Episode 14- Online Marketing, Moving up, and Luxury Vinyl Plank Prdduct Talk

In this episode of The Home Building and Remodeling Show we start off with a discussion about the importance of being visible online as a contractor.  It creates awareness and in today's world where everyone goes online to look for information and products. We then move into a discussion on leveling up in the construction industry and how each role brings on new responsibilities and challenges. We've added a new segment to the show for our interior company. In this segment we will discuss design trends and product knowledge.  We start this with talk about luxury vinyl plank aka LVP.  The estimator plays a big role in making sure a project is on track and can be stressful when bids are not met.  Product knowledge is important when it comes to LVP luxury vinyl plank flooring -Trending because of weather, cost, and easy installation - Use digital marketing to put yourself out there and get found by potential clients, - Use social media to share your story and show off your work and be accessible and transparent so that potential clients who are evaluating your work can verify it for themselves.

Transcript

 U1 

 0:00 

 The Home building and remodeling show. Let's go, 10s everybody to the home building and remodeling show. My name is Chris Kirby and I'll be your host. I am the owner of three construction companies on the Alabama Gulf coast. The show is about residential construction. We're going to cover topics of home building and remodeling. Are you thinking of doing a remodel or building a home? Are you a contractor looking to improve your knowledge base or grow your business? Have you ever done a remodel project or built a home? There were so many things you wish you knew or that you could have done differently during the process. Then this show is for you. We break down the process of building and remodeling and how to have the best results during your project. Whether you're a DIYer looking for tips, someone looking to hire a contractor to do a project, or a contractor looking to expand your knowledge base or your business, welcome aboard. Glad to have you. Stay tuned. 1s We kick off the show with my thoughts on home building and remodeling. I'll share best practices and talk about some of our experiences in business and out in the field. These shared thoughts and lessons learned are meant to help you on your very own journey. Let's go. We're going to talk about going digital as a remodeler, as a contractor. So a growing number of today's homeowners, as we know, the keyword millennial digital technology is evolving. So people want their remodeler to be up on things. Not only that, they're gonna find you online. So, as a remodelr, it's imperative to use things like Facebook, social media, digital marketing, different things like that. And like I like to tell my team is that, yes, it's tough for some people and it puts you out there. And if you're doing bad work, you're going to get called out for doing bad work as a contractor. But if you're doing good work as a contractor, you're community based and you're putting yourself out there on social media and things like that. Yes, you're easily accessible, but you're being transparent. And in today's world, anybody can find you online. It's a knock on your company if you're not able to be found online. In Pro Remodelr magazine this month, they talked about going digital to market your business. So that is something that a lot of the old school remodelers and builders aren't savvy on, but they're becoming more savvy because it is a necessity in our environment. So. 1s It says a growing number of today's homeowners are digital natives. That means they grew up with internet. So they grew up expecting to be able to find services online, google search, and different things like that. So what you've got to make sure to do is put yourself out there, project yourself in the digital world so they can find you via Google. So there's different campaigns that marketing companies, companies do for remodelrs, such as the Google ads and stuff like that. But if you work hard enough, you can be found on Google organically and as a remodeler. When people are searching remodelers near me, or kitchen remodel, or bath remodel, those are keywords and tags that you need to have in your Google profile. So what you need to do is if you're not like me, I built our website for the company, and I went to websitebuilder.com and I was able to build both of our websites. I have a little bit of a background using technology just from my Navy experience and stuff like that. So I was able to figure it out and do it, and that's how we're able to stay relevant online. However, if you're not, I would recommend finding somebody local being the keyword, somebody you can sit down with and express how you want to market yourself and stick to your niche. Right? Niche, niche, whatever the word is, right. Pick one and stick to it. So what we found out in our first year, we would take on any client, we just wanted to get into their house. So it didn't matter if it was hanging a ceiling fan. There was three of us, and we would go and hang a ceiling fan. And as our company grew, we started to really hone in on what we were good at. Another thing that we were always from the beginning, we were always taking pictures before and after again, even if it was just a ceiling fan, 1s we were doing before and after pictures, making sure that the clients were aware of what we were doing. And then I also went on to home advisor, and home advisor was hit or miss for me. I had some great experiences. I spent $26,000 our first year on home advisor, really putting ourself into a little bit of debt just so I could make sure that we were getting out there, putting ourselves out there, getting calls. And a lot of it was boot led calls that you would get on home advisor. So it. 2s But there were some that was really good for us. And again, it was just another avenue. So if you look at our home advisor, we've got 60 some odd reviews. And so it was important for us to be online for people to be able to find us. And home advisor was the hot thing. They were marketing very hard. Angie's list, home advisor thumbtack was another one, and so we were getting just bombarded with calls. The problem was a lot of those calls were not relevant calls, or they would go out to five, six, seven people at a time. And so you were really competing to be the first one to call. It's a little bit different. Now. The client has an opportunity to choose you through an avenue like now. It's called angie. They don't even do home advisor anymore because they had so many issues. But it was tough to really get started, and putting ourselves online made a lot of difference for us. Facebook. Facebook was big. Instagram was big. Insta. We were a little bit slower. Facebook, we've done a lot of good things, and we've gotten a lot of good business via facebook. We were in a world where a lot of contractors just wanted to do the work, get paid, and move to the next job. However, they weren't being found like we were. So that's how we were able to thrive in the industry and continue to have success, was because we were able to be found. We were accessible, we were transparent, and we backed up our work at every point. And so that was a big key to our success. And us still being here and being relevant today was we adopted the fact that we need to be online early. And now we move into shop talk. It's the portion of the show where I bring in a co host and we cover trending topics in homebuilding and remodeling. Hope you enjoy. Let's go. You. So yeah, really at this point in your career, you have went from being a construction laborer. Working with framers framing houses, you were a salesman, and then 2s you started doing some trim carpentry, some little bit of commercial remodeling. So dabbling in a little bit of everything that a remodeler does. And remodeling is a general term for I mean, there's all types of remodeling. There's all types of there's kitchen and bath. There's interior model, there's exterior. So there's a lot of different things that you probably started to pick up in the commercial side. And then you 1s had that little time in life where everybody has that, had some crisis moments and came out of that and then went right back into trim carpentry, then crew lead, and then came here and was a crew lead. And really, here, I think 1s you had the skill, you had the trade knowledge, the industry knowledge, and the background from all of that experience, and I instantly saw that. And then the sales part, right? We can't pass that part up because, honestly, you became, after doing our crew lead for a little bit, being a crew lead here, you became an estimator, 2s and you've always been a nice guy, friendly guy, able to talk to people. We had a lot of friends growing up and hung out and hung out with pretty much everybody, right? So all of that worked to your favor, and you became the estimator here, which, as a construction estimator that has a whole series of different dynamics. It's different than working in the field now. It really is. 1s It's a pretty it's. There's a big gap between working in the field and doing the estimating because then you start carrying a little bit of the weight on you, really for when you start to dabble in the management, you start to see, in construction, you start to learn a lot about the stuff that you don't really see if you're just a labor or just a crew lead for a company where they're out in the field and they're and look, 1s everybody in this office and I say this all the time makes money off of the backs of our talent out in the field. Right? And so I need good people out in the field working day to day. But the beauty of that, and you've seen it when you came to the offices, your awareness of the client and the client needs and the employee needs and the company needs increases tenfold when you take on a position like the estimator. Whereas as the crew leader, you are responsible for you and maybe one or two other people, and you know you're going to show up, here's the tools you're going to need, here's the materials you're going to need, and here's what I got to accomplish today. Right. And then you clock out and you get to go home. As long as you hit that goal, you're gone. You're not worried about 1s going on the estimate and putting the estimate together and the person calling asking, where is my estimate? So you really started to see all that stuff. Yeah. Especially the ones. 2s That call the next day, right? And we've talked about that, where it's a huge deal, a whole home remodel, and the next day they're like, hey, where's my estimate? Right? Yeah. So you started to see that in construction, as in any other industry, you have to have what I say is some emotional intelligence. You've got to be able to read people. You've got to be able to know and understand people. In any field that you're in, especially as a leader, especially as a manager. To me, gone are the days of they're just employees, and you treat them like robots. Clock in, clock out, do what you're told, go home. Well, you're not going to make it far in any industry if you've got that mentality, and that's that boss mentality. That's not that leader mentality. And when you become an estimator, the thing is you're sitting down and saying, here's how the job should go. You're kind of laying it out time wise. You're bidding for how many days or weeks or months are we going to put into this job? Here's how it should go. Here's how much that labor is going to cost. Here's how much minor materials are going to cost. Here's how much the materials are going to cost. So you're having a bid for all of this stuff. And the stressful part is now you turn that over to a project manager or to the crew leader, and in order for you to be right on your estimate, they've got to perform how you predicted they would perform. Exactly. If not, if you've bid something for two days and it takes three, we've lost money. If you've bid something for two weeks and it takes three, we've lost money. And so how do you feel? Because you're not going to get every bid right, and you're definitely going to learn as you go, and you're going to make mistakes. So you're going to undershoot. Right. 1s How did you feel? 1s If you're like, oh, my gosh, did you get stressed when they weren't hitting the mark a little bit? Like, if you lost money, if you're like, okay, this is a $10,000 job. We're at 11,000, and we still got work to do. Yeah, right. I mean, it still kind of stresses me out, 1s especially now that I'm working the. And stuff, and it's like because you got these some crews that are just they get through it. And then 1s when you're building these estimates, you tend to overlook all of the stuff in remodeling, right when you're going out. When I would go out? When you would go out. And now when Casey goes out, you can't see you don't have X ray vision. You can't see beyond that what the problem is. You don't see it until the moment they're like, hey, I need this where's it at. And then you're, like, looking at your paper, and you're like, oh, goodness, I didn't even realize that. Yeah, absolutely. And if you want to talk about stress, now, the company is like, hey, man, we're losing money. And the client is like, you said this would be done on this timeline. I've got movers moving stuff in. I've got whatever. Right, right. And so you fill it from every side as the estimator when you get it wrong. 1s And even the crews are like, dude, the scope of work you gave me, compared to what I'm working on, there's no way. Yeah, so everybody's just aggravated with you and then know what I mean? You're totally trying to be like, oh, yeah, I could do it. I could do it. I could have done that. Oh, my gosh, man, my dad is the worst. You know what I mean? Old school people where they're like, I would have had it done in three days, a three week job, me and one other person. And that's that whole walked in the snow mentality, and we still got the job done. I've never worked anywhere where they bought your blade. Yes. A lot of the accommodating stuff that we do now back in the day, who was happening. 1s Yeah. So that's the pressure that you started to face, but you've leveled up. So you've come into a field where you had no skill, no understanding, and started out basically with grunt work, labor work, and you were able to do that. You stuck it out at least six months. 1s Now we're going to move into the portion of the show where we talk interior design. We're going to bring in an interior designer, and we're going to talk trending design and products. Hope you enjoy. Let's go. 3s Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. Today I have one of our interior designers, Courtney, with us. Glad to have her. Today we're going to talk a little bit about what's called LVP luxury vinyl plank flooring. And then maybe we can start with an intro to your background. Courtney 

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 16:00 

 sure. So I'm an interior designer. I've been an interior designer for 16 years. I really love to talk about products, so if you know something about something, I want to know about it too. And that's why we're getting into product knowledge. 

 U1 

 16:12 

 And she has a wealth of experience, wealth of knowledge, and sometimes even from given our background, where I'm in the construction world, we know how to install, and we call, like, the schluter vendor, and they send a rep to train our people to our guys and girls to install the product. But when it comes to the knowledge of the product itself right. And how it performs, there are sometimes even some of the stuff that you talk about as a designer just from learning about product is way over my head. So 1s today we're going to give them some of that basic knowledge. And then as you're talking about some of the important things that a consumer should look for right. Especially when it comes to luxury vinyl plank, what is one of the most important things they should be looking for? So the most important with luxury vinyl plank is your millware layer. LVP is basically five layers of materials. The top layer is your millware layer and the bottom is your attached pad. The higher the millware layer, the better it is going to hold up and the more scratch resistant it is. Yeah. So usually it ranges anywhere from six to 20. There are some go as high as 40 mil, and that would definitely be for something that's very high foot traffic, perhaps more on the commercial end. 

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 17:35 

 For an average consumer, we're safe to say stay around 20 mil. 30 mil? 

 U1 

 17:40 

 Yeah. The mill is the actual thickness, so you can actually pick up a single plank and you can hold it. And the thinner millware, it will kind of just fall. Right. 

 U2 

 17:55 

 It actually kind of bends. So when you pick up a vinyl plank, if you put it into two hands and it can bend really easily, that also means it's not a rigid core. So rigid core is one of the other important things to know about luxury vinyl plank. So. Millware layer is actually that top layer. So in overall thickness sure. It ranges anywhere from 2 in actual product thickness. 

 U1 

 18:20 

 Got you. And does that affect price of the product? Yes. Okay. 

 U2 

 18:26 

 So as a consumer, I always tell people you want to look for a high millware layer and then a high. So let's say the millware layer is a 20 mil and it's 8 mm thick. That's kind of your good, sweet spot to be in. 

 U1 

 18:41 

 Sure. And what does that mean as far as wear layer, but also the scratch resistant, all of that type of stuff talk to us about. So, one of the things that it's trending right now, LVP luxury vinyl plank is trending. And 1s we're getting a lot of calls on the construction side, even when we're doing kitchen and bath. Instead, they're actually going a little bit away from tile. And they want especially on the beach, too, they want a floor they can put throughout the entire house. So why do you think that the luxury vinyl plank is trending right now? 

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 19:19 

 Well, especially in this area, part of it is because of our weather. It is a very hot, humid, wet space. We're due for storms. However, it's not just us. It's making its way throughout the entire United States. Sure. Part of the reason it is so trendy is cost. The product alone is very cost effective. It usually ranges from around 199 a square foot up to 899 a square foot. And besides the cost on it, it's also installation. You can install it using just a razor blade. Your hands. 

 U1 

 19:51 

 Yeah, and I can attest to just kind of at first when it came out, we were thinking, well, how do I install this? It seemed a little complicated, but it's not. It's pretty easy to install. And to actually cut the piece, we can literally score it with a razor blade straight across, snap it, and then you're ready to install it. And then thing when you're installing floor that you talked about price a little bit, and there's your upper end of anything that you do for us. We can install LVP rather quickly. Yes. So that helps the consumer with the labor price as well. It's a little bit different where we just basically would go in. And now, no matter what you do, your prep has to be on point, your floors still have to be level and things like that. Because this stuff will move. Yes. And if your floor isn't level, 1s there will be issues with it. Staying together, sticking together, stuff like that. Thanks for joining us today. As always, we are grateful for our listeners and your continued support. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Follow us on social media via Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Get more info at our website, www.thehomebuildingshow.com. And as always, remember who we are. The homebuilding and remodeling show.