Continuing education: How to prioritize learning to better yourself and your business

Zach Wojtowicz:

Hey everybody, Zach Wojtowicz here with …

Courtney Mattern:

Courtney Mattern.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Hey, there we go. Courtney, welcome back again.

Courtney Mattern:

I’m so excited. I don’t know how I got so lucky to have to …

Zach Wojtowicz:

The honor is all mine and our listeners. You’re fantastic on here.

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah, it’s so fun to come on and out from the recording booth where I’m just typing y’all notes, like make sure you ask this or …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Is it a little scary?

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah, it is.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Just being honest.

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah, just being honest. Anytime you get in front of your customers, in front of your audience when you’re used to working behind the scenes, deep down you hope that they like you, they hope that you like what you’re making and working … I’ve been working on this podcast for three years, been at Buildertrend 4, working behind the scenes to bring on the guests, to program the topics. And podcasting is odd because it’s what we call in marketing one-way communication, it’s where we’re sending out messages and providing content, and you don’t get that instant feedback on social media. And so, it’s hard to know exactly how everyone’s feeling. But I know we are 10,000 listeners strong, so that’s always a good sign. If anybody out there’s listening, and you want to let me know how we’re doing, can send a note to podcast@buildertrend.com, I’d love to get your feedback. And actually, that’s one of the ways that I connected with our guest today.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Who is?

Courtney Mattern:

Is Adam Copenhaver.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m putting you on the spot. She’s doing the intro.

Courtney Mattern:

Adam Copenhaver from CopeGrand Homes. He’s a builder based in South Carolina. He’s been on the podcast before.

Zach Wojtowicz:

He has.

Courtney Mattern:

He’s a star. And when he was on the first time, I reached out to him because he said that he was a fan of the podcast. And I was having some gut feelings that some of our episodes weren’t working, or I was worried about providing the right content for our listeners, and so I reached out to him and talked to him for an hour while he was driving. And he told me about all the topics he likes to listen to, all the podcasts he listens to, his favorite things about the hosts. He had lots of great things to say about Zach and Charley, which I know everybody adores you guys and your banter. When we meet builders sometimes they’re like, “Do those guys even like each other?” I’m like, “Yes, they’re besties.”

But we reached out to him, he gave us really great feedback and he’s back today to talk about what else he’s listening to, other ways that he’s finding growth as a business owner. And I think that continued learning and being willing to keep adding new skills into your tool belt is so important for builders to stay relevant, especially when the industry is changing so rapidly.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, love it. Well, I could not have done it any better myself, so without further ado, let’s get Adam on here.

Hey Adam, welcome back to “The Building Code,” second time on the podcast. How you been since we saw you last?

Adam Copenhaver:

Zach, thanks, Courtney, thanks for having me back on. Everything’s gone great. The last time I was on, I think we were in the midst or the tail end of COVID, and so honestly, I don’t know what was up and down back then. So, I’m extremely grateful that we are past COVID and things seem to settle out, normalize. We got back to more of a predictable environment, so I’m celebrating that today, now that you asked. Because it’s pretty cool to see it back to normal again. And yeah, my sanity’s back.

Courtney Mattern:

I’ve heard a lot of people talk about that time blur. Time was both expanded, and it shrunk. And I keep thinking back, I’m like, was it three years, five years, 10 years, a decade?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Well, I age 15, so it’s all relative.

Adam Copenhaver:

True, true. Very true, Zach.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I see in our notes you were on episode 51 in 2022, and so this is episode 190. So, that’s quite a spread, maybe every 40 episodes we just have you on.

Adam Copenhaver:

Yeah, sounds good.

Courtney Mattern:

So, for listeners who might not have caught that episode, tell us about yourself. Tell us about CopeGrand Homes.

Adam Copenhaver:

Yeah. Yeah, great, I hope folks go back and listen to it. I think that one was on building a bad to the bone team. And so yeah, I was grateful to get to share a bit more detail about that. But yeah, I think some unique things about me, I think a lot of us have the same journey into construction, some influences. I have a twin brother who helped me get into construction. Particularly, we grew up doing some projects with our family. We went to get our four-year education. I went into engineering. Ben went into building science and construction, which is really great. And then through that, we continued to do our projects in construction and then we graduated, both ended up with, as our game plan was, is go work with the smartest guys in the room and learn for a decade how they do it, and how to run a business with the ultimate game plan that we were going to be in Charleston, South Carolina building houses together. So, yeah, we took two separate paths, but came back together. It’s been great ever since.

Courtney Mattern:

What do you like about building in Charleston? I was just out in Raleigh a couple of weeks ago visiting some of our customers, and that part of the country is just so beautiful. What are your favorite parts of building on that Southern East coast?

Adam Copenhaver:

Yeah, I think, particularly our team is focused on building challenging, unique projects. And Charleston, the East coast in particular, a hurricane ridden environment, a very hot and humid environment, which gives its challenges in construction. And then an earthquake potentially prone environment. I hate to keep talking about them. I think the last one in Charleston was like 1860s, 1880s, something like that. And so, we’ve got all these things that we need to plan for in preparation of building a home, particularly in engineering. And then the uniqueness of building high-end custom homes brings its own level of complexity. So, as you try to seek after mastery and a number of things, it’s these challenges that take you to the next level and the next level. And that’s always been fun. It just so happens that Charleston, in the canvas that it is, in South Carolina on the coast, we have beaches, we’ve got rivers, we’ve got marshes, we’ve got just these amazing historical places nonetheless, too, and we get to build in each one of them.

So, I was on a Zoom call this morning and I had a couple meetings from the job site, and we’re on with the architect, and the landscape architect, and my brother’s on it, and we’re chit-chatting before the client gets on. And they said, “Hey Adam, where are you at?” And I just turn the camera on my phone around and there it is, this beautiful, expansive ocean, as we’re peering through the family room out there. So, we are blessed, hands down. I know there’s probably some listeners right now saying, “Goddammit, we should be there. What are we doing in Kansas?”

Zach Wojtowicz:

Or Nebraska.

Adam Copenhaver:

… so to speak.

Courtney Mattern:

Or Omaha.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That literally did cross my mind. Do you want to see our cornfields? We’ve got cornfield.

Adam Copenhaver:

Hey, yeah, y’all call me if you’re interested in making a move to Charleston. They’re always looking for good people to add to the team, that sort of thing, too. And I’m not kidding about that.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Wow.

Adam Copenhaver:

I’m from Pennsylvania. Ben and I are from Pennsylvania, originally, still love visiting, but when you do get to level up and go to these places, I would say that Charleston’s been a place where we vacationed a lot before we actually decided we want to move here. And it hasn’t changed for us. On the weekends, nights, that sort of thing, the most beautiful thing is if we want to go out on the boat, or go to the beach, or go to see some scenery, it’s super easy to do here. If you’re a mountain lover, Charleston, South Carolina, we’re four hours from our mountain range out there, so that’s pretty convenient, too. So, yeah, I’m bragging on the East coast a bit right now for all those folks … There’s definitely different areas of the country that have their attributes. Ben and I and a lot of folks that live here, and the attraction to Charleston of course is very strong. So, for all those reasons, that’s my passion about Charleston and getting lucky enough to build a career here with the rest of our team.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s incredible. Is Charleston pretty fast growing city? I’ve been pretty good at paying attention to regionality and movement. And is Charleston seeing a benefit of that? Are you seeing a lot of it growth in the city?

Adam Copenhaver:

Yeah, no doubt, Zach. There used to be a statistic, it’s outdated right now, but at one time it was, I don’t know, a hundred some people a day moving to Charleston, something like that, which is insane. Courtney, there go your eyes.

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah.

Adam Copenhaver:

Yeah, no doubt. Also, I’m not responsible for everybody moving to Charleston, it’s just that …

Zach Wojtowicz:

You sell it so well.

Adam Copenhaver:

… it’s a landscape that attracts folks for all kinds of reasons. Particularly the business development of the Chamber of Commerce in Charleston in general. We’ve got Volvo here now. Mercedes has a small piece here. Boeing’s here. So, there are some distributions and there’s a huge port here that drives business. Now, I’m one of the folks, I’m a tree hugger at heart, if I’ve never covered that here on the podcast, I am. I don’t want to cut down a single tree. I want to appreciate the landscape. When we design our homes, you’re going to hear me talk about it and how important it is. I’m not trying to exacerbate the potential flood with what we do, and I don’t want to ruin any the landscape, but I’m not a NIMBY type of person either.

I want to plan homes in certain areas in the appropriate way to appreciate the environment and not destroy it. And then, sure, I do want things to stay rural in a lot of cases as well. So, I might be one of those guys on the fence of, Hey, I want to build a career in construction, but I don’t want to destroy the environment while I’m doing it.

Courtney Mattern:

Have you ever built a house around a tree?

Adam Copenhaver:

Yes.

Courtney Mattern:

Seen those houses that sometimes have a trunk through the middle, they add it to …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, mold it to the landscape.

Adam Copenhaver:

Yep, yep, around it. For sure, three sides around it, never completely on four sides, although it’s probably coming. Certainly have put trees inside of houses. But we build houses under trees, too, Courtney. In Charleston, you can look them up, there’s a Live Oak tree, which is a specimen tree and a protected tree all across the south on the coast. And we have some pretty heavy restrictions over those Grand Oaks, and particularly, we design around them, under them, potentially also within them to protect them but also celebrate them. And so, they’re very unique monuments. They can pose some challenges, and to that extent too, there are properties in Charleston that are just unsellable or unusable because they’ve got specimen Grand Oaks on them and you just can’t do anything to construct around them.

Zach Wojtowicz:

They are pretty incredible, the live oak.

Adam Copenhaver:

Yeah, I’m trying to think about for folks to see what they look like, the movie “The Notebook,” which was filmed not just 20 minutes down the road here. There’s a lot of them in that. What’s that new series? Sorry, my wife’s watch it.

Courtney Mattern:

Oh wow. This reminds me of …

Adam Copenhaver:

Outer banks. Outer Banks.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Outer Banks.

Adam Copenhaver:

So, we watch that. A lot of that filming is done here in Charleston, although it’s a Outer Banks type of setting. But yeah, you can see what the landscape looks like if you check out those.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, it’s almost like magical looking. The whole environment is just so special. We wanted to bring you on today to talk a little bit about your inspiration, like the Live Oak tree is inspiring for building and talk a little bit about ways that you use outside sources to help inspire you. And the theme of the episode is “What have you been reading?” So, what have you been, since we last talked, been exploring to tell our listeners?

Adam Copenhaver:

Yeah, I think we chatted a while ago, I collaborated with Buildertrend on a little piece, and I chatted just a lot about education. And I mentioned a little bit about education. Ben, my brother, has got a four-year education in building. I’ve got mine in engineering. We collaborate now in the construction industry. Most folks after they’re done with school, like the pace of level learning, depending on how you participate, used to be hyperbolic. And then you go somewhere and maybe the first couple of years of work, you’re learning a whole bunch and then it plateaus. And so, my recommendation there, because if you don’t get out, and you don’t have an opportunity for other educational resources, you’re probably going to get caught in a rut. And my encouragement there was to recognize how easy it is to access other means of education, to improve yourself, improve your team, improve your company.

And so, I’m very interested in that. I’m definitely self-improvement, but I also want to do so for the rest of the team, my family, those around me. So, yeah, I read a lot. I subscribe a lot. I listen to a lot of podcasts. And when I do those things kind of all different times of my day or my routine when I do them … So, particularly reading, book reading, it’s been a little while since I sat down and read. I’ll have to think about that. Most of it’s been audio. And I use Audible. And I’ll get a book recommended to me or I’ll search a topic and I’ll do it. But the one I just finished up was really cool. It’s called “Who Not How” by Dan Sullivan. And he had a co-author on it to forgive me for forgetting your name, but it is a really cool, really great book. “Who Not How” is based on the premise that in elementary school you are taught or formal education, you’re taught not to collaborate with others.

We learn on our own, we sit at our own desk typically, we’re going to take our own quizzes, take our own exams. And collaborating with others in school was oftentimes a form of cheating and so it was discouraged to collaborate with others. And so now we’re all ingrained, for the most part, that we need to go through life like this. We need to go to our career, we need to sit at our own desk, we need to figure it out on our own. And for me, particularly as a business owner, you’ve got to wear all these hats in the analogy. Growing a business from just Ben and I now to 10 folks strong, and doing what we’re doing, is an evolution of taking all these hats that Ben and I had on at once and understanding how to start participating with others, finding other who’s to help us out with what we need.

And so, Dan Sullivan’s whole focus is set behind this and Dan has a coaching program that I’m probably going to be a participant in after reading this book in the future as another means of getting more education and improving our team dynamics here. But he talks about the “Who, Not How,” it’s most of us say, how am I going to do this? How am I going to grow my company? How am I going to get to my next opportunity to build? Instead, the question should be common and should frame around who, who can help me do this? Who can I seek out to? And the great thing that Dan points out in this book that I’ll celebrate too is, he said, “You can’t just go and expect others to help you.” You can’t just think that you’re going to go find another who and that things are going to be kumbaya and you get your success that way.

It’s, you have to go to that person after you find them, after you answer the question of who and you need to add value to what also they’re looking for. And so, I’m going to be implementing this in our hiring process as well, to find other who’s. But it’s important right now I’m trying to, quite candidly, it’s changed the way that I’m going after our website revamp. So, as a builder, I’m going to say something that’s going to probably resonate with a whole bunch of other builders across the country. I’ve not updated our website in years, half a decade it feels like, which is crazy. If you want to find our most recent content, I always offer our clients to go to our Instagram or socials because it’s there on a regular basis. But I realize I need to do it because that’s oftentimes what folks do. And so, I was in charge of doing the last website and at the moment, I’m trying to find that who to say, “Hey, you know what, I’m not to be the best at this.” It used to be when I was wearing all these hats.

And so, I’m looking for that, who right now. I’m looking for the who that can do the website, help us with the social stuff. We had somebody there in that position not too long ago, they graduated college, they’ve gone on to another fancy career. I wish them the best. Thank you, Margot, for all your time with us, if you ever listened to this. Those are the components. This book has helped me reframe, not how am I going to get this done because if I rely on that, I’ll time travel, like five years until I can decide to recreate the website. And so, that book really jump started a whole bunch of these opportunities that I have to 10 x the opportunity of getting stuff done, really. So, that’s a big part of that book. I’ll go in deeper if you guys want to, but I’d offer that listen, hands down. It’s a relatively short listen for an audio book. If you want to go through it a little bit quicker, change the speed to 1.25 like I do, and you get through it a little bit quicker. But fantastic book.

Courtney Mattern:

I was just going to ask …

Adam Copenhaver:

“Who Not How” by Dan Sullivan.

Courtney Mattern:

I was going to ask how do you find the time …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Courtney Mattern:

… to do this extra?

Adam Copenhaver:

Oh.

Courtney Mattern:

I think that’s when … I don’t know, I’m definitely a lifelong learner and carving out the time can be tough. What part of your day do you soak up this information? How did you decide to prioritize the continued learning?

Adam Copenhaver:

Time priority is like a huge juggling act. I think folks often talk about work-life balance, I’ve heard this term work-life integration rather than work-life balance. So, you kind of figure it out. We all have so much more time than we think that we have and most of that’s idle time. But if you can get more dynamic about planning certain portions of your day and getting into certain routines, that’s a great opportunity. For me, it’s especially difficult because number one’s family. Got an awesome wife, an incredible wife, Christi, and then we’ve got these three beautiful children that are all four and under. And you’re trying to develop them and grow them, too, so they take a huge amount of time as well. And then of course we’ve got our business also, and you’ve got a lot of responsibilities there. Most of the time that I get to listen to some things is going to be on nights and weekends. And so, if I’m traveling, traveling’s easy, if I’m traveling 45 minutes away to a job, and I don’t need to make phone calls, boom.

I’m not a radio listener at all, so talk radio or any of the music genres that I like, I’ll keep in touch with them from time to time, but I will not listen to the same radio station and hear the same songs ever on the way to work every day, so to speak. So, most of us in construction have some pretty long travel, just time to travel. And you might be traveling with somebody else like a lot of our subs are in work trucks and that sort of thing with some other people. I’d say just throw it on. Throw it on for everybody in the truck or throw your Air Pods in and get little doses of what you want to be listening to. A lot of our subs are listening to stuff on the job site. I recommend one headphone, not two headphones, so you can still hear what’s going on to be safe.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Safety first.

Adam Copenhaver:

But there’s an immense amount of time for those subcontractors to be listening to things that … it doesn’t need to be a business book. It doesn’t need to be “Who, Not How.” It could just be some self-help type of stuff or routine stuff, fitness stuff, all that stuff, whatever you might be interested in, those sort of things just listen to it whenever you can. Mine, whenever I’m doing yard work, there’s not a chance that I don’t have my headphones in, like idle work I’m listening to something. And that’s the key thing is anytime I’ve given a chance to do it, Courtney, I’m popping my headphones in. They stay with me every single day, and I’m just catching up on whatever I was listening to the last time. And then when I get a phone call, so what, I’ll pause it, and I’ll get right back to it.

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s interesting how too, I guess this is a personal anecdote, I’ve noticed I’ve started to passively not do things that then lets me actively do other things. So, people will be like, “What are you watching on Netflix?” I’m like, “I don’t.” I really watch Netflix shows, so what am I doing in the meantime? I watch a lot of documentaries on YouTube. I spend a ton of time finding …

Adam Copenhaver:

Oh, YouTube has been great.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, you start finding these small moments to kill 10, 20 minutes, but you can find some amazing stuff. And I’ve learned a ton about building on YouTube. I had a customer tell me this. I have no idea what they’re talking about, I’m just going to plug the term in, it spits out, I watch a video, I’m like, oh, I can actually have this conversation now. So, there’s just little things as your life changes and evolves. I’ve just naturally noticed I’ve started to pick … And the key thing for me is I’m just a really curious person, and so, I think I just have that innately, but not everybody does. But it’s something that I think is really critical for growth is that you got to have something that you make the time, you find ways to do it, and then you make decisions about what you put that time towards.

Courtney Mattern:

You start intentionally, then it becomes habit.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Then it’s just who you are.

Courtney Mattern:

For me, I guess my personal anecdote, my big tip came from Atomic Habits by James Clear about building these tiny little habits that add up to big impact. And I started pairing something I didn’t want to do, which was exercising with something I really wanted to do. But both of them were goals of mine. I wanted to exercise more, and I wanted to read more. And so, when I have a book that I’m really into, I’ll read it while I’m on the treadmill and now I find myself being like, I got to go get on the treadmill. I’m going to put it up, I’m going to walk the incline and the time flies. I’m almost done with my reading goal for the year just because I paired those two things, the one thing I wanted to do and the thing I didn’t want to do that I knew was good for me. So, there’s a tip for anybody out there.

Adam Copenhaver:

That’s a really good idea. I just heard recently, too, that you can hack the screen on a Peloton to watch whatever you want to watch. One of our clients was watching movies while he was on a Peloton. He’s like, yeah, before I knew it, two hours later I got a nice ride in.

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah, yeah.

Adam Copenhaver:

Which is great. So, you realize that you can hack these different unused areas in your life. And Zach, a hundred percent YouTube University is remarkable place for content. Now, everything comes with an asterisk. I just think about multiple times this year where I’m just not quite ready to go to bed yet, my brain spinning or something like that, but I just need to unwind. And it’s not a night that I’m going to be sitting at my computer working through and that sort of thing. And so, I’ll go and type in whatever I want to watch, have a glass of whatever, and just sit there, and I’ll time travel for an hour or two. And it might be, hey, I want to watch some fly-fishing videos, which is a passion of mine. I might want to watch a fly fishing video from across the world or recently, also a lot about different construction techniques that are all there.

All the build show stuff is on YouTube as well. So, it’s pretty fascinating because you’ll go from one thing and then the algorithm of YouTube or the AI behind it’s like, hey, this guy really liked that because he watched the whole thing, so we’re going to give him more things of up next, up next. I appreciate that because without YouTube, I probably wouldn’t be as well versed in a lot of things that I am now. Certainly, Courtney, you’d probably be walking separately than reading. And so yeah, it’s pretty cool.

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah, I doubled my time well spent by doing that, by combining the two.

Adam Copenhaver:

Yeah.

Courtney Mattern:

Adam, we have to tell people, the last time you were on the podcast in episode 151, you had mentioned that you were a big fan of the podcast, “The Building Code,” you listened to it. And I took the opportunity to make you part of podcast research. So, I called Adam and asked him all these questions about the podcast, what could be better? What does he like to learn about? What does he want to hear? And one thing you told me was you like learning and hearing from other builders about what inspires them and what mistakes they’ve made and lessons they’ve learned. So, now it’s time to put you in the spotlight and share what is a lesson you’ve learned.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Feels like a segment, like a bit like the lighting should change. Tell us what mistakes you’ve learned, sir.

Courtney Mattern:

The lights dim. We put a spotlight on you like you’re being interrogated.

Adam Copenhaver:

Holy smokes. Yeah. I’m not totally prepared for this question, but let’s just chat about it and you guys digging in and say …

Zach Wojtowicz:

We’ll do it live. We’ll do it.

Adam Copenhaver:

… tell me more about that, Adam.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Adam Copenhaver:

I think the biggest mistakes that I’ve made … I just got off of NAHAB meeting too, and you’re on the call. I was on the call with a number of other builders from across the country. And in order to run a business, you need to make sure that it’s a profitable business. You need to be responsible to your team, to your clients, to your subs, to your vendors, to make sure that you’re running a business profitably, so that you’re not just propping a tent up with a toothpick, so to speak. So, we got cut pretty deep during COVID, to be honest, of the silent little things. Luckily, our planning was pretty strong and how we followed some numbers was pretty strong, but not strong enough to what it is today. And I’ll dig into that a little bit more. I’m fearful that a lot of builders, and this might hit a cord, to some extent where it’s a Ponzi scheme, where they’re not focused on their margin and their business numbers so much that they just use a deposit from the next job to complete the last job.

And this market that we’ve been in for the last 10 years has really enabled a lot of builders to do that, which is very dangerous. And so I’d encourage, first builders … because I’ve been here, too, where the numbers didn’t turn out as good as you wanted to. And the reason that COVID caused so much stress, and I’m sure, I’m absolutely certain this is the fact for a lot of builders out there, a lot, it’s caused a lot of financial stress that a lot of builders didn’t see until maybe now because of the time, particularly. The other particular reason is because the cost increases. For me, we lead our business, the entire team on the golden rule, hands down, we do onto others how we want to be treated. And so, do we have provisions in our construction agreements that say, is there an escalation clause? Absolutely. And going into COVID we saw what was coming up, in particularly we said building materials and lumber. And so, we called these things out on our contract and we said, Hey, we’re really not sure what’s going to happen to lumber.

It’s been volatile, but this risk we can’t take on our own as a business, so here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to share a lumber number with you and whatever it is, by the time we’re done purchasing lumber, that’s the number. It’s been volatile. If it’s lower, we’ll give you the difference back. If it’s above, you guys just take the difference for us, and that’s the most fair way that I know how to do it. So, we did that for all of our construction agreements, which saved us. And this is going to sound outrageous, I’m talking about some of those swings were over $100,000 from when we originally budgeted to there and some closer to 200 grand. If you think about that, and a builder didn’t have that built in, and he tries to make up for that, it’s tough. Where we didn’t do it was all the rest of the little incremental ones. The incremental ones on siding and roofing and trim and copper and PVC. I didn’t want to change order fatigue our clients. We use change orders to build relationships. We do not use change orders to destroy relationships.

And so you just say, hey, you know what, just keep on pushing forward, we’ll find our efficiencies. We’ll do it through managing the job to the 12 months or 14 months that we thought that we’d build it, but COVID all these delays. And so, here you go, the opportunity to see how much is going out the door on your overhead every single month. When you think about that and you say, okay, every job during COVID, on average, took two months longer because of whatever delays, and it was probably a lot more than that. Two months of overhead, if you’ve got 10 jobs, that’s 20 months. You got to be a savvy builder to be looking at it in advance and to do something about it. But how do you go back to your client after the fact and you say, “Hey, we didn’t plan on your project going two months over. I think that we’re going to need to charge you some more money.” If you’re like us, you don’t.

You just work to the next one and work to the next one. But if you didn’t estimate that job and plan it on the right profit margin to begin with and be looking at your net profit margin across your historical jobs, you’re very likely into that Ponzi type of phase now where you’re not doing so good. And the only way that you get out is making right decisions and being honest with yourself and planning the next ones better to get out of it. So, yeah, those were some mistakes and I think that it was an external thing, but also we probably could have been a little bit better prepared to deal with those conversations and not just do it for lumber, but to do it with everything else. But again, I’m happy with where we are because we were safe through it. We watched the numbers. We stayed in a positive position, but I could see for so many others that it was a very impactful thing that we all went through.

But don’t ignore it. I still see builders out there … Listen, I don’t have a greedy bone in my body. I know where our profit margins as builders and contractors need to be to run businesses, whether you’re this big, because I’ve used to be that big, or whether you’re this big because I’m that big now, or maybe up here. And I’m not trying to say that we’re trying to get much bigger than what we are right now with 10 people in the revenue that we do. But I do see builders or hear builders doing lower profit margins and it’s to get those jobs. And I’m fearful that they’re trying to get those jobs with lower profit margins, so they can make it for the last one. And so, those guys that are listening to me doing that, you need to price accordingly to save your business and to save the people that you’re working for and look out for your subs and suppliers and vendors, so that you don’t end up in a very awkward position.

Because the market can change tomorrow and that next job might not be there. So, plan for these jobs today and make sure that you hit the numbers that allow you to be a profitable business. Otherwise, you’re putting everybody at risk and the most important person that you don’t want to put at risk is your client because that can have a liability legally, that can last a very long time and ruin families, quite frankly. So, yes, the mistakes made for sure. Financial planning is one of them. And dealing with these external things, whether it’s market fluctuations or COVID or supply chain disruptions, you got to remain nimble, and you got to be upfront with your clients and you got to have conversations with your peers. One of the biggest opportunities I have to learn is to talk to other builders. I endeavor for our local market to be more builder friendly, meaning I’ve got several builder buds, which I’m blessed to have. I’d love to have a hundred more in Charleston.

Fortunately, I have a good amount around the country and thanks to DMs on Instagram and those sort of things and the guys that call me and refer to me. They may not know it, they’re asking for this and that, they may not know it, but I’m getting just as much out of those conversations as they are. It’s collaboration over competition. I’d love to do more of that in my own market, but I’ve learned so much. How do I know how much to charge as a profit margin if I’m not talking to other builders as well, if I’m not knowing my numbers extremely well. And so, you got to do that stuff. If you’re on your own island and you’re still wearing these 10 different hats, dammit, listen to “Who, Not How.” Go get some more education and become more comfortable. I would say the biggest change from when we chatted last to now is I was uneasy about COVID and what that did to a lot of different things. And we kind of chatted about that and just lessons learned.

But I’m extremely comfortable right now with what our business is, our culture and our company, the financial metrics of how we’re running jobs. COVID certainly taught us a ton of things. Our systems are a heck of a lot tighter than they’ve ever been, our processes, our training. Our training is a hell of a lot stronger than it’s ever been. As we chatted about those new echelons, we’ll continue to reach those new echelons, and I’m going to do it with Buildertrend as well. Just throwing a shout out there. And I’ll go bring this full circle to the “Who, Not How,” as I’m stopping the book and these mind blowing moments of holy smokes, why am I continuing to push on this. This is my responsibility, I have to do this because I feel that way all the time. I feel like if I want to get this done right, you got to do it yourself. And that’s just one of the big cognitive fallacies that we all convince ourselves about.

And you can do some remarkable things with other people and they can be better at it than you will ever be. And if you do that, you do that together and you both bring each other up, you’re just leapfrogging. But the big mic drop moment for me was, thinking about our business, the most important, who looking back that I didn’t even realize was Buildertrend. Buildertrend is one of our most fantastic, who’s. Ben and I, eight or nine years ago, chose Buildertrend as we were interviewing, co-constructing, all these other ones and we just said, “Hey, these are the people that I want to be with.” This is the systems, the processes, the continued devotion to evolution, evolving the business that you guys have that helps keep us organized. So, when we think about a who all the components of Buildertrend, Buildertrend revolving around the schedule, but the estimates, the templates, the PO systems, gosh, the whole way through the Daily Logs to the Photos, to the client interaction, to the opportunity for them to see what our cost plus or simply some contracts look like.

The file repository, which I call our online filing cabinet. In the last episode, I told everybody who I worked for. We had this file room that was ridiculous. And all the jobs are in there and all the folders are in there, and the amount of paperclips and staples and paper in there was absolutely ridiculous. Now, it’s all on Buildertrend on the cloud and everybody gets to access it on their computer, their phones, the clients, the subs, the vendors is remarkable. You imagine how many who’s, I need to do all that, and my only who to solve all of that is Buildertrend and the rest of our team to integrate our processes around. So, these young builders that I get phone calls for, they’re still working off of spreadsheets that are, “Sure, could you template it?” Yeah, but think about the amount of mistakes that just one keystroke can cause in a spreadsheet that’ll just cause havoc. I know because I’ve experienced them.

Somehow remarkably, something disappeared from a spreadsheet in a budget, and I’m the golden rule guy, I’m going to eat $28,000 septic field that I didn’t want to eat on a job because it just remarkably fell off a spreadsheet. Those sort of things happen. So, yeah, kudos to a Buildertrend for being CopeGrand’s who, our whole team’s who, and we are definitely looking forward to continuing that relationship and participating in the next things that you guys have coming out, which thanks for letting us be involved with them.

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah. Zach and I are both pretty passionate about the community of builders we have and often trying to find ways to connect to them, whether it’s at BTU or online. And I’d just say to any of our listeners, if you’re looking for a builder buddy, and you’re looking for a builder like you, you can send us an email at podcast@buildertrend.com. Zach and I would love to connect you. We work with a lot of different builders, and I’m always thinking, “Oh, you need to meet Joe Christensen in Kansas City,” or, “You need to Brad Levitt in Phoenix.” And Zach has so many connections with his role in CS. Or you can also join, we have a Facebook group for the podcast called The Building Code Crew.

You can go in there, you can ask questions. You can say, “Hey, I’m a builder in North Dakota who else is out here?” And connect and make some friends because the information sharing is so valuable because you might think that you’ve figured it all out. But life is, as I like to say, too short to make all the mistakes, so you should learn from others. And all of our builders are so kind and so willing to help each other out.

Adam Copenhaver:

You’re right, Courtney, you guys have introduced me to a number of folks and those will end up being lifelong relationships. So, thanks for that. And I didn’t know about the Facebook group, so I’m going to become the best member.

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah, we need to get you in there. You should be running the Facebook group.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, we’d love to have it.

Adam Copenhaver:

I don’t know about that.

Courtney Mattern:

He’s like, I did not sign up for this.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, wait a minute, back that up.

Adam Copenhaver:

Oh, no.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s one of my favorite things that I am always just blown away by in the construction industry is, I think because there’s such a relationship focused industry for the building process, that they’re extremely open to sharing how they got there and it is something that keeps me ever engaged with the people that I get to meet here on the Building Code and in my customer success role. So, Adam, we are out of time. That was a great conversation. Thank you for your words of wisdom. Thank you for showing us all the things happening, we’ll check back in with you for sure. You’re always welcome back …

Adam Copenhaver:

In another 40 episodes?

Courtney Mattern:

Another 44 episodes.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s right. We’ll hit you up about 35, 40 episodes, we’ll make that happen. But no, we’ll get you in that three club. It’s a prestigious group.

Adam Copenhaver:

All right, sounds great. Well, hey guys, thanks for having me on. Anybody that wants to reach out to me, I’m an open book. Feel real welcome to reach out. CopeGrand Homes is the old website right now, but socials are great. DM me, email me, whatever you guys want. Yep. Thanks so much.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Love it. Thanks.

Adam Copenhaver:

All right, I enjoyed it. See y’all.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Well, we just had Adam from CopeGrand Homes, second time. Courtney, what’d you think?

Courtney Mattern:

He’s just one of my favorites.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I know, I felt like …

Courtney Mattern:

Can I have favorites?

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s hard. Charley and I talk about it all the time. We actually got asked on a different podcast that we went on, well, who is our favorite? And Charley copped out. He was like, “Well, I can’t pick my favorite customer. I have to pick the consultants or the economists.” And I was like, I don’t know, you could have favorite kids, I guess favorite people.

Courtney Mattern:

When I did PR in Broadway, we’d always say our favorite show is the one that we’re currently promoting.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Now, if you say Adam’s your favorite, and Joe Christensen hears this, then we could start some drama.

Courtney Mattern:

Oh no. I know they’re all my favorites. I think Adam brings a lot to the table and as far as positive attitude, and also he’s making South Carolina sound so amazing.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I know it was like a tourism or move to South Carolina.

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah, it’s like we need to get out there with a Buildertrend event and meet some more of the builders in the area. But I can’t wait to add some books to my reading list and listen to some more podcasts. It’s just so great to know that someone like him who’s constantly searching for the best thought leadership, for the best advice on how to grow his business to learn is also a listener of “The Building Code.” So, kudos to you and Charley.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Well, thank you, Courtney. It’s the most underrated part of my job. I really look forward to it. Yeah, I thought Adam, our discussion about some of the things about building habits are good takeaways for me. I definitely want to go check out the book that we discussed. The interesting thing about being a business owner for me is the people who are really effective business owners, they never get to that point of, I’ve made it. They’re always constantly trying to improve a process here or find a talent gap here, bring in more revenue so I can do these other things. So, I’ve just respect Adam a lot for his mindset as you talked about. But he just really strikes me as someone who you want to spend time around, be a part of his team because he’s just so genuine and warm. And it was a great interview.

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah. And I think I’ve sat in on a few episodes lately, been really lucky to interview some of these builders with y’all, and you find this common thread, this common denominator of builders who do have that growth mindset, who value their people, who are trying to be innovative and not really thinking what is everybody else doing? But it’s almost like they’re in competition with themselves, that they’re high achievers, that they’re not looking to the people next to them and saying, how do I do it like him? It’s how do I do it better than I’m doing it right now? And it’s a common thread we have here at Buildertrend, and I think that’s why we have all these great customers, and we’re drawn to each other, and we work really well together. And sky’s the limit – and they’re teaching us things every day.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. I always feel really special when they’re like, Zach, I have this problem, help me solve it. I’m like, “Me? Me, I’m just a guy. I work in a tech company.” And that’s the fun part, is we help each other, and it really makes magic.

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah, it’s such an honor.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Don’t forget, we got to throw it to the social channels. Where can people find us?

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah. Head over to Facebook, we have The Building Code Crew. It’s a Facebook group. It’s small but mighty and hopefully will grow faster the more we talk about it. But if you join the Facebook community, you can connect with other listeners, other builders. You can request episode topics. You can ask questions to Zach and Charley. You can give us feedback. You can just drop us some funny gifs or gifs, depend on which generation …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Ooh, controversial. Yeah.

Courtney Mattern:

… you’re in. And then if you love the podcast, please rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. That’s how we climb the charts. Those are the numbers we can show our leadership that you are loving this podcast. And then you can also follow us on social media anywhere at Buildertrend. We’re on LinkedIn, we’re on Instagram, we’re on Facebook. We’re not on TikTok, but maybe we should start a poll.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Charley would love that.

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah. Send us a note if you think we need to be on TikTok. We’re on Threads, that’s a new one. I’m not sure if we’ve threaded yet, but we’re there. We’re out there, and we’re ready to talk to all of our fans.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I love it. Well, thank you for joining us on “The Building Code.” We’ll see you next time.