66. Using APB Systems In A Small Town With Rob & Amy Burton

As far as the business, we knew we needed some help there.

With APB bringing everything together, we just save a ton of time.

We know exactly what our costs are going in and what they're going to be coming out.

And so that has been the biggest, biggest thing for us. Go with your gut. It doesn't lie.

Don't undervalue what you do.

We're not just any custom home builder. It's more of like an experience. I always like to say it's like the Rampton experience.

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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. We have another exciting episode from the Professional Builder Secrets podcast. Joining us today is Amy and Rob Burton, co owners for Rampant Homes and Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. Nice to have some more Canadians on the show. Amy and Rob, welcome.

Thank you very much. We're excited to be here.

Thanks for having us on the show.

Absolutely. Well, listen, let's start off with something very simple which is tell us a little bit about yourself and how did you get started and you know, tell us a little bit about your journey as a builder.

So I guess when I finished up high school, I started in construction, framing, cribbing, doing all the manual labor. And then from there I went into cabinet making. So a lot of the finishing ends things and had a partnership fall through with a cabinet shop. So I started something new. I went work for a builder and I was site supervisor there for quite some time. He retired and I was like, hey, I'll build a house. So I went out and built a house. I did a lot of the work myself, did the cribbing, framing, all that stuff. And then from there I built another one. And then it just kept going and going and we were doing new homes, renovations. A lot of the stuff was hands on. Then I would say probably about eight years ago, it just got busier and busier and we were more hands off and more management and. And now it's completely hands off all management and it's been really good. I think we've been in business for coming into 15.

Yeah, years.

Yeah, 15 years now.

So you've transitioned from being in the business to being on the business. Tell us a little bit about your building business and what does it specialize in and what's it like being in a small town in Alberta? As well, as a builder, we are.

A custom home builder, specifically design build. So we have transitioned away from renovations. We used to do quite a few renovations. Now we're more just in. In the custom homes. And. And that's where really where my passion is and what we enjoy doing. We're in a city of about 100,000 here. We have a good outlying area that we do a lot of work in as well. Lots of farms, and we do do a lot of work for farmers in the area as well, and acreages.

Well, Amy, tell us a little bit about how you started off in the business. Obviously, Rob started it and then you joined. What has been your. Both of your ambitions as a business owner as well with. With building this business?

Well, I. Rob and I have been together for 21 years. Married for 16. Yeah, I've been with him through his whole journey from his framing and cabinet making and schooling and all of that. And I was actually working for a grain company, so I was totally separate. We had just got married. We started Rampton Homes. We had a small office in our house. I did the bookkeeping. We made our logo on Microsoft Word out of like whatever little. Just put a few little designs together. It was kind of funny, now that you think back. So working for a grain company that kind of grew. I grew out of that, I would say. And I moved on to be in a management position for a real estate company, which I loved very much. Learned so much about the home industry, I guess, and after that moved towards a more for the real estate board. And then we had our first child. And so at that point I started to transition back into Rampton a little bit more hands on, more in the office. It was more flexible then because I was on maternity leave. So I was kind of in and out of Rampton just when I was needed. And then it was up until about five years ago, I came back in full time. So I started in real estate, moved into being here for Rampton Homes, doing all the financials and stuff like that. So that's my passion. I guess that's where I started. I didn't know a whole bunch about the building aspect of the homes, but I know a lot about the billing and the financial part. So that's what makes us a good team.

I Think now tell us a little bit about the ambitions of the business. Obviously, it's grown since when you started. And I believe that you are also working with a coach that has been on this, on the episodes before, have been told you've been working with Clint, but tell us about where your business has grown, where it was and where it is today.

I guess we've just been really working on making it sustainable, something that we can step away from a little bit more than we did like back in the day, just working like 14 hours a day, six days a week, or maybe even more. Now it's more, you know, we have two girls, we're busy, we've got other activities that we like to do. And not that we don't work hard, we work very hard, but it's just a better lifestyle that we have. And we've got a lot of that through the systems that we put in place from apb.

I'll chime in here. We started on spreadsheets, Excel spreadsheets, we'd called them ledgers. So they. And actually Rob created all that. He knew nothing about Microsoft and he. So he taught himself and created ledgers for every single job and that kept track of all the expenses, all the budgets, GST rebates from appliances, you name it. So streamlining that, going paperless, we started that on our own, got into an online program, and then now with APB bringing everything together, we just save a ton of time. Everything is paperless, everything is online, everything is synced from co construct to QuickBooks. It's been amazing. So with Clint's influence on how to integrate all of that, it's made a huge difference with freeing up our time to do other things in the business. And out, I would say.

Now tell me a little bit about how did you both discover the association of Professional Builders, or apb, and what. What has it been like working with Clint with the mentoring program?

Well, I think we probably found it online because we were looking for some kind of change a few years back and someone just to help us with the business. We can build houses like crazy and just about do anything in construction. But as far as the business, we knew we needed some help there, so I think we found it online.

We'd started with like a business coach, a generic business coach in town here. Learned a ton from her, but she didn't know how to build a house. She didn't know how the home building industry worked. So I think we were literally googling and Rob found it and it just all of a sudden it was like, is this real? Do we really find a coach that is for custom home builders? We started just by doing the programs online, not even meeting with the coach yet. I think we did that for a few years before committing to the mentorship program.

How do you both work together? Obviously it sounds like you have different roles, but also are on the business today. But do you guys divide and conquer? Do you guys get each other's way? What's it like being a married couple and also running a business together?

Also, do you want me to start, I guess being really young, getting married, having kids. The beginning was not easy because we didn't know our roles. We didn't know we were growing and maturing. So now, like, hindsight, it all happened for a reason. But now we. We know our roles. Some days we do hardly talk at the office, and not because we don't want to, just because I do what I need to do. And Rob and our other staff members work together at what they need to do. So I think that's what's worked for us.

Yeah, 100%. She looks after all the numbers and the accounting. And my main role is sales and project oversight. And from there we have a good definition of where that splits. And, you know, if we have an issue, we resolve it and get it going. We do spend a lot of time every day together, so that's good.

Well, tell us a little bit about how you've adopted some of the APB systems. What systems are you using and how does it impact your business today?

We definitely haven't adopted all the systems. We're working on that. And I mean, that's going to be a work in progress for the rest of our. The life of our company, I'm sure. But I found one that's helped, which we're not terribly consistent with, but it has done well, is the employee reviews. Construction slots has been super. We're able to see what's on the go financially and physically. Like, what kind of work do we have coming? Where are we going next year? Also with construction slots, like, what do we want to put in there? What do we need to market for so that we can fill our construction slots with the ones that we want? Not maybe like, for example, not like three small renovations. We want to do one larger house that takes the place of three smaller Renault. Right. So that's where construction slots kind of gives us direction there. And then I'll let Amy talk about the financial management part of it, because I think that's been probably one of.

The biggest Things is, yeah, the WIPA was probably the first thing that we really adopted. We felt like we were in a place with our company where we, we felt good about our numbers, but we didn't know, we didn't trust that the numbers that our accountant was giving us at year end were correct and we didn't really know how. Like, every year they would ask us, what's your work in progress? And at that point, neither one of us, even with my accounting background, I was like, I'm not sure how you're getting you as our accountant. It's getting the number that you have. And I couldn't figure it out. Couldn't figure out for the life of me. So WIPA was the first thing. I just like dove in three days. Like, don't interrupt me. Headphones on. I'm going to figure this out. Once we figured that out, we quite promptly switched accountants because we realized that our numbers were inflated. We were paying way too much on taxes and our books looked way too good. So we kind of felt like we were being lied to for three years almost. So we switched accountants, we redid three years worth of year ends, got almost $50,000 in taxes back, and all of a sudden we knew what we were doing. We had this amazing tool that was just a simple spreadsheet every month. And so that has been the biggest, biggest thing for us. I've talked to a few builders in Canada, one particularly in Saskatchewan, and I just told them, like, if you're going to do nothing else, just do wipa. It will change your life. But from there, that was a huge thing. And then just the targets tab is another really big one. It's fun to see where we've come from and where we're going and set that. And even the just our yearly review, like, let's review, let's plan for next year, like, what's our big goals? All that stuff. And it's worked out well for us because we didn't think we'd hit our goal this year. It was a big goal and we're close. Like, we may even go over, which is something that if you would have asked at that two years ago, we would have never thought possible.

So what's been the critical benefit of having these systems in place? It sounds like, you know, obviously there was a lot more financial awareness. It sounds like you got some money back from the last three years using wipa. But if you look, if you look at and categorize the biggest impact for your business, is it time? Is it efficiencies? Where do you think you're finding or seeing the benefits today?

Big one for me is financial clarity. Just having Amy be able to just give all the reports and the accountants understand what we're up to and everybody's on the same page. So financial clarity is a big one. Time time's a big one. We've got systems in place, people in place to do all the jobs that we have in the systems. And yeah, so we're gaining a lot of time back as well. It's been a big help that way.

The confidence even coming from a financial like, I went to school for it, I worked for different companies, but having the confidence in our numbers to give those numbers to Rob and him understand them is. That's been a huge stress relief for myself. But also having Clint to bounce these ideas off of and he'll be like, oh, that doesn't look good. Something's wrong there. Let's redo your WIPA for this month. Make sure everything looks right or those numbers are off. Where did those come from? It's been really, really beneficial just having a. Another set of eyes on things.

Okay, you talked a little bit about the systems. What about technology? Is there room for technology in the business and. And how are you guys using it today?

Yeah, I love technology as much as we can use. We definitely integrate. I think like six years back we took on CO construct. I tried BuilderTrend, I think, for six months and then switched to Co Construct. I think they're owned by the same people now. But anyway, I took two years, set it up really well and haven't looked back. That's been absolute saving grace and saves so much time. And fully integrated all the way from while we took our leads out of there. Now we're using a CRM for that, but right past that point where the job starts all the way to closeout and counting selections, everything integrated, so payments, all the client communication, it's all in there. On top of that, we're using PlanSwift, Microsoft Suite and QuickBooks Online, so. But all that stuff integrates into Coconstruct and that's our main piece of technology used to run our company right now.

And you mentioned a CRM as well. Do you have a custom CRM? Do you work with the salesforces or hubspots?

HubSpot currently is the one that we're working with and then we have one other one that's doing some email stuff for us. But I think eventually everything will be in HubSpot. Just so we're all under One roof there.

Now, how have you approached your marketing and sales and what's it like marketing and selling in a small town as well? I mean, do you rely on digital? Is it word of mouth? How does that work for you?

A lot of our work in the past has come from referrals. I think that's changing a little bit as the market and the times change, of course, but so we're going to more paid advertising and just content, tons of content. So we've got a great website set up. Slowly and surely we're adding more content to that all the time. And then I think from there, yeah, we'll just keep following the systems and integrating more content and ads and getting those ads to the people that they need to go to so we can attract the right client.

What are some of your focuses in the new year for your business as well? What are you looking forward to? You talked about potentially even surpassing your goals this year. When you accomplish such a. Such a big goal and then you go, that was great. Most people go, what's next?

Fair. Yeah. This year our goal is to finish our company manual that's going back on the board for next year. That was a big goal that we didn't achieve. But, you know, we're well into it now, and I think we have a great plan moving forward. So that's just a matter of time. And company manuals aren't built over overnight. So as we go through next year, that'll get finished up, but a big emphasis will be put on sales and marketing, and I think we're gonna have a lot more time for that now that we have a lot of this other stuff out of the way that we've been able to systemize and get under control.

It sounds like the systems that you've put in and the technology you've embraced has really transformed your business. Do you feel like that's the contributing factor towards the revenue and the sales as well? When you, when you. When you look back and see where you've come from?

Well, from a, like, financial point, I think it's really helped because we know exactly what the house is going to cost before they even sign a contract. That's because of coconstruct and the planning and everything that Rob's able to do with that. We know exactly what our costs are, our overhead. So, yeah, I think it's really helped because we're not surprised. Like, we're not surprised by anything anymore. So we can really focus on, like, honing in on those things or we could maybe cut back on or things we can spend money on so that we can grow. It's just really helped to clarify everything, I guess, like we know exactly where we are going and how to get there.

Now, you, you mentioned that you are a custom home builder in many ways. Is this something that you were always. Did you transition to this and what is your business transforming into today?

You know, we've always been a custom builder, but did smaller projects and renovations. And that's really something where we've just really figured out that, hey, this, this isn't ideal for how we're set up and we want to transition away from that and just do the custom homes for an ideal client every single time. So. And not have to have the fillers anymore. So. And I think that's where the marketing. We want to fill all those spaces in. And that goes right back to our timeline that we talked about with the construction slots. So we're able to see in the future next year, hey, what do we have going? What holes do we need to fill and market accordingly?

Yeah. And it just goes like we were. I don't know, I felt like the first few years of. When you start a company, you're kind of chasing, right? You want to, you want to get the jobs, you want to get your name out there. But now, now we're more about building our brand and awareness so that people understand that we're not just any custom home builder. Like, we want them to know the quality of our homes. We want them to know what they get when they build with us. And it's more of like an experience. I always like to say it's like the Rampton experience. And that, that goes right from the initial phone call with Rob to when we're all celebrating at the end with possession. And it's just becoming more and more of. Once people understand that, then they don't really want to build with anyone else. So that's the main goal.

Can a building business just survive on referrals? And I'm going to follow up that with another question, which is how are you known in your community and industry as well? Because obviously you've been there for a while and you've made a name for yourself. Now, how do you think other people see you guys and can you guys just survive on referrals?

That goes back to one of the first questions you asked about what it's like in a small community. And there are ups and downs to that. You get the great clients, the small town attitude. Right. That's the upside to that good community feelings. Just about all our work has been referrals. But I think as our marketing is working and we're getting the content out there, we're seeing those phone calls come in that, that are not referrals but, or maybe secondhand. You would kind of know about you. But we've seen the information and this is what we're after and that's why they're coming to us now. So I think a lot of our business in the small town is going to be referral and it always will be. But there's still room for all the marketing and the other content out there to attract more clients, not just referrals.

I think we always have to be aware too that people will talk here. So even you know, they may not be a direct referral. They maybe saw our ads and went on our website and did all that research. But they will always talk. So they'll, they'll always find someone who knows us or whatever. I think from as far as we know we have a good name in our community. I think we were always like the young builders. We just started out but now we have a good base under us like coming into 15 years. We're not the little guys anymore. We have experience and knowledge and, and a lot to offer.

Let's go down memory lane and tell me a little bit about the past. Were you hesitant when you were first deciding to get into the building business? Did you think is this going to work in our area?

I don't think we were ever hesitant. It was just something that, you know, I always grew up working in the building industry and my grandpa was a carpenter as well. So kind of had some background with that. I wasn't unfamiliar with it and just what it evolved to. And I've always had a passion for building and quality. Like the cabinet shop I worked in was super high end cabinet shop. It wasn't just run of the mill and I think that's where we took the whole home building is just, you know, we, we want to do really high end product and there'll always be a market for that. No matter where you are, there's always going to be someone who, who wants and is going to get a really high end product. So. And that's where we fit in perfectly.

Yeah. And I think we were young too. Yeah, we were 21, 22 and 21 when we got married. So like we were young. We didn't know any different. Yeah. Let's start a home building company. Sure. I'll download the free version of QuickBooks on our computer, I don't know. So to go from that to where we are looking back, it's pretty crazy.

I think they call it shotgunning it.

But yeah, that's pretty much it.

So tell me a little bit about that time. Obviously, it's such a sensitive time when you're starting out. Most builders have a classical mistake that they fondly remember because that one defining area where they made that mistake that they'll never make again. Did you have any of those ups and downs where you were like, oh, we probably shouldn't have done that? If you look back, is there anything there where you're like, we really learned.

From that so many times?

I'd say the biggest ones are competing in a cost plus scenario, which we haven't done for years. But that is the worst building business model out there because you're competing against a client who only cares about one number, and they're probably not going to be the greatest client. And we experienced that a couple of times for sure. So those were the hugest learning curves for us. And we would have said like years ago, three years ago, I would have said, you can't build a $2 million custom home and not do a cost plus. Has to be cost plus. You can't figure it out. And now that's a no brainer. We got it figured out to the dime. We know exactly what our costs are going in and what they're going to be coming out. Granted, I mean, we've had a crazy couple of years, but we've got that all figured out now too. So that would be by far one of our biggest learning curves.

And Amy, what do you think is the overall success factor for the growth? Obviously you've been on the books. You've had that financial awareness and clarity as well. As Rob was saying, when did you know that you had hit your defining moment where you knew that things were changing and the pathway was changing for you?

Well, it's kind of funny because over the years, every time I would step away from Rampton to go somewhere else, whether like I, I helped start up a real estate company and kind of was just getting into that with them, all of a sudden Rampton needed me again. It was like, okay, yeah, we're picking up, things are getting busy. So that last time coming back, all of a sudden it was like, okay, we're finally hitting our breaking point here where we're, we're moving forward, not just doing a little bit of things here and there with just Rob, like, all of a sudden we needed more employees, we needed more space. Lot in office, I would say, I don't know. It's been in the last six years. All of a sudden things just kind of took off and I knew that I would. I needed to be here and be full time and. And now we have a few people working for us. But one of the other challenges I wanted to mention was hiring people. The person you have the gut feeling about, go with your gut. It doesn't lie whether it's positive or negative. So we've really learned a lot in the last few years about that and made some mistakes. We thought we were done making mistakes, but. No, you're never done. We've learned a lot from that in the last few years. Systems in place. Yes. But now we have a really great team now, so it was worth the mistakes, but.

And what's it like having a coach? Obviously I've had Clint on this show before as well, and he's a wealth of knowledge. He's also from Canada as well, from the west coast. But what does that like working with someone? Because it's a pretty. I would imagine it's a pretty brave choice that you both had to make to say, look, we're going to commit to this. We're actually going to not just use the APB membership, we're actually going to work with someone. And there's a lot of trust that you put in someone as well. What's that like?

Yeah, trust. And it's a big financial commitment as well. For us it was. We knew this for years. We were looking for direction and. And we knew we needed help on the business aspect of things. Like we said earlier, we used our local coach here, which was great, but we wanted it very specific. And then App was able to offer that to us. And Clint especially has been really good. It's almost like he's local because he is in Canada. He's only one province away, so that's pretty cool as well.

And I found too, it always felt so overwhelming with like marketing, social media, but then that felt important. But then financial and business growth and all that felt important and I just felt like we never knew where to start. So it just felt really heavy all the time. But now that we have Clint or started working with Clint, it's just made it way easier. Every month we have direction. We're not the best. We don't get all our homework done always. But we try and we always make an effort, but it's just given us direction. And so then it doesn't feel like, such a burden, I guess, and we, we get stuff done.

Look, my only other question is, let's just say down the track, a time machine's invented and you have to go back in time. Rob, what advice would you give a younger version of yourself? And Amy, what advice would you give builders that are starting out today?

Oh, that's a tricky one.

I'll let you think on that. My advice from the very beginning would be don't just do your paper stuff, like, figure out what it costs. Figure out what you cost hourly and start simple, but just record everything. I think that is where you get in a knot when you, you know, you're that, oh, I'll just get this done and do this and do these few projects. But I think if, if people. I've told some of our trades too, like, just find a bookkeeper and keep track of your stuff. It will never hurt to spend money on that and just get your financials figured out. So that's my advice.

But, yeah, you don't undervalue what you do. I think that was another big, big thing for us was we undervalued the work we did and the product that we delivered.

That's a great piece of advice for our listeners out there. Rob and Amy, want to thank you again for your time, your energy. Great story. Really, really inspiring story as well. I'm excited to see what comes ahead for, for you and hope to have you back on the show again.

Awesome. Thanks so much. We appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you very much.

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