United Foundry Talks — Episode 001

Feast or Famine Is a Choice

Hosts: Matt DeLong and Booker Fritz Runtime: ~20 minutes

Intro: You're listening to the United Foundry Podcast, a podcast where builders, remodelers, and contractors scale their business using AI and technology.

Matt: What's up, everyone? This is episode number one of the United Foundry Talks podcast, and we're going to jump into some pretty interesting topics that we think you guys would enjoy and find valuable. Again, this is for builders, remodelers, and contractors. We're going to just talk shop. We're going to talk about all the things we've seen and observed and give you guys some tips and tricks on what we've seen over the last couple of years. So I'm going to go ahead and introduce my co-host, Booker Fritz. Hello, Booker. How are you today?

Booker: Hello. Doing good. Happy to be here. Happy to dive into some of this and help everyone out here. I know we were talking a little bit before the show, and one of the things we were discussing is how some builders will experience super busy months, and then everything seems to really die off suddenly, and they're a bit confused about it.

Matt: That's right. The feast or famine. It's kind of like peanut butter and jelly one month, steak and potatoes the next, then back to peanut butter and jelly. And you've had some experience with this — the slow month, busy month cycle. Our opinion is that it's not bad luck. It's a direct, predictable outcome of pausing marketing when the calendar gets filled up and the crews get busy. Talk to us a little bit about what you've seen firsthand with that, Booker.

Booker: Yeah. So there's definitely a lag period, right? If we started marketing today, you may get leads the first week or whatever it may be, but there's a bit of a ramp-up process. And there's the same thing for a cooldown process after you pause it — you might get a few leads slowly rolling in after that. So if we start a bunch of marketing today, and then you fill up your jobs and you're booked out, you don't have any more crews for the jobs, and you say, "Hey, I'm going to pause marketing" — that's kind of the initial thought. But if you do that, once those jobs are finished, you're left with nothing. So you really have to figure out a way to handle that workload, or turn down some jobs even, or start qualifying jobs more, so you can keep the leads coming in after your busy season. It's roughly, I would say, a 60-day window that you want to prepare for. If you're busy, maybe you can reduce it a little bit. You definitely don't want to turn it off, because you're going to feel it.

Matt: Right. And there's a sales cycle between when someone first contacts you and when they give you the green light and sign a contract, right? So that's a 60-day window. The moment you hit pause, you might still have people agreeing to estimates and proposals you wrote a month or two ago, where you're like, "Oh, I can pause marketing and I'm still getting business." But there's that 60-day lag, which pretty much accounts for the traditional sales cycle, especially for remodelers. Obviously custom home builders have a much longer sales cycle — usually six months to three years on a big-ticket, million-dollar-plus home. Those aren't typically impulse items you're going to decide on over a weekend. But yeah, absolutely — there's a lag between when you stop marketing and when you start feeling the effects. And most builders, and probably entrepreneurs in general, have this expectation that a change is going to happen immediately, not understanding that there's a 60-day lag. That could prove to be a fatal mistake, right?

Booker: For sure. Yeah. Definitely.

Matt: So let's talk about what most builders and contractors rely on, which is referrals. That's how most builders get business, and as you know, Booker, the best kind of advertising you can get is a happy customer telling their friends and family, "Hey, I used this guy, he did a great job, you should reach out to him." Those are definitely an engine, but they're not very predictable. They're very passive, and you can't really schedule that kind of thing. You might get three referrals in one week and then nothing for the next two years.

Booker: Right. Yeah. Referrals are the best kind of leads. I mean, they have the highest close rate — people are coming to you, they already know about you. So they're really great, but they're pretty unpredictable. When you get them, it's awesome, but you don't always have those referrals coming in. So it's definitely important to look at different avenues and explore different ways of getting regular jobs like that.

Matt: Right. And I've always thought that referrals are one channel. Getting referrals and recommendations — that's great, and you can certainly build a business around that, but it's not predictable. There's nothing intentional about it. You're essentially coasting off the goodwill of other people. And at some point, as we've seen in the last couple of years, your referrals just kind of dry up. Then your one avenue to getting new business literally shuts down overnight, and you have no plan, nothing in place to keep getting leads or keep doing business. That's the one thing we hear a lot from remodeling companies and builders: "Hey, I'm really good at building buildings and remodeling kitchens, but I'm not so great at the sales piece." So obviously you need a second channel to build leads, not just relying on referrals, because again, you're just coasting. So Booker, what are some other options you're aware of that builders can use to get a more predictable — what we'll call a pipeline, not just "throw me a lead over the wall" — a predictable pipeline of business?

Booker: Well, I would say there are really two parts to it. There's the short-term stuff — now, there's still a ramp-up here, like we mentioned earlier; it's still going to take time to start generating leads — but for the short term, you'd be looking at different ad platforms. For example, Google Ads, Local Services Ads, Facebook ads — pretty much any ad you see online would yield a short-term result. So if you need leads fairly quickly — again, there is a ramp-up period — that would be the go-to. But long term, it's really going to be the popularity of your website. You want to be the popular kid on the block when it comes to your online presence, and there are a lot of things we can do to increase that popularity.

Matt: Right. And it's not just about being the best at what you do. It's also about being the best known. Because if you're the best at finishing or woodworking or whatever your craft is — electrical, plumbing, whatever your niche is — being the best isn't good enough. If no one knows about you, you're going to starve, right? Or you're going to end up subbing for other people and taking whatever they give you. So having a predictable pipeline of paid traffic and website leads is super important. And what's interesting about websites is that I hear this almost every week: "Hey, my website doesn't bring me much, so that's why it looks crummy and dated — I don't want to invest in it because it doesn't bring me anything." I know what I would say, but what would you say to someone who treats the website as an afterthought — "I had my 12-year-old niece build it on Squarespace or Wix"?

Booker: Nice. Well, I would say — you guys are super busy. Remodelers, home builders, you have a million things on your plate. Everybody's calling you, everybody wants something done last week. You've got quotes to do, lots of jobs to do. So I get that it's hard to put one more thing on your plate. But you need to think of it this way: your online presence is just like building a house. You have to start with a really strong foundation and build on top of it. So it really is key. You definitely want to be showcasing your best work online. We don't want people searching and finding a website made by somebody who just created their first site on Wix or whatever it may be.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Booker: Awesome. Matt, what would you say to people who maybe have been approaching this wrong all these years? Like we just mentioned, it's tough when they have so many different things on their plate.

Matt: Right. I think the idea is you have to prioritize sales, and not just when the crews aren't busy. I've been an entrepreneur for 30-plus years, and sometimes you have to figure out what not to do first — do it wrong first. I sometimes joke that that's my superpower: I'm really good at figuring out what not to do. Eventually you figure out, "Okay, here's what not to do, but here's a better way going forward." So you have to be able to say, "I know I'm tempted — now that the crews are busy for the next month or two and we've got jobs booked — to pause marketing." And I'll tell you, having been an entrepreneur my whole life: when money is good, that's when you should be investing and continuing to build and scale your company. When you've run out of money and the phone isn't ringing, that's the worst possible time to say, "Okay, now I'm going to get serious about sales." You have no money for marketing, no money for anything, including hiring team members to help with estimates.

A lot of this ends up being stuff you figure out over time, and there's a bit of trial and error. Every remodeling or building company is different — unique circumstances, unique clients, unique market, unique timing. As we head into the fall, as we record this episode, and you get into the colder, slower months, there are all kinds of things you have to learn and adapt to. So for those of you thinking, "Hey, maybe I've been doing this wrong and I need to consider an alternative" — give yourself some grace. It's okay to make mistakes. No one knows exactly what to do perfectly the first time. But recognize, "Here's what we've done so far — let's consider an alternative so we can stop this up-and-down cycle."

That's common for most owner-operators — steak and potatoes one month, then pausing marketing indefinitely. I've even seen people who say, "I'm not going to return phone calls," and then they return a call three months later and the homeowner has already hired someone else and the project's done. So be mindful of that 60-day cycle, learn from those ups and downs, and be intentional: "I'm sick of the ups and downs — we need to do some things differently." That'd be my opinion.

Booker: Yeah. Definitely. I'd have to agree for sure.

Matt: And as we're talking about referrals and word of mouth — the idea is that's one engine, one pipeline, but ideally you need more than one. You need some kind of strategy. A lot of builders don't even think about, "What if I took 10% of my revenue and reinvested it in marketing or ad spend to get a more consistent flow of leads?" — not the up-and-down that's so common with referrals. Maybe a second engine is paid or organic lead generation that runs continuously, independent of how busy you are. Then you can start building out a team. You can have people you've personally trained start giving quotes, not just you. You go from an owner-operator, one-man show to actually scaling.

I remember my very first company — my very first hire was a salesperson, because I was the guy who built the projects. It was a little bit of a scary moment, but it worked out really well, and we ended up growing that company and selling it for millions of dollars years later. It was scary to say, "I want to hire someone — maybe it works, maybe it doesn't." But in order to scale, you have to take some kind of risk.

So on building organic lead generation, Booker, what are a couple of ideas for the smaller owner-operator to get more consistent leads — not shared leads, where you're paying and they sell the same lead to six other people, which ends up feeling more like a raffle ticket than a lead? What would you suggest there?

Booker: For organic, obviously you want to make sure you have a Google Business Profile to start. You at least want to be registered with Google — you want to be on the map. And the really important thing after you have that set up is collecting reviews regularly. Of course, that's hard for home builders, because you might only build a few homes a year, but it's still super important. Even if you only get one review a month, that's okay — it's at least some progress and consistency in collecting those reviews.

Matt: Some kind of cadence.

Booker: Yes, exactly — some kind of cadence like that. You can also schedule posts. On the Google Business Profile, you can make a little post about your services. It's something you can do early in the morning while you're having a cup of coffee. It's not a high-stress thing, it doesn't have to be anything crazy — often it's just a few sentences and maybe a picture of a recent job you completed. It shows activity, so when people come across your company, they see that you're active, which is most important to them. They don't want to work with a company that hasn't done a job in a few years and has an old profile. They want to see that you're actually there and updating things. Nobody knows how busy you are if you don't tell them and show them — just like they don't know the quality of your work. You have to show them.

Matt: Right. It costs nothing to set up a Google Business Profile. It costs nothing but a little time to ask for client reviews, and that consistency over time is really what's key. We've worked with clients whose most recent review is six or seven years old. Obviously, a bunch of five-star reviews from six years ago isn't nearly as good as recent ones. It's not about getting reviews as much as getting reviews consistently over time. Obviously, remodelers are going to have way more jobs in a year than someone building one $2 million custom home a year — probably 10x as many projects compared to a custom, luxury, or ultra-luxury home builder.

Those are inexpensive — actually free — ways to start building a second lead-generation pipeline. They just take a little of your time, versus sitting back and waiting for the phone to ring from a referral. At some point, all the people you've done business with will have recommended everyone they can think of, and that's that. The referrals dry up and you're unprepared, because you relied on the one and only option — which is great, but has limitations.

The instinct to turn off marketing and ads when we're slammed — I think that's one of the most expensive habits in this industry. There's a disconnect because of that 60-day lag: you pause it and there's no immediate, obvious effect. It's not like the phone stops ringing right away. If you've got a decent pipeline of quotes in their 60-day cycle — say six, seven, eight quotes averaging $50,000 for remodelers — floating around while clients think it over and get their budget and finances together, it's very tempting to say, "Let's pause everything, no more paid search, things are busy and I don't want to get overwhelmed." But that's the perfect opportunity to add someone part-time to help with estimating while you're busy running the team on different projects. That next person — part-time, commission-only, or hourly plus commission — can start meeting with homeowners, representing you, getting quotes out, and lining up the next 60 days. So when your current project wraps up, you've already got what's next queued up.

All right, folks, that's what we have for you today on why feast or famine is a choice — some things to think about as we wrap up. And as always: if you aren't planning to scale your company, then you're planning to fail. Thanks so much for listening. In our next episode, we're going to talk about leads and lead generation, and why leads alone aren't enough to win the business. Thanks so much for hanging out with us.