Why the Design to Bid System Fails with Trapper Roderick

Reece sits down with Trapper Roderick of Roderick Builders to talk about why most custom homes blow up on budget before they ever break ground. They discuss the broken “architect first, builder later” pipeline, and how to pull the builder into design early so the scope, the money, and the build reality actually match. You will hear how Trapper wins work through real estate relationships, design-forward content, and tighter processes so profit supports quality instead of fighting it. If this helped, share it with a builder friend who is tired of value engineering after the bid.

https://www.instagram.com/roderickbuilders
https://www.roderickbuilders.com

Show Notes:
00:00 Design and budget together
01:15 Trapper’s builder roots
03:43 Utah growth and demand
07:50 Why residential design
12:21 The broken bid system
14:59 Winning clients first
17:58 Networking and content
25:26 Profit funds quality
30:09 Systems and Adaptive
34:41 Principals on site
41:18 Invest in yourself

Find Our Hosts:
Reece Barnes
Matt Calvano

Podcast  Produced By:
Motif Media

Transcript

0:00

I think design should be involved in every decision from the beginning to the end, but at the same time, the finances also need to align, which is why, from the very beginning, the architect, the client and the builder all need to be together. That is a team effort. It all ties together. Welcome to builders budgets and beers. I'm Rhys Barnes and I started this podcast to have real conversations about money in the building industry, the wins, the mistakes and everything in between. I believe builders deserve to feel confident about their finances, and that starts by hearing from others who've been through it too. This industry can be slow to change, but the right stories and the right tools can make profitability feel possible. Let's get into it. I trap mics are hot, baby, we're rolling. Hey, how you been, man, I've been doing good. Thanks for jumping on the show. Okay, so I always like to just give a little background. And honestly, for the listeners out there, if you're tired of that, like, Okay, I always give a little background. Put a little give me a DM on Instagram or something if you want me to switch it up. But trapper, give the audience a little background on yourself, who you are, what you do, what you build, where you build, just some of the basics. All right, cool. Well, my name is Trapper Roderick. I'm a fifth generation builder. Came from both my mom's side and my dad's side of the family. One was a big commercial family, big commercial contractor. The other was more small boutique. Just still did nice stuff, but more of a boutique shop. So I always knew I was going to be in the industry, or knew when I was going to get into it, because I wanted to do it my own way. So I studied architecture. Bad route for me to go. I was too much of a builder to be an architect. Still design homes a little bit, but, you know, nonetheless, ended up graduating in front well, didn't quite graduate. Still have three classes left, but there you go. Okay, University of Utah, for like 11 years, the Dean still thinks I'm a graduate. It's whole ordeal, right? So I spent a lot of time in the University of Utah. It shaped me to who I am today. Started a few small companies while I was at the University of Utah, I helped kind of build out their entrepreneurship program. When you met me, I mean, everybody was talking about my jackets, right? So like, I was at aberdasher for 10 years, so I made some suit shirts, overcoats, things like that. So not a lot of people that know that side of me think I'm a contractor. It's kind of funny, but you have a contractor at heart, an incredibly well styled contractor. Design is coming through. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, that we're gonna talk a lot about today is design. Okay, great. So, yeah, I mean, and then, you know, really, I kind of started doing some stuff for my dad, off and on, really, in like 2012 whether some project management, whether it was some financials contracts, financials, contracts marketing, and my dad was la based, and I was never gonna go out there full time. And so I started my life. Why were you never gonna go out there? I mean, there was always like, you know, if some, you know, if I got a contract, like LeBron James, right, you know, like, I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it, right? But sure, LA is crazy. I love Utah. My family's been here since, like, the pioneers came across the plains, right? So, like, I am, like, the most Utah man you can possibly get, like, my family lineage and and Utah is just growing so much, and I just see a lot of shit going on here, you know? And I'm like, well, like, at least, let me have a little bit of my stamp on it. Like, I want to make sure that it's still a beautiful place, because it's kind of being overtaken by other parts of the country coming here. And, you know, I wanted to stay beautiful, and I wanted to stay the Utah that I grew up in, totally overtaken in what sense are you saying? Like, design overtaken in what sense? Well, I mean, it's just it's busier for stuff, obviously more people, obviously more people, a lot more people. It's still a conservative state, but it's definitely not as conservative as what I grew up in, which is fine. I mean, I'm all about diversity, but, um, yeah. I mean, you're just getting a lot. It's a melting pot, which is a good thing. Melting Pot just because a people want to come to Utah, melting pot because of religion. I mean, all these different things. But, yeah, it's just changing. It's busier. There's a lot more. You can't just, like, disappear, right? Like, I used to be able to run in, in the back, streams and rivers and just spend all day out there and totally in the designs, I mean, you're getting so much of the same, and it's because, like, you got a lot of big money in here. I mean, Utah's a Utah, a lot of people think, like, Oh, that's a small market. No, yeah, it's small market from a population perspective, but from an economy, Utah's enormous. I mean, it crushes almost every state in the entire country, except for obviously, the obvious ones, right? That's, do you know the numbers? What are like in terms of, like, the economy? Like, what are the numbers on it? We should look but I would be okay. I can, I can state some, some other facts that would back those numbers up, though, yeah. Like, if you've ever heard of silicon. On slopes is that port city? No, it would make sense if it was. But silicon slopes is like what divides Utah County, which is like BYU territory and youth and Salt Lake County, which is Utah territory, college football or college basketball, but it's like this big tech mecca that kind of replicates, you know, Silicon Valley, of course, it's just a massive you got Oracle there, you got Adobe there, you got, like, your vivints, I mean, and some of the people that have been bidding on the last piece of land there, it's insane. It's not the most limited commercial land in the entire country. I would say we've got the best airport in the entire country, which still has another seven years of development on it. You have the expansion of Deer Valley, which is another massive undertaking from a project like, if you would like skiing, like, there's not a better territory. Now, when it comes to size and scale, I think they're bigger than veil combined. Nuts, pretty crazy. And the list goes on. We've got, we've got a an inland port that just came to Utah. I mean, economy wise, we are massive, yeah. So I literally just looked it up. And I mean, this is from the AI overview on Google, but it says, Here we go. Utah's economic data shows strong growth, with the state ranking first in GDP growth and having the lowest unemployment rate nationally in recent reports. Key metrics include a nominal GDP over 300 billion, a 6.1% growth in personal income and a median household income that ranks highest in the US when adjusted for price parity. Yeah, so pretty small. Yeah, you know, it's got room to grow. Yeah, not a big deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's nuts. Okay, so yeah. I mean, obviously, like a ton of opportunity. It makes a ton of sense why you would want to stay in Utah and leave the Roderick name on where your family came from. Yeah, exactly. And then, I mean, if you like commercial construction, my great, great grandpa started Jacobson construction, which was 100 plus million dollar a year company, you know, yeah, dude. Okay, so it is in your blood. Okay, so you obviously, I mean, for those of you out there, trapper, where do they find you? On Instagram, at Roderick builders. That's the easiest way on Instagram. I mean, we have a small YouTube channel. I'm gonna be doing some more shows like this. So, I mean, I'm out there, yeah, you're gonna have Utah growth on your YouTube channel. If you type in Trapper Roderick, you're gonna see a lot of silly images of me, like modeling male suits and stuff like that. I would stay away from my name. But so point being, guys is you need to look up trappers Instagram, because they're doing incredible work. And that goes into my question of, okay, so your grandfather built 100 million dollar plus a year commercial firm. You obviously, you're both your folks were in construction, and you chose residential. Yeah, that's gonna stem a lot from working with my dad, right? So, of course, on my Roderick side is the residential I framed a lot for my dad growing up, I helped run framing crews, even, like, in high school. So, like, I knew what I was doing when it came to putting things together. And then, I mean, my dad was really young. I think my dad's like, 53 years old. So, like, not a huge age gap, right there, right so if I wanted to spend time with my dad, I had to go to work. And so I was constantly around houses. He was a general contractor for residential homes. And he went out to Los Angeles, and I want to say 99 or 2000 and started building like some big dog houses. Some of the names I could say, not supposed to say, many of them, but yeah, I mean, we're talking celebrities, movie stars, athletes and just pure luck, a guy that was an architect, and they had, like a building firm, kind of that they didn't have, like a qualifier. They wanted to come in and be that person for him, and then, you know, he ended up eventually breaking off. So I got to be around these these jobs and these homes that, you know, most people would never even dream of, like that might not even really even exist. You would only see them, you know, on the rich housewives of Los Angeles, or whatever it might be, right, right? Selling sunset type houses. I mean, several of our homes have been featured in these type of publications, but never once has it ever mentioned, you know, Robert pillars. So, yeah, we keep the businesses separate. But that is what really sparked me wanting to be in residential because I got to see something that not many people get to see. They get I got to see the emotional side of residential most people. You go buy some track home from some builder, and it's customized, right? And it does it just check marks the boxes as four bedrooms and four baths, and it's got a movie room and kitchen with a 10 foot Island, all right. Cool. You check marked all the boxes. But I like to be able to control essentially what somebody is, essentially what it somebody is feeling from the moment that they walk in the door, love it, or their eyes are gonna go. I want to know the things that they're gonna feel. I want to know if that wall is gonna feel heavy on them, and you know if it's gonna appeal to women. If it's gonna peel them in. And so I just really loved the design aspect of residential, which is what led me down the architectural path. And, like I said, that was not for me, dude, I love it. Okay? So that makes a ton of sense. And even with your dad, you know, tapping into just call, like, the ultra high net worth extreme luxury market like that, is incredible experience for a very young person, right? Just to see the potential, oh my gosh. I mean, it's, it's kind of hurt me in some ways, right? Because like, I don't know, I don't know how to build like, if, like, if I wanted to go build myself a home today, like a modest home in Utah, which sadly is a million dollars these days, or slightly more, I don't think I could just because you're just, so what do you build that? If you don't mind sharing a cost per foot? Sure, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a really wide range, and it'll totally depend on, like, what neighborhood we're in, but you know, some of the listed owners will know some of these neighborhoods, so like, we're building in, like, a Heber Valley, we're probably building anywhere from 450 on the low end to like maybe 600 on the high end in Heber, but then five minutes up the street, if we're in like a promontory or to hey, we're probably building at like a 750 to 950 it doesn't mean that it doesn't exceed that, but it's some of the requirements from The arcs. It's some of the things that you would just do to fit in in the neighborhood, you know, start getting into automations and things like that, right? So it's a wide range, but we don't have a problem being in kind of any of those categories. But you know, if I was to go buy a house, you know, I would need to be at, you know, 253, 50, a square foot meal. Totally, totally. Well, go ahead, yeah, it's not that I couldn't build it right, like, but I'm just tainted because, like, I know, all the other cool things you can do, of course, of course, pockets and automated shades in in, in techies, fun stuff and and heated floors and just in seamless, you know, stone across entire walls, you know. Because why wouldn't you totally, totally well? And I think, I mean, you hear that it's not uncommon to hear builders say, I couldn't, I couldn't buy what I build, right? Or I couldn't, I couldn't build for me, right? Yeah. And so I think that's, like, totally common. But in terms of, just, like, your passion for design, like, where do you think, like, the big opportunity is for builders to start looking at emphasizing design? Well, I mean, let's just start with, there's so much opportunity, but let's start with, like, the system that's broken. You and I have talked about this before, and all too often, a client, someone who wants to build a custom home, they buy a piece of land, they know that they're they meet with a real estate and they buy the land, and then, you know, especially in this wealthier category, they're they're going to the architect first, and then the architect designs them a home that check marks all their boxes. It's probably super amazing, right? Then what do they do? Well, who should build it? Right? Because more than often it's second second homes here. So they don't necessarily know the market. So the architect sends it out to bid to 510, builders that he knows. Well, then at that point, it's just a bidding war, right? Because all the numbers start coming back, and they're all way more than the client expected, because they didn't involve a contractor from the beginning. So at that point, quality relationship, all that stuff, it goes out the window. That's a broken system, because now they can't build the home they wanted that they thought they were just designing. And so they end up having to go with the lowest bid, which then that guy's not motivated to do a great job. He's pissed by the end, he didn't make enough money. He didn't market himself. Now the contractor doesn't have enough money to go and market themselves, and so they take the next best job when they're when they come to the end of it. So let's fast forward to how can that? How can a builder being involved in design help builder meets the client first. They should be involved in that design process. If a client works with the architect, first, they need to get so they don't design something that they client can't afford. They need to get a builder involved, which means that the builder just needs to understand design and not just say, Oh, I'm going to build what's on the plans, because we're the ones on the job site every day. If right, at least they should be on the job site every day. In my opinion, if you're on the job site every day, you might notice something that you're like this just doesn't feel right, right? And if you feel that, I believe it's your responsibility to let the architect on the client know, right? Okay, well, I totally agree. I'm just I'm hearing a lot of this conversation, and even like so I did an episode with Alex mulctine out of lions car just north of Boulder, doing really high end stuff, very bullish on like pre construction, and working with trades and architects and design and interior, all that stuff in the front end. Why? Is it okay? It might be simple to understand from, like, the consumer's buying standpoint, to start with the architect and then get the design and then go into the builder. How do you shift that, like, tactically? How do you start to get in front of the consumer as the builder and then introduce the architect? So the architect and builder are together from the jump, yeah. So. Mean, I'll tell you what I do, and by no means is my system perfect. It has plenty of things that need to be refined. Sure. Yeah, I have never, in this, in the Utah market, had an architect bring me a job which is really sad and depressing. I need to change that ASAP, sure. Well, I am meeting every single one of my clients first. Okay? I make sure I am educating people like that. I take time. If somebody is looking at lots and I know a bunch of realtors and they want me to go walk lots of them, I'll take the time. Obviously, that takes time, and it should charge money, but you know what? Like this is such an important life decision for them, and I know the market, I'm the Utah homegrown boy, right? Like I might as well spend some time with them, right? Even if it's just to help and I don't end up getting the job ever. So I start there. I make sure real estate agents know who I am and how I'm going to take care of them. You know, I'm not going to be paying their 3% fees, but I have a lot of creative ways to work with them where they can make money working with me. And I make sure when we have open houses, all the agents are there. I I like working with with agents like you and I are working together now. Like, there's not one agency that's better than the other, there's agents that are great, right? And so I start there, and then I really educate myself on the neighborhoods, right? Like, Sure, why this neighborhood is better than this one, or why this one's a better fit for this customer than that one, right? Because every customer has a different need, and in our market, they're just coming here. They want, they think they want to ski and ski at home, and then they realize there's so many other amazing things in Utah, and so it's just my job to educate. You know, totally okay, so a big so I'm hearing a lot of like, building strong relationships with agents and brokers, yeah, and again, being like a true subject matter expert, arguably, like, more so than even the agents and brokers, yeah, a little bit of, like the neighborhoods and like the product that's moving, and like the different types of classes that are in there, go ahead, yeah, because they, I mean, the agents, they see dollar signs, right? Not every agency's dollar signs. They see dollar signs. They say pretty houses, but they're not the ones that are studying the arc review, or have to, you know, I mean, in understanding all the little, teeny things that have to go in to designing those homes. And so that's, that's another thing. Just take the time Read, read the arc review process for every single one of those high end neighborhoods. Because you might, if you did get a bid set of plans from an architect, you might not realize that, oh, well, no foundations would be allowed to be exposed that all that has to be covered in a rock. It wasn't on the plan. And now, now you're shorting yourself on your bid, right? So take the time understand them, because now you can be an expert and you can educate someone. Why this house that looks the same? This one's 450 and this one's 750 totally, but, you know, totally okay. So, and then even on the education point again, this is like all tying back into, like, all tying back into, like, the emphasis and importance of design, right? And it's like in terms of the individual. So when you say educate, you're obviously talking, like, walking lots, right? And like, knowing your market extremely well. How else are you educating the consumer so much so that they're starting with you, as opposed to an architect? I mean, I definitely go to like, networking events, right? Anytime I can go to networking event. What types of networking events? I mean, it could be, it could be an alumni dinner for the University of Utah, for, like, my fraternity I was in, right? So, like, it's not like my clients are going to be there, but now my peers, people that I respect and that they respect me, can see me as a market leader, someone, I mean, contractors, in general, the most stubborn people on the planet, right? And they're so stuck. I'm not that way, right? Like, am I a stubborn person? Sure. But like, I know that there's the way that I do. It isn't the only way. And I think generationally, so many times something new comes up and somebody doesn't want to change. And so I make sure people know that about me. I'm not perfect, but I'm going to try really, really hard to do something great social media. I mean, is a huge one. I mean, I think you've even seen I've tried to step up my game over the last, you know, so long, just to make sure people know that they can reach out to me and that I'm not just like, only going to take someone on that wants to build this house right here, you know, right? I'm just here to genuinely help, you know, right? Well, and totally, and I think so I love, like, there's the networking standpoint, I would love to know, just like, is there any concrete attribution that you could tie back to that networking effort? Right? Essentially, just saying, like, I've, I've, you know, went to fraternity alumni dinner, and my buddies, who are, I don't know, professionals in the area. Have you ever, like, won a job off of that, like, second, third degree network, kind of, there's some that are close, okay, sure, but they influence the deal, yeah. So, I mean, like, I had a call today, right? So this used to be the president of our fraternity. He's a, definitely a mover and shaker in our in our market, from our he's a real estate agent, right? Called me today. He's like, Dude, your contents been crushing. I didn't know you were building this stuff. He's like, how come? I didn't know this. He's like, Well, we have this little thing where our agency, like we want to promote three or four luxury home builders in every market like him. Can we meet? Can we come see your home? Was like, so, like, that's, that was just an hour before you and I hopped on this call. Like, that's gonna turn into something hands down, right? Totally, there used to be this agent that was up in Promontory, and he's one of my favorite, I'm gonna name drop, Michael Swan, like, because he's so awesome. He was setting every record in Promontory. I was like, I was like, a kid. I was 18, I think I first met him, right? Yeah. And he would always invite me because he he was never better than me, right? Like he treated me as a peer and an equal, even though I was so much younger, he saw that I was eventually going to be somebody that was a an industry leader in this market. And so he would invite me up to every single one of his open houses, right, even though it was another builder, and he was the agent, and I obviously had no money to buy a$9 million home, right, right? But you still invite me, and I would go, well, now to this day, he's brought me three deals that are probably going to be spec home deals where we partner with a landowner. Love it like that's great because, I mean, I love that like I would, I will always build custom homes, totally back, homes that were custom, homes that just happened to be for sale, like they are quality, pushing the limit, Type homes. I mean, that's my bread and butter. Yeah, totally well, and so that's beautiful, right? So there is, there's that long tail attribution, right? It's like, it's kind of like, similar to the sense in the real estate game of it's always like, just like sales in general, right? It's like, it's, like, it's, you're not always going to close everything on the front end, but you need to be front of mind when people are ready to pull the trigger. Right? Like, you need to be in their face, in their mind. Like, what is like? I finally am getting ready to build a $9 million home. I remember looking at Roderick builders product right on Instagram. Or I remember my real estate agent talked about this at a dinner that we were at something along those lines. Yeah. Those lines. Yeah, yeah, exactly, I mean. And I probably one of, I think our biggest hold backs on on people is like, they see how nice our stuff is, and so they obviously go, Oh, they're too expensive for me. No, just call us, you know, like we're not, we're not better than anybody, right? We know how to do it. Doesn't mean that we can't totally, totally well. And I think that's the like, even to the social media side. You know, I'm just gonna like, plug the contractor coalition Summit, because they do a lot on, like, social media and content and stuff like that. But I think the one comment that always resonates with me out of those conversations is that, like, the entire purpose of social media to your point of almost, like portraying this like bigger version than you actually are, or maybe like, like, limiting to yourself to a to a more luxury market than you might like be doing. The point of social media and investing in that is to obviously showcase your design, but for the consumer to feel like they already know you before they've ever met you. Yeah, right. Yeah. It's really interesting. You say that because, you know, I've looked at just like my social media over the last 30 days, and anytime I put my face in front of it or talk, it's like 10 times the engagement, 10 times the shares, 10 times the saves, yep, and people want someone that they can resonate with Exactly, exactly, you know, Going back to how can design right? Be good for builders to get engaged with. Builders should talk about the design. They should they should get on their social media. They should talk about why this architect pissed them off, and not that they're slandering the architect, like, hey, this architect pushed the limits, and it's frustrating because I don't know how to do it, or I now I got to figure it out, and I'm gonna find a way to figure out how to do it, right, right? So talk about the design, and it can educate people on making really smart decisions 100% but even, even, again, to the point of like, having the consumer of the content feel like they know you before they actually have met you, that it's not just like people building homes, right? That's architects, that's designers as people in the area, and if they know that they're working with a builder that is emphasizing design and recognizes the importance of, from a consumer's outcome standpoint, getting involved early. Now you've got architects that are potentially seeing your content, and they're like, hey, like, I know at the beginning of my sales process, I have a client that's wanting us to design a house. We think that you would be a great builder for this, or we want you to, like, get involved early. Like, how can we get this going? That's where you start to change the dynamic, right of just like the commonality, because, again, you think about the sales cycle for the consumer, makes all the sense in the world. Consumer wants to build a house. Well, step one, design. It Right. What do we want this to be, who designs houses, architect, right? And it's just natural for the consumer to think that building the house is the second step, because you how in the world could you build something if you don't know what it is? Yeah, exactly. So shifting that nomenclature, that that line of thinking, is important. Go ahead. Yeah. No, you're dead on. I mean, all of it, you're just absolutely dead on. And I just feel so bad for so many contractors out there. There's so many people who have poured their heart into being a great builder, building a great product, but they never learned the business side of it. And so, like, I'm so glad I did other businesses first, and I'm not perfect, right? Like, we have plenty of things that we. We have to figure out. But, you know, we work on the business every day, along with building our custom homes, right? So I just hate seeing these guys that, you know, they've been doing it for 40 years, and they really don't have anything to show for it. And so I think that's why these discussions, you know, working with architects, working with clients, agents, it just matters so much so they can learn the other side of it and actually make what they deserve for what they risked, right? 100% making, making what you deserve for what you risked is important, but I it's not always about and I find this commonly with with builders of like Mark Williams, is a thing on this to where he's like, one of his first projects, where he made, like, what he was actually supposed to be making, he felt like wrong for it, right? Like it didn't. It didn't set well with him, because it was so much more than he'd ever made. But it was like, the reality of this, like, because of the risk and you ran your job, right? Like you made the money you should. That doesn't mean you have to take it all home, right? Well, it doesn't make you a greedy person. No, not at all. I mean, you think about this too, right? Like, if you, if you make what you deserve for it, and a client calls you in four years from now, and there's an issue, whether that issues your fault or not, you can go help them and take care of it, right? Totally. Rather than be like, Screw those guys, like, I barely made a penny, right? Totally, you can be happy at the end of the job and be willing to spend a day with them on the lake and really love and take care of your customer. You can buy them a fancy gift at the end of the end of building their home, like, because, because you were also taken care of. And so you want to return that. And so any warranty stuff that comes up. Or, heck, you could even market along the way. Rather than just being grinding every single day, you can get another one of those jobs, rather than be like, Oh, I gotta go find the next shit. You know, totally, totally, and even more so on, like the, like, the warranty side of things, and, like, sure. Like, if you make what you're supposed to, you're if you made what you were supposed to and you go back and fix something, it's that much more comfortable, but even more so, you can start looking at it and taking the money that you made, recognize the issues that happened in the project, that you could potentially forecast. Warranty work being on, invest the money that you made into developing processes and hiring people to prevent that from happening in the future. So now, when it comes up, you're like, Okay, we're good. And that's the profit side of things, right? It's not about these builders and, oh, we're supposed to be making a 10% profit and running the $15 million a year business. So I should be netting, you know, $1.5 million it's like, it's not like taking home and dumping it into a house. It's like looking at the business and it's like, shit. I can go, I can now focus on building the pipeline to hire the project manager or two that I need, or building out an org chart and hiring the estimator, or getting the heart or whatever. Go ahead. Yeah. I mean, the reality is, like you, the money should be going to your business, right? It shouldn't be going to you. And should we make a comfortable living? Sure we should right, like we work our asses off and our families more than anything. I think contractors, families, subcontractors, general contractors, they do suffer. I mean, like, I praise my wife for the support she gives me. Like, I said, Hey sweetie, like on Friday this week, like, I'm going all night. She's like, why? You know, I'm like, well, because, like, we're coming to the end of the job, and I want to make sure it's dialing I need to spend some time in the house, and I need to, like, be almost living it for a day, and so I can make sure it's perfect for the client when we turn it over in a week, and she's like, okay, like, I get that, but that's a sacrifice to them, right? Totally. So, you know, I'm all about paying myself a salary, and if there's really big successes, cool, I get a bonus, you know? And if there are big failures, it doesn't mean that I get to pay myself left, because I'm on a salary, right? This means that that bonus is not coming and that we got to tighten some things up for some things up for a while. You know, totally, totally, um, so I love, do you actually say no, do you actually live in the house for like, a day or whatever before you turn it over? Because I think that's brilliant, by the way. Like, it's not like I'm actually sleeping, I'm working my ass off, right? Of course, that, like, there's always, like, that special touch thing that I'm just, like, I should just do that myself, right? And on this particular house, it's nothing crazy, but, yeah, I mean, I'm gonna spend all night there just going through, checking the lights. Like, I'm gonna be walking around. I do it earlier on, like, I check for squeaks and stuff like that. Like, hey, you know, like, now the house is finished, it's settled. It's heating differently. There's other elements. There's big, giant chandeliers and stuff like that. So, like, I want to find if what, what issues we're gonna have, right? Like, because nothing worse than, you know, a week or two later, when they moved in, and you just have this massive list, you know, totally, and it's like, as a homeowner, like, you like, just finally get the keys, you move in and you like, you flip on a light switch and you have and you have no idea what the light switch does, and it's like, Dude, what the fuck is a dead light switch? And that's part of it, you know, like, I mean, because every home takes time getting used to, right? Like, unless you're doing, like, panelized lighting control, you don't know which does what. And there's three in a row which one does which, you know, I mean, heck, even my own house, I switched the one. I'm like, other one. You know? Yeah, we're gonna go through. We're just gonna label it, you know, it's not something that I need to spend a lot of time doing, but I want to do it. Zach, my partner wants to do it, so we do it, you know, yeah, totally, I love it. No, that's great. Okay, so you made a comment earlier that you guys work on the business regularly, yeah? What is like your top of focus thing that you guys are working on now. Well, Douglas Mead is one, okay, which I think you've noticed, of course, yeah, you're doing a great job. Okay? Number two is documenting certain processes, like to a macro level. So, like, I could hire somebody for a small job, right? Like, because I asked myself this question last night, imagine I had all the money in the world and I still wanted to do the business I do today, which I would what would I instantly hand off to somebody that I'm doing myself? And that was a hard question to answer. I love that, okay, which I don't, I don't have an answer for you, right? Not yet. I mean, okay. I mean, there's, there's things, right? Like, okay, cool. Like, I would do less of the social media posting myself. I would do less of the cost categorizations myself. I do less estimating myself. But, like, my estimating process is so much more complex than just handing it to an estimator, right? So I am my going down to like the What are you doing to work on your business? I'm going through in working on line by line item workflows of what that estimator should do, sure when I hire that estimator, right? And I do it because it's such an important part, some of the work we're doing right now is active stuff, right? Because we've kind of changed a little bit of our systems. Build a trend is a great partner of ours. We love build a trend. But yeah, adaptive, sorry, I said active earlier. Adaptive, you're good, you're good. Yeah, there's a guy who works for a company called active next door to me. So adaptive, adaptive has kind of changed a little bit of that. It's simplified it for us way better, right? But it's still getting used to it and changing some of those processes that used to run through builder train, and now we're running through adaptive. I mean, that's just some things that I'm personally working on. I want to understand it before I hand it off to our accounting team. That's foolish for me to expect anyone to do anything that I don't at least understand 100% well. And so it kind of sounds like you're in the era of just like, okay, you've obviously built a very solid business so far, but you're, it's almost like you're preparing for, like, the next wave of growth. And I think it's important to be reflective and look into your business and say, Where are the gaps? I now know how to do all these different things. How do I document this so that I can prepare and be successful with bringing someone in? Yeah. So I used to teach this entrepreneurship and marketing class at the U and I was like an adjunct professor for a while, and I would always say to like, the people like you got to you got to be able to pivot right like, I mean, this was to the students that already kind of had, like, business up and running, you have to be willing to pivot. And so I think Zach and I, we really, like, every six months, we kind of like, throw away the whole business model. Start over. Doesn't mean that we're implementing parts of it again, right? But we do that because then it makes us look at it with fresh eyes, sure, and just keep doing the same system over and over, right? Maybe that system is now more advanced now, right? We don't need to do some of the things that we were doing. Maybe we need to do the some of these things a little bit differently. So it's not that we're like throwing it away, but we kind of go at it with that mindset of of constantly pivoting, because if you're not pivoting, you're not growing, and you're just stuck in your ways. And there's a quote. I actually have a video of it for my dad off to send to you. But he says something like, along the lines of, it's like a great contractor is not always the one who just built something it's sometimes built something great. It's sometimes how quickly they're making decisions and how quickly they're finding solutions to the problems, right? Totally. And if you're not, if you're not pivoting, you can't always do that, you know, totally, totally. If you're not pivoting, you can't find the successes and the failures that are going to impact the speed in which you can make the decision. Yeah, yeah. So, and I love that. So, like, in terms of, like, the pivoting side of things, right? And I mean, obviously you're being dramatic, of, like, scrapping the home business plan, and, like, starting over, okay, well, so tactically, like, what like, when you say you're scrapping it, like, what are you scrapping? And then, like, like, what are you doing? I understand the pivoting. I understand an example, right? So, like, we used to have a of project managers, right? We wanted a project manager on every job site, and we would, for the most part, one of us would visit every job site every day, but we would go meet with our project managers. Well, we've we sat down, and just like we do about every six months, sometimes it's. Late at night when we happen to be on one of these late night job site extravagant, we kind of just talk about the shit that we're not happy with, and we decided that we weren't gonna have any project managers anymore, which is kind of crazy. That's kind of crazy, right? No project manager. So you don't have project managers right now. Zero. You don't have a project Who do you have? You got someone? Well, I have a partner, right? So, yes, him and I co project manage. I'm doing more of the the the office side and the business growth, and he's on site every day, and I'm on site like every two days, right? Or every other day, right? Homes? Are you building? We only build like five or six at a time, right? We could build we can handle up to 10, right? But it's not crazy, and we always make sure that we're we're like, okay, we're not going to be taking jobs down in the valley anymore. We're only going to fall in Wasatch and Summit County, so we can get to all of our jobs within 15 minutes. That was a pretty major scrap, totally. But it's a core belief of ours that one of the principles of our company should be on site every day. And I will tell you, it makes a massive difference in our fit and finish versus the next guy who's building at the same price point. You can walk in one $10 million home and the other, and you can see a difference totally so Okay, so is the intention to and of course, you guys will pivot, but like is the intention right now, or like immediately, for to have a principal on the job. So then you can start to better think and articulate what the Roderick builder product looks like. So then you can process it, build it, and then manage someone to step in. So you can scale what they're thinking. Eventually someone will step in. Yes, but just like how I was, like maybe going down, like, what that estimator should do every day Zach is going through, what should that project manager do every day? Right? Lovely, into such a deeper degree than what you would ever learn in construction management school, right? Like, how are you treating it like it's your baby, and even then, like, we still always make sure one of our principals is on site every day. There's just, it's just foolish if you're at risk for that much money, whether they're smart homes or custom homes, and you're selling these clients that you're going to learn. Clients that you're going to love their home, just like they did when it's the largest investment of their entire life. You know, we owe it to them to be on site every day totally well. And even when you talk about, like, finishing out the home as a principal, right, is like, you can just tell the quality and the difference in it being so designed forward, like, that's the stuff that's important. And the only way that you can get an employee, someone who is not like an owner of the business, to care to that level, is to set the expectation with them and have that expectation be clean and aligned on and they know exactly what that means. Because, just because trapper, or is it Zach, is your partner, Zach or trapper, like they're it's not like what they're doing is novel, right? It's not like what you guys are doing is like, impossible to train or like, set expectations. Or, like, set expectations around for someone else. It's not and, you know? And right now, we're a little bit busier than normal, and so and my dad just finished that house, actually, and so he's out here in Utah doing some other jobs on his own, but he's also acting as one of our principals on site when Zach or I can't be there, right? And he's he's now carrying that forward because, and I kind of got that a lot from my dad, because he was always like, the one man show. Had a very small team, but yet he was building 100 million dollar homes. But he literally was on site every day, all day. That's insane. Ran his business from there, but he was only ever doing one or two homes at a time, so it worked for him, but I saw what a difference it makes when he builds these and so I'm like, we have to have something like that, right? Totally, totally, he helps us with it. One thing that I see, and we can wrap this thread up, but one thing that I see when there's like, the it goes over like principal, I'll call it principal led project management to like staff or employee led project management is if you're not extremely tight and process oriented and set insane expectations and have like a level of accountability and buy in from the team, what you essentially build as a home builder is a bunch of mini businesses within one bigger business, and you're getting a huge spread and difference on, like, the quality of product and how it's being done. One project manager is, like, essentially, like, full autonomy on the project. They're running things the way that they would if they don't have expectations and processes and and ways that they need to be doing things. You start getting all this, like, the spin and this difference, and then it's kind of hard to, like, label it as the business's product because, like, the business was so far removed and the expectation wasn't set. Yeah, totally. I mean, I think some, you know, a lot of people you know, look at like, Brad lever, right? Like, oh, he's, he's just, he's killing it because of his social media. No, no. The guy, anybody, doesn't matter the level of business that you've built like they should be striving to have a business that operates the same as his does, right? Like he has built a team that truly works together, whether that be a project manager or a social media person or a director of construction, they talk and communicate together, where so many contracting businesses the project manager. Does his job and doesn't talk to anybody else. The accounting does their job and doesn't talk to anybody else. That's not how this business wasn't work. They need each other to be efficient, right? If a credit card swiped, the accountant needs to know what was it swiped for? Totally you have to have that communication. Or there are just massive failures, 1,000% and I think that's where you know, even like design was kind of the thought the topic or theme here is the design is the well, correct me, if you think this is wrong, but the design or the finished product is just the outcome of all of that alignment and communication, while design is typically viewed and looked at as like a front end conversation, yeah, I mean, I think it's well, in my opinion, I think design should be involved in every decision from the beginning to the end, but at the same time, the finances also need to align, which is why, from The very beginning, the architect the client and the builder all need to be together, because that is a team effort to make sure that the architect understands how it can be built and the accounting and who is paying for it. It all aligns, right? I mean, all ties together totally without each other. 100% okay, so we'll, we'll wrap the episode up with and you can take a second, but what would you leave the listeners with that is, like, the most important thing that they need to emphasize or they should focus on, knowing that they're all gonna be in different stages of business. What's the most important thing they should be thinking about? Invest in yourself. Okay, absolutely. I mean, every single day. I think we all have high aspirations when wake up, of like, what we can accomplish in that day, and the likelihood, if you're highly motivated, motivated individual, like I am, like, you're not going to get all that stuff done. But never stop believing in yourself, because one day, one of those tasks will become easier, one of those hurdles might become one of the biggest blessings in your business. And you know, so many people work and work and work and grind and grind, and then they retire, and they've worked so hard and they've saved their money, but now they're all too old and too frail to actually enjoy life. So believe in yourself. Enjoy your life as you go about it. Like, if there's a builder coalition, I, oh, I don't have time for that. I got this job. No, make time for it, because it's fun too, and you'll learn something. If there's, there's someone invites you on a ski trip. Like, try to make time for it. Like, there's, there's so much, so much beauty in the world, and there's so much going on, and you never know what could come from it. So like, Don't be reckless, but like, believe in yourself. Like, everything can be an opportunity, and everything can be a learning opportunity, and we're capable of way more than what people think. I love it 100% Trapper Roderick, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on builders budgets and bears, I appreciate you, dude, thanks, man. I really appreciate it. And miss you. I hope to see you soon. We'll see you soon. Don't worry about that.