 What Lowe's is saying about, hey, we're buying material for the next two to three years because all the permits that are issued today, short of a war or an economic crisis happening overnight, we're still going to need these houses. There's such a shortage in houses a year from now. We still won't be caught up. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales, and outperform your competition. All right, everybody. Welcome to Smarter Building Materials Marketing, where we believe your online presence should be your best salesperson. I am Zach Williams, alongside my co-host, Beth Popnikov. Today, we're talking to a builder on today's show, having an honest conversation about the state of the industry, what manufacturers are doing, that's working, what's not working, and then, in the backdrop of that, what's happening with labor in a way that you can, as a manufacturer, be helping. We are really excited to welcome Caleb Williams to the show. He is the president of TrueCraft Builders, Inc., and Caleb, you are a generational builder, right? Your dad is a builder also? Yeah, and when you calculate the amount of people we have in our company and the years that my dad put into it, my dad started the company 27 years ago, but he actually worked with another contractor as a lead site super for years before that. And so, he started the company, and I want to say about 10 to 12 years ago, I started running the office. I was actually involved in a work injury, and I had a back surgery, and so, it actually put me in the office, and about the same time, my dad started doing missionary work, and it kind of forced my hand to start working more and more in the office, and I took over running the company about 10 years ago, and we're still here today, so. You haven't looked back. Yeah, exactly, exactly. My dad put the foundation in for where our company is, and I have five brothers that work with me, and we're a family-owned business, and a lot of people say that. You have five brothers? I do, yes. You have five brothers. Do you have any sisters? Five brothers? I do, one. God bless your sister. She's the oldest, and yes, she's a treasure to our family, but she doesn't work with us. The rest of us work together, and so there's six of us boys total, and we all work together, and that's the best one thing that everybody says. How in the world do you work with family? And not only do we work together, but we are best friends. We cook out on the weekends together. We hang out, ride motorcycles. Our family is a close-knit family, and it has worked well for our company. That's really cool. Jinks. So, Caleb, tell us a little bit about your business. I mean, I was really interested to chat with you because I was looking at your website, and you guys do both residential, you do commercial. You've done some really big projects as well. Just give us a high-level overview of your business, the type of work you guys do, and the size of your tour. Sure, you're exactly right. We do both residential and commercial. We started off as a more residential company when my dad started it. We was kind of a service company, but a lot of his clients were the NASCAR community, and with Lowe's being in our hometown here, it was a natural fit. We started doing small outfits and things like that, and it turned into more and more commercial. And when you start that field, it's very hard to do both at the same time. And if anybody's, if you've ever done it before, you understand because the trades people that work in commercial typically don't like to do residential. And so, we've actually found a niche where we do a little bit of both. A lot of our residential clientele are previous customers that we've done commercial outfits for or a commercial building. And so, we create a relationship. And I'm all about having a relationship with clients that's a long-term relationship, that it's not just a one time you build a house and you never see them again, but it's a continued relationship, and that's what we strobe for. And it's worked out really well. Yeah, let's check on your side. You guys have, gosh, you guys, when you work with Lowe's as well? That's right, yeah. So, we have been working for Lowe's for about six years, about seven years ago, we did an outfit for one of their advertisement companies. And I got a call one day out of the blue. A guy from the facilities there asked, was we interested in doing a small project there at the Lowe's headquarters? And it was able to, we got our foot in the door with just a small project and we haven't left. And we've been really fortunate, like I said, that was six years ago. And we've renovated close to, I want to say about 800,000 square feet of space there at Lowe's at different times over the last six years. And we've been just, yes, it's been an incredible, incredible run. We're really blessed to have some great partners there at Lowe's. And not only that, but also getting to meet architects, designers and people that are lead trades people in the industry and people that you want to associate yourself with. So, we've been blessed in every one of those areas to be able to partner with the likes of Gensler and different companies and Lowe's 3P. And when you look back at your project portfolio and you see the names that some of the people that we've worked for, we've been really blessed. So, I know what our listeners want to know is what is it, what does it like to be a builder right now? What is it like to be a builder right now? Where it's like the uncertainty level, like if there was a meter, like I think it's probably greater than ever, like what's going to happen in the market. But at the same time, like it feels like you can't build enough whether it's homes or even commercial real estate. You're saying that there's more permits out today than ever before. Talk me through what you're hearing from other builders you know as well as yourself. Like what are you guys dealing with today? What are some of the biggest problems you're dealing with? What's the market feel like to you all? Yeah, you're 100% right, Zach. It is so challenging to be a contractor today. And I know anything we do in the world, you really, since the pandemic started, it has made it harder. It's challenging. But as a contractor, I was actually walking the site this morning with our Lowe's Project Manager. And we were talking, it seems like it's almost a daily occurrence to get an email or get a call saying, hey, you're still didn't arrive or, you know, product that you ordered 12 weeks ago, there's a delay because of shipping. And that's a daily occurrence and it has made it extremely challenging. But at the same time, I've never seen growth like we're seeing it today. I think, you know, we were talking earlier that I was telling you about, we were meeting with the county official last week. And she was telling me that they have more permits issued on a daily basis in the last several weeks than they've ever had ever. And so when you look at that, it's really hard to judge where we're going with this and when the pullback will be because we always know that there will be a slowdown at some point. But it even has made it more challenging because the demand for materials, the demand for labor. And so it's a constant, you go home at the end of the day with, you've earned your pay for that day. Let's just say that. Is there anything you're doing, Caleb, that is helping you feel comfortable in this level of unpredictability? I know you mentioned, just as we were talking before the show that the market's never been hotter, but there's things that you're seeing that are happening that tell you this isn't sustainable, material shortage, labor shortage, cost of materials. I'm sure you're seeing other things as well. Is there anything you're doing to help you prepare for the future when things either cool down or something shifts? Yeah, that's a great point, Beth. One of the things that my dad found when he started the company is we never wanted to go into it. And I've seen too many times, I've seen it in 2007, 2008 where companies will go out there and start developments. They would start 10 houses and really get themselves upside down. And we've always tried to operate on a cash basis where we've never overobligated ourselves. So while our growth has been really fast in the last six years, we've also tried to manage it and never tried to overextend ourselves in a way that's going to affect us. But at the same time, you have to grow. As a business owner, you want to see the growth and you want to hire more employees. And so there is definitely a balancing act of watching the market, knowing where the market is today. And just like you said, planning ahead so that you don't get yourselves in trouble when things do slow down. One of the benefits that I feel like that we've had that's really huge in the industry, we've been able to work with some of the architects and what that has allowed us to do is to learn to plan 12, 18, 24 weeks and even 12 months in advance. A lot of the projects we're doing, if you're starting a project today, a large commercial project, you know it's going to take you six to eight months to design and permitting. And so you're planning months and years in advance. And so that in the residential side, I've taken that same concept and used that in the residential side. So when you're planning ahead and you've got a project starting, you're really starting to look at indicators way down the road. And obviously having a client like Lowe's and been able to rub shoulders with a lot of their people that really have key indicators in the market. And you can be in a casual conversation but bring up, hey, what are you seeing in the market? What are you guys planning for a year from now or two years from now? What are you seeing that's going to happen with the industry, you know, based on what we're dealing with now? And so that has really benefited us. Can you share anything? That's exactly what I was going to say. I had one of the Lowe's purchasing agents tell me when there were such shortages with plywood and things like that, they had to go out and guarantee, hey, we're going to buy materials from you guys for the next two years. Everything that you run in your mills will buy from you because there wasn't enough plants, there's not enough people producing materials. And I think we're seeing that and when you go to Lowe's or Home Depot or wherever you buy your local materials, there's shortages on stud, there's shortages on plywood, there's shortages on everything. And I've thought about it a lot of times, you know, either builders, I think it's something that's happening where there's a shortage of labor. Contractors are buying more today than they have ever bought before because it's a shortage of houses. And then you've got delays because of COVID, you've got protocols that have been put in place because of whether you're in a state that's really cracked down and will limit what you can do and how many people you can work. You have those combination of things and it's really, it's just drove the market crazy. And I think if you're not planning ahead today for a year from now, materials and things like that, you're getting behind. So they're hedging their bets, if I'm hearing correctly here, Caleb, they're hedging their bets saying, hey, we don't know what the market's going to look like, but if we want to survive today, we're having to buy material and just hope, I hope it's the wrong word here, but like expect that demand is going to continue. And like we're hearing that from other even contractors too, like I'm having to overbuy product in order to make sure my doors stay open. You know, we're, that's right, we're having, that's right, we're having to overbuy your, I told the guys, I said, we'll use the material somewhere. If you have a leftover store, we'll use it somewhere because it's so hard to get, whether it's plywood, sheetrock, whatever the material is. So we know we're going to use it somewhere. But the other thing, you know, no one, what they're saying as far as material and the other thing, they're not making any more land, you know, the land that's here is what you have. So as it has a really great way to say it, if you come across a property, you can, today you can't say, you know what, I'm going to save my money in two or three years, then I'll go out and get that piece. It's probably not going to be there in two or three years. So if you see land today and you want to start a development and you have the backing to do that, you've got to go ahead, even though it might be two years from now, you've got to buy that land today. And so knowing what Lowe's is saying about, hey, we're buying material for the next two to three years because all the permits that are issued today, short of a war, or an economic crisis happening overnight, we're still going to need these houses. There's such a shortage in houses a year from now. We still won't be caught up. So by looking at that, you can say, hey, I'm going to go ahead and purchase this land because I know even if I'm not ready for another two years, I've got this land in place. I've got this development planned so that I can move forward at that time. And if you're not thinking that far ahead now, you're going to be behind. The days of going out and just buying a lot here and there, I think are there in the past, you've got to be planning for the future. And you can't wait for just months at a time. I can remember three years ago, if you wanted to go a lot, you'd row down the road and you see a lot of sign, you call about it and you get it under contract. And that's not the way it is today. So we talked about materials. We talked about land. What are you doing about labor? Or what do you think should be done about labor? Because that's not all on you, Caleb. You don't have to solve that. That's not a pain point for you, is it Caleb? Caleb is fine. Yeah. Yeah, we definitely, somebody needs to solve it. I think we had all subscribed to figuring out that solution. But you're 100% right. We've had several positions open here at our company. And we're needing to hire a project manager. We're needing to hire two site superintendents, a full-time estimator. And the problems we're seeing today, there's such a shortage. You're going to pay a premium in wages to get those people. And you want people to be happy. So I think the key thing, when you find them, you've got to pay them to keep them, offer them benefits so that they will stay and create a work environment that they love to be in. I've said for a long time that a contractor is only as good as the people he surrounds himself with. If you have trades people that do shoddy work, you're not going to stay in business. And so I think one of the things that needs to happen is we've got to bring, I grew up working with my dad. I grew up after school going and helping him. I started with just cleaning up the job sites. And I worked with my dad and another carpenter named Mark Brant. They really showed me how to build. And as a trim carpenter, and one of the things that I did right out of high school, I built a structure for a piano. And so I've always prided myself in being a trim carpenter. And I find today, you can find help, but they're not really qualified help. People aren't teaching today that old crap, the old way to do things, that something that's going to last. And a lot of the mentality today is I'll get it done, I'll get paid, I'll move on. Because it's probably going to get remodeled, you know, when the next family moves in, it's going to get remodeled anyway, so not that big of a deal. And that's the wrong mindset to have. I think there's still quite a few quality trades people and builders out there, but there are fewer and fewer far between. And so I feel like that we've got to bring that old, whether it be in the high school, we've got to bring back the trades people and learn a crap from a young age so that when they step into it, they're not doing so much on the job training and cost and won the general contractor dollars, but also cost them a lot of heartache for the homeowner, whether it be delays or things like that. And them not getting the product that they were hoping for. Kale, I want to show you something here. I found this chart from, and I'll make sure we link to this for our listeners here, but I found this chart from NAHB. What they did was they surveyed 18 to 25 year olds. And they said, Hey, what are your career plans? And then what they did was the 26% of the people that said, Hey, I'm undecided at this point. They asked them point blank, and this is what I love. They weren't like, Hey, what do you want in order to get into construction? They just asked them like, how much money do you need to make in order for us to convince you to get into construction? Like there's a need. We have opportunity. How much money do you want? And what's really interesting for listeners, we'll make sure we link to this on the show notes, 7% said $40,000, 7% said $50,000, 22% said $75,000, 21% said $100,000. And then the best part is that 43% of the vast majority of people said not interested at any price. You cannot get me into construction. Isn't that interesting, Caleb? Does that surprise you at all? It really does it. And, you know, I think there is a group that, with the dollar amount, the look of the dollar amount, they say, I'm going to need this much to make what I want to do in life, whether whatever it be. But I think the other part of that is, society has created this mindset that you need to go to college to make a lot of money or to make a good living to be successful. You got to have so many degrees and that hard work, because let's face it, construction work can be stressful. It can be labor intensive. And so we've created a mindset that says, hey, you've got to make a living as easy as possible and make as much money as you can. And by the way, you need to go to college and get four to eight years degree. So construction is probably not the way to go. And so we've created that mindset. And so there's fewer and fewer people willing to jump in the industry. I had my accountant tell me this probably a year ago. He told me, he said, 95% of my clients are business owners that have to do with the construction industry, whether they own a mechanical business, plumbing, electrical, general contractor, graders, whatever it is. He said, in 90% of them make more than I do as an accountant. He said, and at least 60% didn't even do one year in college. And so that tells you what the industry has changed so much. I know when I was growing up, and I'm just going to be brutally honest here, the majority of people that I worked with on the construction sites were either had a drug addiction, they had so much alcohol problems and things like that. And I remember even on Friday afternoon, seeing people crack open beers on the job, you know, but that's been a long time ago. That's 30 years in the career. And today is so much more professional. I think we're starting to see the mindset change a little bit about the construction industry, but we definitely have a long way to go. And I think we've got to start bringing up younger people to fill those roles because so many people that I know and that I've worked with my entire career, they're retiring and they're, you know, either they're going to sell their business or they'll just retire and nobody will pick up that mantle. And I think we've got to start bringing young people in. And I would like to start, you know, doing apprenticeships in the summer because really you need to get people right out of high school and start bringing them in and letting them sample and start paying them a good enough wage up front so they want to stay in it. Because I think, you know, too often we try to pay the least amount we can and you're not going to attract anybody by just giving them hard work and then not willing to pay them anything. I think that's a really important piece that you're mentioning, Caleb, that doesn't get brought up with addressing the labor shortage. Tons of people have talked about reintroducing, you know, trade schools or trade certifications in high school, which is a great idea. Absolutely destigmatizing the idea of physical or manual labor, not being as sought after or not being as worthy of a career as an office job or as worthy of a career as a four year degree. I completely agree with that. But I think it's really important to address, like if we want to destigmatize it, a great way to do that is throw money at it. It's really hard to say that about a person making 100 K a year. Like, you know, if you're making 150 K a year, that's a totally different scenario on what you're doing. I know, yeah, I just think that's a really, really great point. Yeah, I think too, too many people think, oh, well, you know, you're going to go into the construction industry, you're going to work so hard, and you're only going to make 40, $45,000 a year. And most people that I know, they're actually trades people in the field, you know, they're making 60, 75, 100,000. And business owners, if you can have a, you know, just a van, a work van and two guys helping you and you can be making upwards of $120,000, $150,000 a year. And I think that has to be, it has to be brought out that, hey, you can make a good living without going to, and nothing wrong with going to college. But I think so many people today go out and they, they'll spend four to six years going to college and they'll, they'll go home with $80,000 in debt and, and then start their career making $60,000 a year, where you can go in the construction industry. You know, it's backwards in four or five years, you can be making 60 or $70,000 a year and you don't have that debt. And I think that, that's another thing that has to be brought up in the day and age when we're talking about, you know, canceling college debt and all these things. Hey, there's other alternatives out there to make a good living than to go on and, and, you know, getting behind in life by taking on this massive debt. That's great. Caleb, man, thank you so much for coming to the show. If I can just ask you one last piece of advice, if there's a manufacturer listening, they listen to all the problems that are faced, that builders are facing today. What's the one piece of advice that you would give them? You know, I would say get out, get out on the field and talk with, talk with the contractors. I remember about six years ago, maybe, maybe five years ago, we were doing a project with Stanley, and it was when Stanley was selling all their tape measures to Lowe's, and they actually reached out to our team and they said, hey, can we come out in the field, follow you guys around, and let's talk about our products and what we can do different. And I think that's a great mindset. Get out and talk to the builders, get out on the sites and see what you, what, if anything needs to be changed, what you're doing wrong, and also what you're doing right. One thing I think that I find interesting with, with contractors and the entire construction industry, we are pretty brand loyal. So if you, if you have somebody that's used a Stanley tape measure, for instance, they're probably going to use that Stanley tape measure for their career. And that's whether they're buying materials, you know, plumbing fixture, whatever it is. When you find something you like and it works well for you, you're going to continue to buy that. And so what I would say is get out on the field and talk to those contractors, talk to those tradespeople and have that one-on-one conversation. Hey, it'd be open to change and what we can do different. I think, I think that would, that would help. Awesome. Kayla Mann, thank you so much again for coming on the show. If someone's to connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that? Our websites, truecrabbuildersint.com, we can reach out to us that way or you can call our office and we'll be glad to collaborate any way possible. That's great. Kayla Mann, this is awesome. Appreciate your time. And for our listeners, if you enjoyed this content, make sure you go to venvio.com slash podcast to subscribe and get more. Until next time, I'm Zach Williams alongside Beth Hopney Galov. Thanks, everybody.