World Millwork Alliance Podcast with Paradigm's John Wheeler

This episode was filmed live at WMA 2024. 

Stefanie and John Wheeler from Paradigm delve into the significance of networking within the millwork industry and the rising role of AI in enhancing business practices. We discuss industry trends, knowledge gaps, and the importance of personal branding in creating a lasting impact.

• Importance of events for networking and learning 
• AI as a tool for efficiency and improved customer experience 
• Understanding market trends and adapting business strategies 
• Need for training and mentorship for future generations 
• Enhancing customer service and delivery standards 

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👉 About Stefanie Couch & Grit Blueprint

I'm Stefanie Couch, the founder of Grit Blueprint. I grew up in a third-generation building supply business. I've worked inside dealers, distributors, and manufacturers. I built Grit Blueprint to solve problems I saw in our industry.

Grit Blueprint is a visibility, media, and growth partner for manufacturers, distributors, dealers, service providers, and leaders in the building industry.
We help you get seen, build trust, and become unmistakable.

Transcript

Innovations in the Millwork Industry

Stefanie 0:00

How do you make people want to come back from work? How do you become that top five or six options?

John 0:06

This show does a really good job of. It feels like the millwork industry.

Stefanie 0:11

I think AI obviously is something people are super intrigued about, also a little bit scared of.

John 0:15

AI is not going to replace people's job. You can now do the work of two or three different people.

Stefanie 0:20

Time is the most valuable asset we have in our business. You don't get more time, you can't buy more time. You can't hire more time. I'll be back next year, hopefully, and I would love to see new faces here next year. Welcome to the Grit Blueprint Podcast with Stephanie Couch. I'm your host and on today's episode, I am actually live and in action at the World Millwork Alliance. It is a great conference for millwork and door professionals and I was privileged enough to be able to speak and do the keynote address there and two breakout sessions on personal branding and AI. John Wheeler, my co-host for this episode, is a sales specialist at Paradigm, which is an amazing door configuration software for our industry, and he is also a millwork and door nerd, just like me. We have a great conversation about technology, why you should attend shows like World Millwork Alliance and some of the things that you can't miss about what's happening in our industry. Hope you enjoy this episode.

John 1:22

So welcome to episode three of the Door webinar series. We're here at WMA. You can see our lovely booth behind us and hopefully get a little bit of the traffic noise behind you.

Stefanie 1:36

Yeah, it's in San Antonio Texas.

John 1:38

Yeah, it is. We've been out on the Riverwalk, had an awesome event last night put on by Steve's. It's kind of their hometown show, so that was cool. Checked out the Alamo.

Stefanie 1:48

The whole Alamo was rented out. It was amazing. What a great event.

John 1:52

It was good stuff, lots of good people. They fired some muskets and scared the daylights out of me when was this.

Stefanie 1:58

I must have missed this. Was that at the very end?

John 2:01

No, they gave us a warning right at the beginning. The first one they did. They were like it's going to be really loud, and then they didn't tell you they were going to do it again, and again, and again.

Stefanie 2:09

I missed that.

John 2:10

Yeah, the other 10 scared the crap out of me, but yeah, we're going to do something Instead of showing things. We're going to kind of talk a little bit about what the importance of these gatherings are, getting together with some of the people. There's a lot of new faces here and there's a lot of old faces here, and you know why you would come. What we've kind of heard. Rather than showing anything else, absolutely let's do it Cool. The first thing that I wanted to talk about is you know, what do you see at the shows? There's a lot of. I feel like this one feels a little bit different. There's different people newer generations. You know the mom and dad are retiring and the younger generation is coming in. We talked to a couple of people last night. Ai is the question of the day, new speakers you did a couple sessions.

Stefanie 3:01

Yeah.

John 3:02

So that was good.

Stefanie 3:03

Yeah, I've never been to this show before, so I'll tell you it's really cool. I like this show because it's small enough to feel like you can see everyone, meet everyone, talk to everyone. You know there are a lot of these huge shows 9,000 to 10,000 people plus like IBS has, 70,000, plus there's obviously a place for that, but this is so specific. And to door millwork people and I think plus there's obviously a place for that, but this is so specific into door millwork people and I think that's great because it's it's really a honed in niche and you may not know everyone here, but it probably is somehow related to what you're doing if you're in the door window and millwork business. So I really like that.

Stefanie 3:37

And this show was in san antonio, which I love and I think it's a great city a really good turnout. I think I heard over 700 people really, yeah and um, that made don't quote me on that, but that was the number I heard. So I think that was a really good good showing for this and I did see a lot of people here, like you said, new people that are taking over the business. There's been a lot of consolidation in our industry, obviously, and there's a lot of people here that are talking about that continually having having that happen, so I think it's a really interesting show and a cool time in our industry.

John 4:08

I think so. I think so also, and it really this show does a really good job of. It feels like the millwork industry. It's a tight-knit group and new people get welcomed in. You know, just like anybody else, but you see a lot of people that you don't see very often.

Stefanie 4:25

And I think you know I did a keynote on Monday and we talked about future-proofing your millwork business and I hit on AI and branding and some things and then we broke it down and I think AI obviously is something people are super intrigued about, also a little bit scared of which I understand both of those perspectives and bit scared of which I understand both of those perspectives.

Stefanie 4:47

And as we continue to see more innovation in the industry, it does help us to get that next generation in, and I think it was pretty interesting to me that most of the people that asked me a lot of questions about this were not younger people. There are principals in these businesses that are running them and they are genuinely intrigued and really wanting to learn more and hopefully implement this into their business. So I'm always actually really pleasantly surprised by that. When I speak about AI, people come up and they wanted they've like, hey, tested it last night after you talked about your stuff, what do I do here? Should I do this? And I absolutely love that. So I think this was really cool to see that. And, again, you know people that are are owning these businesses for 50 years. They're still wanting to innovate and I love that spirit.

John 5:29

I think you said in an AI thing a long time ago AI is not going to replace people's job. You can now do the work of two or three different people in the industry. We heard it a lot People walking by asking how ai fits into our tools and things. You know they're they. They want to do more with less. It's kind of the one of the shirrits of the the industry and that's just one easy way to do it and I think that, just talking about it, you know we, uh, we were just asking like what would you want it to do?

Stefanie 6:00

yeah, what did people say? I mean, what were some of your top answers?

John 6:03

be able to hire a new person and have them tell the telecomputer what the quote needs to be, and it just turns into that.

Stefanie 6:10

Yeah I don't think we're that far from being able to do something similar to that, especially on items that are not super custom. You know, someone wants a six panel fiberglass door that's smooth, that's a 3068 in sling. I mean there's no reason why you can't say that type of stuff. Now, if they need a 24-inch transom, that's a segment with 12-inch legs then maybe you got to get a custom quote on that. But I do feel like we could do something more general. You guys are already working on that and I think that's one thing with talking about the labor shortages and the time crunch that people have.

Stefanie 6:42

I actually spoke a lot about this this week. That speed to lead, the amount of time it takes you to get back a quote, to get back an order. Those things matter in our industry because time is the most valuable asset we have in our business. You don't get more time. You can't buy more time. You can't hire more time. Yes, technically you can hire people, but at the end of the day, if you can hire people, but at the end of the day, if you can go in and pop this in a quote tool or in chat, gpt or whatever, and save time, it's advantageous for the customer, which is what we all want to do, is win that customer experience, get them stuff back quicker and more accurately, which is what we're doing with these tools I just thought about.

John 7:21

You said lead and I'm thinking about somebody you know. Let's just say some door manufacturer has a thing on their website to fill out, a lead. They check a bunch of boxes and they say the I didn't want a 3068 fiberglass painted in black. And they do all of that instead of like them going through and configuring. Anyone configuring it that hits some sort of a chat bot and just like, builds the quote and sends it back to them yeah, if you have it all in there, there's no reason why that couldn't be configured.

John 7:47

So I'm not gonna be able to think about anything else let's just have that.

Stefanie 7:51

Let's have that develop by the time we get back from the plane there, john, just knock that out on the way home, no big deal. But I think it is really cool to see people implementing this, to be experimenting with it. And also I'll say about AI is that you don't have to boil the ocean so you can start with one thing, use one tool, highlight one thing. You can save time on that. You really want to fix and figure out how you can use AI to do that.

John 8:16

We had some people say like I'm just going to start by having it do my emails for me. That's what I told people. It takes me two hours to do. I can do it in 15, 20 minutes, and now I have two hours to do something else.

Stefanie 8:26

It's amazing, because what can only you do? There are things AI cannot do. They can't right now AI can't sit here and talk to me customers like you can. It can't take a customer out to dinner or lunch, so maybe use that two hours to do networking every week to really optimize your business, I think that's a.

John 8:45

That's a good point, I think, having knowing what you're going to replace that time with, once you figure out how much time you can save. Um, you know, maybe you focus on, but not the other thing we heard use. Having it be used for is like augmenting skills or like training stuff. That's it. So if you want to hire, think of how expensive a person is that can do takeoffs been doing it for 30 years. But if you can, if you can even find them.

Stefanie 9:10

I mean up with the salary, like if you can even find that person is impossible.

John 9:14

Basically, at this point, so if you can augment it with tools of any sort or, you know, maybe you focus on training with your extra time, things like that and one thing that I think is interesting is that you can actually use the ai in the training.

Stefanie 9:26

So I think people are asking about that. I'm curious, john, as you heard people talking this week, were there any training topics that people were hitting on very hard, uh, that they would love to see, and what were they?

John 9:38

it was, uh, doing takeoffs. Okay, everybody said that it didn't matter what you did molding people, door people, uh, lumber people. Everybody talked about takeoffs, um, and then just understanding with somebody new to the industry right, I've talked to the successors to companies that are just getting into millwork. They came from other spaces and they're like I need to get up to speed because we're focusing on strategic stuff. I got five years to learn this, enough to where my parents can retire. You know how do I get up to speed on it? Like, how do you pick the right door? How do you uh, um, how do you hire people in the in the industry? You know what, what matters most to people? How do you deliver it to them?

Stefanie 10:19

what do the customers want?

John 10:20

yeah, what's important to them, what the and the service because I think that that's one thing that sets this apart is there's a lot of customers that that we have that if you order a hinge it shows up the next day, yeah, and that it doesn't, they'll send a whole truck to your facility to deliver a hinge, and that blows a lot of people's mind. It's kind of the Amazon model, but it's what everybody's been doing in this industry for a while.

Stefanie 10:45

Yeah, I think that that's going to change as well. You know, figuring out what do people really value, and from a customer service perspective, we are seeing that most people in other industries they want the Amazon model, they want it next day, they want 500 options. But also actually at the Paradigm Conference, Zonda was speaking about how that works with when you get 1,500 options. Truly, what happens is that the top five or six are the ones that most people choose, and so how do you become that top five or six options in a sea of sameness? And that's when we I talk so much about branding and how do you stand out? And customer experience goes so deeply into that brand experience of how do you make people want to come back from there, make people appreciate and value your brand and it's not price, no, it's definitely not Almost never.

John 11:40

You can't, can't be twice as much. But, and I think the the other thing that we heard is, uh, figuring out what, what is going to be popular. Right, there's product development, and when you hear that in this, in with doors, specifically, there's, it doesn't feel like there's life-changing stuff that comes out. But as the you know it used to be, everybody wanted a black door for the last while and barn doors were a huge thing. Now we heard a lot that, you know, based off of data from their, their systems, they're thinking about okay, it's, it's raw, almost unfinished, right With like a wax finish or something like that. But they want to see the, the wood grain, and it's not just any wood grain, it's like vertical grains, clean lines, things like that.

Stefanie 12:22

Yep yeah, it's actually really interesting because I believe that wood grain molding and that older, more architectural look it's going to really resurge. Um, because I think that trends are so cylindrical and that was really popular in the 80s, the 70s and the 80s and it's been a good 30 years and I think it's coming back, which is good, because you can make more money on stain grade doors and moldings than you can finger joint primed. So that's always good for those people and especially like I know one of my amazing clients, magby. They have a really awesome molding shop where they do custom knives and they can make any historical molding or any custom molding. They can match it in any species right there in their shop. Crazy, it's really cool, and so I think that's amazing because they have people like that.

John 13:14

They can do those types of moldings and I think you know one of the things. Going back to what the new thing is, you know there used to be three or four wood door companies that were imported from like south america or things, I think. This time I think there's 12 that are presenting, and I think so that speaks to that. That's the case. They also have a molding package to go along with that. But you think of, uh, uh, you know it used to be like frame port wood. You know the ones that everybody used, and now there's so many more of them.

Strategies for Millwork Industry Success

Stefanie 13:44

Yeah, there's a lot of names at all these shows always here and IBS that I've never seen or they're new to the industry and that's always really interesting to talk about what they're doing and see their names and their logos for the first time. Talking about data trends, so we're talking about how you see that you know popular is going to be the next trend. Tell me a little bit more about what you think, because I know you love data. It's your love language data is. Tell me more about how Paradigm can help people see that and how other tools can really help them really know what's going on in their business, because I think a lot of times we fly pretty blind. We have gut feelings and go off up and unfortunately sometimes those gut feelings end up as big piles in the back of the warehouse on our six month and over aged inventory list. So how do we use your tools to not do that?

John 14:32

So looking at what's being quoted and not necessarily what's been ordered, because everybody knows what's been ordered, but that's basically in the past. Once it turns into an order, that's what was being done. So you can look at you mentioned, like, having 1500 options. So if I offer 45 different species, we can tell you, based off of what's actually being quoted over the last, however long you want to look at it, the trend for the top five species and then you can move those to the top um. You know you find places to source them, so the cost can come down, lead times come down you bring them into stock if it's something that you're selling a ton of instead of special orders and then what?

John 15:09

what are they finishing it with? That's right, because then you got set up. You know, finishing can take a really long time if it's five or six different steps and we talked to, uh, some people, people yesterday that they will remain unnamed, but they're trying to figure out. How do you finish something faster, yeah, and how do you figure out based off of what's being quoted and ordered and how long it takes? Took us to do that, how long do we expect to? And comparing that and.

Stefanie 15:36

But it all comes down to service give people the right products and have it take less time and hopefully eventually those things will be able to be ordered online without having these huge processes with customer talking to a human and then that just shows up at their door or how, or at the you know dealer or distributor's door and then it goes to get installed. I think we're pretty close to a lot of our people in this industry. They're really trying to figure out that speed because they know if they can pre-finish something and have it to them in a week instead of four weeks or whatever their time is, it's a big deal.

John 16:09

And it's the same thing with machining and prepping the door and things. We talked to the guys from Caval and they came out with a bunch of APIs and things. We talked to the guys from uh, from cavall, and they, you know, they came out with a bunch of apis and things so that nobody has to. Once the order is placed, it just goes to the machine. Yeah, and you know that that might save a day, it reduces errors and all that, but it all comes down to to service.

Stefanie 16:28

So well, and cavall has so many amazing technology advancements that are coming out all the time. Their machines are like robots, basically, and I think they're going to just keep doing that, and every door shop I walk in is almost fully cavall machinery now, so they're definitely leading the charge and they're also.

John 16:47

That was talking to them. Um, and you know, they're focusing not just on selling new machines, which they cost a lot. That seems like a great idea, but they have so many machines out there. Yeah, this, the, these tools that we're talking about, have so much capability that's probably being underutilized. That happens with with any anything that you buy. Your car doesn't do everything that it can, but how do they, how do they turn on all these different features and allow people to do do different things and be more efficient and stuff. It's a focus of theirs.

Stefanie 17:17

I feel that way about my brain. They say you only use 10% of your brain capacity. I'd like to figure out a way to turn on that other 90%.

John 17:26

I feel like there was a movie about that I know.

Stefanie 17:28

Limitless.

John 17:28

It didn't end well.

Stefanie 17:29

I've been searching for that film my whole life, but it did not end well, so that's not a good thing, and I think I'm at about 2%.

John 17:36

We walked around, we went looking for dinner on the river walk and I knew there was a million restaurants. That was my number, it was a million, and so we headed out and we went left and I'm like it's all this way and everything was the other way.

Stefanie 17:55

So we walked.

John 17:56

We had a bad idea, yeah you don't want to do that, but I will, with all the confidence in the world, lead a team of people in the wrong way.

Stefanie 18:03

Piss. The sales ability have follow there. Well, I am really excited that we got to experience this show. I think it was probably one of my favorite shows I've ever been to. A lot of people I really care about were here that I haven't seen in a while, a lot of people I've never met that were amazing and great feedback on a lot of the things that happened here. So I think it was a great show, and the real gist of this is, if you are in the industry and you're not sure if you should be going to in-person networking events, if you're not sure if these conferences are worth the time because it does. It costs money to get here. It also takes a lot of time, which we've already talked about. How valuable that is. I think this is one of those shows that it is valuable, and there are multiple ones that I think are worthwhile, but I definitely think this is one of them. So I would. I'll be back next year, hopefully, and I would love to see new faces here next year.

John 18:53

A hundred percent.

Stefanie 18:55

Thank you for joining me on the Grit Blueprint podcast. If today's episode fired you up and inspired you, subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who's ready to level up. But here's the real question Are you ready to take bold action and build something extraordinary? At Grit Blueprint, we don't just create strategies. We actually create results. Whether it's building your personal brand, optimizing your marketing and strategy in your building business or scaling, we're here to make sure you dominate the industry and leave a legacy. Don't wait. Visit GritBlueprintcom to book a consultation and start making your moves today. Visit gritblueprintcom to book a consultation and start making your moves today. Remember, success doesn't just happen by chance, it happens by grit. Keep building and I'll see you next time on the Grit Blueprint Podcast.