Building Sustained Success w/ Stephen Dunn | Ep. 82

In this episode, David and Gary interview COO of Exeter Building Company, Stephen Dunn and discuss what it takes to build long term and sustained success with each relationship you create.

Links:

Stephen Dunn LinkedIn Page

Exeter Building Company Website

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

David: 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to the biz dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host, and I'm joined today by Gary Voigt, who I bet you didn't know this was the inspiration for Horton Hears a Who. So Gary was, in case you were wondering, that looks strange to me.

Gary: 0:24

Only one that can hear them. Like no one could hear them on this back existed. I had to, you know, write a big essay, probably

David: 0:30

the Dumbo ears you got there.

Gary: 0:32

They do stick out a bit. Don't they? Wear a hat? Try to

David: 0:36

send them a bag. Yep. See, I don't get that I can't even hide them under

Gary: 0:39

some people do wear hats that actually put their ear underneath the edge of the hat to kind of hide them. I can't do that voters have sensitive those are your elven

David: 0:48

ears. When you have to get the elven ears up there. How

Gary: 0:50

else do I hear who's come on?

David: 0:53

More important. We are joined by Stephen Dunn, who is the Chief Operating Officer of Exeter building company. We are going to be talking to him what that means in just a little bit. But first, we're going to talk about AI because that's all that matters in the world. You know, actually Gary's a bot. I should have made that that joke. You're just an AI chatbot Yeah, but

Gary: 1:12

um, 4.0 this week after last week, so that's right, you got an upgrade?

David: 1:17

Did you pay attention to the Stephen this this AI chatbot mumble jumble.

Stephen: 1:22

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's hard not to, I think that there's a lot of fear with people when it comes to AI. I think it's just like the internet before the internet came out. Everybody was really afraid of you know, what was going to do whose job was and takeaway? I really think it's just opportunity. So it's really how do you leverage it? You know, I've used it for things as simple as writing an email, you know, writing, writing, writing back to clients, I've used it for writing to trade partners to vendors, giving awards marketing,

Gary: 1:50

have you been using Chet GPT that prompts

Stephen: 1:54

I did, yes, I have not a huge tech person. At the end of the day, it was just one of the things where I feel like you kind of gotta be well versed in it to understand. And so started using and seeing how I can leverage it seems right different pieces of information out for you, because it takes in, you know, so much more than what we can take in so you can be a 25 year old 25 Year Experience salesman. And that bought just through learning is gonna learn more than you, then you've done in 25 years, and probably give you a better sales script. And that sales guy has been doing,

Gary: 2:25

I've used it for, like research purposes and stuff like that acid to generate lists of ideas and things like that. And if it's not, you know, some of it seems like your generic stuff that it would pull from any other article. But some of it is actually enough to where it'll get you thinking in a different direction than you might have, or at least kind of get you kick started and coming up with a little bit more to add to it. So I think I've found it most helpful in that space, at least for the the chat GPT stuff. Yeah, for the image creation. That's just fun.

David: 2:58

What I found was how we're, that's how we're gonna fire Gary is we're just going to replace him with Dolly. So

Gary: 3:03

you haven't told her yet. You can't do that. I got my promise.

David: 3:07

He's got this problem. So what I'm interested in so the new chat GPT for let me say that right? Is the new one that just came out recently. And that thing, they put it through the paces, it got a 1400 on the LSAT. It got over a 90 on the LSAT. And it got a five on all high school AP courses, all of them. So they're showing, look, this thing has chops. Like it's really, really smart. And it allows and you can't do this yet, but they've shown demos, you can show it a picture of what's in your fridge. And it'll tell you recipes that you can cook from said picture, because it can now understand pictures, and then it can answer questions about it. So it's really interesting, didn't take it some of the famous meme pictures, and saying, explain to me why this is funny. And then to have a computer explain to you why a meme is funny, is funny in and of itself, because it's so bad. But what's what's interesting to me is basically everything you guys just said is what everyone sees is the I don't want to write this email. I want to summarize this gizmo, I want to reply to this guy by using the prompts, right? So it's faster. But in the coming months and years, my guess is now the robots are going to start talking to each other because the guy who wrote that, to you originally was a robot, and now you're replying to him as a robot. And I'm just very curious as to how much of this grunt work that we do every day is going to go away. I mean, there's people whose entire job it is to take a Word doc and turn it into a PowerPoint slide. And now the thing will do for Microsoft announced recently their co pilot, which is their new thing and Word and all of their office. stuff that will basically you give it a prompt, and it will do it for you. It'll do whatever. Yeah. Yeah, it's clicky clicky Clicky. No clicky Clicky. CLIPPY, click the little paperclip. You're probably too young for that. Steven, do you remember that? Did you ever see the paperclip? Yeah, no, I remember, when he was four years old, he played with a paperclip on word. But it was, this is what they wanted forever, right. And now, like, what someone explained to me was, you know, Excel being a great example of this is so powerful, but so few people know really how to use it. And now this thing will explain to you, hey, I need a pivot table, I need to display this blob of data in this way. And you don't need to know Excel anymore to just go and do it. And I'm very intrigued to see that. But I still think it's like everyone, when we talk, I'm gonna back up for a second, the when we talked about automated cars, everyone was so excited. I'm going to be so excited when I don't have to pay attention to drive anymore. And I was like, that's just level one. The real magic of it is when you're not even in the front, you're in the back. Right? You're working during the cart. So what is the equivalent of that for all these AI things? What is the equivalent of being in the backseat? When the AI is driving? That's what I'm curious about when it comes to this chat. GPT stuff, just chat in general, or AI in general? What will that look like? Does anybody have any thoughts as to what after we're done playing around and writing each other emails? What are we doing next?

Gary: 6:34

In my head, it's the sequence from the Disney movie wall e, where you just see the giant corporate ship floating in outer space with all the passengers on board, like it's a cruise ship, just sitting in a chair getting zoomed around to do whatever they need to do. Because everything else will be destroyed.

David: 6:49

We go straight from writing each other emails to GPT.

Gary: 6:54

Five to one. Yeah,

David: 6:57

perfect that wow, that's not a jump at our bone. We have been sitting there so long, our bones have become detached. And we're

Gary: 7:02

mid journey would have already created the storyboards for how we're gonna get there. So yeah.

David: 7:08

What do you think, Stephen? Do you have an intelligent conversation because that was really bad.

Stephen: 7:13

I think it's interesting when you think about AI, so I think before chat GPT, before we started seeing AI really work, you would have said that it was going to take away the money, the mundane activities, would have taken away your data entry, your conversion from, you know, word of PowerPoint, where we saw it really go was directly towards those creatives, you know, towards your copywriters, and towards your sales, sales scripts. I mean, you think about eventually, one day, we're gonna call somebody, you're gonna have to ask question, are you human? Are you AI? And so I don't know, ultimately where it goes. But I think what it will do is it will force us as humans to be more creative, I think our jobs will be more built around. Thought, because I do think that while it started in the creative space, it's going to eventually take over a lot of the data entry, you know, CPA started out in taxes. I think some of the jobs of accountants, you know, where we're doing a lot of data entry, we're taking up an Excel workpapers, we call it and we're recycling it for the next year. That's a human right now, eventually, that can be AI, you plugging in data, if it can, there's different types of avenues, what blackbox, scraping, things like that. Maybe you can scrape data one day I can start to put things in and somebody's you review or someone's your creative. I think it's just going to shift what jobs we do. I don't think it necessarily take too many away, it'll just shift one of the activities we're spending our time on.

David: 8:30

What I find interesting, someone said it was I was listening to The Verge cast, which is the verges podcast, which I'm a huge fan of you should listen to it. And they were going deep into the subject where it's just where a lot of my noodle started going. And one of the things they said is, fundamentally, when someone sent you an email up to this point up to six months ago, there was no question that that was a dude, or dudette on the side, other side of that screen, writing that email. Well, now you're asking, Did human write this? This is a new question that we have to ask ourselves, which is so fascinating, because now it's what does it what does a human need to do now? Right? Does a human need to do this grunt work? Or can we just leave that over for the robots to do and we do, like you're saying the more creative work because that's ultimately, where we, we didn't realize how much drudgery we were doing until the robots took it all away. And I think that that creative side, which is unfortunate for a lot of people who are not creative at all, but it really does, like someone was asked us, I mean, I get asked this at least once a week. Are you worried for your job as a computer programmer? No. And they're like, well, but now the chat GPT for can if you do a hand drawing, you can take a picture of it. It'll write the code for the website of the thing you just drew. Okay, cool. Have you seen what that website looks like? Right, it's horrible. It still takes into have the idea for what that website should do. That's the human side. That's that's what we bring to the table. That's what any developer brings it to. You're not just looking for the code monkeys. Now it might make the code monkeys might get way more efficient in the future.

Gary: 10:14

Yeah, it's basically giving them the Encyclopedia of all code that exists at their fingertips. You know what I mean, as far as specializing in a certain language, that might not even be a thing anymore?

Stephen: 10:26

I think you nailed it. It's the it's the efficiency factor. I think that is really what I think this will ultimately change is how efficient can we be with our time, you look at, you know, the most successful entrepreneurs, most successful business people, what do they have, they have focus, they focus on the right things. They've they've made their time, so efficient. And what is AI really allow us to do allow us to be more efficient in the the higher leverage activities.

David: 10:50

I think, if you can, if I can go now as I know exactly what I want, as a coder, or a writer, or an artist to a certain degree, let's assume that the art ones get way better, because right now, they're still like, the hands are all jacked up and stuff. But let's say they got really good and a few years, the idea of what to do is still a human thing. What do I want this to do? How to software get built? We're nowhere near that. And maybe eventually, we will be like that. And they all take over. And we are all but there was like, there's a line also is, how much of this are they going to? Or we're going to allow them to think in? And then versus do? Do you want them to take control of your computer? Do you want them to write that email without you knowing it? Right, you know, what I'm saying is an email comes in that looks like this. Just reply back with that. And do you I'm not sure, at least that that'll be a generational change, right? Because I certainly am not going to be comfortable. Now. I'm old, right? My children might be okay with allowing. I never even saw the email, the bot, took an email that it thought was useful. It made the decision how to reply back, and it just sends me a summary of what just happened. Whoa, that's super scary. I'm not ready for that. As a as an old guy that scares the bejesus out of me. My grandkids won't know any different. Right? They're not born yet. So let's assume I'm not that old. I'm not very old. Oh, I'm sorry. Darn it, you don't have grandkids either. That he knows of anyway. I think they'll be fine with it. It's kind of like I always said, if you get rid of the keyboard, that's when I'm done with computers. I'm not going to Star Trek it. We're all I do is talk to the computer that would freak me out. You imagine coding just sitting in the room just yelling? If, if then No, know, I'm off the I'm off the train at that point. Here. Here's my analogy. So our marketing person Christie, who listens to all these podcasts in their unedited state, I'm so sorry. She has taken it upon herself to read our blog posts, as audio files, and post them on our website because she used to be a voice actress, or actor. I think they're both actors now, right? Am I saying that wrong anyway. So when you can go to our website now. And you can see any of our blog posts, and you can click and you'll hear Christy read it to you, as a human being very cool

Gary: 13:21

to go to any other ones. to It doesn't,

David: 13:23

she's amazing. She's totally amazing. Now go and listen to one of ours, and then go to any other large website. Now we're not a large website, but there's usually who's doing it and click on that play button, because a lot of them do it because Google likes for accessibility, the audio version of an article, which is great, but they're using a computer to do it. Right, the reading of it is a computer. And that's what I'm thinking the richness of the human experience is so palpable, when you hear Christy read it versus the bot, it is just night and day. It's just night and you wouldn't even think about it. But she's just had an inflection. She's mad and she made a sound effect. She's like, whoo, I mean, you know, it's like Degray bought say, woohoo, is hilarious. First off, but it's just awkward. You're all like, what? And I think that same thing for that virtual assistant, if you had if you actually have an assistant, which I do not, which sounds great, though, to have someone who goes through your email, I know people who have this, like they're big business guys, and they have this, they will read their emails first, and then peel off the ones that are worthwhile and, you know, handle the rest. That human warmth, that human touch is like those blogs, right? That's going to add something to it. But you're right, the difference between hiring someone for 50 $60,000 a year to give that warm human touch versus a bot that does it for free. Yeah. I know where this is going. Don't get me wrong, but there is something about what it probably won't be free. You know, someone's gonna,

Gary: 14:57

there's gonna be a subscription charge.

David: 14:59

Let's talk about Are you what do you do? Tell me about Exeter. Tell me what you do at Exeter. Tell me how you you know. Tell me what your favorite

Gary: 15:07

color get started.

Stephen: 15:09

Well, favorite color is Carolina blue. Start there.

David: 15:11

Oh, wow. You know, I have a funny story on that. I'll steal you for a second. We did not choose a school. So we're from Texas originally. And everyone asked us when we moved here like 16 years ago which school yet which Duke or UNC, which is it? And we were learning realized quickly in North Carolina. If you choose one, you lose friends. We just I'm a Texan. I don't know anything. I don't choose a color. Green. We just do green because we don't do blue anywhere in or under anyway. Sorry.

Stephen: 15:38

Yeah, no. So yeah, Exeter building company. So you know, custom luxury building company has been around since 2016. Started by three lifelong friends. One of them had been been in building since 2003. And the other two worked at tech companies. Then they joined up after a 50th birthday party, and decided to form this company and build in this custom luxury world out here in Raleigh. Well, needless to say that back in 2016, it was not like it is today. So I started out building houses under a million this year, we're averaging about $2 million per sold home. So it's exploded, I came on in 2021 came on for finance. So like I mentioned earlier, I have a CPA degree that I've kept and maintained, kind of been through a bunch of different industries and businesses just from an appetite to learn. And when I came on board, I kind of decided I wanted to take as much as I could and learn as much as I could. And so last year in about May, I got promoted to Chief Operating Officer. So now kind of my job is to run the company from the operations standpoint, and then report back to the three owners, you know, some of whom are still involved kind of involved in the business, but the ultimate goal to be to enable them to work on their business, not in their business every day.

David: 16:51

Oh, man, you must have read traction. Congratulations.

Stephen: 16:56

So we're everybody's avid readers, you know, I am as well, I love real estate. That's really what brought me into this space and in this world. And so, you know, my my goal has always been to, to own assets on businesses and run them. So all of us read, we all share books, we all share YouTube videos, you know, different.

David: 17:16

Somebody tells me the YouTube videos they share are different than ones we share, Gary, we just send dog pictures and stupid prank Something tells me you're a journalist and we can make fun of.

Stephen: 17:27

So you get a lot of the guys like Alex or mosey Gary Vee. I listen to them and my ledge, I think who else we just sent through but just kind of follows thought leaders when it comes to business, and business development, you know, how people got to where they were, you know, what do they put emphasis on? How are you a leader? All the challenges that everybody faces when you are starting? Or you're running your own business?

David: 17:48

Sounds to me like he should be running this podcast. Gary, do you want to take a break and let him just run with sucker. I mean, he's way more qualified than we are clearly he's

Gary: 17:55

definitely sounds better to let's not sit there looking at the camera on him the whole time, we'll just sit

David: 18:00

back or sit back, let him talk,

Gary: 18:03

luxury building. And just I know, there had to be some crazy ups and downs with the pandemic. And then also just recently with the way the housing market has kind of shifted. So what kind of speed bumps or what kind of obstacles kind of came your way? And how did you guys handle that as a company?

Stephen: 18:23

Yeah, for sure. So I mean, real estate's local, that's the easiest way to say it. I mean, even neighborhood to neighborhood can differ area. You know, obviously, when the pandemic hit, nobody knew it was gonna happen. You didn't know if it was going to be like, Oh, eight. But the crisis you didn't know if people are going to stop buying, they're going to move in. I think what ultimately happened is it was a month to a month and a half, two months of uncertainty and slowdown, where everybody was wondering, oh, gosh, do I need to be looking at the way my business is operating my cash reserves? What do I do? And then it just exploded. People found themselves at home, they really started to look into how do you make money online? I think that's been a huge increase that we've seen is how do you do things without having to go in the office companies went fully remote, people that just had a lot of cash, whether they built it in that short period of time, or they had been holding on to that equity in their home and realize, man, I don't have to live in California anymore. I don't have to live in Washington, DC, Portland, Seattle, wherever they were. Raleigh is always in the top five list of cities in the United States. So it naturally became a place everybody started moving on top the fact that you have Apple, you and Facebook talking about bringing no headquarters down here, just all these businesses moving in. And so Raleigh just boomed. As soon as people didn't have to go in the office every day. You saw everything's kind of go gangbusters. And, you know, exert the partners really did a great job of taking advantage of that. We've doubled in revenue every single year, dating back to 2019. So obviously, I think this year is going to be much more stable given everything going on and we're back in that state of uncertainty. We don't know what's going to happen. But again, real estate is local. So while I do think that, you know, at some point, there's got to be a correction in the market, because the market always corrects back to the median. Now, who's to say what the median is? I don't know, you hear a different answer every single day. But Raleigh is a little bit better protected because of how many businesses we have moving here, how much development is going on commercially, commercial space companies. I mean, you would have thought things would slow down when interest rates were going up. And in the last 90 days, we've seen a flurry of activity, typically the spring and the fall markets are and people are buying. We've We've closed homes with buyers over $2 million in the last 90 days, averaging like two a month. So I mean, it's just it's been crazy. There's been a lot of opportunity to be had, which I think is when there's uncertainty, there's opportunity. The people that don't panic and really focus are the ones that really see that opportunity and find success.

David: 20:58

So you are in a unique position to answer a question that I have always asked, I ready you go. Who buys? Like, what kind of job does the average person who buys a two plus million dollar home? What do they do for a living?

Stephen: 21:16

You'll be surprised. We have some people who have bought just under 2 million, but they traded baseball cards. Didn't you know they had mid management level positions but had been buying and selling baseball cards in season I think some other sports for a while think about time they had their pool, which we're working on right now. It'd be over 2 million. But I mean, you see everything from startups, I mean, people in their 20s a lot more younger couples in their 30s than I would have expected. You see a lot of people that are moving in from California, Washington State DC, New York, who now how they afford the first house there I do not understand. But you know, they're coming

David: 22:01

from another use on equity from their other home, right.

Stephen: 22:04

1500 square foot house, they sold it for, I don't know$6 million that come out here at about a 5000 square foot house for 2.4. To them, they're like, Oh, this is easy.

David: 22:15

My uncle years ago in like the early 90s. He moved from San Francisco he had an apartment like 1200 square foot apartment overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. And he or townhome, or whatever they call them, they were the condo, probably he owned it. So with an apartment, he sold it came to Dallas, bought a 4500 square foot house still made profit. I mean, that's and that was a long time. I mean, it's been like that forever. So good. So what about let me tweak, twist the question a bit. If it's your first time buying a monster like that, you're bringing in the cash to the table. Now what do you do for a living? Are you a doctor, your lawyer have always wondered like, because I drive by we have one of those neighborhoods near us. And we, my daughter and I have a thing about going through houses, real estates been in my blood forever. I don't own any homes, my dad built houses. So I grew up with the smell of wood houses being built. That's that's home to me. And so I passed that on to my daughter, we go to houses that are being built, we're like, there's the bathroom. And over here is going to be a closet, like this is the thing we do. And so we went to a house that was 1.6 million bucks near our house. And we're like, and this is how the other half lives. And it was just, you know, gorgeous, like six, it was 6000 square feet had a basement, which is weird here. As I'm gonna wake forest, and we're like, in the show was adequate, who can afford this? And like, if you're buying your first one of these monsters, what are you doing for a living? Do you have that answer? Or is it just so all over the map?

Stephen: 23:45

It really varies? I mean, you get a lot of engineers, we've worked with a couple of doctors, couple attorneys, a couple of real estate agents who've done extremely well. The last couple of marks

David: 23:55

Spain, Is that who you work with you work with Mark Spain now. Dude's face is all over color everywhere.

Stephen: 24:03

It really varies. I mean, you see business owners, some people like like venture capital P models, buying businesses investing in them. There's really not one answer.

David: 24:15

So that I mean, that's not not the important part of our conversation. I just always have to keep going to answer the question. So when it comes to this is something and I like to take our conversations and expand them beyond just your business because I want to make not everybody's in the high end real estate market. Right. So one of the things I know that's really common that's a problem with a lot of businesses right now is hiring when it comes to their manual labor jobs, right, the hard work and sweat on your brow kind of jobs and obviously construction has lots of those a lot of my friends who owns businesses who have you know that work force working power in their business they're really struggling to hire just is a friend is like, there's no one. They're all lazy and they don't want to work. I'm like, No, buddy, they're working. They're just not working for you. Hold on there. How are you doing in that? How are you faring in that weird hiring? You know, employment market? And well, I guess I'll start with that. And then I'll venture off from there.

Stephen: 25:24

Yeah, so I probably not really in that target market.

David: 25:28

Okay. Because you don't? Are you building the home?

Stephen: 25:31

No, we don't build anything we 100% subcontract out. So I mean, our our trade partners, I don't like certain vendor, there are partners in at the end of the day. And they they do have hiring problems. I think that it's lightening up a little bit, given everything going on. But you can you see the numbers and unemployment, that number is not drastically increasing things. Hiring is still getting hard. But there are definitely some more businesses out there. They're coming to us now asking for work that didn't exist the last three years. So I would say that has to guess maybe gets a little bit easier. But you know, that's really hard to say. And that's not an area that we typically operate in our hiring is more for project managers. And it's almost the opposite of that, where we're looking for individuals who have a tailored skill and luxury building is not a requirement. Because if you ask me the requirement when you're hiring is really the person. Do they fit into your culture? Are they a good person? Do they work hard? Do they have the right attitude? You can teach anybody anything, but I can't teach your attitude and your hard work.

Gary: 26:41

That's a great quote. And that's actually something that I heard, believe it or not from my daughter's high school volleyball coach, that was something that she mentioned to them. It's you know, you can I can teach anybody how to play volleyball, but I can't teach you to have a winning attitude. Yeah, so it's similar to that. Yeah.

David: 26:57

Well, there is also if you're five foot one, you're not spiking over that net. I don't care how good your coaches, that's all.

Gary: 27:04

You could be a great defensive player.

David: 27:06

So okay, so that question on hiring was not a good one. That's what I've learned, because he's not hiring. But that does beg the question. So you guys specifically, you guys design the homes and then find GCS general contractors to build the homes. What is your actual business?

Stephen: 27:23

Yeah, no, great question. So we are not the designer. So we have some external partners who do the designs the home if you're from North Carolina, you know, the names Tony Fraser, you know, Macmillan design, those are probably our big two. If you've been in Raleigh, and you drive around inside the BeltLine, which is inside of a sorry, that's a local term, if you live inside this 440. Interstate, you're considered. I've always equated to the Great Gatsby, if you're inside your old money, you're outside your new money system. But, you know, that was way off topic. But they design the home. And then we have the general contracting license, one of the owners has the general contractor license, and we have project managers that go on site, then they manage all of our trade partners. We run this business like a business seems redundant, but a lot of builders are builders they build to build awesome houses, and they do an awesome job. We decided to run this like a business and the fact that you know we have a team, we have processes that are set up in order to be successful. So we have someone who her whole job is procurement, supply chain management, she does some other things like you know, business management as well. But really, her job has helped us working with our trade partners and ordering supplies, our project managers, get people on the calendar, and get them out on site and spec their work. We have someone whose whole job is permitting. We have we have designers on our team that work on designing the specs and selections of the home. They don't We don't do any interior design work, but they'll help you pick out you know, where do you want your electrical outlets? What type of light fixtures do you want in your home? How do we want to design your cabinets, you know, what type of countertops Do you want. And so we really run this like a business. And that's been a huge benefit for us. And we've had to go and get lending because obviously it's building is not financed 100% in cash by just really rich people, you're leveraging money, just like most businesses are and so banks look at us and say, Oh, you actually have a business, a process a team, you have a chief operating officer, which is probably a little bit outside the norm. She's just, you know, an owner and a truck was always what we say about a lot of builders. And so that's kind of the benefit that we have in the way that we build. So long winded answer to your question.

David: 29:36

No, that's perfect. Yeah, my dad was one of those guys with a truck. That was it that he had a suburban and he had a magnet on the side and that was his business. That was the whole thing. That business did not last very long. So I totally understand

Gary: 29:50

the question that I had earlier about the pandemic and then about that though, the home rates was kind of like trying to see what kind of obstacles that you guys had gone through from the beginning. So that kind of leads to one of the questions that we actually have on the notes that we hardly get to ask anybody. But when you guys started, I know you probably had a goal in mind. But did you think that you would get as far as you are today? Have you exceeded your expectations? Or do you still just keep pushing goals forward, trying to reach them and not like taking into consideration how much you've accomplished so far?

Stephen: 30:27

So I was not there when the business started in 2016. So I can I don't know if that was more of a business question or like a personal question.

Gary: 30:34

Not personal just mean, Exeter itself? Yes. Yeah. So

Stephen: 30:40

I mean, I think when the business was started, that emphasis was probably in that under a million, probably not doing 20 homes a year. You know, I think that that was not the model. Really opportunity arose, where you know, that we were focused in on the business focusing on making the right decisions. And opportunity came up that said, Okay, there's a marketplace now for this land prices are going up. You know, who's building then this inside the Beltline world, which is more complicated. And so that's really where you know, over time, what we've developed is, you know, what do we stand for. So for us, our biggest keys are, we build, we have the luxury builder for inside the Beltline in Raleigh. So that's a much harder area to be in, because the land is a lot more expensive. And, you know, there's more challenges working with the city in terms of different building rules. And then we also work on out of town buyers, because we have systems and processes in place that enable us to do so. So you don't have to technically live here and build your house, you could be in another state, and you'll get weekly updates, you'll get photos, you'll get constant communication, you'll get feedback. That way, there's that availability. So it's like you're here, even if you can't walk the home every single day. But to say that this is a, you know, if doing 20 homes a year averaging about $2 million a year, he can do the maths 40 million a year. I don't think that that was necessarily what the business picture was in mind in the beginning. I think it's just what has been born out of opportunity, and really listening to what clients want, and what people in this area have wanted. So it's really using that customer feedback. In real estate, you have real estate agents, talking to them about what people are looking for. So short is always looking for opportunity. And if you have to pivot what that business model is, then you can make that pivot rather being stuck and saying I want to build $100,000 houses, that's where I want to be. It's a very different product. That was five years ago.

Gary: 32:44

Yeah, that that actually you brought up something, working with real estate agents working with developers working with contractors. So you're in a position where Who do you actually market your business to? Do you market your business to the contractors? And then you also market the same business to like the, the actual designers or architects, companies that build or develop the homes? Or what is your marketing look like?

Stephen: 33:11

Yeah, no, that's a great question. So at the end of the day, our marketing is always targeted towards that end user, or the purchaser, the client that wants to, yeah, but at the same time, I mean, we're still marketing to real estate agents, alike. The most powerful type of marketing that we have in this industry is word of mouth. And it's referrals from our clients. We actually just sold a house in a neighborhood up in Wake Forest, actually, that was because one of the clients is building her house, and she referred her friend to live three houses down from her. So it was it was a referral, you know,

David: 33:47

which people know rich people. Yes, exactly. Just how it works. Yeah,

Stephen: 33:51

they really is. But I mean, that's true in anything. I mean, word of mouth is always much more powerful. You have one person, tell two people, two people tell four fourths, I mean, you just that compounds so aggressively over time. That's probably the best marketing we do. We have, you know, we do social media marketing, again, showcasing what we can build how we build. Really, it's also just to let the real estate agents know what's out there. I think a big problem that a lot of builders don't know they have is that agents don't know what is coming if it's not in MLS, right. And so if it's not, and there's good and bad things to do in MLS like you shouldn't really put like an unbuilt house in MLS because then somebody could be coming from Charlotte and go drive your property and see that it's a house from 1943 still sitting there and they thought there was a $2 million house there. Well, there's, you know, there's good and bad practices there that that we use. I mean, it is a way to drive leads. So as long as you are being honest in that MLS description. You'll see people do different things, but really, it's marketing to our agent community to let them know hey, we have a house that's finishing on March 31 of 2023. Let your buyers know Hey, We have this piece of land available that if a buyer wants to design their own home, bring them by, we have another piece of land if you want to use the plan we're planning on and are permitted for, we can make some changes for them, you know, bring them by. So really just

Gary: 35:12

did you guys develop like the promotional materials and stuff like that and send them out to the different agencies to? Okay,

Stephen: 35:18

yes, we deal with we use a CRM we send out weekly, not weekly, but bi weekly, probably newsletters, where we try to highlight on different topics on different communities that are available, different homes that are coming available. The Parade of Homes is a huge event in North Carolina. It is

Gary: 35:36

a huge event down here too. I'm in Florida. And that's something everything that you've touched on so far with about that. Kind of intercepting and letting real estate agents and agencies know about what's coming up. I've done plenty of work with marketing, real estate and one of my previous jobs and yeah, that's a big thing. The promotional items, the Parade of Homes and just the referral network amongst different real estate companies is a huge thing, too. So

Stephen: 36:03

yeah, I mean, your your production track builders who build you know, 3040 5060 100 plus homes and a little development, you can put a development in MLS, so everybody knows it's coming. I think when you get into that custom luxury world is a little bit different. Because you have houses sporadically strewn about rarely do you have one development with multiple homes.

David: 36:24

So one thing we'd like to ask every single one of our guests who are in so I guess the reason why we asked this and I don't know if we've ever actually said this, every person we speak to is a leader of some sort. Every single person here is that we've ever interviewed is a CEO a see something, oh, a founder, leader of some sort. And so that's where we value that insight. And so the question is simply, if you were to meet a young version, not of yourself, but just someone who was hungry, entrepreneurship, business, they want to make a new sock company, they want to make soaps, whatever, not necessarily building, right? That's the crux of it. What three pieces of advice would you give them to get them on their way that you have learned, as you've been a leader in your company?

Stephen: 37:12

I think the first piece of advice for anybody doing anything is be relentless. That's kind of my two word phrase. It's always just keep going. You know, you're going to fail, fail and learn, you're going to succeed, succeed and learn, just relentlessly go after whatever it is that you want, you know, whether that is something academically, whether that is entrepreneurial, whether that is working for somebody else, our society wants entrepreneurs so bad, that everybody's should do it. Nobody wants to do it. You know, working for the people is totally fine. be relentless in your pursuit to get better. If you do that, I think you succeed. That's my first one. My second is focus. Focus on one thing at a time, I've been guilty of this more time than I can care to admit, where I want to do so many things. And I'm focusing on three, four or five things, I'm failing at all five, focus on something figured out and then move to the next next pillar, it can be small chunks, medium chunks, it can be a broader market, but just learn, learn and focus on that one thing at a time. And then the last thing I tell everybody is give all and expect nothing in return. So if you are constantly giving, eventually you are going to learn something. And you know, somehow the universe, whatever your religion, your faith, I'm obviously Christian. And so you know, I personally believe that if you give you give back, you know, you spread the word, then things will come back to you. And so I just think that if you give all expect nothing in return, regardless of your beliefs, that that is a true way to be successful. Because then people will inherently want to give back to you in some capacity. And it's not really a trick, it's more of just if you do things to give me way more successful, you're gonna do it for longer, and you're gonna enjoy a lot more than if you just try to take everything all the time.

David: 39:05

I've heard that one that last one in various formats many times, if you like in a lot of it's around networking, right? The people who do the best in networking and meeting and growing are those who introduce everyone. Rather than taking they're giving they're passing those names around. And then everybody starts thinking of you because they want it there's something inherently human about returning the favor. That is just if it is buried, I don't care what culture creed, religion, space planet, whatever, there is something if you are human, which I guess if there's space planet, you're gonna if you are human, you have it deep in your soul. That you want to return the favor. If someone did something for me for you. And you can see that even in movies I mean, even like the crime bosses, right that the bad guy in the movie, if you did something good for him, he's gonna return Turn that favor. My might be a horse head if you do something bad. But, you know, it's just interesting. And I think that that is such a powerful thing. And you can do it, you can expand it way beyond networking, which is, of course what you're talking about. But I think that's such a powerful, powerful thing. And it's so for some people, it's super easy, like, it's just water off a duck's back, it just flows naturally. Other people, they have to really work at it, because they are self absorbed. And they know that give them credit credit, they know that I'm probably right in the middle. I'm mildly self absorbed. Don't answer that, Gary. And, but I do have an inherent desire to give, right? That's, that's me. But some people I've met, it's just man. It's like, there's a couple of guys like that in my business group that I'm always like, that's who I want to be when I grew up just because they're givers, right? Just their, their nature is giving and what a great place to be. Sorry, I've stolen it again. But I think that that is I just love that.

Stephen: 41:02

I think you're, you're spot on, I think there's a there's a sweet spot in that to kind of add that caveat in there. I don't remember who said it, but it's if you were on like a scale of one to 10 Give the take and one was a taker, and Tim was a giver, you want to be an eight, if you're a 10, as a giver, you're going to take advantage of if you're an eight, you're still gonna get, you're still gonna get taken advantage of it as an eight. But guess what, like, you're gonna be giving away so much that there's just so much benefit to that. For me, personally, there's a lot more happiness involved. If I'm giving somebody something that directly impacts them, I think that is my favorite thing about leadership at the end of the day, is that if I can give so much that somebody gets better, somebody improves, heck, if you if I lose an employee, because they've gone to take a better role. That's great. That means that we succeeded, you know, I hate to lose good people. But if they want to start their own business, then that means that you've been successful. And so just just for me, I'm inherently more of an introvert. If I could sit at home all day, I probably would. So it is sometimes work for me to do that, as you were saying. But I think that really giving everything is just a lot more fun and more enjoyable in that process in that journey, no matter where you're going.

David: 42:08

So I'm in C 12, which I've mentioned several times on the podcast, which is a Christian business group, Christian business owners are in this group to to learn how to run their business. And one of the things that's been surprisingly consistent is how hesitant a lot of business owners are even in that group to mention or to pronounce that they are a Christian company. Now, because they're ashamed of it quite the opposite. But they don't they know that when you put the noose on there or whatever, to a lot of people, that is the sign of a sucker. And they will try to take advantage of that because the Oh, this guy is getting, he's got to be nice. And so I'm going to take advantage of that. They just sat talking about that given thing, they think, Oh, you're a 10 on that given scale. So I'm going to take advantage of that and they got so tired of it that they kind of have to dial it back. That's just a sad truth. But that's the kind of remind me of that when you're talking about the the guys who gets the doormat as Gary said,

Gary: 43:06

I Stephen, if anybody wants to learn more about Exeter, Exeter building compass show off? Or you Stephen Dunn, how would they reach out and how would they get in touch?

Stephen: 43:17

So Exeter has their own website, Exeter building.com is the best place to look at plans, you can get in contact with our business development manager through the website. If you want to get in contact with me, I probably have Instagrams where I've done the most content over the years, which is SDN 90, I'm starting to force myself to get into YouTube, because it goes back to the whole giving, I want to give knowledge that I've had that maybe I've been afraid of sharing the past. And so I'm starting a YouTube channel. So under Stephen Dunn, just be about sharing kind of what I know, might not be great, but hopefully some person getting something from it. And then just one person I've succeeded. So

David: 43:57

hey, we know all about making substandard quality content. Don't worry about the

Gary: 44:01

annuity for years. We're gonna include your links, we'll include the links into the show notes that will go under this substantive video on YouTube and then in our other podcast, distribution centers. And then

David: 44:17

how's that for promotion, Christy, you like that?

Gary: 44:22

If you want to reach out to us, you can do that as well underneath this video, leave a comment or you can email us at Hello at the big pixel that net or you can also get in touch with us through any of our social media platforms to

David: 44:35

well with that we're going to sign off thank you so much David for joining us. It's been a lot of fun. You know most of these have a theme I'm sure we were we were just all over the place. So whatever you want to get out of this hope you got it but really enjoyed having you.

Gary: 44:52

It was a really good conversation. Yeah.

Stephen: 44:54

Steve, it's easy when when you can do that. So I appreciate gentlemen. enjoy talking to you. Have a go Well