165 Business Development for Home Builders - Mike Dildine and Jared Maybon May 17 2023

Greg Bray: [00:00:00] Hello everybody, and welcome to today's 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 are excited today to have a special show where we have two guests, right? Usually, we just have one. So, we've got two today. We've got Jared Maybon who is an EOS Implementer, and a coach at Build Better, and Mike Dildine, who is the owner at Highland Homes and Build Better as well. So, thank you Mike and Jared for joining us today.

Mike Dildine: Excited to be here.

Jared Maybon: Thanks for having us.

Greg Bray: Well, why don't we have each of you just give us a quick introduction? Mike, why [00:01:00] don't you go first, and then we'll let Jared follow you and just tell us a little bit about yourself and kinda what you've been doing.

Mike Dildine: Yeah. I'm a builder of 20 years up in Boise, Idaho. Started in 2004, so 19 years, I guess. The first 12 years of my business in Boise, we did about two to 3 million a year. I would consider myself a stuck builder, a struggling builder wanting to do more, wanting to break through and make things happen, but never really figuring out how to do it.

And then 2015 hit. Jared joined the team at about that time, and we implemented some new business practices that took us from about three or 4 million all the way up to almost 40 million. So, we were able to 10X that business over a period of about five years. In the process of doing that, I was able to help build teams and systems so that my level of involvement at Highland Homes is really just five or 10 hours a week now. So, that brought on this other career of mine now.

Build Better is a new company that's about a year and a half old. And it's a business development program for builders to help builders get [00:02:00] unstuck. Like I was stuck for 12 years. It's a program designed to help share our journey, the things we learned, everything we did right, everything we did wrong. But the mission is just honestly to help builders that are trying to get more out of their business, and we share from personal experience all that we learned in hopes that it will help them improve their own businesses.

Jared Maybon: That's great. Thanks, Mike. My turn. Like Mike said, I joined Highland Homes working with Mike in late 2015. Started working through. There were three or four of us at that point. It was a really small operation and lots of open communication and we all covered each other's backs to get things done.

Over the course of several years, we grew very rapidly. Lots of expansion. Got to the point where Mike was working 10 hours a week. I like to say that's cause I was working 70 hours a week. So, the math comes out okay on that. But really, what got us there Mike has a phenomenal knack for leadership, for understanding human beings, how to communicate with them, and how to get incredible results out of people.

So, as part of that leadership team [00:03:00] with Mike, the last two years with Mike, I was serving as his CEO to kind of help execute his vision for the organization. To make sure that we were staying true to the vision and the culture while we expanded efforts into new markets, even did kind of unprecedented things for home building in the markets that we served. So, had a lot of fun there.

The inception for Build Better started years before. Mike had always been interested in sharing what he had learned and helping lift the industry, and having a significant impact in other ways. So, being involved in helping to build that out with him was powerful and been cool, and it's been amazing to see the impact that it's had. So, that's pretty phenomenal.

I now also work as an EOS Implementer but continue to serve the building community and teaching Build Better principles alongside of Mike where I can and have a lot of fun to continue to see home builders learn to accomplish the things that Mike was able to. It's been fun.

Kevin Weitzel: There is a boatload to unpack there. However, I get to do one of my favorite parts of the show where I get to make both of you highly uncomfortable. This is great because, Greg, get a load of this. There's not one of 'em to make uncomfortable. There's [00:04:00] two. Starting with Mike. I need to know something personal about you that our viewers can learn about you that is not home builder related, that they'll hear just on our podcast.

Mike Dildine: Last weekend, this is breaking news for you. Just last weekend, it was the beginning of our spring break and I packed up my entire family and we flew to Phoenix, Arizona under the guise for. In fact, yeah. That's your home.

Kevin Weitzel: Yeah.

Mike Dildine: Homeland there. You know what I was there for?

Kevin Weitzel: To avoid the snow?

Mike Dildine: Can you guess what happened in Phoenix last week? Only the most important event in the entire country. I was there for Taylor Swift. I'm a huge T Swift fan.

Kevin Weitzel: There was a big ballyhoo about her tickets with Ticketmaster and yeah. That was giant.

Mike Dildine: Tried to blame it on my two daughters, that it was them that really wanted to go, but deep down inside I'm the T Swift fan. And I went and it was an amazing experience being [00:05:00] there, dancing all night long with my celebrity crush.

Kevin Weitzel: She puts on an incredible show from what I hear.

Mike Dildine: Oh, it's amazing. She puts on a really, really good show.

Greg Bray: Do you think if we tag her when we go live with this, that she'll like share this to her network?

Mike Dildine: If you want, I'll call her real quick. We could have her join the call if you want.

Kevin Weitzel: Let's do it. Jared, something personal. What do we got buddy?

Jared Maybon: I don't know how personal you want me to get here. Let's see if I can top something more embarrassing than being a Taylor Swift fan in the home building industry. Let's see. You ever seen those videos of those fainting goats?

Kevin Weitzel: Yes.

Jared Maybon: You know, you scare 'em and they just fall right over. That's me around needles getting shots. I pass out when I'm around needles, full blackout. My most recent experience when I had COVID about a year and a half ago, I had to get injections in my belly because it was gonna stop the symptoms or some voodoo, I don't know. I bought into it though. So, I went to get the shots in the belly. I had to get four of them. The first needle, as soon as it poked the skin, I blacked [00:06:00] out and when I came to, I was sitting in a puddle of my own urine.

So, that was a really good experience. It was very humbling for me. But the cool part of that is that my favorite pair of pajamas now is some scrubs that I got out of the whole thing. I got to change outta my pants. They gave me a nice new set of scrubs. So, that's something cool I walked away with.

Kevin Weitzel: That might be the most personal, uh, tidbit we've ever had there.

Greg Bray: That's pretty personal.

Jared Maybon: Hey, you asked for personal. I'm all about vulnerable, open, and honest, and that's what you're gonna get.

Kevin Weitzel: I was thinking you collected baseball cards, or into juggling or something, but.

Jared Maybon: Nope, I don't do needles. So, don't bring needles to the show.

Greg Bray: Oh man. Thanks guys for taking us in places we have not been before. That's awesome. Well, Mike, you already told us a little bit about your experience being a builder. Tell us a little bit more though about that moment where you decided you wanted to start giving back and start helping others learn the things that you had learned and how that evolved for you.

Mike Dildine: Well, the development of the business started for me at The [00:07:00] Builder Show in 2015 where I went to the show and went from class to class to class and heard builders just talking about being successful, and I'm doing this and I'm doing that and increasing my sales and all these different things, and I felt myself shrinking in my seat with every additional class I went to, feeling confused and discouraged and what was wrong with me that I couldn't figure it out.

Went home shortly after that and it was Valentine's Day actually of 2015, just a couple weeks after The Builder Show where we were sitting down for dinner with my wife and my kids. We make Valentine's Day family experience and we do homemade fondu, and we were just sitting down to this fondue and I got this text message from my favorite homeowner. We had just finished his house and it was just one of those just terrible home building experiences.

And he just lit me up that night, it was like seven o'clock, about how terrible his house was. He had just moved in and it wasn't clean and this and that. And so my wife and I together that night, left the kids at home, grabbed our cleaning gear, and went over to this [00:08:00] dude's house and knocked on his door at 7:30 on Valentine's night, and I found myself on the floor with my wife cleaning up this guy's floor, and it was just this moment of incredible frustration and embarrassment.

That on the heels of The Builder Show, it flipped a switch in me where I was just like something's gotta change. Like, I cannot do this anymore. And so we jumped into all sorts of things and we can get into that, but that's what spurred the change. Those moments have lived in my brain for years. And what I've learned is that there's builders all over the country that are feeling that same level of frustration. They're having those same types of experiences. They're affecting their homes and their family lives, and how they're able to enjoy the work that they're doing.

And having finally broke through some of that and feeling freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of enjoyment of work and things like, I feel at a mission almost, a calling [00:09:00] to get out and help builders all over the country, all over the world that are struggling from the business development side of things on how they can accomplish this. They've given up hope on doing it, and I want to tell them, don't give up. There is a way to make things happen and to improve in your business.

Kevin Weitzel: Well, Mike, one of the things that I really appreciate about you is your transparency. You've had even some social media posts where you've even said, and people wouldn't ever wanna admit this, you know, openly, but you want to share with people how not to lose 900 grand in a single sitting. For somebody to take those lumps themselves and then put systems in place and have outstanding team members like Jared implementing his practices and your direction to right the ship and to correct those issues, and multiple issues. The fact that you're willing to turn around and give that knowledge of those lumps that you took on and pass it on to other builders is mind-blowing to me.

Mike Dildine: I mean, why not? [00:10:00] There's just so many people that are struggling and there's no need to put on this face of doing everything perfectly. We did do a lot of things really, really right in our journey, and I share those as well. But we learned some really valuable lessons, Jared and I both, through that process of 10Xing a business in such a short time of things we did terribly wrong. We did. We lost $900,000 in one year because of a lack of systems and different things that we weren't prepared for. By sharing it with people, it gives them the ability to realize we can do this, we can figure things out, and learn from my mistakes. I don't know. Jared, thoughts on that?

Jared Maybon: Yeah. I just, I want to highlight a couple of things here, some more depth of the story that Mike hasn't exposed yet, and it's that Mike came back from that builder show and decided that the first thing he needed to do. Correct me if I'm wrong here, Mike, but he figured out how to flip on the sales switch. The first thing he thought was, I want more business. We need more revenue generated. And he did that phenomenally well.

The other part of the story there is that [00:11:00] two or three years later, the tap was open full boar, and we had all the sales flowing into Highland Homes that we could handle, but our internal processes and systems were an absolute train wreck. We hadn't built out anything that could accommodate for that massive influx of revenue and clientele.

And so you talk about Mike's humility and his willingness to get on social media and tell the world about it. Sometimes in my experience with business leaders, one of the harder demographics to be honest with is your own employee base. To sit down internally and look at your team of 30 or 40 people and say, Hey, we're failing at a few things. That's humbling and that's scary and that's hard to do, but that's something that Mike was willing to do.

And so if you look at our growth by revenue, we hit a pretty steep incline about 2014, 15, 16, 17, and then you see this year where it turns down and we plateau and even decrease in revenue quite a bit for a solid 12 [00:12:00] months. That was a pivotal moment for me and my learning from Mike in seeing that it's okay to be humble, to acknowledge to your internal team that there are weaknesses, and to intentionally turn off the faucet and stop the sales from coming in so that you can right the ship before you start going forward full speed again. So, pretty powerful to see that outwardly, but also to see how that works internally was pretty, pretty phenomenal.

Greg Bray: There is a perception, I think, in leadership in general, that you're supposed to at least give off the aura that you know all the answers, right? That you're supposed to be the one that has it all figured out and everybody is looking to you to have it figured out. And there's something really powerful about being a little more honest and vulnerable and saying, no, we're figuring this out together, and we're gonna swing and miss a few times as we go through this. I appreciate you guys both leading with that. That's, I think, a core of really that next level of leadership.

The person who pretends they know everything. We all know they don't, but somehow they come across acting like they do, and then they [00:13:00] can't admit when there's a mistake or they have to blame somebody else when something goes wrong. I think that's really powerful. Would you agree with that?

Mike Dildine: Greg, you said one word in that whole phrase where you said together and that word means so much to me because, for the first 12 years that I ran my business, I tried to do it all alone. I like tried to be the man and do everything, and I was wearing all the different hats, all the different times, and my business changed when I brought on Jared. Business owners don't work with leadership teams, construction business owners especially. So many of them hold everything to their chest and don't wanna let go of anything and carry all of the weight on their shoulders.

And I did 12 years of that and now I've done seven years where I finally got over myself and said, yes, you can still be a leader. You can still lead with confidence. You can create vision, but you don't have to have all the answers. There's other people around you that are just as smart and quite often way smarter than [00:14:00] you are when it comes to this or to that or whatever.

And so, man, I would encourage construction business owners all over if you're doing things on your own, go out and find this leadership team, this head of sales, this head of finance, and don't try to wear all the hats yourself. Build a team, work together, and that's when your business is really gonna start to take off.

Greg Bray: Let's drill down on that just a little bit more, cuz I think that's easier said than done for some people who have done it all themselves, right? So, Mike, you said you had the aha moment, I need to share, I need to bring some in. So, Jared, he reaches out, he brings you in, and then there's a transition period where he's struggling to let go of some of this stuff, to let you do it. Talk us through some of that as the guy who got brought in, when you have to say, Mike, stop it. Let me do it. I wasn't there. I'm just assuming that that conversation happened at least once. So, correct me if I'm wrong.

Jared Maybon: It's like you got a crystal ball there. You can see exactly how things went. Greg, you're right. I think it's hard, and to Mike's credit, I think he was blessed with a natural [00:15:00] trusting demeanor, and not every organization has that. What Mike's done really well inside of Build Better is build out some platforms to help train and coach leaders to evolve, to increase in some of those aptitudes, to allow them to delegate, and to let go of some things.

I will share a few little tidbits here, some things that we did to help Mike let go. Because sometimes he did have a little bit of a white knuckle grip on some of those things, and we did feel like we were having to slap his hands and say, cut it out. Stop. We're trying to run your business for you. It's what you asked us to do. It's what you're paying us to do. But really, if you wanna help a leader, let go of stuff, you've gotta put systems in place that give them confidence that when they let go of something, they're not just trusting a fallible human being, but they're trusting a system and a process that's been documented and put in place and can be recorded and tracked with hard, cold data. And that doesn't sound very fun or sexy or exciting. But it's the absolute truth.

A leader is going to be far more likely [00:16:00] let go of systems and processes if there are systems and processes in place, right? But if you're just trusting a human being who's going to get sick, and who needs to go on vacation, and who has a family, and who makes different decisions than you do, to take something that you've built up and trust and love and run with it, that's a hard thing to do. That's a big ask.

And so from my side, regardless of how capable I thought I was, I had to realize from time to time that I was holding Mike's baby in my hand, right? And it was unfair for me to ask him to just drop that baby with closed eyes. And so working really hard, a lot of my time and effort was spent with the team trying to put systems in place that helped Mike feel comfortable letting go of things, and Build Better captures that too. It really is a phenomenal program in that he walks you through those systems that need to be put in place to give that confidence to leaders to let go.

Kevin Weitzel: Well, Jared, you said something pretty profound there that you said that, you're basically, you're being entrusted to hold his [00:17:00] baby. It's much more of a rarity in today's society that people take the pride of craft and the pride of wanting to make sure that they're successful, not just for themselves, but for the entirety of the company and for the ownership of the company. I think that a lot of people have that shortsighted viewpoint of, I'm just here to do my job, or I need to make sure my commission is X versus I'm being in entrusted with this person's baby, you know, their home, their company. So, I think that's something that's commendable, that you actually have that mindset going into it, to begin with.

Mike Dildine: For those people out there, I wanna speak to Jared for just a second because there's the business owners out there and there's those that help the business owners build. One thing that Jared did year after year after year that allowed him to, he went from a project manager, right? We hired him as a project manager. He had this constant giving selfless attitude of just, how can I help? The fact that he just worded it like that, he's holding my baby speaks to it. And there's so many employees, team [00:18:00] members that don't have that kind of an approach.

But when a business owner sees that in a person and there's this genuine just willingness to jump in and grind and help and work wherever possible, Jared went from that to managing our pre-con team to building out systems. And his path to CEO in our company was incredibly fast because of his willingness to jump in and love and care and serve the organization and build those systems all with me in mind and that baby of the business that I've built. And it makes it really, really easy as a business owner to start to be more willing to hand stuff off when you see that level of care and that level of commitment to the business.

Greg Bray: So, let's talk just a little bit about some of those processes, cuz you hinted, Jared, earlier that one of the first ones that you really focused on was the sales side, as far as trying to turn things around. Our audience is more sales and marketing focused as well. So, you know, maybe Jared, tell us a little bit [00:19:00] about how that went, why you kind of started there, or if it was a conscious choice or not. Maybe it just happened by accident, I don't know. And kind of part of that focus on process and how it impacts sales and marketing specifically.

Jared Maybon: Yeah. So, full disclosure here. Mike turned on the sales tap before he ever found me. The sales was ratcheting up and it was when the operations couldn't keep up with the sales that he said, all right, hold on. We need some help here. So, I can say, I know Mike's first move was he went and hired people that he trusted that he knew were good at that, but Mike might speak better to how the sales processing system was built out.

Mike Dildine: Yeah, everything starts with sales. If you're gonna grow a business it's through sales. And my approach to sales was much like the approach I think that a lot of builders around the country, especially small builders take. It's kind of just maybe build a spec home but just wait for things to fall in your lap. I took the approach of digital marketing, and it changed my business forever.

 I went and hired somebody out of the life insurance business. He came in. He had eight years of [00:20:00] experience in building email campaigns and CRMs and different things like that. Man, it changed the business in just a year of putting our focus on that. We went from an email list of zero to an email list of thousands. We built some scorecards of, you know, lead conversions to sales appointments to contracts. We started to really operate a successful sales funnel, and that just opened up the doors for years.

We grew that email list to, I think it's at 20,000 plus right now. And we've got that group of followers now that we can market to at any point. So, we get a new subdivision or new opportunity, we hit our email list. We get it out to 20,000 people and that generates leads, emails, sales appointments, and you just get this machine going that I didn't have for 12 years. And that's what opened up the floodgates to be able to start selling homes and created all the problems for Jared then cuz we didn't have any systems to build the homes.

Jared Maybon: So, if I can chime in, because there's always [00:21:00] this backend about this that I get really passionate about, and that is that you create a digital sales campaign and it's powerful and it's working cuz you get the right people that know how to do it regardless of what industry they're in. They know how to drive sales to an organization using digital tactics.

But if you don't have processes, if your products and services don't match what are being marketed, then you have some massive internal tension and conflict, and we encountered those periods of tension and conflict repeatedly. And so getting systems in place to make sure that the products and services you're selling are actually the products and services that you're delivering. that's a whole nother conversation, right? But it's integral and inseparable, I think for successful organizations.

Kevin Weitzel: Well, McDonald's didn't set out to make the world's cheapest burger. They set out to make the best system for creating burgers and fries and the eating experience. So, it really was process-driven and that's what they sell to their franchisee owners is the process, not the actual product itself. It's the pride of making that efficient in [00:22:00] extracting the profitability from that is what they're actually selling. So, I think you guys are definitely onto something of changing the mindset. My follow-up to that is you create Build Better. How does a builder benefit from Build Better? Do they fly to Idaho for a month? How does that all work?

Mike Dildine: Yeah. I'll tell you how Build Better was built. It was through Jared and I and members of our team spending into the six figures, I mean a hundred thousand plus traveling the entire country. We went to Florida, to Utah, to Texas, to Arizona, and we went for classes on project management, classes on accounting, classes on sales funnels. And it was a period of three to five years of compiling all of this information and data, and then coming back and putting it to practice and tweaking that data and everything.

So, time and money, lots of time and lots of money. Build Better was designed to take all of that stuff and put it into one place so that somebody doesn't have to spend five years [00:23:00] or a hundred thousand dollars to do it. Jared and I, and one other member of our team have recorded almost 30 courses. From everything from vision building, to sales, to accounting, to team building. When do you hire? When do you let go? What do you let go of?

Everything that we learned for five years has been compiled into almost 30 courses. And with those courses, we've developed a workbook that's almost 200 pages and there's a section for every course. And it allows a builder that is in Tennessee or Texas or wherever they are, to say, I need to learn more on sales. And so they can skip straight to that sales section, absorb that information, jump into the workbook, and apply it to their business. How am I doing with things?

And then we offer coaching. We offer four calls a month, a sales call, a finance and accounting call, a systems development call, and an ownership and management call. So, they get the chance to jump on with myself, with Jared, with our certified coaches to say, here's what I'm up against in [00:24:00] my business. This is what I've learned. What would you suggest? And so it's a collaborative program. It's a membership program that's very inexpensive for builders where they don't have to spend a hundred thousand plus, but they get all of that information and help coming from the comfort of their own home.

And then there's things we offer. There's a masterclass where they can come to Boise and sit with us for two full days and just a crash course on different things like that. But we designed it to be simple so that they can do it from home. It's affordable and it's a lifeline for them, for these business owners that are trying to find ways to break through from somebody that has done some of that.

Greg Bray: So Mike, just to clarify then, is it the business owner that is the member, or does their whole team potentially participate in some of these offerings?

Mike Dildine: Yeah, we've got business owners alone. The first thing I do is encourage them to find their team and get them involved. Don't do it by yourself. We've got three, four people from different companies that jump in. They get the content, they get the workbook, they can jump on the calls and everything. So, [00:25:00] definitely encourage participation from the owner as well as his leadership team.

Greg Bray: As you now talk to all these owners and get to know them, are you learning like, gosh, everybody's got the same problems, or are you going, oh man, I haven't run into that one before? We need to update the class to cover that nuance that we hadn't encountered. Or is it really same stuff, different place kind of a thing that you keep running into as you learn and explore?

Mike Dildine: Yeah, it's fascinating. I love the opportunity to talk with builders from all over the country and even Canada. They do have different problems. One is focused on sales, one's focused on accounting, but the consistent problem I see over and over and over again from builders all over the country is getting sucked into the business. Never having the time to focus on the systems development. What do we gotta change? How are we gonna make progress? And it's across the board.

All of these business owners are saying, I'm working long hours and hard hours and I want to get more out of it, but [00:26:00] finding that time to focus on business development is a recurring problem that I hear with almost every builder I talk with. And that's what we're trying to do with Build Better is force builders to step out of the day-to-day operations of the business and carve out time. Here's my time, here's the program I'm going to use, and this is how I'm going to get business development going. That's when they start to create some traction and real momentum in their business.

Greg Bray: So, Jared, for our listeners who are in that leadership role, not an owner, right? But they're in that leadership role and they see their owner falling into this, that they can't quite break out. How do they approach that conversation? How do you go to the owner and say, Hey, you've got to step out and look at this from the high level and work on the business, not in the business, the little catchphrase? What's the trick or the suggestion on how to have that kind of a conversation?

Jared Maybon: Hostile brute force and swear words. It's the only way it works. No, it's a tough [00:27:00] conversation to have because, you know, I've worked with quite a few teams myself, and typically the truth is one of the last people to know that there's a problem is the owner, right? Because so many of the issues are happening in the underbelly of the business. It's where consumer meets business offering.

So, often the owner is not intentionally aloof from that by any means, but they're focusing on the financial structure of the organization and making sure the taxes are paid and risk management and some of these things that are really critical and important, but they don't see how critical solving some of these deeper issues are. And what they also don't sometimes realize is how important it is for them to let go and delegate power and authority to other people to manage those issues.

And so sometimes the most powerful tool is just to be very transparent, open, and honest, and bring to that owner's attention, the problems that they're confronting, and the frequency with which they're confronting those issues, and if they can show hard statistical data [00:28:00] that shows the impact on the bottom line that those issues are having. It goes back to my statement on systems and processes in place to help people let go of things. The only way to justify the need for a new system or process is to show how a lack of system or process in that area is affecting the bottom line.

So, coming back to ownership and leadership over and over again and saying, here's this persistent little issue, and if you would let go of it and delegate some authority to let somebody who's really qualified and has the time and head space to solve that problem, here's how that could impact the bottom line. That kind of persistent effort, I think is what will ultimately help owners realize the power that comes from that delegation and letting go of things.

Greg Bray: Man, I'm loving this conversation. Kevin, how about you? This is great stuff.

Kevin Weitzel: It's ridiculous. A good example of that. Greg, he came up with an idea of having this podcast. It would benefit sales and marketing teams across country. And he kept hearing the same thing. Same thing. You know, the world lacks sideburns. There's not enough sideburns in this planet. So, he said, who, who could I find with rugged ridiculously good looks [00:29:00] with a set of sideburns? And he found me. Boom. Done. It's magic.

Greg Bray: And that's why we're an audio-only media publication, right?

Kevin Weitzel: No. It's refreshing to see a company that can take an introspective look because, you know, we see it all the time. You know, at OutHouse we deal with clients that they build X number of homes a year. Let's say they're building 10 homes a year. The business that we sold our services to that sells 10 homes a year, when they hit 75 homes a year, it's a different company. And when you go from 75 homes a year to 150 homes a year, again, a completely different company.

You can't keep operations the same. And if you do keep your operations the same, all you're gonna do is just put a cap on how big that growth can ever hit. And I think that you found that magic and that secret sauce of learning to diversify and hit systems in place and make sure that you put the proper people in place to make sure that the execution happens.

Mike Dildine: Again, mentioning people. I think the job of a business owner is a team builder. You're constantly looking and trying to find the right people. A book that [00:30:00] Jared and I are both super passionate about is Who Not How. So many of us in our lives work on the how. I don't know how to do this. I gotta figure out how to do this. I gotta figure out how to do that. And you're not an expert in that. You have to find your who's.

There are people that are so much smarter in accounting, so much smarter in sales, in project management. And so if you can take that mindset as an owner or as a leadership team to think, I gotta find my who's and not necessarily try to figure out how to do everything. That mindset of team building and nurturing, team nurturing culture, there's this magic that happens when you get this right team of people sharing the same vision, working together, and doing the things that they truly are good at, everybody. Man, magic happens in your business.

Kevin Weitzel: So, question as far as the structure Build Better and your potential person that would wanna sign up for a membership. I'm a big believer in personal growth. I've personally funded my own [00:31:00] development in certain things that was completely separate of what my parent company had thought would be okay to pay for.

Is the Build Better service something that's affordable enough to where an individual in a company could self-fund their way through the process, and would they just get that same benefit? Or is it something that really needs to come from top-down and you get buy-in corporately from the entire company?

Mike Dildine: It's gonna depend. It brings up the question where certain companies, the business owner wants to count for every single last penny spent. And it's like, I want my business to grow and develop, but I don't wanna spend a single penny to do it. I'm worried about the budget, and I'm gonna be tight and everything like that.

We absolutely have made it affordable enough on purpose, that every business across the country could look at it and say, I can afford to do that. It's just not that much money. And so whether this hits a business owner that's listening today, or it hits a CEO or it hits a project manager, anybody in an organization that looks at it and says, I think we can tweak. I think we can improve and [00:32:00] do a little bit better here or there. It's that affordable that they could jump in, talk to the business owner, invest in it, and it's not something that's ongoing.

You do it for three months, you do it for 12 months, you do it for 24 months, right? As long as you're getting value out of it, you keep rolling with it. If you get to a point where you look at it and say, I'm not really getting any value. We've set it up that way so that you can cancel at any time. So, very affordable, very non-committal, and we genuinely are just trying to make it accessible to any home building company across the country that wants to focus on business development. People have to focus on business development, and they're just not doing it.

Greg Bray: Well, guys, this has been a great conversation. I wish we'd keep going, but we wanna be respectful of your time today as well. But before we wrap up, I'd like to invite each of you to just share one last piece of advice that maybe we didn't get to that you wanted to share with those who are listening today. And Jared, why don't we let you go first on that?

Jared Maybon: My quick and easy and obvious one is for anyone that's listening to do yourselves a favor and look into Build Better. Make that leap, make [00:33:00] that investment. There's a reason that professional athletes have coaches, right? To involve yourself with a coach, with a system that's outside of your system that has that objective look, that objective view.

Mike said it. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars traveling around the country looking for views and perspectives outside of our own, and it's the only way you'll ever induce growth in an organization. Otherwise, you become stagnant, a pond with no movement, no fresh air, no fresh water. So, reaching out and bringing sources into your organization to improve, to get better. I can say this firsthand, there's not a better one out there for home builders than Build Better. It's been designed and built that way to do that. If it's not Built Better then go somewhere else, but for crying out loud, go look for help. Go look for something fresh and new and bring it into your organization.

Greg Bray: Mike, any last words or thoughts?

Mike Dildine: Yeah. The one that comes to mind is to be able to believe that it's possible. I honestly reached a point in my business after 12 years where I didn't even [00:34:00] believe in myself, in the ability to break through with the business because the level of frustration was so high and I felt like I had tried so many times. And I didn't have big investor money to back me or some fancy MBA business degree or anything like that. And so I felt like there was this ceiling that just, this is as far as you can go, Mike.

Bull crap. You can do so much more with just this focus on business development. When we set our three-year, five-year, 10-year type goals, I set 'em and I didn't even believe 'em, truly in my own head, and then we actually went and did it. Like, we hit these incredible goals. I would just try to instill belief for all of you builders that are listening out there or business owners of other types, subcontractors, and things like that, believe that it's possible. And we've got tools that will help you understand ways that you can go out and take meaningful steps towards that direction.

Greg Bray: Awesome. Well, if somebody's listening and they're ready to go, they wanna sign up, how do they get in touch and how do they connect and get started [00:35:00] with Build Better?

Mike Dildine: Yeah. To learn about the Build Better program you'd go to it's go.joinbuildbetter.com. And on that we've got all of our pricing, we've got sample videos and different things. You'll learn everything about the program that's included. So, go.joinbuildbetter.com. And then for myself, you could find me on LinkedIn, Mike Dildine. Reach out, send me a message. Would love to jump on a phone call with anybody, and just genuinely trying to help businesses out.

Greg Bray: I love the enthusiasm guys. Thank you so much, and the transparency and the openness. It's clearly coming through that you just want to help. That you've learned something, that you've seen the pain of others, and you're trying to make a difference, and that's awesome. That's awesome. So glad we get to know you better and, and learn more about the program. So, thank you.

Mike Dildine: I know Jared would welcome every phone call as well. He was crucial to everything that we did. Has a fantastic business mind on him and has gotten into EOS as well and there's a lot there. Jared, LinkedIn for you as well, if people wanted to reach out.[00:36:00]

Jared Maybon: Yep. Thanks, Mike. I'm not hard to find Jared Maybon on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, wherever you want. EOS Worldwide, Jared Maybon as well. You can find me on the website there. So, lots of ways to track me down. Through Build Better, there as well. So, not hard to find.

Kevin Weitzel: Although, Greg, Jared did say something. I wish we used video on this because you almost looked disappointed. Jared at one point said the things that aren't sexy, and he said, data's not sexy. And I swear, I thought Greg was gonna be like, what? You look all sad and puppy dog-like, oh, data's not sexy. It is sexy. Data is sexy people. It is.

Greg Bray: I know, but when I have to compete with sideburns, Kevin. We just can't compete with sideburns.

Kevin Weitzel: Boom. Does anything really though?

Greg Bray: We're gonna go now. All right. So, thanks everybody for listening today to The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. Thank you. [00:37:00]