So I sat there and I thought to myself, wow, what an impact, not smiling had
Welcome to builder nuggets hosted by Dwayne Johns and Dave young. Hey, our mission is simple, build freedom. We are a couple of entrepreneurs turned business coaches who have dedicated ourselves to helping our builder remodeler clients create the most rewarding businesses in the industry. My co-host Dwayne has been a successful builder and remodeler for over 30 years. He's seen the highs and the lows. From the beginning though, Dwayne has been on a quest to find a better way to run a contracting business. In 2016, he found that better way. That's how I met Dave, a lifelong entrepreneur and visionary who measures his success by the success of those around him. He reached out one day with a formula on how to transform my business and the rest is history. Since then, we've teamed up to help hundreds of contractors like you build better businesses and better lives. Now we've decided to open up our network and share our secrets so we can start moving the needle with you. It's collaboration over competition. Each week, we bring together industry peers and experts who share their stories so that we can all build freedom together.
(00:59): Our guest today is now a regular part of builder nuggets nation. He debuted with us last year on episode number seven, free estimates are too expensive, which consistently ranks as one of our most downloaded shows. That's good stuff. He has a similar mindset as Dwayne, always for a better way. Today is going to share with us how embracing technology can improve your business and help elevate the industry. It's my pleasure to welcome back friend and colleague Paul Kawalski with Paul Kawalski builders here in Charlotte, North Carolina. Welcome Paul. Hello friends. Good to be back. Thanks for having me again. Yeah. Looking forward to it. So I have to ask, has there been any traveling or fun stuff lately skiing? I don't think I saw you down at IBS in Orlando. So you must have been doing something. Yeah. So I've, I've been skiing discovered Idaho skiing, which is fantastic. A small plug for McCall, Idaho, wonderful little town with two gigantic mountains with plenty of snow, plenty of back country skiing. So really excited for that. And you know, you opened up a can of worms when you mentioned skiing because I I'm heading out to salt lake city here pretty soon and gonna hit up park city in deer valley. So I'm a sucker for a skiing conversation. Dwayne,
(02:17): Also showing that you're doing some things right in your business, cuz you've got time to go out there and do that sort of stuff. So, you know, kudos to you for that. Thanks man. Thanks. Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, happy to, happy to change topics to skiing. If we need to if we run outta technology, I can always talk cool ski stories. So you and I would both go down that rabbit hole. I was just back from the ski trip as well. So why don't we just give the, all the, the audience, a refresher Paul and, and tell us all again about your background, your current business, about your revenue, your team, and all the all the essentials we need to know to get the lay of the land on Paul Kowski here absolutely. Okay. I'll, I'll do my best on this. So we're a design build firm with in-house architectural designers. So that's our basic business model. We focus on remodeling. We do some new custom home builds, but we really have a niche for large scale remodels. And in terms of how we, we run our business, we do use EOS entrepreneurs operating system which has been fantastic. We implemented that about two and a half years ago. And it's really changed our business a whole bunch in terms of our revenue we're right at 5 million. And seems like we're growing and budgeted for 5.7 next year and actually exciting piece we're hiring on a, a new project guide, which is a sales role in our company. So that's exciting. And yeah, hopefully that kind of rounds out what we do and we're in Charlotte, North Carolina. That's good. And I think also we some NA stuff, you, you won some NA awards here locally. I know through Charlotte, but you went on to regionals as well, correct?
(03:56): Yeah. We got two projects in regionals, one whole house remodel 500,000 to 750,000 is up for nationals. We're complete competing with three other projects I believe. And then historical renovation, 250,000 and up category. So I'm, I'm real excited to go down to Savannah and I, no, hopefully with two projects the, the odds are pretty good. We'll we'll come home with something I hope, I think. Yeah. Well, fingers crossed and like I said, I'd look forward to seeing you down there. I'm gonna try to attend the evening of excellence in Savannah as well. So that'll be fun. You and I spoke a little while ago about, okay, Paul, would you like to be on a podcast? And you didn't even hesitate. You'd love to, to get on and talk about business and, and remodeling and just, I think the industry in general, and one thing we landed on was technology, you know, and, and how technology obviously has changed, how it can help you, how it can help the business help the team. What were you thinking since, since we had a conversation, I mean, what have you seen from that fold and maybe what sorts of things are you using that have made, had had a big impact on your business?
(05:01): Yeah, thanks Dwayne. It, it really, one of the things that made it pop in my head when you, first of all offered, you know if we wanted to do a podcast, I said, yeah, that'd be fantastic. I love to, I love the talk industry, like you said, but the thing that popped in my head about technology is we've been using software called builder trend. It's a fairly popular or software that's out there. I would imagine most listeners are familiar with it or have heard of it at the very least. But we've been using it for eight years and we recently had an audit and actually had a consultant come out. And when I say an audit, kind of a, we had builder trend look over how we're using the software. And even after eight years, there were a lot more things that we could do with it. So we had a consultant come out from builder trend to meet with us and really kind of opened our eyes to the world a possibility. And that's why technology was in the, in the front of my head, along with some other things that we're doing, we've changed the software that we're using to BIM software kind of saying goodbye to CAD officially in doing more of our drawings in a BIM software, 3d renderings, and but also using it, our construction plans as well. So there's a lot of exciting technology things going on here
(06:22): And whether it's a builder trend or a co-construct or a new design software proprietary software, hell for that matter, even if you're just using, you know, elaborate spreadsheets, all of it really is not, it's not that powerful if you're not gonna to take the time to fully understand it, train your staff. And I think what you had mentioned there about the builder trend thing, that probably an example of that, of being able to in and say, Hey, here's the product. You can't just take it off the shelf and expect wanders overnight. It's what you put into it. So what have, what have you found maybe even on the training side, when it comes to the technology, one kind of things have to be done. Wow. So you know, some of the feed features again, and I don't want to get too far down the rabbit hole, if somebody's not, or a listener isn't familiar with builder trend, but some of the, the, the common features you would use, like messaging and logs and the schedule, all things that make a whole lot of sense to start using right away are fairly intuitive, but you're exactly right. It is about the buy-in from your or whole team, if not, everybody's using it and using it the same way so that other teammates can expect certain things to happen. You won't be as successful with it. And that's one of the things we found out having some consulting done is that there are features that we're not using, or just didn't have buy-in from the team, but to get everybody in the same room room and understand what it means for us.
(07:41): And, and maybe even not maybe certainly for our clients to really have full buy-in is, is important. So if I could give a, a for instance, we've been using the, to do feature and linking it to our schedule so that everybody understands that we're actually running our production meetings from the, to do schedule and builder trend. So instead of saying, Hey, what's going on on this job? Oh, well, we gotta, we're waiting on a selection for a toilet or whatever. No, it's really very purpose driven. These twos are linked to the to dos are linked to the schedule and each person in that production meeting has to answer for that to do and it also cues them that this needs to be done for the next step in the process to be successful. So a lot of words right there, hopefully that made sense. Well, it makes perfect sense because without, without buying nothing, nothing happens. It'd be interesting to hear how long that took what it looked like. So I, I suspect that the consultant came in, took a look, did, did the consultant interview the project managers as well?
(08:51): Yeah, so it was a, it was a team. It was a two day intensive of two, eight hour sessions and we all met together. So that was a kind of a two day intensive leading up to that. We did work on, you know, watching some of the training videos that we never watched on builder trend and went through some of those to make sure that everybody had at least some of the basic understanding before we dove in. And we also as any good consultant would do, had asked questions of what, what are some of our goals and what are some things we wanna solve, or what are some roadblocks? So he came kind of geared up for that. He also interviewed key people prior to, but after the two day intensive, we had a list and we used builder trend to do and a checklist for all the things that we agreed that we were gonna change and do.
(09:46): And we are still working on it today. We had this back in early December, so it is not a quick process test, but I can see the buy-in starting. I'm able, we're, we're making our first attempts to run our production meeting, using the to-dos. So the thing they're happening, but it takes a while. My anticipation is by end of first quarter, we will have achieved a majority of what we want to do. This also include just not to keep piling on here, but this also includes changing our sub payments. You know, how we pay our subcontractors and vendors, there's methods to do that via the particular software that we're using. And as you can imagine, anytime you change an accounting piece, there's lots of little tie-ins and you need buy-in from your department as well. So long answer to your question, but it takes a while, but these are the things that if you invest in it, they will pay you back for years to come, or that's my belief anyway. Yeah. We'll, we'll talk about that investment in a second. I'm interested. It's probably more fun to hear if there were any good fights about any of this stuff or any dissenters, or I'm joking around when I say fights, but sometimes you have people who say, you know, I don't want, I don't think that features valuable. So what were, do you have a few of those nuggets that you can share?
(11:07): I would say there was, you know, we're, we're, we believe in vulnerability and being candid in our business and, you know, I, I think it was, it was hashed out, but there were no, I could say safely that there were no fights but really healthy discussion around what we should use, what we shouldn't. The worst it got was just getting drug out, going back and forth, discussing stuff and almost beating stuff to a dead horse. So yeah, that was probably burnout toward the end of second day and where we couldn't get out of our own way a little bit, but that was about the worst. Otherwise I think we had uniform buy-in, there are things that occurred afterwards where one of the items was for me. And I said, I, I just don't think this makes sense for us to do so. As it develops, as you implement stuff, sometimes you realize it was a great laid plan, but being able to have constant feedback and say this, you know, this isn't necessary. Yeah. And not do it,
(12:06): You know, a lot of times what, what you'll find, especially with project managers, construction managers for other members on the team as well. But you know, they really have to understand fully the why behind something. I mean, when you just say implement, Hey, here's new software, here's new technology and we're just gonna use it because, you know, and that that's, you're gonna be really challenged to get buy in with that approach. They've gotta understand the why the value of it, why you're doing certain things, the way you're doing, why you're embracing this technology, no matter what that is, whatever platform that could be, that's gonna be a big step in, in getting that buy in. I agree. I agree. And you know, we, we did have a, we were already using builder trend. So it was an expectation out the gate for anybody who came on board, but we all agreed as a team. Once I was able to share that kind of audit and understanding what we're not using and what other companies are, it was kind of the eye opener and what we could do with it and how we could be so much better by committing to some of these, to some of these things and some of these disciplines and using the software in different way. So I'm very thankful. I gotta say, I'm thankful for my team and, and we're not perfect, but you've gotta follow up on it. That's the other, their piece to, you have to ask. Why, why is this to do sitting here not to done.
(13:20): It's interesting when you invest in your team like this. So this really is a team investment. You took them outta the field for two days. I suspect there was probably a cost for the deep dive with builder trend. And then the time that you're working together on implementing this is forward thinking, right? There's probably people out there listening right now who are, are thinking to themselves, I'm too busy to do this right now. I can't stop all my guys or all my team members. I, it, it's not the right time. What advice do you have for them on how to carve that out and how to make it worthwhile and how to communicate that value? Yeah. I mean, I, I answer with a question like, well, when are you gonna find the time, unless you start doing something differently, you know that's kind of the question I would pose. And sometimes you have to slow down to speed up, right. Make the investment so that you can have that time later. That would be my advice, just really think about when are you make the investment into you and your business and your team. And, and if time is your issue, if that's your problem, we'll then think about some solutions. That'll buy you some of that time back and look at that, make sure it's an investment.
(14:28): Yeah. It's probably this investment or, or, or one, like it is the one that's gonna get you the time. That's the irony of it. Yep. so Changing gears for a minute. I mean, if we think about technology, I want, you're a design build firm. I wanna take it all the way back to the beginning. Are you using anything like Matterport, you know, things on the front end, are you doing, are you doing anything to document these projects from a technology standpoint, from the very beginning before you even really get into design and construction? That is a great question. You wanna talk about an investment? How about a, a LIDAR system for measuring these homes? So yeah we just made a large investment into a piece of equipment to assist us with as-builts to get more accurate as-builts, which plays into using chief architect as well. The more accurate measurements you have the better you can model out. So yeah, before we get started, we actually, it's funny, you mentioned Matterport. We use the LIDAR laser kind of scanner to upload to Matterport, which will spit us out a drawing file that we can plug back into chief and use as our as-built or for references. So that is something that, again, you know, it's an investment we looked at how much time do we spend out there with a tape measure? How many times do we need to go back? And if a measurement's not right, how long does it take us to redraw? And if you do the math, even though a piece of equipment, like a LIDAR scanner can be expensive. It's, it's like a, it's a robot, right? It's pretty cool. We have a robot on the team. I'm excited about that, but it can, it can measure measures accurately and way better than humans. No offense humans.
(16:07): To me, when I look at technology, I go all the way back to 20 years ago. I, and I really started to embrace technology in, in this industry and finding out what I could do. What could I have computer and, and software do that I didn't have to do. I look, it's a time thing. You know, that's the one thing we've talked about it on other podcasts. You know, we, all of us are given the same amount of time. We can't produce more of it. You can't really find anymore of it. It's ju it is what it is and how you manage it extremely important. And that's where you can pick up the huge efficiencies. Because I think if you look at these technologies as, how can they save you time and your, your client's time, your, you know, your, your team, that's where the payoff is huge. Cause yeah, as you said, you know, it's, it can be, maybe it can be more accurate. I mean, a human can be pretty accurate if they take a ton of time, but the back to the, my whole point of there's things that can be automated, there's things that could be, you know, over and over again, think about those things. Think about those things in your business that you could have, whether it's a software or a technology replace. And man, if that frees up four hours a week, eight hours a week, you know, 16 hours a week, that's dollar signs and that freedom that we talk about out all the time as well, you know, I mean, so if you can find something to save you time, that is a huge return on your investment.
(17:19): I wanna ask you Dwayne, have you used you know, as I understand it, you know, if you go on like V R B O like some of those are like some realtor sites you use Matterport to kind of be able to see the space. Have you seen any other applications for the, that as well? We see some folks that are using, you know, Matterport almost from a sales technique, you know, in the very beginning they can go in and take photos and document. And in real time start to produce those images, walk people through the house and kind of go through room by room with them just from an exploratory standpoint, you know, that's a powerful tool to do, and it can even be done remotely obviously with, with clients. You know? So I think just from the very beginning it's, to me, what I look at it as, what better way to document any kind of project, you know, than something like that. You're documenting the visuals, the 3d and, you know, measurements and all that other stuff from the very beginning. So I think you can, I think you can start out by thinking of it as a sales tool before it even becomes a design tool.
(18:17): Interesting. Well, we, we, we approach design tool. We looked at talking about the investment, the timing, and gosh, how long does it take to measure this correctly? You know, and if we miss a measurement, what does that cost us as far, as far as time? You know, I think we did have discussions about, oh gosh, this is kind of a cool flashy tool. And, you know, you can certainly almost, you can walk through the house, you know as you mentioned with, with what's produced. But yeah, we'll, we'll have to focus on that too. I like that. Thank you for, for sharing that and then if you move from, let's say you've documented some stuff, obviously you're maybe not in everybody, but you're a design build firm. So you're, is it chief architect you're using now or yes. You mentioned that. I have, I have experience with using chief architect in the past. It's a great program. What are you seeing from, I would say, even if it's your team or your trades back to what we had said before, even if it's a build trend, whatever it is, when you really start to utilize these programs, there's immense power under the hood. I think that people don't realize, you know, again, you, how many different programs are there that can produce you a set of drawings. Well, that's great. But if you really start to use the power of the modeling, you know, specifications there, what are, what are you finding is helping your team and your trades
(19:31): For us? It was a journey of what is the right software. We, we had a combination of tools that we would use and we, we just found it was, it became inefficient. And we knew we had to pick, if we were gonna really improve our efficiency and design, we had to pick something and stick to it. So we did a lot of searching and wound up with chief as the number one, what I have learned. And I am not a I'm not a, a, a production designer. I don't, I don't do much drafting work or modeling myself. So this is from what I get from my team, but understanding how you set chief and talking about the power within it, it's an investment as well, right? Getting the layers and your templates, correct in chief. And for those who use the software will know what I'm talking about. And if you're using it and not setting up templates, you're probably going to run into some problems or a waste of time later. I'll just put that out there. That's a free tip. But if you get templates set up correctly, you can make changes in the software or share it with other folks and be very effective and not lose any of that data. So setting up templates correctly is, is hugely important. When dealing with that type software, wanna level up, connect with us, to share your stories, ideas, challenges, and successes.
(21:00): The builder nuggets community is built on your experiences. It takes less than a minute to connect with us@buildernuggets.com, Facebook or Instagram, want access to the resources that can take you and your team to the next level. One call could change everything. So Dave, we're seeing a theme here with all this stuff that it doesn't matter what it is. You you've gotta put that investment up front. And man, there's a lot to it. No matter what it is, you can't just, I think a lot of people, people purchase, I wanna say invest because invest is more than just purchasing. It's the time it's the training. It's all the other stuff. I think a lot of people purchase technology and hope for some grand solution. And, and then they get disappointed with it. Well, there's, there's two investments, right? There's paying for it. And then there's actually sinking it into your business. And if you're not investing in your business, then how can you expect it to deliver the type of return that you, that you want? So it starts, you know, when I hear your story, Paul, I start to think about two amazing opportunities that this creates for you. One is scalability, and the other one is elevated valuation. And not only is valuation going to be elevated because you have better systems and structure and all those things in your business and predictability. Those are things Dwayne and I talk about an awful lot, but you also have now a team of advocates and supporters and people that you've invested in who know how to use it, know how to run other facets of the business. It elevates you into those that, that leadership and the ambassador, you know, type role within your company and gets you, it, it gets you out.
(22:35): So that that's a combination. Anytime you make that investment, the payoff is about, you know, it has a ripple effect, you know, all over the place, if you do it right. And it sounds like you're, you're doing it right. What what are some things that you would counsel other contractors to avoid from either mistakes that you've learned or aha. Moments that you've had here? What are some of the key nuggets or secrets of strategies to, to deploy here and what are some things, some pitfalls to avoid? And I'm kind of putting you on the spot a little bit, but I think you can handle it. I got fake. So, you know, I'm so glad you mentioned scalability. I jotted it down before this, when I was thinking about builder trend and, and setting up for that. So when you said scalability, I was like, oh my God. Yes, that's exactly it. That's part of the investment, but in terms of best, best nuggets for folks, patience is, is a virtuous, some of this stuff, but how have a plan and work the plan, maybe the idea of sharing this with your team, if you're a leader of your company and you believe there's a technology, that's gonna help out ask your team questions, you know, about, Hey, can this, what do you think if we had this, what, what could we do? How could this help you? Could this help you and getting them to feed it back to you? So sharing with your team would be one planning for the implementation and understanding what that's gonna take.
(24:02): What is the time investment and making sure your team understands that Dwayne mentioned it earlier, maybe sharing with them some of the possible outcomes, or have them tell you what the possible great outcomes are are of having this technology are so you can create buy-in before you ever start. And then I, I mentioned it earlier, but some patients with it, you are going to run into some curve balls of Dave. You mentioned it earlier, the idea of some dissenters or, you know, some fights and stuff like that. I, I was fortunate enough not to experience too much of that, but I could imagine that would come up, especially if you have some kind of old guard or, you know, legacy employees that say, Hey, we, we, we always done it this way. You know, why are we changing this? And so I imagine that could be, that could be a challenge in what as well and letting that person maybe that's the person who needs to hear what it's gonna do for them a lot.
(24:55): So those, those are some, I think key takeaways. And don't short yourself either, right? You know, I looked at the consulting fee, you know, it was, it was a heavy fee with bill trend to have them come out, but it it's a drop in the bucket compared to where it's gonna bring us. And if you can create better scalability, gosh, why, why not? So don't be afraid to invest in your company. That's the other thing, I'll say one last thing. And I wanna mention this, I'm an industry guy. I believe that there's a lot of, of super talented salt of the earth kind smart individuals that are in our industry. And, you know, these tools are things that raise our level of professionalism. And I think in our client's eyes and in our community's eyes, we're leaders. And this is just another tool that you can, you can show that off with. So I wanted to mention that.
(25:52): Yeah, you got me thinking here, speaking of leaders, it's, it's clear that you were the one who championed this for your, for your office. And I suspect that there are other owners out here that may feel like, Hey, this isn't my thing. This isn't my strength. There's probably opportunity for you to elevate somebody else on your team to say, Hey, take the lead. I want to put you as the, you know, the leader on our implementation. I'm not very good at this. I believe that this is where we need to go, but this is a strength of yours. I, I think it just happened that you happened to be the right person for your team to do this. But what do you think of the idea of elevating somebody else on your team to be your lead implementer and to oversee this and to hand that off, if it's not your, like, I think as owners, many owners just get stuck thinking they have to lead everything, but this could be in a, a leadership opportunity as well. If it's not your strength.
(26:42): I think that's a, I think that's a great idea. You know, I happened to, to spearhead this. Yes, but I had a lot of help along the way. You know, we, we broke up and shared in each department, whether it be design, production, accounting, or sales, which would be my department, we were able to break up and share the but if you can find somebody who, who, who, this is an opportunity for them to implement a major piece of the business, you know, that sounds like a great person. You know, if you are gonna scale, you know, to work in operations, I mean, or, or any place like that. I think that's a, that's a profound idea. I happen to be the one in, in this instance, but there are other things and other investments that, that were not my idea that came to me the LIDAR piece. I didn't know what the heck that was, you know that was brought to me by my design team saying, Hey, I think we can save some money here. I think there's a better way to do this, Paul and so yeah, a hundred percent I's
(27:44): This is where culture, mindset and technology, all intersect here, you've created. And you mentioned that you've created this culture where people feel like they can have raw and open conversations with you about that. They also felt confident enough to bring something new to the table and, and lead that. So these analyses are all opportu entities for somebody to raise their hand and be a valued member of your team to explore it. And like, sounds like you got a culture where they're out looking for this stuff. So that's, that's how you're gonna grow when the whole tribe's out searching. So Paul, any other things that you've, you've found, anything else that's created, some efficiencies in your business across the board, you know, could be all the way down to even some of the folks in the field, whether it's time tracking software, any of that. Ah, so you know, that that is part of builder trend. They do have some, we've been looking into that. We've been doing time tracking. Our design team does need to track time. Just by the way, we do our billing through a design agreements. So that's in place, but we're also looking at potentially, and we haven't implemented this yet, but doing some GPS track for project managers along with some geofencing, so we can figure out where they are, where they're spending their time and get better allocation of hours for them. Another thing that I'll mention is the thing that I'm looking down at right now, and I know this is a podcast, so you can't see it, but this is, I don't know. I used to write on Yelp, low pads all the time, but this guy, this is a SuperNote and I've probably saved a small forest of yellow legal pad, tree forest, I guess, by investing in this I like the feel of paper and I'm a natural kind of writer.
(29:23): This is a smaller item. You could certainly do it with an iPad, but this just tends to have a better feel. And every note that I take, I save it and I put it in a folder and I organize it by month. So it's a chronological documentation of all the notes I'm taking. So rather than having to go back in and dive for the yellow notepad from 12 months ago and trying to see if I can find a note, this is at my fingertips and I have the files there. There's a couple different versions of this that are out there. I, I do feel that sometimes contractors can kind of be analog to some degree because there are tactical nature. So this is a, a great little tool for anybody who loves pads or maybe is a, an old Franklin Covey disciple. This is an awesome, awesome tool. Yeah, that, that is a great tool. I mean, I use an iPad myself, but same concept. I have, you know, the stylist for it love to just fast as I can jot stuff down, it goes in there, you can digitize it, you can save it. You can and mark up drawings. Yeah. A again, I think back to the time saver efficiencies, I mean, one, one of the things that keeps resonated with me as we go through this is, you know, we are going to be challenged as an industry over the next several years, as you know, inflation is, is here probably to stay maybe not rising as sharply, but still, probably here to stay. We're gonna be challenged with cons. Pricing is gonna become more of an issue, you know, sensitivity around what things cost. We are going to be forced to just find more and more and more efficiencies in how we operate, because you know, the solution is not to just constantly raise your prices.
(30:55): I mean, that, that's the easy answer, but I think we all know to stay in a competitive market, you're gonna have to become more efficient at every aspect, a business, every interaction that you have from initial phone call planning, design, construction, you know, tracking, scheduling all this stuff. So I think it is, it is well worth the investment. It can be daunting. I, I get that, but I think that's maybe a good way to look at it is if you're out there and you're listening, think about, maybe think about those parts of your business, that you're current spending a ton of time in, and what are the things that are consuming a ton of time that could possibly be automated or, you know, replaced with some sort of technology. I think that's a great place to start cuz you can't, you know, you can't implement technology across every facet of your business all at once. That's, that's really hard to do, but if you look at those areas that that need some serious help first probably get a big bang for your buck.
(31:42): That's a good point. Dwayne and Paul, is there any, you know, what's next on your list of the next area in your business that you wanna dig into? Have you identified anything? Do you have a goal that's maybe hit it with a shortcut through a, through a technology or even a, a process? No, no new pieces on the horizon. You know one thing that did spark my mind a little bit was Dwayne mentioning Matterport and involving that as part of the sales and maybe marketing piece as well, but we're look, we're looking to get that LIDAR dialed in on, on, and creating as-builts and starting to see some of the fruits of that. I mean, we did six measures in two days, full house measures. Right. That's incredible. Right. And then 10 minutes to spit out the ASBI plan. Think about that. Right. That's awesome. So, yep. That's a huge time saver.
(32:36): You know, I, I think we may look at our CRM a little bit. We, we use builder trend for our CRM, you know, it, it, it it's good. It does what it needs to do. I think we may be able to enhance that we are I am bringing on a person in sales to, you know, come on board and, and maybe as we grow in that department, maybe the CRM needs to get a little, little bit more robust, but right now, just kind of buying into builder trend, using it to its best capability, making adjustments, using this new software, chief, the buy-in to that, we've kind of think we've gotten over the hump with that. Those are really are, that's like what's right in front of me. I think if we can get those pieces in play, we're, we're gonna be, we're gonna be really far ahead of, of where we want to be.
(33:23): You've got the, the cadences and the timelines in place with EOS cuz in the back of my mind, as we're going through a lot of this, I'm thinking about, you know, your quarterly rocks and you've got the ability to digest something, get it integrated and then move on to, okay, we've got that. Something else is gonna move up. Our, you know, either an issue will force something up or the opportunity to grow and scale will present a rock for somebody else on your team to own and dig into. And at some point you're gonna get to the point where you've built a lot of proficient people into your team who are bringing more and like these things will accelerate and get easier and easier to embrace because you already have the cadence and the language with EOS to, to get it all in. So it's an exciting time for you to seeing all this momentum happening at once and knowing that you've got the ability to keep it structured.
(34:13): That was one of those things too, like, you know, thinking about why are we doing this to create scalability? And you know, scalability for us is an opportunity to develop leadership and allow people to move up. So if we can open you know, another branch or if we move locations or do something like that and, and, and scale our business and make it larger, I really view, I mean, of course I'm not allergic to, to better revenue and better profit. That's, that's good. I like money. Money's okay with me, but it's really about growing leaders within your company, giving them the opportunities. When you create scalability, you create opportunities for the folks that are helping you get where they need to be. So I look at it as the toolbox. You know, if you think about it, that's all that we do. We build and remodel these homes with a vast array of tools on, on the job site. These are the tools for all the behind the scenes stuff you need, you need to constantly have the best tools and everybody needs to have availability to those tools. That's the thing, you know, so I think that deep dive on to what is needed is huge. And Dave, to your point around you know, once these tools are, are, are well understood and could be run by the, a team without, you know, a ton of effort on, on your part, that's when your business be truly becomes scalable, more valuable,
(35:28): Well, it's a good way to look at it, right? So if you scale your team, if you scale your people, if the investments are made into your people, they're the ones who are gonna scale your business. You don't scale your business and then scale your team. You scale your team and your team scales the business for you. And in doing so as the leader, you're creating more and different opportunity and more fulfilling things for them to work on and elevating them to the, to the next level. And that creates space for somebody else coming in to, to fill the things that they were previously doing with a mentor. That's just had success at that particular element. So you, you put all these things in place you're, you're on the right. Tr trajectory that's for sure. And it's you know, I, I'm thinking of Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy and from who not how, and they, and Dan often talks about technology being a who, a teammate. I, I think of AI as a, as a, as a teammate and what's, what's happening within the industry there. And I, I can't wait to see what's going to emerge next. What's going to be brought to the table. And what other things that you find for us and stories that you have for us from your team in the in the future?
(36:37): I'd love to follow up with that. And and, and I can't, I know I mentioned it before, but I, I, I, I wanna say it again, the experience that our clients have who are the other kind of partners in this business, right? The people that are investing in their homes, having this technology, making communication better, really creating just clear ways to do things and taking us up to a level that other industries I think have been at. And I think having remodeling a new home construction and construction in general, see, having folks see the technology that's embraced and, and the technicality of what we do and the D qualities and what we deal with and just how amazing the folks are in this industry. So I keep, I know I keep plugging on that, but I feel strongly about it. Well, there, there's lots of them out there and it'll, it'll be heartwarming for them to hear these stories. This is what they wanna hear. These are the things that they're looking for. This is why we've done this podcast is to bring those like-minded people together. So thanks for sharing all with us. How does your team feel about all this?
(37:42): You know, pretty good. You know, again, I, I, I stress vulnerability. I mean, I know there there's, there's a little bit of stress with it, but everybody I'm so proud of my team, man, is all, is all I can say. They I know Goldie are accounts payable, person and office manager. This was a, this was a big step and it was gonna be a lot of work. And she's very much a an SC type personality on the disc scale there. So she's not big fan of change but she's an amazing worker, but she, as you know, again, I think sees where the team is going, sees the overall goal and was able to buy into it. And you know, we've had some new folks come onto our production team. So we didn't really have a lot of legacy kind of pushback. That's the way we used to do it, type thing. I don't wanna do anything else, so we didn't have too much of that, but I think everybody sees the future, right. And like, if we're gonna be leaders and we're going to be the best in our industry, and we're going to find time to live more, these are the things that we need to invest in. And I think if you have belief and buy in that, that's where your team is going. The rest falls into place.
(38:58): Yeah. That's for sure. It definitely does. And then, you know, the elevating, the industry part that that's big as well. You know, I talking with Nick Schiffer, another past guest recently about, we've gotta all stay on this mission of getting the industry to stop racing to the bottom, you know, and in a lot of ways it does between and commoditizing and, and lowest price and all this other stuff. And, you know, this is the elevation that we talk about all the time on this podcast. I mean, putting ourselves out there as professionals, even you on, on you on, on your previous episode with us, free estimates are too expensive. You know, it's all about positioning ourself as professionals, as providing tremendous value to the, you know, and I think that's just exactly what technology will do will raise the bar for the entire industry.
(39:40): It'll also attract a lot of younger folks into the industry. They're gonna start to see the use of technology and be interested in that. So I, yeah. All around outside of what you're doing for your business what it can do for the industry. Appreciate you taking time here, Paul and sharing with us. Yeah, I think you're a great example of it and you touch, you know, quite a few different facets of it. So that's why I thought it'd be good for us to talk about it, but yeah. So what else, so what else is up with Paul? I mean, as we're going forward, what else excites you here coming up for the rest of this year and then beyond, oh, wow. So ne nationals. Yes. That's big skiing next week. That's big. But I am, I'm really excited onboard our project guide. That's our, that's our sales position here at Paul Kawalski builders. And I'm excited to see what effect that has on the company. And you know, I am an EOS company, as I mentioned earlier. So we have a one year, a three year and a 10 year plan. I feel like we're laying some, some serious groundwork to achieve our three year goal. And if we can get repeatable and duplicatable success out of our three year plan I think being able to open another office, or at least in large, or, or scale the operations here is going to be likely and inevitable. And I'm really excited. I did for my people, for those opportunities that that'll bring, oh, I almost forgot to mention we're gonna remodel our office. So that's gonna be exciting. We're getting we're getting an update to the office. Yeah. And it's, it's long overdue. I mean, as, as sexy as this background is back here, we might need to soup that up a little bit. But I look like I maybe work at a high school or something back here right now. But I I'm a principal, so in my spare time, no. But anyway, no, that's why we do a podcast coach
(41:30): Alki, you look like Coach K coach. There you got it. But yeah, so we got a, an office remodel creating more collaborative spaces where we have different kind of meeting areas and just a, a cooler feel to the office as we all return to the office from the grips of COVID and Ohn and all those things. So I'm excited to, to have a, a, a better place for people to come to when they come back. Yeah. If they wanna meet up with you or connect people, wanna reach out, what's the best way to get ahold of you. You can find me at PK builders on Instagram, you can also look me up on LinkedIn Paul Kawalski builders or Paul Kawalski. Those are probably the best ways to reach out to me. Of course, you can check out our webpage, if you like. It's www.pk, builders.com, Instagram, LinkedIn website, LinkedIn, all of those things. That'd be great, Paul, thanks again, man, for taking time and hope to talk soon. Hey, thanks for listening, Dwayne and I love hearing from you. Your stories are inspiring and your challenges can be overcome.
Hey, thanks for listening, Dwayne and I love hearing from you. Your stories are inspiring and your challenges can be overcome. Got a cool tip idea for a show problem that you haven't been able to solve, or maybe just struggling to figure out what you need next and where to get it. We can help hit us up@buildernuggets.com and start building freedom.
