08 Creating Buyer's Trust with Progression Photos - Gordon Henderson May 13 2020

[00:00:00]Greg Bray: Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine, 

Kevin Weitzel: and I'm Kevin Weitzel with Outhouse, 

Greg Bray : and we're excited today to be joined by Gordon Henderson. Gordon is the president and cofounder of 149 photos and we really appreciate him taking some time to be with us today.

Welcome, Gordon. 

Gordon Henderson: Hey, thanks. It's great to be here. Appreciate it. 

Greg Bray: So Gordon, give us that a kind of quick overview and introduction of, of yourself in 149 photos. 

Gordon Henderson: Sure. Um, [00:01:00] so myself, um, either in terms of how I sorta got into this industry, started back a long time ago from when I was a kid. Basically, as a teenager, my, um, I used to spend the summers building decks and, uh, additions and remodeling with my grandfather.

So I was kinda had this passion for, you know, working with wood and, and, you know, working in the construction on construction. Um, in fact, to the point where in my early twenties, I ventured out and like build a spec home and it really wasn't gonna live in it. Just build a spec home. And, uh, I learned a lot and then experience, actually, I can.

You know, I don't necessarily have, it didn't have the same kind of pains that a big new home builder has today, but, um, I learned a lot through that experience of what, how, how challenging it is to build a house. Right. And, um, so that, that was a that was a great experience. And in 2000, I started a company with my uncle focused actually in the collision repair industry.

And believe it or not, um, that we built a program that allowed, um, vehicle owners to [00:02:00] see the progress of repairs done to their, to their car in the shop, the body shop. And so it wasn't too long after we started that and around 2005 where we said, you know what? People really care about their, their new home that's being built.

Maybe we should kind of leverage the same kind of thing to build a for, for new home builders. And so we started something in 2005 called new home watch. and then of course, in 2008, the great recession happened. And, um, that, uh, you know, that changed a lot of plans at that point. So fast forward in 2016, I quit my day job again and with my business partner, Steve, we created 149 Photos.

Greg Bray: Awesome. Awesome. Well, tell us a little bit more about the significance of the number 149. I mean, that's just kind of the the next question. When you, when you think about a name like that, any, any significance there? 

Gordon Henderson: Absolutely. Uh, we did that very much on purpose. Um, when we started the company, I wanted the name of the business to kind of beg that, that question.

Like, okay. Like that. I get asked that a lot. A lot. Okay. What's up with 149 and, uh, that was [00:03:00] on purpose. So that you had asked that question. And it's basically our, our value proposition to builders. It's our elevator pitch, so to speak. So maybe one, four, nine, one house, one new new home under construction, four months of construction, and customer engagement.

We'll, we'll return to you nine times return on your investment. So that's, that's essentially our elevator pitch. 

Greg Bray: Awesome. Well, tell me a little bit more about that spec house you built, cause that's kind of interesting. You know,  did you actually make a profit on that? Did it work out or, or you know, cause you were built, you didn't build a second one.

Right. So something there's, there must be a story there. 

Gordon Henderson: Yeah. Well, yes, there are. Yeah, that's a good question. Um, yeah, I barely, I'm barely made a profit. I mean, everybody else made money. I think I made a little, a little bit, actually, I kinda came into with the expectation that it was a good chance I might break even or lose money, right?

First time doing something like that, that kind of scale of the project and getting everything right is, uh, is, you know, kind of a long shot. So I did, I did make a little bit of money. Um. It was actually pretty interesting in this, in the town that I [00:04:00] lived in, there's this 500 square foot house was the smallest house in the town that I lived in Plymouth, Michigan.

And so I had this harebrained idea to tear that house down and build a, you know, a bigger house that, not that it was 12 1300 square feet, wasn't real big. A ranch on a basement. And, um, so I got to go through this entire process. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's a longer story than we probably have time for it because there was all kinds of trials and tribulations that happened along the way. Including, um, petitioning the County to vacate some of the right of way along the street and getting neighbors to sign a petition and all that stuff.

Um, it was a great learning experience, but yeah, it was pretty interesting. 

Kevin Weitzel: But more importantly, did you stay on budget. 

Gordon Henderson: Uh, I don't even know if I had a budget. You know what I mean? I mean, I had it, I had some idea what I was going to sell it for. Of course. Yeah. But I mean, I was, I was happy to make a little bit of money and make sure I paid everybody.

So it, it turned out good in the end. 

Greg Bray: So it sounds like though, Gordon, it. [00:05:00] Did you at least have this experience of being able to kind of feel the pain of a builder and kind of some of the things that go into that whole process? Is that a fair, fair assessment?

Gordon Henderson: Yeah, I think so. I mean, obviously, you know, I've built one spec house and, um, that was, you know.

It seems like a lifetime ago, um, that we did it. So the the the market was significantly different than, than than it is now. Um, but, you know, I'd have crazy things happen. Like, you know, I, I put out a yard sign, you know, advertising like at the end of the street, and I'd come back the next day and was gone, like, probably just stole it.

I'm like, what the heck? I gotta go buy another one. These things, you know, and so. I don't know how much, how many big builders have that problem necessarily, but, um, it's certainly trying to figure out, okay, how do I market this thing? Um, how do I negotiate the sale? What does the contract need to look like?

What do I need to worry about in the contract? What do I, what do I need to worry about in terms of call backs and things like that? You know, I'm just a small, you know, I'm literally just starting out as a builder. What do I know him? 25 years old or whatever, and you know, so, [00:06:00] um, there's certainly, I think there's some shared pain that I had with, with builders that are, they're going through today, but they actually have a lot of other challenges that I didn't.

Greg Bray: So you told us a little bit about the one four and nine ratio, but you didn't actually explain a lot about the photos part of the name, you know? So let's go back there and tell us a little bit more about 149 Photos. What kind of, what your service and value proposition is. 

Gordon Henderson: Sure. Um, so we basically are, we've built a platform that is designed to deeply engage prospects and buyers of new homes with their builder, with their new house, with their community, but you know, mostly with, with their builder. And, um, it has all kinds of bells and whistles, including AI and all this other stuff that, that makes it kind of all work behind the scenes.

But at the end of the day, that's where after is kind of deeply engaging buyers and prospects with their new home. Um, but honestly, the real secret sauce is, um, something they made that we wouldn't totally expect. But our secret sauce, our program is that we actually send photographers to construction sites once a week.

[00:07:00] We actually show up boots on the ground and take pictures of, of what's going on. And then those photos are uploaded into our platform where the queue, the AI automatically curates them. Um, you know, kind of separates them out, determines which photos we want to actually share and which ones we want to keep private for the builder only to see.

But then they're shared with the prospective buyers and the buyers that are in contract and then also within the entire organization, um, for our, for our builder clients. And so, you know, we're trying to do three things. Number one, we want to digitally remarket in an automated way to people that have visited, you know, that are prospects for the builder that visit either the new home sales centers or the model homes.

So we can automatically digitally remarket to them. We want to keep people that are in contract, you know, satisfied and happy and excited about and engaged in their new purchase, which hopefully reduces, you know, canceled contracts. And then number three, we want to give the entire organization visibility into what's going on in the construction site.

And that has a whole nother sort of [00:08:00] outside of sales and marketing benefits to the builder. 

Kevin Weitzel: So you literally could play watchdog for a company that wants to maybe do some visual inspections of a particular superintendent that maybe their numbers aren't up to par with other superintendents. 

Gordon Henderson: Yeah. So now, now, you know, a lot of we find is, especially the big builders.

The people that are maybe in their headquarters for central office aren't necessarily getting on construction sites all that much. Right? So they have a good idea of what's going on, but not always. And this gives them a way to see exactly what's going on. Like, why is this community performing so much better?

Maybe related to safety or cleanliness versus the other one. And they can all do it virtually, which is, which is pretty cool. 

Greg Bray: You know, I, I love the way that you've taken, a common. Service or process of taking a weekly photo and you found multiple pain points that you can serve with that based on the audience.

Right. So, so the buyer is one audience to build themselves. You know, in the, in the main office is [00:09:00] another audience that has a different need, but yet the same data can, can solve or, or help them solve that particular pain point. I think that's great. 

 Gordon Henderson: Yeah. And what we find is that every builder has sort of a different hot point.

You know, what's most important to them. Um, a lot of times it's the sales and marketing, right? So we're trying to get more customers through the front door, but a lot of times it is that customer service or even, um, we find a lot of times it's the purchasing team that leverages the program so they can see, okay, what are the options that the customer ordered.

Correctly installed that we get the right cabinets, the right countertops, and so they're trying to solve problems before they become a really big problem, you know, so you don't want some, uh, you know, a buyer going through the walkthrough only to discover that those aren't the cabinets I ordered. You know, we can discover it hopefully weeks, if not months before. That happens and solve it right away. So you're, you're exactly right. 

Greg Bray: Awesome. That's, that's, that's really interesting to kind of think so. So you have kind of become really involved in what, what we often [00:10:00] refer to as the customer journey or the buyer journey after the sale, um, for a lot of these things during that production process.

Um, tell me or tell us a little more about why you thought that this would help that process? What, what kind of helped you kind of come to that realization that, Hey, there's a, there's a problem here that needs to be solved. You know, so you started doing this. 

Gordon Henderson: Yeah. Um, well, honestly, part of it stemmed from that previous business that we started related to collision repair, right?

And so people, you know, we found that people really cared about, you know, this big investment of their car. And so they would check in every day and say, Oh wow, let's see what's going on, and we sorta thought woah. You know, they care that much about a car, how much more they going to care about a house, right?

That they're going to maybe live in for decades. And, um, so it was kind of born out of that, and just kind of our own experience maybe as home buyers ourselves in realizing that, you know, this is such a big investment.  I want to make sure it's done right and I want it. You know, [00:11:00] part of what this does is it kind of creates a trust factor between the builder in the consumer where you say, we're, we're not only gonna tell you what we're going to do.

Right? Like, okay, yeah, it's in, it's in drywall. You know, but we're actually going to show you too, right? So you don't have to just take our word for it. You can actually see it for yourself. And that makes, that's, I think that's really important in terms of consumers feeling, you know, that they can, they can really trust and have that, um, that faith in the builder that they're going to do, going to do it right. 

Kevin Weitzel: And I don't even know if you're realizing this, but me, you know, me coming from the sales end of things, you're, the whole mind process is so much longer of a process once you've committed to buying it, but you're actually helping that sales professional, keep that elation, keeping that excitement level high because they get to see the progress as it's going, and that's something that's lost when you just wait, wait, wait, wait until it's done.

You know? 

Gordon Henderson: Yeah, totally. Um, I mean, buyer's remorse is, you know, every sales professional knows that that is a real thing, right? It doesn't matter what you buy in on a house, you know, the, [00:12:00] the excitement and the high that you get from spending $400,000 on a house is, is pretty huge. But then how do you fill that gap that that's a.

That's a high that you got. You got a lot of gap to fill there. Right? And we feel that you know, doing these weekly progress photos really helps to keep that excitement going. So that, that, uh, you know, it, it does help reduce broken contracts and that, and that's a key part of it, is keeping that excitement going after the sale.

Kevin Weitzel: So obviously you're located in Michigan and you know, you have a physical touch that you have to have with having that, that photographer there. And obviously your, your hired photographer is gonna work within your standards, of course. But, uh, what are the countries, you can surf? 

Gordon Henderson: Uh, we're, we're throughout the country, but mostly in, basically in all the hot markets.

So we're strong in the South, the Southeast, you know, in the, in the West. Um, we do, we have clients here in Michigan, um, but most of our, most of our activities in the Southern part of the United States and most of the hot markets. 

Kevin Weitzel: And are they just stills or do you do Matterport as well? 

Gordon Henderson: There are in progress photos are [00:13:00] all stills. So we're, we're doing, you know, we're showing up once a week, shooting anywhere between 10 and 12 photos. And you know, I should, I should mention, I mean, a part of our goal here with this platform is we want to try to help accelerate sales and to sell inventory homes.

So our goal is that when a, an inventory house or spec house is done, we've already sold it, you know, which is, we know that's not necessarily achievable 100% of the time. So if in that case, we have a finished spec home, we also offer Matterport and we do some finished photography as well. 

Kevin Weitzel: Nice.

Greg Bray: So Gordon, do you have any horror stories you can, you can share where, you know, this picture suddenly caused a problem because now somebody saw something that you wish they hadn't seen.

Um, as part of that process. 

Gordon Henderson: Well, not, no, none of them. They're gonna like set your hair on fire note. No horror stories like that. I mean, as we've evolved our program, like when we first started, we didn't have any AI built into it, right? So we just like, okay, we took the pictures and we had people looking at them to try to make sure we caught everything.

We [00:14:00] didn't always catch everything. Right? Um, any visual inspections, never going to be 100%. Uh, you know, effective. So, but then as we kind of grew this business and we said, gosh, we have all these photos. So, you know, when you have a lot of images and AI has evolved so much over the last, you know, when we originally did this thing way back in 2005, like AI was like, forget about it.

You know, you had to be a Ph.D. to even do anything. But now it's actually pretty easy. Um, and so we've got all these photos. We built AI that like, looks at the photos and says, is this a dirty construction site, like is there a lot of debris and you know, is there a porta-potty? You know, in the foreground of this picture, Oh, well let's take, let's, we don't take it out, but we just say, well, let's make that private.

We won't show that one so much. Um, or do we have picture? Is this a picture of somebody on a ladder? Or is the scaffolding, you know, things that maybe the builder's not even doing wrong, but, um, just, just to be safe, we'll make it private. So we've, we've spent a lot of energy and kind of building this AI to eliminate all of that.

And we process like [00:15:00] 25,000 images a week right now. And so, you know, a human can't effectively catch everything and the AI helps big time. So. 

Greg Bray: All right, I'm going on record. Gordon Henderson said AI is easy now. Okay, so I'm just, I'm sorry, I'm just saying you heard it here first. 

Gordon Henderson: Okay can i revise that ... its a lot easier.

Kevin Weitzel: just a curiosity is going to kill the cat. Uh, have you ever caught me those funny pictures, like, you know, a ladder on top of a ladder, you know, when he goes? I mean, I don't wanna throw any builder under the bus for breaking OSHA rules, but you know, those photos come from somewhere. 

Gordon Henderson: Yeah. No, we haven't seen anything like that. Yeah, I've, I've, I know exactly what you're talking about. I've seen those pictures where it's like, what are you doing? Like that is so unsafe. Fortunately, you know, all my, all my clients are here in the US and I've not seen anything like that. Thankfully. 

Greg Bray: So what, what would you say to a builder who said, Hey, this is a great idea. I'm just going to get my salesperson to walk around and take some pictures. You know what, why can't, why doesn't that work? [00:16:00] Or does it? 

Gordon Henderson: Well, you know. In theory, I think it could. Um, but what, when we've seen, there's a lot of builders that do that. Um, but what we've seen is just like anything else the builder does, if you don't operationalize it and you know, set some standards and rules around how you're going to do it, it's ultimately going to be, um.

It, number one, probably inefficient. Uh, number two is probably going to be inconsistent. And number three, the quality's probably not going to be what you're going to be happy with. Cause you know, you've got a sales agent running around with their cell phone, taking pictures, you know, the quality is probably, is not going to be what you're going to be happy with and it's going to be very inconsistent.

So it, yeah, theory, theoretically you could now what you'd be missing. Of course, this thing like our AI where we like don't show the stuff that you don't want, that we've, you probably shouldn't show. Um, and what we've also found is that. You know, and I talked to a lot of agents like maybe they work for builders that used to have to do that and um, and they're like, you know what?

I should be selling houses, not out taking pictures. You know, this, this is [00:17:00] not a good use of my time and energy and calories. You know, for the builder. 

Kevin Weitzel: It's just like online sales counselors, you know, builders that have their salespeople that are supposed to be answering phone calls and stuff and, you know, answering, you know, real-time chats, their most important client is customer's standing in front of them. 

Gordon Henderson: Right.

Kevin Weitzel: That's just going to create delays. Same issue that you just stated is that, you know that salesperson, that's not their job. That's not their focus. They could care less about that. 

Gordon Henderson: Yeah. Right. Yeah. And of course, like if you're a, maybe a smaller builder that has fewer resources, and so, you know, a lot of people in your organization are wearing a lot of different hats.

Like I said, you could probably do it. The thing is, it's gotta be done consistently and with high quality so that you're not sending anything that's gonna potentially embarrass your, your company either. And you've got to be careful that, 

Kevin Weitzel: No, actually that's a good point. You know, large versus small builders not holding in any kind of numbers.

I don't want you to know, you don't have to give a whole price list in front of you, but is your product affordable for your five to 10 home a year builder where they could utilize your [00:18:00] services as well? 

Gordon Henderson: You know, honestly, we don't even really kind of go after that, that end of the market. The way the way we're kind of structured is we need to be going into a market in hitting so many houses in a single subdivision in order to kind of hit the price point that we can offer.

We're typically looking at builders that at least have a hundred homes in a market per year, typically. 

Kevin Weitzel: That's legitimate. 

Greg Bray: Now, one, one area that I know builders sometimes struggle with is having buyers stop by the job site. Does drive him by or drop him by. Um, and, and it's because they, they want the information that you've been talking about, right?

They want to know how things are going. They want to see progress. They want to, they want to know. Um, have you, have you been able to see any kind of before and after kind of numbers or maybe it's just anecdotal feedback of where, where once the photos are available that, that, that type of behavior is, has been reduced.

Gordon Henderson: Yeah. Um, I, it's, like I said, it's kind of anecdotal, but I [00:19:00] definitely hear that frequently from clients that startup with us. You know, being able to do this. It does keep the buyers off the construction sites and a lot of them, a lot of the places that we're shooting in the South, you know, maybe as many as a third of their buyers might be from out of state, so they can't get there anyway.

Um, which is good for the liability, but, you know, it means that they're kind of missing out on that sort of connection and engagement experience that you get with visiting the home site. Um, but yeah, it definitely does help keep them, keep them off the sites. But you know, buyers can sometimes be crazy, right?

I mean, I ran into this. Be careful. 

Greg Bray: We like buyers, right? 

Gordon Henderson: Buyers are great, buyers are great, but I ran into this one, this one guy, I was out with one of our photographers shooting, and I ran this one guy. I'm like. He came to the house and he's like, uh, can I help you? Like, Oh yeah, we're, we're here to shoot the house.

And like, Oh, I asked him, are you the builder? They're going, no, I'm the homeowner. And he was like, he was like working on the house. I mean, this is like, this is a big builder, [00:20:00] right? And he was like, almost like working on the house and like. This is one of those, you know, the squeaky wheel gets the this is one of those 80 20 role, like 20% of the customers cause you 80% of problems.

It's like the 1% that cause you the 80% of the problems, he was on a site all the time and I think was in the ear of the construction supervisor all the time. So even though he had photos available to him, he was still on site neglect. I don't know what you're doing, but it's crazy. 

Greg Bray: Yeah. That, that's interesting so, so Gordon, of course right now we're in a unique environment with, with this, uh, pandemic challenge and more people staying at home and kind of shopping more from home. Have you seen an impact on the importance of the photography even more so just over the last few weeks with these changes that have been going on?

Gordon Henderson: Yeah, for sure. Um, you know. This, this has happened so quickly. It's amazing. I mean, I've never experienced anything like this in my lifetime. I don't know if you have, but, um, you know, it's just the change has happened so literally, [00:21:00] almost overnight. Right? And the builders have responded, you know, all my clients and other ones that I've seen out there too, ever responded so quickly.

Just changed how they have to do things right. It's completely out of necessity because there literally are literally, it's illegal to be on-site and so you can't show a house and you can't meet with people face to face and they don't want to either. So yeah, this photography, um, is super important. And if a builder didn't have enough before this happened, they're scrambling now.

Right? And so we're seeing a lot of inquiries and a lot of, a lot of discussions, and you can just, just virtual touring in general is, you know, going through the roof and every builder seems to be responding with, okay, we've got this virtual tour option, and now we've got, you know, we'll send you out a pair of 3-D  Google glasses and all this other stuff.

So you come to our homes and just. You know, they are responding quickly, which is cool. I mean, that's great. I mean, our customers are very resilient and they'll, they'll do well in this, I think. But if you got caught flat-footed and you weren't [00:22:00] prepared to have the right kind of photography in order to be able to do a virtual tour and you're hurting right now.

Greg Bray: Do you have any tips for those that are in that hurt at the moment? Any, any quick fixes or just little things that they can do to save themselves a little bit? 

Gordon Henderson: Yeah. Um, well, if you're, if it's legal too, in your area, if you haven't been completely shut down, you know, the the people doing like 3-D tours and, um, finished photography, you know, there.

Very eager to work in. Um, so we're seeing that around the country. They want to work. And you know, my guess is you could probably find somebody to do it pretty quickly. Now, obviously per in-progress photos, that might be a bigger challenge because you can't, you can't go back in time. Right. You can only move forward, but, um, there's still plenty of opportunities to get the finished photography done.

Kevin Weitzel: And I apologize that I didn't look at this ahead of time, but, uh, there's 149 also offer finished photography as well, or. 

Gordon Henderson: Yeah. Yeah. If we, if we get to that point where we have a house that's unsold. Uh, you [00:23:00] know, spec house that's unsold, then we offer, as part of our package, we will, we'll come in and do HDR photography and 3d tour as well.

It's all kind of included, but our goal is to drive that to zero, but. 

Greg Bray: Well, uh, Gordon, we w it's been, it's been a great discussion so far. It's been interesting to learn more about this, getting a little, little close to our time. So wanted to give you a chance. What, what's one piece of advice you'd give to builders about, about anything?

Doesn't have to be about photography, but, uh, yeah. Any, any advice for the folks out there? 

Gordon Henderson: Well, here's, here's my advice. Um, I think. You should look to try to seize this opportunity to evolve your business to the next new level, whatever that is for your business. Right? I mean, we're, we're living in kind of an unprecedented time, you know, happens once a hundred years or something.

And, um, there's a very, I think a very strong likelihood that our economy coming out of this crisis is going to look considerably different than what it was going in, right. hopefully not too different, but it's going to be different. [00:24:00] And. I think what you have to do is make sure you don't miss this opportunity to change and grow.

Um, there's going to be new ways of doing business. We're already seeing builders already make that shift now very rapidly and be new opportunities, uh, the way you do business. There's going to be probably new businesses that will come up. There might be be new industries that come up out of this. Um, so I, I say look for ways to adapt and grow your business too.

The new, the new norm for you. Look for it, anticipate it, take advantage of it. Um, the other thing I would say is stay positive. Um, I'm hearing from a lot of our clients that, um, there's still very strong demand for new houses, and the feedback actually has been. Very encouraging as we've been talking to, talking to our clients around the country.

Um, so that even though in this time of shutdown, there's still a lot of demand, there's still a lot of people that are doing virtual tours and are basically ready to sign up and buy a new house. And I think once we're able to start building again and I'm able to, you know, get back to full strength and building and able to meet face to face [00:25:00] again, I think we're going to see the new home construction industry come roaring back.

So. Look at this as a great opportunity to seize the opportunity to look for opportunities and stay positive. 

Greg Bray: Oh, that's great message. Great message. Really appreciate that. 

Kevin Weitzel: All right, so I'm going to interrupt with just one little personal note. We had chatted on another occasion, and I know that you're a Beatles fan, so, uh, if you're locked in a room for 24 hours, as many people are with this COVID-19, what one Beatles album are taken with you? And there's a follow-up question. 

Gordon Henderson: White album. 

Kevin Weitzel: The white album. Yeah. All right, so rubber sole or yellow submarine. 

Gordon Henderson: Oh gosh. 

Kevin Weitzel: There is a correct answer. 

Gordon Henderson: I hope I don't disappoint you. I probably would go with rubber sole. 

Kevin Weitzel: I love you, man. 

Gordon Henderson: One true Beatle fan to another. 

Kevin Weitzel: Oh yeah. 

Greg Bray: Awesome. Well, Gordon, if people want to chat more with you, get a connect with you, what's the best way for them to connect?

Gordon Henderson: Well, all our contact info is at our website at 149photos with an S [00:26:00] 149photos.com. Um, you can also email me at Gordon@149photos.com or connect with me on LinkedIn. We'd love to get connected. 

Greg Bray: Awesome. Well, thanks so much again for your time. I'm Greg Bray from Blue Tangerine, 

Kevin Weitzel: and I'm Kevin Weitzel, from Outhouse.