But it's amazing how small our world is. Somebody halfway across the world can find us and can start using our software within 24 hours. We have made a big effort around certain markets like New Zealand, Australia, Canada, kind of Commonwealth countries, primarily because they're mostly English speaking, but also because we've found them to be really good markets for us. And so we do have what I would call like a second and third shift that comes in and only works with New Zealand, Australia. And so those folks actually work out of our home office in the United States, but they're coming in when everybody else is going home. So they're just waking up right where you're at, you're just getting up in the morning. That's our guys are just showing up to start their day.

Yeah, no, it's definitely the time zones definitely are different for us, but, you know, we still operate under the same pulse, I guess, as they say, what are some of the current trends in the building and residential construction, space and industry, and how does buildertrend really keep up or accommodate these trends? You know, you mentioned that you're spending a lot of time on the front lines listening to your customers. How do you keep up?

Yeah, I think the one thing I continually hear from our customers is they want to do things faster. So it used to be all I want to create a plan or bill of materials or connect with my vendors to build an estimate. I want to do that faster than I was doing it. It took me all day to do today. To accomplish today. And I want to do that in an hour. And so I think it's all about speed and how we can make our customers more efficient. That's one thing I always see. And so that relates to a lot of things. And so if you think about how we utilize data and, you know, I mean, artificial intelligence, AI is kind of a fancy buzzword, but it's also like predicting what people can do because of the way they have behaved in the past. And so one of the things that we've got an interesting. We've got interesting data sets because we have so many customers. And so we know if you're building a 3,000 square foot home that requires a basement in the Midwest, like, we have a pretty good idea that should take you X amount of days and it should take you X amount of days to frame that house. And so those types of things, us being more, I think, predictive to our customers and showing them where they have gaps in their business is where I see the future going. We have some of those capabilities today, but I'd say we're still kind of in, you know, kind of an American term. I'd say, you know, we're in the batter's box on that. We still haven't really swung and got out in front of it yet. But I think any way you can make your customers more efficient, make them do their jobs faster again. You look at what the iPhone has accomplished for so many of us and what the Internet's accomplished, it's the same for our industry now.

Our listeners are builders from different parts of the world. And some builders embrace innovation. Some people are a little bit more hesitant. How do you Spark innovation@buildertrend? And any advice for people that are on the fence thinking about embracing the new age?

Yeah, no. I mean, we all, you know, our industry gets a hard time, right, for being late adopters. And, you know, there's plenty of studies from very fancy consulting firms that show us being, you know, kind of last of, you know, technology adoption. And part of it, what a lot of people understand is our industry is also really fragmented. And so what a home builder does in Brisbane or Sydney versus what a remodeler does in New York, those are two different businesses. And, you know, there's some foundational things that they may be doing that are similar on how they operate or how you build a schedule, but there are some major differences than someone building a skyscraper versus I'm building 20 homes a year, custom homes. And I don't think a lot of people realize how big of a difference it is when you're running maybe a civil engineering construction business versus a home building business. So our industry has been late adopters. But you know, I've said this before, like my grandmother messages me on, you know, Facebook. She's 91 years old. The world is caught up in a lot of ways to technology. And so if you're comfortable using a phone, an iPhone or an Android, or you're comfortable using the Internet, you should be comfortable using software. The biggest challenge I see with our industry, Bosco, is commitment. And so, you know, part of that is just operating. Most of our clients, most of your listeners and most of the folks that are members of association of Professional Builders are small businesses. And the challenges that you're facing every day, it's like, what fire do I put out? How do I build a strategy to make my business double in size in 18 months or two years? It's not about what technology necessary to pick. It's about the focus you put on what you want to be as a business and how you're going to get there. Technology plays a part in that. You know, builder trend, co construct, you know, we play a part in that. But it takes focus and it takes energy to build a great business. And that's the one thing we talk to our customers a lot, especially when we see them is you know, know why you make money, know why you want to get a job done in 90 days and not 120 days. If you know why behind these questions, you'll be successful. Don't just make money because you hope to make money. Have a purpose behind it.

Dan, I'm going to ask a hard question here, but what are some of the pain points that comes with a company that's grown and been on this growth path? What are some of those pain points with the cloud based platform as well?

Yeah, you know, I mean, we, I think I like talking about small business because, you know, we were a company of three people. Today we're a company of, you know, 900 plus employees. So, you know, I wasn't born to lead a company of a thousand people. It just happened. It kind of evolved over time. Pain points for us is having too big of a focus. So you're trying to do 20 things instead of just focusing on doing one or two things really well. It's easy to chase shiny objects whether you're building a technology company or you're building a construction firm. It's like the contractor who takes on seven different types of jobs and doesn't do Any of them all that well, versus putting a focus on, maybe I just want to do swimming pools, but I'm going to sub out the landscaping. So I think focus is a big, big part of it. I will always say this. People are the best part of my day every single day, and also the biggest challenge of my day. And, you know, we are a very people focused organization, putting people first. But it's hard. It's hard when you have people. Whether it's. It was hard when we had five, six employees, it's hard when you have 900 employees because people come with real problems. And the problems most of the time are a lot bigger than you're going to have in any kind of business case scenario, because it's real life. And so I think for me, that's the two areas I always try to give advice on is like, be ready for those problems, attack them with grace, love your people, and then put as much focus and energy on probably less things than more things.

Speaking of a large workforce, you were recently recognized as the best place to work in Omaha. And also you've had a lot of recognition on a national level from having that strong workplace culture. How has the workplace culture shift really contributed to that success of the brand? How does it play a role today?

Well, I think it's been a huge part of it. You know, we have to build a product that makes our customers happy. It makes them efficient and good. And the only way we do that is if we have people that are happy building those products. So there's kind of this cycle, you know, between we gotta build our product, we gotta serve our customers, and we've gotta have the team behind it to make it all work. And so we've made plenty of mistakes. We're not some perfect organization, and we've had a lot of growing pains. But I think at one point where what we really did, Bosco, in my opinion, was probably four or five years ago. We really put a stake in the ground, said, you know, we sit in meetings all day long talking about marketing, we talk about finance, we talk about our sales strategies, we talk about our product updates. And we just went month, if not a quarter. And we never once talked about the people of this organization. And the people of this organization are the foundation of doing all these things that we hope and that we want to dream of doing. And we didn't spend any time talking about what it's like to work at our company. What is their career path look like, how do we show someone that they start in this role they can finish in a different role three, four years down the road. We didn't think about that. And, and culture, you know, kind of in a modern world, you look at a tech company, we've got a bar, we've got ping pong tables, but all that stuff is kind of a facade for culture. You know, if nobody's sitting at the bar talking to a stranger or a colleague and nobody's playing ping pong, I mean, it's all a facade. So I think real culture is about supporting the people next to you, owning your mistakes, celebrating your successes and just being a champion of all things people. And if you can put your focus around that as a leader of your organization, Whether you have three employees or you've got 300 or you have 900 employees, I think usually the outcomes are going to be more positive than negative.

I think it's an interesting insight because even as builders, they're going through these growing pains trying to hire people and growing the business as well. And growth comes with its own set of pains, as they say. So I think that's really good insight for the builders who are listening out there as well. What does the future of buildertrend look like? I know it's a hard question to ask during an unprecedented time, but if you had to look at the next 12 months, what's the key focus?

The key focus is probably for us, it's how do we unify the organization? We're living under a couple different brands right now. We have a town hall. I give this advice to anybody, anybody has more than one employee, have a town hall meeting once a month or every quarter and say, what are we going to spend our time and energy on? How are we going to dial in our focus? How are we going to celebrate our success? How are we going to own our failures? And so, you know, this, this upcoming town hall, I'm going to talk a lot about our shift and our mindset about really being, you know, for a long time it was about, you know, how many sales are we getting and what's our revenue and you know, our product's awesome and we, our product's amazing. But I want, I don't want to have an awesome product. I want to have the absolute world's greatest product. And that product, we want it to be the best product every day. We believe we have that. But the only way we can continue to have that every single day is if we just have laser focus on building the best product every single day. And what I love about cloud based software, the software we're developing is changing every single day. Again, it's not like it was 20 years ago where we send you a disk once a year and you update your software. We can change and we can update and we can make our software more beautiful and better every single day. And we're spending a lot of time and energy on doing that. And so as we think about the future, always a product focus being number one. But two, how do we bring more things into the product fold that are going to make our clients stronger but more efficient? So whether it's bringing financial information in, material management, where we can integrate products and get more real time pricing, those are all things that we're focused on for the future, especially 2022.

Let's talk a little bit about the building industry. What's the industry dealing with obstacle wise in your insights from the front lines? And how does industry recover from this unpredictable time in history?

The scariest thing I see right now is the, the changing in pricing, right? For someone that does an estimate and then all of a sudden they, you know, go to buy, actually buy the product and the prices of the things that they signed a contract on are 20% higher. So there's a lot of risk around that. Not having guaranteed pricing, you know, going back to the labor piece, I think having finding really good people, that seems to becoming, you know, more challenging than ever. Especially you know, in our backyard, the United States. I mean our unemployment in the part of the country I live in is 2%. It's the lowest anywhere, right? So you know, it's not that it's that people aren't working, it's just you can't find people to come work. There's just not enough people. And so we have a supply demand issue. But that's happening everywhere. That's happening for restaurants, that's happening for a lot of hospitality companies. So it's not unique to the, the construction industry. But I would say the pricing thing scares me the most for two reasons. One, it's really hard to control a bid or an estimate if you don't have secure pricing. And two, I get worried that we are going to out price the market, right? So if material prices just get too high, people are going to take a step back and say, look, I'm not ready to do this project until it becomes more affordable. And I think in many cases a lot of contractors who are smart. Over the last 18 months or two years I've had the ability to kind of say I get to pick the work I want to do and I can throw any price I want out there. Well, it will shift. And so that's a great place to be today. And you can kind of pick who you want to work with and you can throw kind of any number you want out there, but that won't be forever. And so having our clients and our customers and our folks that we support, like building out some consistency on how they want to attack a new contract, I think is going to be really important for the future.

You talked a lot about the shift in digital and the tech space as well. We've talked a little bit about the emergence of artificial intelligence as well as a frontier of where things are going. How does automation play a role and transform the building industry moving forward?

Well, I mean, gosh, it's probably, you know, I'm only an expert a small area of this, which would be software automation. But I think it's all about labor, honestly. So automation for me and the way we look at it, obviously we are trying to make our customers way more efficient. So if it takes you eight hours to do something, how can we reduce that to two hours? If we reduce that to two hours, does that mean you need to have less employees or you can maybe reshift your staff, you know, your staff somewhere else? So as I think about technology, automation for software, it's about getting our people to move faster with more accuracy. If we can do that, our clients win. If you think about automation for, like, building materials and some of the other things that we're seeing in the market, I mean, it's pretty crazy that 3D homes are a real thing. And I didn't think that was possible a few years ago. And, you know, I'm kind of hot on this topic just because I was watching the videos over the weekend on YouTube of 3D homes. But I just think it's really interesting. And is it still in its kind of emphasis? Yes, but what does that. I mean, I think there's going to be pieces of things like that that all builders will be using for certain parts of their projects. It's not what we think it's going to be like some printer comes in and builds a house, but it may come in and build a countertop for you, stuff like that. So I'm pretty excited to see where that goes. But if I was a contractor today, I'd be most focused on how do I keep my really good people. I want to make sure I have the best people, and I want to be really thoughtful about being kind of planned for the good times and the Bad times and not just excited about what's maybe happening right now.

Dan, in your illustrious career, I'm sure you didn't get to where you are if you weren't good at assessing risk. I mean, all leaders look at risk management as part of their forte. What are some of the risk builders should be paying attention to today? What should they be aware of moving forward?

I think people get a little careless with their contracts and their estimates and there's a lot of trust out there. So I think risk, when you don't have a firm contract and you're not handling your change orders and your selection approvals the right way, it will absolutely bite you where you don't want to be bit and it's going to hurt you. You'll make less money. And a lot of people just say, well, this is the way. I've always done this, I've always done it this way and it's always worked. But if there's a better way, you should do it a better way. Simple as that. Like, that's for any, that's for any business, whether you're a contractor or you're a doctor, you're going to do. If you can find a better way of doing it. You should always be looking to progress and be better in your job. So I think that's always a risk. I do think, you know, a lot of builders that start their company just like you and I, we have strengths, right? We have strengths, we have weaknesses. And a lot of the strengths that I see a lot of our customers have, like, they may be they got in this industry because it's a family business, or maybe they were a craftsman or they had, they were in a particular trade and they shifted into owning their own business. Then they became their own general contractor again. Find people to help you do things that you're not good at. If you're not good at managing people and, you know, handling HR issues, don't just try to figure it out. Find an expert to help you figure it out. You know, hire someone that can do that if you're not good with customer service, because you have a, a quick fuse when somebody calls you out on something you don't like. Don't handle the customer service calls. Find someone who's really patient who can do that. And I think that's where the biggest weaknesses I see within our industry right now is that a lot of times as business owners, I'm one of them, I get in my own way. And, you know, you can't truly allow yourself to grow if you try to do everything yourself because no one's that good and you just don't have the bandwidth and all of a sudden you're going to be taking warranty emails and calls at 10pm at night and you're going to miss your kids sporting events and you're just going to be miserable. So find help if you can get it.

And it's amazing because a lot of builders work the extra hours, they work the weekends. They're trying to wear all these different hats as well.

So I know I always say, I mean, I put out. I mean, most companies have hours, right? You know, I mean, we're doing this in within hours. I mean, it's okay to tell your customers, you can text me anytime you want, but I won't be responding to text messages after 5:30pm or 6:00pm and one way we can avoid a lot of this back and forth is we can have a meeting for a half hour once a week on Tuesday over a cup of coffee and check everything off the list that you want to check off. Any questions that you have, we'll take them on that Tuesday. So instead of chasing around, you know, a million things at night or during the days, you know, be the boss, be the boss of your business. Tell your customer what the process is going to be instead of letting them control the process. And you can utilize software like BuilderTrend for that, obviously, but at some point you're the boss and you've got to communicate verbally with your customer about this is how the process is going to work out.

Take us through, you know, buildertrend's suite of products. If I'm a new builder or I'm a builder that's coming to your world, what are some of the first tools that would really make me a better builder for tomorrow? You know, would Co Construct be one of those first products that I would be coming through?

Builder Trend or Co Construct, they're both great products, do similar things. You know, I think for us, a lot of the we'll call them quick wins. So I think a quick win for a lot of our clients is really basic. It's called a daily log. And so, you know, a traditional daily log would be on a pen and paper and you'd write down what you did that day and you'd write down who was there in today's world through buildertrend or Co Construct what a daily log is. Essentially you're using your phone and you're typing in. This is what happened. You can do voice, so you don't have to type anything. It's going to pick up the weather, it's going to pick out who was on the job site. So it's doing a lot of that work for you, but just that you can take pictures, you can take videos and you can share that with your staff. You can share that with, I think most importantly your customer. So if you do a five minute daily log, you spend five minutes doing a daily log on a project and let's say you're managing four projects, so that's, let's just call that a half hour, 20 minutes to 30 minutes of your day. Are these daily logs. Your customers are going to be so happy, so happy because you took time to tell them what was happening. It takes almost no effort on the contractor's part to actually do it. It's documented everything that happened. There's pictures, there's videos, it's showing that you actually did something. And if you didn't do anything, it's okay to say, we didn't do anything today, you know, we had no subs, we didn't have it on the calendar, but you still gave them an update. And I think for me that's one of 50 things we can do for a customer. But day one, you know, Bosco, if you were going to sign up for BuilderTrend, you could be doing that tomorrow and make an immediate impact on your customers and on your business. And so I look at that as a quick wins. There's great little tools like to dos. You can have your clients or your customer, or if you have hourly employees, they can clock in, clock out, so you can track and that's all gps. So you can actually see if they're on the job site when they're clocking in or not clocking in or all that good stuff. So there's a lot of things you can do real quickly. But at the foundation it's about project management and communication. So building a schedule, sharing that schedule. It can alert folks you know, can alert your trades, your subbies, whoever you want. So there's a lot there for sure. And a lot of our customers. Again, it can be overwhelming. Like I am not a high tech person, I'm not a gadget. I don't go buy the first gadget that comes out. I'm a late adopter in a lot of ways. And so don't let all of it, whether it's build or trend or another software program, there's always going to be a lot there. And so if you can take advantage of 10, 20, 30, percent out of it, you know, in the first year that you get it, you're winning because you're doing more than you were doing in the year prior. You know, if you're not maxing out 100% of it, that's okay. You know, we've got clients that have used our product for over a decade, and they're, they're not utilizing all of it, but they're utilizing what they need to utilize to make their business better.

What are some of the initiatives that you're involved with that's preparing builders for the future? Obviously, you know, the next three to five years is going to potentially look like a very different playbook. So how do you, how do you get them to start preparing for that and get builders out of the, you know, in the business and get them on the business?

Yeah, so we do, you know, we do quite a few things. Obviously, we've got something called Builder Trend University that we take on the road, but you can also come to our hometown, Omaha, Nebraska, and we get crazy attendance for this and we sell out every month for it. And this is about thought leadership. It's a lot about the conversation that we're having right now. And then there's some really tactical things where you can send your project manager or your bookkeeper to come to actually do the hardcore training in a specific area. But a lot for us is listening. Right. You know, you're asking me a lot of good questions. I don't have all the answers, obviously, but we're asking our customers a lot of questions, too, and we're watching them and their behaviors in our software. But we're also asking them, what makes you worried. If there's one thing you could change today, what would you change? Similar to some of the things we're talking about today. And so the beauty for us is we've got a sounding board of 27,000 plus customers across the world. And not. And the consistency is there's a, it's consistent on some things, but some of it's like, you know, we're hearing completely different things in Australia than we're hearing in Canada. For us, we've got to listen to what our customers need. But at the end of the day, if you don't take advantage of what your competitors are taking advantage of, they will beat you. Simple as that. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a fair game. So, like, if you want to keep track of everything up in your head or on a piece of paper, you're probably going to lose Honestly. And so it's like you've got to take advantage of tools and technology. Same reason why you have a nail gun instead of just a hammer. Right? It's just like, it's like it's the exact same thing. It's like, because it makes sense. Right? You're gonna be more efficient with it. So.

Yeah, no, I know. Those nail guns really come in handy when you're trying to do your own home, home renovations, as they call it. Dan, I could be talking to you for ages. You know, we've got to get you, Jeff and Steve all together sometime and do a hangout session. My final question for the day would be looking at your amazing journey and looking at the past as well. What advice would you give a younger version of yourself? And what advice would you give builders out there listening to this?

Yeah, I think, you know, as an entrepreneur, my advice would be to probably listen more, talk less, and don't be afraid of some of the hard conversations. Some of the hard conversations are telling your customers, no, you have an obligation. I think we all think we're in these, we are all in these customers. Anytime you have someone giving you money, you're in customer service. But it's not okay to be bullied by a customer. It's okay to drive the conversation and to manage their expectations. I think especially first time entrepreneurs, younger entrepreneurs have a really hard time managing their customers expectations because they're not quite sure what they should even be. You know, you don't, you shouldn't even. In many cases, you don't even know what you want your customer to feel. And it's okay not to know, but you should really focus on what do I want my customer to feel during this process, why they're in the middle of it, and what do I want them to feel when they're done working with us. And it's okay to ask them, like, what do you feel right now? And sometimes I think what I failed at doing personally was I was afraid to ask questions because I knew it. I knew the answers might not all be positive. And part of that's an ego problem more than anything else. But, you know, getting negative feedback from your customers ultimately is what makes you more successful and how you, how you change things. That would be my small little advice.

Sage advice as well. Dan, look, we love having you on the podcast as well. Look forward to speaking to you again and doing some more of these potentially. We'll get all of you guys together. We could potentially have a big leadership roundtable, as they call it. In the future.

That'd be great. I appreciate it. Cheers.

Thanks so much for your time.

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