Third Generation Home Builder - Carrying on the Legacy

This episode of American Builders features Chris George III of Chris George Custom Homes. 

We discuss: 
- The founding story of Chris George Custom Homes
- Working with family 
- Building for scale vs building custom 
- The nuance of custom rural building projects 
- Why its hard to be a community builder and a custom home builder at the same time 
- The future of Chris George Custom Homes 

Learn more about Chris George Custom Homes: https://www.chrisgeorgecustomhomes.com/

Presented by TradeGuard: https://tradeguardins.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:01

American builders. There is a dream. One brick, one beam. Building the American Woo. Alrighty, welcome back to American Builders. Today I'm here with Chris George of Chris George Custom Homes. Chris, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. So let's start. We start everything with a background, but I'll kind of tee you up a little bit. This is a third-generation company here in Kansas City. Um, been around since the 1950s. But give the audience an understanding of who you are and how your company came to be and how you came to kind of be the owner operator of it.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Yeah, so I'm Chris George III, actually. So my grandpa uh was senior. He started uh Chris George construction in the 50s, and he had 12 kids. So he you know took all kinds of different jobs. He did some commercial, he did some uh uh a lot of residential, built new homes, uh, but did a little bit of everything. There's still buildings in downtown Aleta that you know I know that my grandpa built. And so, you know, a lot of his boys worked for his company. Uh, I think some of the girls probably helped in the office too. But my dad ran framing crews for him uh for a long time and or for a couple years when he was very young. And then my grandpa owed him, so so goes the story. My grandpa owed him some money, so he gave him a couple lots uh that he owned as payment. And then my dad went off, took those lots, and just went off on his own. And then my grandpa retired a few years later after my dad had, you know, kind of had things humming and came to work for my dad. So we always say third generation technically, our LLC started in 1976 with my dad, Chris George Jr., uh, going off on his own when he was 21. And then grandpa came to work for him. So, you know, it's all been kind of a cohesive transition, but technically two different companies.

SPEAKER_03 2:04

And when did you, obviously, it's a family affair, you know, did you always know you were going to come in and take this over? Walk me through some of the foundational stories of working in the business and kind of how you got to the point of where you are now as the co-owner and and kind of the main operator.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Yeah, so uh, I mean, we started working, my brother and I started working for the company when we were very young, uh, probably 10 and 12. We started working like three days a week, half days, you know, as we always joked that it was glorified babysitting at that point. Um, you know, I don't know how productive we were those first couple summers, but we're in there sweeping houses out. We did all of our trash work internally back then. So we had a trash truck and you know, we would scrape houses out, pick up rough ends, just cleaning, you know, we call them as uh the trash trash monkey position. And we did that for a long time. Uh, and then we moved into like the finished crew. We started working on our finished crew and learning some, you know, light construction skills, spent some time. Uh, my brother spent some time on a framing crew one summer. I laid sewer line all summer. So just kind of different stuff, different facets of the company uh that we worked in all through uh junior high, high school, college. Uh and then my brother and I both went to St. Louis University. Uh, he's two years older than me. And when we graduated, we both just came to work for the company uh full time.

SPEAKER_03 3:30

I mean, I think the the foundation there is probably pretty key of getting started. You said 10, 12 years old. Now you have your kids coming into the fold. Talk a little bit about that because it seems like something you're passionate about of you know, the the work ethic that you can instill in young kids when you get started early and kind of how that's impacted your work ethic today. Can you touch on that a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Yeah, I mean, I think for me it was just like no matter what, you you had to wake up and go to work, you know? And it was like it wasn't something that my dad really talked about, but we just understood that was the expectation. Um, little things like when we were younger and we were getting a little bit older and we're kind of worried about what clothes we were wearing finally, you know, you get to that age and you're like, oh, I want to wear, you know, back then it was what Abercrombie and stuff like that. And uh what were some of those other ones? I don't know. I can't even remember some of those brands, but you know, you wanted to pay more money for your clothes. Well, my parents were like, All right, if we're not gonna buy, you know, Walmart clothes for you, you're gonna pay for half of those clothes. So when we go, whatever you spend, you got to pay it for half. And so it was just like we liked working because it gave us the opportunity to go buy baseball cards or nicer clothes or you know, whatever kind of stuff that we wanted to buy. And so I think just by learning that, you know, hey, you got to work for what you want. Um, again, wasn't really talked about as much as just kind of shown to us. And I think that that's something that, you know, my brother and I want to make sure we instill in our kids.

SPEAKER_03 5:01

Well, I think you made a great point there at the end. It's not necessarily that you have to talk about it, you know, it's like you tell a kid to do something over and over again, the natural kid reaction is almost to like reject that. Whereas the proof by experience and you know, modeling by showing what you're doing probably has a much longer lasting impact. Let's dive in to the actual business now. Before we get into the specifics and all kind of the growth and operations questions, just give the audience an understanding of all the different services that you guys do. If I were to come and hire Chris George, custom homes, what should I expect?

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Yeah, so we have been around since 1976. We've built almost 3,000 homes. Um, used to be uh my dad built the company on production building. Uh so we would do have a model in several different communities and build you know seven or eight different floor plans at a time and just you know really built a lot of homes. Uh, some of these lists behind me are the top 10 lists of permits pulled in the city. And, you know, we were always on that list for 20 plus years. So now our uh Caleb and I kind of over the last decade plus have changed really what we do as a whole. Um, we have transitioned fully into for the last 12 or 13 years, really, fully into you know, custom home building. So what that can look like, we do a lot of teardown rebuild in northeast Johnson County, old Leewood, Prairie Village, Fairway, Westwood. And uh we also do a lot of custom rural building. So someone's got five, 10 acres in Lewisburg, or we're doing one in Cleveland, Missouri right now. So those ones can be really spread out. Um, but we just like that stuff. It's it's every job's unique. Um, it's um, you know, it's just a different took us a while to understand all the differences that go into those. My dad had always done some custom homes over the years. Um, so we had experience in it, but it wasn't what we did fully until probably the last eight or nine years. Uh, we took a transition over, like I said, maybe last 13 years. In the last eight or nine, it's been like that's what we do. Um, and so, you know, it's taken a lot of company uh restructuring in some ways and stuff like that to really uh be perfectly set up for this. Um, so it's been a bit of a transition over the years, but it's what we focused on and it's what all of our kind of organizational change uh over that time has been directed towards.

SPEAKER_03 7:26

We're gonna get into the specifics of of why you made that change and kind of the results of that. But first, let's talk about the you know, running a family business with your brother. I'm in the exact same scenario, quite literally. My me and my brother own a business together. How do you guys think about, and I'm sure there's a lot of other trades businesses and home builders out there who are in a similar uh you know situation. How do you guys think about you know splitting up the roles, um, owning your own areas? How have you guys worked together? Um, and if you could just kind of provide some tips, feel free to speak directly to me if you'd like. Um, but your tips for running a business with your family.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Well, who who's older between you and your brother?

SPEAKER_03 8:08

I'm the younger one.

unknown 8:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Uh look at that. We got the younger brothers uh got got on the podcast.

SPEAKER_03 8:14

Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

We're the we're the face guys for the company. Um I think you know, Caleb and I are pretty lucky. We've uh spent our whole lives uh together. So even when uh we moved into a much larger house when we were like 14 years old with extra bedrooms. My dad kind of like Jedi mind tricked us. Well, I was 13, he was 15, and and got us to share a bedroom. You know, he was like, Oh, you're gonna get this huge room if you guys share this room. If not, you're gonna have these tiny little rooms. And so, you know, we've shared a room our whole lives, and then we went to college together. I mean, he two years ahead of me, went to the same college, went to St. Louis University, played rugby together in college, played football, played all the same sports in high school, and uh, you know, so it's like we've done everything together, we're very, very close, and we're kind of lucky because I feel like we have a and we hear this from people too, like outside people or people we hire that once they're around for a while, like we kind of have a complimentary skill set. So our you know, our lanes are somewhat naturally established. Um, there's still a few things that we could probably, you know, clarify a little bit better, uh, but it doesn't ever really cause us any any sort of issues. Um so yeah, we have we're lucky. I mean, we have like pretty clear lanes of like what we do. Um, you know, I do the majority of the sales and uh kind of you know customer satisfaction is kind of my big thing. It's like not that Caleb's not interested in it, it's just like my one of my very big areas of focus. Uh Caleb does a lot of stuff um with the kind of SOPs and stuff for the field. Um, we just hired a director of construction, so we're excited for that position to kind of take some ownership over that part. He deals with the lenders. Uh, I don't do a whole lot with that. He's more the development guy. Um, and then I do a fair amount also with the field. Like I'm overseeing jobs, like once they're signed, I'm still kind of overseeing them and making sure that the customers and our project managers are remaining aligned and you know the customers are happy. Uh, so a lot of what I do is sales and customer uh oriented.

SPEAKER_03 10:24

Got it. Yeah, I mean, I think having clearly defined roles is an important thing. Uh, complimentary roles is also super beneficial. And just from my experience, like a lot of people when I tell them I work with my brother, they're like, oh, I could never do that. And it's like, okay, well, then you probably shouldn't. You know, I mean, if you if you can clearly identify that that's not a good idea, then wouldn't recommend it. But fortunately, it sounds like we both have pretty good relationships there. Um, let's talk now about that transition from going to the spec houses, focusing on big communities and kind of large scale to the specific custom home builds. What was the thought process behind why you made that change and what has the result of that change been?

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Well, I think there's a couple things. So my brother and I both moved right after college. We grew up out south on uh we were on some land out here in South Lake that's actually where I'm sitting now because this is where our company office is on this land. Um, we moved into a house on 80 acres. Uh, like I said, when I was about 12, 13, he was 14, 15. And uh, so we, you know, we had always kind of built out south and out west in Johnson County, and we build in communities and everything. And then we started kind of up the level of communities we were building in. So we were getting more experience building the higher-end homes. We did that for 10 or 15 years, and then we, you know, my brother and I moved to kind of prairie village area right after college, and we started to see a few homes get torn down. It's kind of before the you know, the gold rush era of of uh that area of town, you know, when everyone started tearing down houses over there. But we started to see a few of them go, and we were like, all right, this is interesting. So I kind of just took a proposal to my dad and you know, said, Hey, here's what I think it looks like. Here's a house I'm looking at buying and trying it for the first time. And he was like, Yeah, go ahead. So we started doing that. First one went well and just kind of kept going from there. And before we knew it, you know, that's just what we were doing. We were doing a lot of teardown and rebuilds in northeast Johnson County. And then conversely, we also got a couple really cool custom high-end uh rural build jobs out in like Lewisburg and B. Cyrus and a couple other places back in the day. I managed those jobs, I project managed for 15 years or so, um, or 12 years or so. And it was like, you know, you learned a lot from those jobs, and I really enjoyed them. And so then we started doing a lot more of that. And uh that was just kind of a nice niche we've been in for you know a long time now. And before we knew it, that was just kind of what we ended up doing a lot of. Now, in the last five years or so, you know, since my dad's passed, since we've joined a coaching group and all this stuff and in a builder group, it it's been more intentional. All of our change has been a lot more intentional over the past five years. We were pretty good, I think, at an acting change before, but it's now just a lot more intentional and a lot more planned. Um, you know, hey, here's what we're gonna do in quarter one, quarter two, quarter three, quarter four, versus just all right, what are we doing next? Um, and so I think that that's been a big change for us, uh, for Caleb and I. Um, and we've kind of made the full transition at this point um to where that's really all we're doing.

SPEAKER_03 13:48

Let's talk about kind of the two buckets, teardown and then custom rural. So that first project you did, I guess we could just kind of focus on that. Walk me through that project. How how different is the process of doing a tear down and rebuild versus what you were doing before versus the custom rural? And like what are the things that somebody going it going into it for the first time, like where you were when you bought that first house, what are the things that they should know going into that?

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Let's say a couple things. Well, first of all, one clarity here or one point of clarity that for me is we do still build in communities. Like if someone comes to us and they want to build in the community, like we still do a fair amount of that. There's a fair amount of that on our on our project sheet right now. Um, and we still do uh some in-home communities or some in-community building on spec basis as well, but we don't have you know five model homes and all that kind of stuff like we used to um because we've kind of moved over and and changed what we do. And then the communities that we build in tend to be, you know, kind of requisite to what we're building in the other product categories because we found it's just hard back in the day. We kind of had our foot in like an entry level and then also higher end point, and it's hard to do both well. So we've you know intentionally made that transition. But I would say for you know, it's kind of two different things for the custom rural, it's all about site costs. So when you have like a plug and play subdivision, you know what your sewer is going to cost roughly, you know what your uh water and gas and electric are gonna cost. It's pretty easy to put a number on those. I mean, yeah, you can run into rock and there's some things in community and maybe peering that can certainly drive costs, but overall, your big picture on your utilities and excavations, like pretty projectable. Whereas in a rural build, you know, you might have a 400-foot driveway, you got a culvert at the driveway, you got a septic system. Is that gonna be, you know, a lateral septic system or some sort of a drip system or a mound system? And what do those costs? They're a lot more than a regular sewer hookup, I can tell you that. And then, you know, you're gonna have maybe a thousand-pound buried propane tank if you can't connect to gas, which a lot of rural lots you can't. So that's gonna be, you know,$9,000 instead of maybe a$2,000 gas hookup. So there's just all these things that can play into it and really drive costs on the custom rural that you wouldn't have when you're building, you know, a house in a subdivision, everything's kind of laid out for you. So there's a lot of hidden costs. People before they buy land, I always tell them, you know, talk to a builder, make sure you can afford what you want on that piece of land before you pull the trigger and buy something. And same thing for the teardowns. Uh, I mean, people see the prices on these teardowns and they're they are, and they just keep going up. And it's it, they're more expensive per square foot than than your in-community building. And a lot of that is the same thing, you know, the sewer lines. They we got to reline sewer lines to get the city to pass them. Didn't used to be that way, but the city kind of wised up and they're like, all right, we can kind of we can use these builders to update some of these mains and stuff, and you know, that adds cost. So a sewer line, you might have to get into the street to connect to the sewer line. Now you're tearing up streets. So all these things, they're just different. And the the cities, each city in Prairie Village, Leewood, all these cities, they have all these different uh codes that you need to hit that can really drive costs, you know, the amount of windows you have to have, the type of roofing you have to have. So you really just if you're gonna go into a build, whether it's a teardown or a custom rural, you know, I always tell people just I would highly suggest you use someone who's got experience in those areas because otherwise there's just a lot of pitfalls uh to not only pricing, but to scheduling and the way the houses come together that is just you know tough uh if you when you're doing your first one or first handful.

SPEAKER_03 17:30

I would have to imagine that kind of plays into why you said you can't do both, at least you can't do them both well. Um you know, talk to that a little bit. Was there a bit of an overlap there where you were trying to do both at the same time? There were some struggles and you had to eventually kind of cut the cord. Like, touch on that difficulty of trying to do both at the same time and why you eventually chose to stop.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Yeah, there's um definitely some difficulty. I mean, one of the things is subs, right? So you have your trade partners, and you know, if you're having them build that 150th square foot over here, and then they're building that 250th square foot over here, it's really tough to try to figure out how to make that work. And so if you want to find subs that can build these high quality, high-end custom homes, and then you also want to compete on price in these, you know, production homes where you have to hit a certain price point, it's just it's really hard to have one foot in each. Um, there are a few companies in the city that do both, but what I found is they have completely separate LLCs and they're using a fully separate. They might have a few sub-overlaps, but for the most part, it's like fully separate. And that makes sense to me. Um, if you're gonna do it, it just almost has to be a completely different business model. Um, and so that's why we made the decision to to go this route. And and also the the process and everything, too. Um, you know, everything's just a lot different. So if you're gonna be an expert in the teardown space or the rural space, you got to get your reps. And, you know, everyone's only got so much bandwidth. So in the end, we kind of made the focus to do those. And and also when I say custom, it doesn't just mean even in community, it can still be custom, right? You know, you're building something you haven't built before, or you're taking one of your plans and making a ton of changes and a ton of customizations rather than, hey, here's the model, you know, we're building that, we're making these 10 changes, and this is your price. It's a much more in-depth planning process, like the whole sales process with the buyer is just much more in-depth. I mean, sometimes we can put them together in three months, sometimes they take nine months. Um, it just depends. But that's not, you know, when you're doing a model and you're building off that, you can get those contracts together in you know, three weeks. Um, so it's just a much different process from front to back, uh, really in all aspects.

SPEAKER_03 19:47

I recently had a guy on who's got$50 million uh home services business, and he started with roofing, um, residential, and he said the exact same thing. Whereas they started to expand into commercial, they created a whole new LLC because of that exact reason you just stated the operations are different. How they pay out commissions to salespeople is different. And then they did the same thing for construction, gutters. And his advice to really anybody was hey, if you have a business that the operations are completely different, make sure you have separate LLCs, separate bank accounts. The bank account one, you can start to then sort of pressure test the profitability individually as opposed to those profits then getting mixed together and you don't know, okay, well, we made money. Well, would you have made more money on if you just focused on this one versus that one? So love that advice there. And it's the second time to come up on this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

Um, let's talk, that's great advice from that from that guy. And we're we're already thinking in the future about different you know, branches of the company that we could start. We we've already started a separate development branch of the company and all the same reasons. Yep. I agree with that.

SPEAKER_03 20:56

And that's that's not to say you can't sort of leverage the the brand name of Chris George, right? You can have the the Chris George companies with Chris George rural rural, I struggle with that words, rural homes. Um like he has he has DT companies and then DT roofing and then all the other sort of subsidiaries underneath that. Um, let's talk about the customer experience. My parents built a home and uh it's a kind of a similar thing, rural home out there with a couple acres. And their experience was not very ideal, uh, very long process. They ended up kind of taking over a lot of the GC work themselves. Fortunately, my dad's an architect, so he he knows how to do all that stuff. But just talk to me about the the customer experience and how you try to give your customers peace of mind in this process where they're putting up a substantial amount of money, sometimes sort of the it's the biggest investment people have in their lives. How do you help customers feel safe and secure in that process, especially when it can be a multi year process?

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Yeah, I think it starts with the sales process. Um I'm always tweaking, I'm always trying to figure out ways to do it better. Um, that's actually something that's on our Q2 list. I got a few ideas for how to improve our sales process. But, you know, I think there's so much education that has to happen in the sales process. And so what we try to do is do a lot of education um up to the point of what we call a pre-contract or pre-construction agreement. And then we put that agreement together based on everything we've learned about the customer. So we have like a questionnaire, kind of a feasibility questionnaire is kind of step one. It's like, okay, answer these questions, and then we can figure out is this project feasible? If it's feasible, if it looks like it's a good fit for us, then you know, we would schedule an in-person meeting, answer a bunch of questions, walk them through our process, show them what the end game is gonna look like. Here's what a pre-contract looks like, pre-construction agreement, and then here's what the end game looks like. So they can see how we get from point A to point B. Um, in educating people on allowances, you know, you're gonna have this long list of allowances in the pre-contract. There's gonna be a long list of allowances, even longer in the contract and the specs agreement. And, you know, you want to make sure they have an idea of what that means. So we try to take someone through a house and say, hey, we're gonna base your allowances roughly off what you're seeing at this house. So even if it's a different floor plan, you know, you know what$8,000 of plumbing fixtures looks like, you know what eleven thousand dollars of light fixtures look like, you know, because otherwise they're just numbers on a paper. And so I think a lot of it is education and walking people through it. Um, some people are building their second or third house, uh, that were, you know, sometimes they're building their second house with us. And sometimes they built two other houses and maybe it hasn't gone so well. So you have to just understand like what's the motivation, like what are they wanting uh in this process and what are the most important things to them? Because it's not always the same. Um, certainly price is a big one for people, but peace of mind is like probably, you know, second, they don't want to stress about it. And these most of the people we build for are busy and they got kids and they got demanding jobs. And so, you know, you want to do the education up front, and then once you get it to contract, you know, you want to be clear. This is this is what you're getting, and there's gonna be deviations, there's gonna be change orders. Here's how the prices can change. You know, there's only a couple ways, and I won't go into that right now, but we're a fixed price builder. So, other than these three ways, there's no way that your contract will change prices. Any price changes I get from vendors between now and the close of contract, that's for me to work out. You don't have to worry about that. Um, we've done some cost plus too, but I find there's just so much less stress on the part of a buyer with a fixed cost, and that's what we prefer to do. And then it's from then, once you start, you do that project kickoff meeting. You got your selections coordinator there, you got your um project manager there, the superintendent there, and myself. And we're just we're going through everything. We're going through communication. What that what's that going to look like? What do change orders look like? Where do they get uploaded? How do you use Builder Trend? Where do you find your documents in Builder Trend? And so we try to lay it all out for them. We give them documents and everything and walk them through all that. And then from there, it's communication. It's here's your on-site meetings, here's how we communicate on a day-to-day basis. Uh, you can always do additional on-site meetings by request, no problem. And here is you're gonna get a weekly update every week coming on Friday. It's gonna come from Builder Trend and it's gonna into your email and it's gonna say, here's what we did last week, here's what we're doing next week, here's the change orders that we've uploaded this week, here's the ones that have been signed, here's the ones that need to be signed still, and here's the change orders we're still working on. And that way it's keeping everyone on the same page. So if the buyer looks at it and goes, Well, I asked about you know enlarging my patio last week, I don't see that on your running list. Okay, perfect. Let's make sure we don't lose track of that. Um, and so yeah, I mean that's pretty much I think it's all about communication and expectations.

SPEAKER_03 26:00

Mm-hmm. Expectations, communication, education, all the all the Asians that are out there. Um yeah, I think the only other one go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 26:10

Sorry, the other one that comes to mind is when there is a mistake made, I always tell people there's gonna be a mistake made. There'll be at least one, and there'll be there'll be something you don't see. But when there are mistakes made, the test of a builder is not to build a perfect house with zero mistakes. I mean, I think that's almost just pie in the sky, though we're always, you know, trying to get there with quality control lists and that kind of stuff. But how does your builder manage that mistake? You know, they don't pass the cost on to you, they fix it in a timely manner, they make you feel heard, you know, those kind of things are incredibly important.

SPEAKER_03 26:39

Which goes back to expectations, right? Setting the expectation that there will be mistakes and then providing the education on how those mistakes are over or overcome. Um, that's great. You mentioned builder trend there, and I think if you could expand a little bit more on on just the technology side of things and and how you are communicating with them um and how you're using kind of technology to give them that peace of mind of where the project is at in sort of the timeline. How do you guys handle that?

SPEAKER_01 27:09

Yeah, so this is something we focus on a lot in the last couple of years. We've been with Builder Trend forever. We were definitely an early adopter, but I'll say until about five years ago, we were guilty of underutilizing the system. Um, and so we have expanded what we use Builder Trend for massively in the last five years and continue to do so. And it's it's we've reaped a lot of benefits from it, a lot of efficiencies. But in terms of the customer experience, they actually rolled out a beta test last fall, and we were part of the beta group to test their AI updates. So what happens is our supers are putting in these and our project managers, they're putting in these daily logs and they're taking pictures and they're putting in these logs saying what's happening, what's happening next. They're filling in their schedules, saying, Yep, this is done, this is scheduled for next week, all these different inputs that we're putting in, change orders. So, what it does is it takes all those inputs for that job from that week and it puts it into one AI update. Now, our guys know you got to manually look through that, you got to add a few things, you're gonna have to edit a few things, like some things it's not perfect, but it's pretty damn good. And it saves them a lot of time because before they were doing those email updates manually and it was taken, you know, a lot of times. We have them do them on our spec houses too. So, you know, they'll have to send out you know, seven of those every week, each one of them. And uh, you know, so it's been great. I mean, that that part has been really great to let the the buyer's gonna get all those pictures that got taken, they're gonna come in that update so they can see exactly what's happening. Oh, the drywall's hanging this week. Some of them drop by the house all the time, but some of them are too busy and you know may only get by every couple weeks. So yeah, we found that to be incredibly beneficial.

SPEAKER_03 28:45

That's awesome. I wasn't I didn't know about that update. That uh yeah, I'm sure there'll be a lot of ways AI will enhance that customer experience. Obviously, our focus is on the trade partner relationship. So let's talk a little bit about trade partners. Um and just in general, when you're looking at the thousands of trade partners and subcontractors that are out there, what are you looking for? And as a trade partner, what can people do to set themselves apart um and be more likely to be accepted or have their bid accepted?

SPEAKER_01 29:20

So this is a conversation that we just had today at our production meeting. Actually, we bring in all of our team. I think we have 18 employees, and we bring in our whole field team to have a meeting every Tuesday. And, you know, some of the things we talk about is sub-performance, our trading partner performance. You know, who is uh who is struggling? What are they struggling with? How do we need to coach them to, you know, help them improve? And then if they can't, you know, it's almost a performance, you know, review plan. It's like if you can't meet these standards, then we got to look elsewhere. And so, you know, we are not a builder that is going to shop and just go to the lowest, you know, price on every job. Like that's just not uh not at all a formula for success. We want to keep these long-standing relationships, but also, you know, hold them to a high standard. And sometimes that can be tough. I mean, if you've been doing it one way for 15 years with somebody and you want to implement some new quality control things that you want them to do. Hey, I want you to input this into Builder Trend. I want you to do your estimate through Builder Trend, you know, all these different things that we're we've been changing, you'll find that some of them, even if they're good at some things, they're just gonna say, I'm busy, you know, I really don't want to do this stuff. And you got a hard decision to make at that point. But, you know, for the most part, we have we have two of most of our subs, not all, but two of most of our subs. And they're trusted partners that we've worked for from, you know, some of them we worked with with for two or three years, and some of them we've worked with for 35, 40 years. Um, you know, or one of our HVAC companies we've been with for 40 years, our plumbing company, we I think my dad actually helped him get started, and we've been with them for 40 years. Um, and you know, those are important relationships to us because they know, you know, what we want to, they know what we expect. And, you know, so whenever you switch out of sub, it's you got to have your antennas up and you got to do your research. Um, I will say, you know, we're in a local builder group, and so that's a good resource to kind of figure out, hey, who's had experience with this company? You know, what kind of experience did you have? But in terms of what I'm looking for, I'm looking for communication. So, you know, we understand your schedules change just like ours do. You got to communicate it to us. We can't just show up to the job site and see that you didn't show up yesterday. And then ability to admit to a mistake. I think that might be that might be number one. I mean, we have parted ways with subs where it's just like it's clear as day they mess something up and they want to point the finger at somebody else rather than just saying, hey, I screwed that up, I'll be back, I'll fix it. And you know, that's just you know, it's just like our people we hire. Like, I have to have people who can take constructive criticism. I have to be able to take constructive criticism from buyers and stuff like that. How well otherwise, like, how the hell, how do you improve, you know, if you can't take criticism. So I think those are probably the main things uh, you know, that separate a good trade partner from, you know, one that's just gonna give you headaches.

SPEAKER_02 32:27

If we turn that around, the same thing applies on your side, right? As the general contractor, you want to be a quality general contractor that trade partners want to work with, and that includes all the things you mentioned there, communicating well, being able to accept when you made a mistake. Talk to that a little bit about how you know the importance of being a good general contractor and how that gives you a good reputation and the ability to attract good subcontractors.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Yeah, I think there's a lot of things there. Um definitely, like you said, communication and making sure jobs are ready when the subs show up. You know, we'll get those calls sometimes. Hey, showed up, I'm a photographer. You know, you wouldn't think a photographer is like really much of a you know, like an integral trade partner in a building company, but you know, he showed up and the job wasn't ready for him to shoot, and it was the second time like six houses that this had happened, and he was, you know, upset about it. And we had to talk with our guys about it and just say, you know, we gotta respect his time and make sure these houses are ready for him when he shows up. And it's the same with all those trades. You know, if they show up and it's half-baked, they're gonna be, you know, upset. And uh so that's a big one, making sure stuff's ready, making sure it does central doesn't get changed that you communicate it and admitting to mistakes. So if there is a mistake made, a lot of times in construction it can kind of be, well, it's kind of our fault, it's kind of their fault. I mean, there's a lot of those kind of gray areas, and so the subs, what I look at it is like when I have to have one of those conversations with our vendors or one of our project managers does, I want the subs who's gonna say, okay, what do we need to get done here? And let's figure out how to get there as a team. You know, maybe I eat something, you eat something, um, and we try to just get it to the end game that we both can live with versus you know, someone who's just gonna try to point their finger and say, uh, it wasn't my fault. But conversely, if it's our fault, then we call and say, Hey, we're gonna pay for this. You know, you have the wrong information or whatever might have happened. Go out there, we'll take care of it. You know, sorry about that. So you gotta be able to put your hand up if you're gonna hold you know then to high standard. You gotta be able to admit when maybe you fall a little bit short.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

Amen. Very wise advice, I think. We'll kind of wrap it up there. Summary of the episode. Provide good education, be accountable, set expectations properly. Chris, where do you see what's the future look like? Um, what is kind of the the roadmap ahead? Obviously, you've got some youngsters coming into the business. Where do you see the future of a Christian George Castanhomes going?

SPEAKER_00 33:42

Well, we're growing a lot. I think uh over the last year, I feel like my brother and I have become professional interviewers. We've made a lot of new hires uh with our growth, and we got some really great people in place. So I'm really excited about that. We have uh just started a director of construction, which is a position we never had. Uh did that internally. We looked externally, we decided on an internal hire, we kind of figured you might be the fit anyway, but we wanted to see what was out there. Uh and then we hired a project manager that starts next Monday and uh a new selections coordinator, and just so many new hires that are really great fit so far. So that's been great. But I think we're also working on uh 80-acre development out here. The land I'm sitting on now where my mom and dad's house was is so we're gonna renovate that house and then build another 60 houses around there. So we're really excited about that. It's gonna be a 165th employment overall park. It's gonna be a big you know legacy project. We we you know purchased the land from my mom. My dad always knew at some point this land would get developed. So that's a big part of our next, you know, three years probably, getting that all built out. Um, and then other than that, I mean, I just want us to be able to capitalize on any opportunities that come our way. So we do some development. Uh, we're developing some land in Spring Hill where we're just selling lots, but we're not, you know, own the land, we're selling lots. So I want to see that continue to grow. That was kind of a legacy project my dad started 20 years ago. It's a big plot of land. So I want to see our development wing continue to grow and focus on custom homes and uh and really just grow and try to my big thing is just I want to maintain, you know, and grow and expand on the reputation that my dad built. Uh I know my brother's the same way, just really important to us. I always tell our buyers we're not perfect, we understand that, but I'll be damned if we're not gonna, you know, do our best to try to do what's right and uh you know, always be upfront and honest and get stuff done as quickly as we can and you know end up with happy customers.

SPEAKER_02 34:48

It's beautiful. Speaking of that, where can people find you? Whether it's customers, uh trade partners, people looking for jobs, where can they find you and then who do you want reaching out?

SPEAKER_00 34:53

Yeah, so our website, uh Chris GeorgeCustomHomes.com, uh there's a contact us form on there. Uh that's great, goes right to me and my brother. There is uh our Instagram is a great place, Facebook, a great place to follow us if you want to see you know videos and content on what we're doing. Um that's you know, we've got three or four posts on a week on there. I think we're up to about four thousand followers on there. So that's something where you can see, you know, kind of up to date stuff. We're honestly probably better about keeping that up to date on our website, like in terms of inventory and stuff. Um and so that's definitely a great place to you can reach out there too. Um yeah, that's pretty much it.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

Awesome. Thanks so much for coming on.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.