 It would not be when it's super fresh in the contractor's mind. It would be two weeks later, three weeks later. Hey, we met at that show. 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, and I'm in a little bit of a different scene today. I am at a trade show in Texas, actually in Dallas. It's called AWCI. It's the Association of the Wall and Ceiling Industry. We have a great show lined up for you today. It is hustling. It's bustling. We've got a lot going on. And we've got a great guest on the show with us today. When I came to the show, I said, hey, I want to interview a pro, a contractor. And I'd love to also interview an actual manufacturer. And we've got both on the show today. It's the same person. We've got Dan Weiss on the show with us today. Dan, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Zach. So, Dan, you're with Weiss Drywall. You're also manufacturer for listeners. Give us just a 30,000-foot view of yourself, your business, and your involvement with AWCI. So, I'm a third-generation drywall contractor based in St. Louis, Missouri. Weiss Drywall and Construction Corporation. No, we wouldn't name it that today. So, out of this, you know, 51-year-old company that my grandfather started, we're a typical commercial drywall contractor. Metal studs, drywall, you know, ceilings, taping, all those things. And so, out of that company, we spun off this other business. It's our off-site construction business called Weiss Offsite. So, we have a role-forming facility. We have some role-forming machines where we do the whole design-build aspect of making studs. And so, yeah, I mean, that's how we got into manufacturing. That's cool. We got connected because you're actually, you're also involved in the board of AWCI, is it right? Correct. So, I am on the board of AWCI, board of directors and then I chair the emerging leaders out of that. And what's that? What's the emerging leaders? With AWCI, we really focus on three pillars. It's obviously contractors, then suppliers, service providers and manufacturers. And so, there's this big need to really help our industry. You know, we all know we're aware of everybody out there. Our workforce is aging. Our ownerships are aging. And so, the executive board put together this program called the Emerging Leaders. And so, it's really not based on age or anything like that. It's really wherever you're at in the life cycle of business. And this is for everybody. It is for contractors. It is for manufacturers. It is for suppliers, service providers. And if you are aspiring to be, or just really want to even get better at leading, and we're all leaders in our own way. So, we bring in these classes and cohorts once a year. You do have to apply and get accepted. These are, and we put together really curated events. So, like this whole week, every day, there has been multiple events a day for this group. Just for that group. Just for that group. So, it's an event within an event. That's really cool because, you know, one thing we've talked about on the show a lot recently with other manufacturers is, obviously, there's a huge labor shortage. Right. You know, people are struggling. I'd love to hear about this from your standpoint, to your perspective as it relates to your business. But labor shortage is a problem. But keeping people in the industry should be a part of that, too. And you all are trying to find ways to, hey, how do we pour into people? How do we build them up? How do we train them? So, they can be more effective in their business and market themselves and things like that. Like, we're going to go to an event later. That's right. Where there's, you're basically just saying, hey, we want to help you learn how to market, learn how to network, whatever it might be. It's really smart. What are some of the outcomes you've seen of that? So already, our group really launched in January of this year and we have been virtual like every, every month, every other month up until right now. This is the first time that everybody has met and got together. Just the exchange and helping people really also understand this association world. It's a little different, you know, because everybody that's here has been part of it for so long. You know what to expect on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. People coming in fresh of this, they don't know any of that. So it's also to help them understand like the value that a construction association provides. The outcomes of this already, I've seen just people learning, their eyes opened, I've seen them be friends, you know, because our goal here is our world just like manufacturing. You want to create community. Exactly. It's a very small world. Yeah. That's really smart. And so if we look at this show, this is, I don't know, is this the first show you've been back to since COVID? Yeah, since 2019, I think. It's pretty wild, right? Yeah. What do you think of the trade show industry? Like, there's been a lot of talk with trade shows die when they're not, if you're watching this on YouTube and even if you're listening, there's a lot of people here at the show. And so clearly, I think trade shows are to say, well, when you go to a trade show as a contractor, not a manufacturer because I want to talk about that in a minute. Right. What are you looking for? Are you, do you want to be sold? Do you now want to be sold? Like, are you coming here with a mission? Hey, I want to find out about this product. Talk me through what your mindset is when you're coming to a show like this. So A, this show is completely sold out. Okay. Completely sold. So you guys only, you cap it. I think they capped it. Wow. That's interesting. That's smart. Creates some like scarcity. I think they had to go like find some tickets or something because they had such a demand. Wow. But when I'm walking the trade show floor, it's all those things. I have people that I've been, my family has been doing business with for decades, right? So of course I need to go see them. Looking for new products to go look at. Do I really like being sold? I mean, does anybody? You expect it? Yeah. But you know, if I'm going to ask questions, yeah, I mean, I want to hear about the product. Yeah. Of course. I think it's a fine line. Yeah. You know, it's a fine line between, do I like pushy salespeople? No. No, of course not. Right. So what do you expect from a manufacturer? You go to their booth, their product intrigues you. What are you expecting from them? And let's say the days afterward, because we've all gone to like a booth and like people just bombard you. Right. With messages. Right. What do you feel like is a good follow up strategy? If you're a manufacturer, you want to reach out to a contractor after the show? For sure. I would say probably not within the first three to seven days. Really? You give them that length of time. Say, hey, I don't want to hear from anybody. I'm just coming back from the show. Give me at least a week. If I was a manufacturer and putting together a standard operating procedure about a follow up policy after a show, it would not be in that when it's super fresh in the contractor's mind. It would be two weeks later, three weeks later. Hey, we met at that show. Because everybody's following up within the last couple of days because it's fresh on everybody's mind. And it's still fresh on my mind too. But I'm also really busy. I have a business to run. That's right. You know, and I'm taking away from that right now to go to this show. And so I got to get back and get caught up. You're extra busy when you get back. That's right. Yeah. And so those emails, you know, typically unless it's very impactful, just get deleted that conversation. Is there anything you've seen after a show that a manufacturer did that like really resonated with you and their follow up or the market and do anything really unique that you're like, wow, that's really smart. And you ended up buying from them. I'm always a huge fan of handwritten thank you notes. Right. Or, you know, something that can be just very simple. Cardstock. Hey, Dan, great to meet you at the trade show a few weeks ago. Really appreciated our conversation about X, Y and Z. You know, something meaningful, right? Something deep, something about our conversation because, you know, our businesses are all the same. It's all about touches. It's all about just truly humanizing it. It's going the extra mile. Right. We talked to a installer recently on our show who was telling us they try to get so personalized. They do handwritten notes. They ended up doing a billboard for one single person. Wow. They did a billboard because they wanted to get one single person's attention. I think like that one-to-one connection is still incredible. I mean, even though like we at Venvio, we're totally focused on digital, but finding ways to intersect those personalized connections is like incredibly underrated. That's right. Well, I mean, because it takes time. The example I always give in anything, right? If I'm talking with another business about their strategy or whatever that may be, you know, it's like, it's always the bed of nails versus the single nail. You know, do you get more strategy? Shotgunning everything out there, right? And handing your cards out like crazy or just, hey, I'm going to focus on you. Like, and I value your relationship because, and you can't do that without a heart of like gratitude and actually loving people. Whenever we start doing people as a dollar sign, people sense that. Oh, they do. Oh, one of the is. And so it's like, we have to really have a relationship and create that relationship. You know, that's how like our businesses are completely based on relationships. Well, I like to say helping is the new selling. It is. Or it's the only way to sell. Right. You know, it's true because we're busy. We don't want to be sold. We want to be helped. So as an installer, if we take a step back, look macro, tell me about your business. Like, how are things looking into 2022? Are you concerned at all about, I look at this every day. What are housing starts looking like? Where's money being spent in the market? That kind of thing. What are you all sensing in your business? So we're predominantly a commercial contractor. If we get into homes, it's typically like a large high net worth person, you know, large custom home like that. You know, so our projects are have a much longer lead time. So I mean, our market, I'm St. Louis, Missouri, and pretty much in only in St. Louis. We have a very, it's a very climbing market right now as far as the number of projects that are coming, the number of projects that are on the books. You're not seeing any slowdown at all. It's picking up steam. Yeah. And so is that what led you into offsite and some of this modular approach to actually doing manufacturing and going, gosh, we can't do all the work. We see there's opportunity to try to create some efficiencies. Talk me through the origin story of that part of your business. So I dreamt this company up and it's not original, right? It's you learn things from picking up just like everything else a decade ago. I wanted to start this prefab, you know, offsite construction business a decade ago. For me, I love people and I love maximizing people right to their potential. And so I'm looking around our job sites. You know, I'm in my mid 30s. I grew up in construction and grew up on these construction sites and I just see things maybe sometimes a little bit differently, but I'm looking around at our job sites and I'm seeing guys who I've known forever, you know, they spend multiple days of their life on a chop saw. Yeah. Cutting studs like. So just earth you efficiency of it or like man, like that guy is really smart. That guy's awesome, right? Or girl. Why are we having them do that? That's a very mindless task that they don't like. So it's like, man, there's got to be a different way to do this. And doing that is through having our role foreign machines doing our own 3D modeling on the projects, maximizing humans, letting humans do what they're really good at, which is solving complex problems. Let's put people in the best position for their highest and best use to what are the things they love to do where in that state of flow. Exactly. And so I think one thing to also consider too is a lot of manufacturers, they hear your story and they're like, Oh, you started as a contractor. Now you're a manufacturer. A lot of manufacturers want to start to develop like an actual installer either net, not just a network, but actual arm of their business. You've come at a completely different angle. What is that like? Is there a tension there or is it just create like massive flywheel efficiency? So our. Entry into more manufactured really. And I haven't gotten a lot of pushback. Most people get it. They get it. They see. Oh, of course. Yes. They see. Yeah. Right. Even our material supplier, right? They're comfortable. Like they've helped me a lot, you know, a lot of different ways because at the end of the day, I'm still buying products from them and I'm still buying a lot of products with them or there's all kinds of different opportunities when we expand and I'm also able to get into different market segments as well because I'm able through our other business. I'm able to spread out a little further regionally. So are you in your manufacturing business? Are you marketing the manufacturing business or are you just using that as an arm within your actual contractor business? So you're doing both. So you're, you're marketing both sides. Correct. Right. So that creates, I mean, obviously additional revenue but also insulates you better from like ebbs and flows in the market. How are you marketing both businesses? Is it the same or is it different? It's the same and it's different. Okay. Right. Okay. Because we're, what are we really? We're a, we're a manufacturer but also really heavily bent towards being a contractor because that's where our base is. So when we're going to market, we're really talking about, we're talking about speed. We're talking about efficiency. You know, there's a lot of areas that we can help in. If there's a labor desperate spot, well, we can do a lot of that offsite at a different facility, at our facility and ship everything out there, right? And get a contractor's project on a higher trajectory and a faster finish trajectory than what a lot of others could. And so, so yeah, we treat it as another arm, but we also treat it as another business. It's a feeder. It goes both ways. Right. I'm hearing you correctly. You got a big project, your contractor business. You can pull on that arm to do work. And vice versa. Let's say you land some manufacturing work. You can pull on your contractor. I mean, it's really, really smart. Do you see more contractors trying to do this or are you in a really unique position? Because frankly, I hear like, oh, we spun up a manufacturing business. Doesn't sound very easy. Right. So yeah, again, I'm not original in doing this, right? Very upfront with that. You're, I've seen other contractors that done this for decades. I mean, even back in the early 70s, you know, we talked about like panelizing, right? It's kind of some offsite construction methods. You know, we were panelizing even in our construction company in the early 70s. We're panelizing projects even back then. So none of these practices are new. What is new and different is that the technology base that we have is a lot more. We can iterate a lot faster. We can roll studs to a more specific length. You know, there's all kinds of different things that we can build in. There's different cuts that we can do this. We can do a lip cut or a web cut or a flange notch or, you know, there's all kinds of different things that we can do that we otherwise wouldn't be able to do. I can make things out of our factory that my people can't make by hand. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. If you just look like your manufacturing arm, you're also selling to other contractors, correct? So yeah, we've done some of those deals. Correct. So if you're marking to them contractors or builders or whomever, let's say GC, how are you trying to position this brand, this, you know, this off-site prefab brand? Like how are you selling? How are you marketing it? Can you talk me through like logistically what that looks like? It's not that hard. You know, truly like we got a market like let us help you. So you know, you have like a target list of like, Hey, here's people that could potentially use our product. We reach out to them, build a relationship. So you're not doing like a lot of ongoing marketing because you know exactly who your niche is. That's right. You know, in our B2B world, you know, I can hit LinkedIn, you know, and you know, maybe pop into somebody's DMs, maybe not. We don't do that a whole lot. But you know, oftentimes we're going to a marketplace looking for those targets on who we're going to, you know, and just make a relationship with them. And you know, most contractors are very open to talking with other contractors or... That's the thing. Like you're also a contractor too. So they don't necessarily feel like you're pushing too hard. You understand their problems as well. Is that right? Yeah. For sure. I mean, I talk the talk. I walk the walk because that's what we do. And I think the other thing is I'm not afraid to say where our products don't work. I'm not afraid to say like, we can't do that or I can't compete with that or just being honest. Yeah. Like and probably to my, you know, downfall like almost too honest sometimes or just like... I think people respect that though. Like people, like if you say, hey, I'm really right for this but I'm not right in these situations. Right. Like what that does is, and psychologically it disarms people because you're going, hey, you're not trying to sell me on everything. You're not like, I'm the best at everything. You're like, this is what I'm really good at. Don't hire me for anybody else. If you need somebody else, I can connect to you or go find someone else. That's really, really smart. That's right. So if you're a manufacturer who's listening to this show, Dan, what piece of advice would you want to give them? What's like the one takeaway you say, hey, if you want to be successful this next year in your marketing and your approach to contracts, whatever it might be, what's like the one thing you want to still down? You want to share with people. So I'm all about culture and our company's culture is huge to me. I've been part of toxic cultures. I've been part of great cultures. It starts with you. It starts with the leader. It starts with the leader of the team. I mean everybody's a leader, but if you're not leading people well, if you're not leading people in a way to be honest, if you're not leading people in a way to just be real, be humble, like I always say, lead with solutions, but essentially lead with a solution or, but in a very honest way, like, because we really believe in our products in these businesses. And so, but you also have to be patient. You know, the sales cycles in this industry and construction is, they can be very long. You know, especially if you're dealing with an incumbent. So it's just really just caring for people. Ultimately. You said earlier, we're in a relational industry. It's a people industry. And that's, that's whether you're dealing with a manufacturer or a contractor or whatever it is. And so I think that's a really encouraging note to focus on culture and I mean, hats off to you, Dan and your family for what you built. Really, really incredible. And I do real quickly. I want to make sure there's anything you want to plug for AWCI or for the emerging leaders group. If someone wants to get involved in that, there's a manufacturer who's listening and says, Hey, I want to, I want to be part of it. What's the best way for them to do that? So they can reach out to me directly. Dan at whistrywall.com. It's W I E S drywall.com. They can also reach out to Chris Williams through AWCI. And I actually don't have his email right now, but we'll make sure we get in. We'll link to it in the show. Yeah, that's great. Chris, they can totally reach out and yeah, would love to have anybody apply that they would send our way. That's awesome. That's awesome. Again, congrats to you. And also want to give a quick plug to trim tax. We're connecting us. Yeah, these guys are awesome. They are incredible. Yeah, really cool product, really cool brand. And for our listeners, if you enjoyed this content, you want to get more of it, make sure you go to venvio.com slash podcast to subscribe and get more. Until next time, I'm Zach Williams. Thanks everybody.