189 Identifying the Ideal Home Buyer - Jaclyn Centofanti Nov 1 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 Zonda and Livabl.

Greg Bray: And we are excited today to have joining us on the show, Jaclyn Centofanti. She is the Business Development and Marketing Manager at Hulbert Homes. Welcome, Jaclyn. Thanks for being with us today.

Jaclyn Centofanti: Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Greg Bray: Well, let's start out and just get to know you a little bit. Give us that quick background story about yourself.

Jaclyn Centofanti: Sure. I'm in the market that I grew up in, which makes me a little unique because almost nobody is very native to [00:01:00] Florida, let alone this little area that we're in. Grew up here and went away briefly for college. Lived in Orlando a bit and then moved back, and I've been back for about 12 years working in the community. Fairly new to the home builder industry. So, I've only been in it for about two years. I got swindled by a home builder to come and work for him. He and I both joked that he courted me because it was about six months of doing so before I finally said, okay, I guess I'll take this leap. But it's been fun and challenging and overall just a good time.

Kevin Weitzel: So, we like to follow up with something personal about you that has nothing to do with the home building industry that people can learn about you on our podcast.

Jaclyn Centofanti: Hmm. So, something about me, I think people here know this, but I'm a huge yoga enthusiast. So, in my spare time when I can, yoga is my total jam. Whenever we travel, I have this like a running joke that I have to just handstand against any random iconic pillar or tree, or sign. Like it's best if there's a sign in the background, so it can actually really tell you where I'm hand-standing. So, [00:02:00] like, at the Capitol building or the Memorial at George Washington and all that. So, that's my fun fact.

Kevin Weitzel: So, Ashtanga, Hatha, the whole gamut?

Jaclyn Centofanti: Hot yoga. Yeah. Yeah. As hot as it can get is really my jam. I like it to just be really hard, otherwise, I don't want to be involved.

Greg Bray: Kevin, have you done a handstand?

Kevin Weitzel: I can't do a handstand because of my arm's ability to withstand the tonnage that it would have to hold. However, I do like doing yoga. I'm just not very flexible, so it looks a little bit more labored and less natural. And obviously, little kids that are looking through a glass window just point and laugh like on the Simpsons, you know, but outside of that, yeah, I love yoga.

Jaclyn Centofanti: I got mostly good at handstands during COVID when we were all work from home and I would put my air pods in and walk around and be talking to clients and on the phone and on calls and stuff like that, and I would just be hand standing against the wall. So, that's where it started, I guess.

Greg Bray: I'll have to start practice hand-standing. I don't think I can do a handstand. So, all right. Well, Jaclyn, tell us a little bit more about your journey into home building. [00:03:00] You mentioned it's only been a few years. What got you interested in home building and what were you doing before that?

Jaclyn Centofanti: About when I went away for college was the boom, the first boom, the home building boom. And Flagler was named again as like one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation because we just have a lot of land close to the beach. We're kind of this little area that nobody kind of knew about, and this gem that people kind of started discovering.

When I moved back, I started working for a local newspaper in advertising sales. And so, I saw that home building was obviously a very big industry for Flagler County and thought that I would get involved. Got involved, just kind of went to committee meetings, was an associate member. And then, got asked later to join the board. So, was on the board of directors for the home builders association. And really had no business being there other than I could help them with their marketing efforts, but I knew nothing really about home building. As I say, like the rest of history.

I went to one of our events and I met Mark. We just kind of hit it off. As I mentioned, went away for school. So, I actually went to school in Lakeland, which is where Florida Southern [00:04:00] is, but also where Hulbert Homes was founded. So, when I met Mark, we just kind of hit it off and started talking. He was so new, not to the industry, but to this area. And I was the opposite, very, very, very familiar with the area and with everybody. He just kind of said, look, I need somebody like you on my team. I said, well, maybe we could talk about that, and six months later, I finally made the shift.

Kevin Weitzel: All right, not stalking you, however, in prep to today's interview, I did go onto your LinkedIn profile and lo and behold, somebody worked at Walt Disney World. What?

Jaclyn Centofanti: I did. I did. It was so fun.

Kevin Weitzel: Did that experience help you in your professional life?

Jaclyn Centofanti: Yes, so I say all the time they don't pay well, but the learning experience. They tell you that, you know, the perks you get, which I won't deny because it's very expensive to go there now that I have children and try to go there. They teach corporate companies. You can go to Disney University. Nobody teaches customer service like Disney, and I tell [00:05:00] people that all the time. So, I think that plays into sales, it plays into marketing because all that is customer service.

But Disney, I mean, there's very specific rules. You're literally never allowed to say, I don't know. If somebody asks you a question and you don't know, which is highly likely, you are not allowed to say, I don't know. You could get like reprimanded for it. You are supposed to say, let me find out. And then you find out. You make whatever phone calls, you search it, you Google it, you get your phone out, whatever. So, that's definitely tapered into me I think as a salesperson, as a human and customer service. I've always been very customer service-oriented, and I think a lot of that comes from working at Disney, for sure.

Greg Bray: You know, it's pretty powerful, though, the difference some of those words can make in just your attitude of your ownership of the situation and your desire to solve the problem and everything else. Just, I don't know, not my problem, right? Move on. Whereas let me find out, you're taking ownership, you're ready to go solve that. People can feel that.

That's a great example. We'll have to see how many others come up that track back to some [00:06:00] Disney experience there. But before we do that, Jaclyn, tell us a little bit more about Hulbert Homes, where you guys build, the kind of buyers that you're working with and serving.

Jaclyn Centofanti: Yeah. So, Hulbert's been in Lakeland for 25 years. It's a decently long time. Mark started it soup to nuts by himself and built it through the original crash and came out on the other side well. Like I said, I went to school there, so when I was talking to him, I did my homework, I called friends and talked with some old professors and just said, what do you know about this company? Like, what am I getting into? Is this a good thing? And literally nothing but good things. Everybody's just said, look, this is the home we want to build. When you're in Polk County, they're the ones. That's your future home. Everybody wants to build a Hulbert Home.

We have so many repeat clients, which I think it's hilarious that people move that much. But in going through marketing stuff, I can see that there's people that we've built homes, built additions, built an additional home built, for their mother, built for their father. There's a realtor we work with that's on home number three, I think with us.

I think they made a really good name for themselves there and have just incredibly loyal subcontractors [00:07:00] and really loyal with the home builders association there. So, when they got invited to come be a preferred builder in Palm Coast, it was very new and they kind of thought, sure, we'll come over, it's not that far, we'll build a couple of homes. But everybody fell in love with Hulbert.

There were so many and that's really where Mark and I's conversation started was he was like, we need help. We need somebody local. We need somebody who's here, who's established, and who can handhold and do the sales and kind of start the operations here. So, we've built that now to having six full-time staff here, including project managers, an interior decorator, myself, kind of an admin permitting coordinator, and then a director for the operations here.

Titusville is the next on our list, and it's for similar reasons. So, one of the developers that we're with here, is opening up a community in Titusville. And it's about an hour and 15 minutes from us, so the team here will kind of launch that together.

Greg Bray: So, tell us a little bit more about that experience of opening a new area for a [00:08:00] builder, right? You were kind of starting about the same time that they were moving into a new place. They've got this long reputation somewhere else, a lot of history, but maybe they're not really known in this new environment. Where do you start with that? What's kind of the way that you approach that problem and said, okay, how do we get the word out about long time, great product that has all these repeat buyers, but nobody here has heard of them potentially?

Jaclyn Centofanti: Well, yeah, you know, I walked into that and it was chaos because it was right when everybody was just building because interest rates were zero and houses were fairly cheap and you could scoop up lots. So, kind of walked in and put a lot of fires out kind of more on an operational end, helped with permitting, helped us get established, introduced subcontractors, stuff like that.

And then once we were able to kind of breathe and get out of the chaos mode, we were able to kind of sit down and say, okay, what do we want to do as sales? What do we want to do as marketing? How do we want to structure the company here? The second year, and this is the first really full year where I said, we need a marketing budget.

They had been so established in Lakeland that, you know, outside of, [00:09:00] Hey, can you sponsor this yearbook, can you do this, can you sponsor this race, do you want to be a part of this, and just being the good guys, they hadn't really ever put major dollars towards marketing. So, we had to sit down and I was just strategic with what I wanted to do.

And to your point, I said, we're not the only dogs here, and we're certainly not the big dogs, so our reputation is next to nothing. And so it's been a lot about building a reputation for me and being strategic about partnerships, sponsorships, committees I'm on, where I put our name, collateral that I put out, branding, stuff like that.

It's not a struggle, but we were behind the eight ball on it. So, we're trying to be a lot more strategic in doing that at the next community. So, lessons learned certainly to maybe get ahead of it more. I certainly don't think we thought it would blow up as much as it did, and that's probably part of it. So, hindsight's 20/20, but here we are.

Greg Bray: So, as you sit there and think, okay, I want to get the word out where did digital start to fall in that toolbox, if you will, of [00:10:00] opportunities? You were doing a lot of grassroots kind of handshake-type meeting people building it out, but how do you start to kind of then use some of these online tools to help with that?

Jaclyn Centofanti: Yeah, that's the focus. And, you know, that's where we met Greg is sitting in on these classes at SEBC and looking at best practices and looking at different options for digital because again, they've never had to do it. So, a lot of it comes down to the SEO for Lakeland is fantastic, but we have almost none here. So, okay, now we might have to pay for it, right? It was grassroots there. I did nothing. It was completely organic.

You know, if you type in Polk County home builder, Lakeland, we pop up right? Because 90 percent of the things on our website say Lakeland and we're on other people's websites and stuff like that. So, I've had to be kind of really strategic and it's still a total work in progress in kind of overhauling, basically pages within the website to try to say Palm Coast, Flagler, Titusville, you know, all of that as much as possible.

Luckily, because we're in with a handful of developers where we're a preferred builder, that kind of opens up that [00:11:00] line where digitally we're on theirs, they link to us. They post our stuff, we post their stuff. Some of that is organic because it already exists because they're doing a lot of marketing efforts, and we just kind of get to be, Hey, one of three builders, one of five builders, one of six builders. That at least gets us out there easily, and then we just need to make sure that they're hearing it, seeing it more than that.

Kevin Weitzel: And I noticed that you use the phrase one of, instead of the best out of these other four builders.

Jaclyn Centofanti: Well, I think we are, but I am not that salesy sales guy. I'm the guy that's like, Hey, have you called this other builder yet? Oh, he didn't call you back. Do you want his cell phone? I would like you to choose us because we're the best, but I want you to do your homework. And I'll also say that we're not everybody's cup of tea. We've turned clients down before that we've said, you know what? I don't think that we can meet your expectations. That's tough, you know when you're looking at a million-dollar home.

We're involved for so long. I joke with my realtor friends like if you have a client and they're kind of a total pill, you've got them until you sell their [00:12:00] house. And then you basically get to say, thank you very much. Maybe you send them a postcard every Christmas, but like you collect your commission and go away.

If I sign somebody on and they're maybe a pill, I have to then hand them over to my interior designer, I have to hand them over to a project manager, and then we have to babysit them for 10 to 12 months while they build their house. Which is kind of a long time for somebody to be not a good fit for a company. We really think about that. Mark and I will talk about it all the time, like, are we sure this is the right fit? You know, are they going to get along with our project managers? Are we just handling something that we don't want them to handle? And we've walked away before as needed.

Kevin Weitzel: You are echoing Alaina Money-Garman. The power of the word no.

Jaclyn Centofanti: Yep.

Kevin Weitzel: Sometimes you do need to use it as a proper exercise in running your business properly.

Greg Bray: It's hard. It's hard though, to walk away, especially when their money's still green, right? Even if they're a pill, so.

Jaclyn Centofanti: Yep.

Greg Bray: And I like the word pill. That's such a that's such a polite word.

Jaclyn Centofanti: It's a nice way to say it. There's so many other ways I could say [00:13:00] it. That sounded like the best one. We use PETA, pain in the arse a lot. But pill, mostly I think, too, because it relates to like, it's a tough pill to swallow to say no to somebody when their money is green. But it's more than just about me because I could kind of walk away after selling them and say, thanks so much. Nice to meet you guys. Here's our project manager, Mike, and he's going to be like for nine months, why did you give me this person? I don't want to build their house.

Greg Bray: Well, I would bet that there's a connection between that attitude of finding the right fit and all the repeat customers that you were talking about at the beginning of our conversation and people that come back. That fitting process up front drives that referral because birds of a feather type of thing, right? These right fit people are going to send you more of these other right fit people and they're going to come back for more. And so probably something going on there that is real. I would bet.

Jaclyn Centofanti: Yeah. So, in a brand new market, and obviously, you guys know that and probably most of your listeners, but you want to kind of build out who is your client, right? So, you ask all the questions [00:14:00] and find that out. I was lucky because right before I came on board, the Hulbert leadership team kind of did that already. So, we operate off of the Entrepreneurial Operation System, EOS, and so they had just started into that process.

And so, as a leadership team, you spend a lot of time deep-diving into what are the company goals. What do you want to do for revenue this that? What's your why? And then who's your avatar? So, they had already built out based on 25 years. And we've added to it because certainly, our client here is potentially a little bit different than the client in Lakeland. But similar. Similar walk of life, similar age, similar habits, similar wants and needs, and pocketbook and stuff like that. So, they had already done some of that homework, which was helpful to me coming in and saying, okay, who's our client? They had already done a lot of that.

Kevin Weitzel: What's interesting is that you have an extreme specificity of a type of client from just one city to another city within Florida. Whereas I thought that all Floridians were just retirees. I did not know this. So, I've learned something [00:15:00] today.

Jaclyn Centofanti: Yeah. We have a good amount on the East Coast. We have a lot of people moving from South Florida. I would say probably about 50 percent of the clients we've built for in the last two years have been from South Florida. I know, basically, they're getting away from the hustle and bustle. They're semi-retired or they're work from home now, or one of them is retired and the other one's not, and they're empty nest. So, they're downsizing. And sometimes downsizing means going from 6,000 square feet to 45. Sometimes it means going from 45 to 28. They're in that realm, but they're not retirees. They're not blue hairs or they're not.

I joke all the time that the women have adopted me because their kids live like in other states. So, they'll call me on like a Tuesday and be like, what are you doing? I'm like, well, I'm working. They're like, come over for a glass of wine. It's three o'clock. I gotta go pick up my kids. I mean, I would love to. That sounds like a lovely life that you live, but. Well, come on the boat. Why don't you just go get the kids and bring them and come on the boat with us?

So, they're [00:16:00] very laid back. They've done well in life. This might not be their forever home, but it's pretty close. And it's the first time that they've really focused on, and I think that's why I appreciate it and I can connect to it because I'm like, Hey, this is gold. But their kids are gone, they're empty nested, they did well in life, and so they're downsizing and they're focusing on look at 90 percent of the time in the South, it's going to be me and my spouse.

So, we want open living. We want outdoor living. We want a pool that we want to go in or we want a hot tub, or we want the outdoor bar or we want, you know, whatever is important to them. We want the master suite to be very large. And then we do want space for our kids and guests to come and visit, but not for longer than a week. The running joke is like, we want them comfortable, but not comfortable enough that they'll stay longer than Christmas. But they're right on that cusp of like very young retirees if they're fully retired.

Greg Bray: Well, Jaclyn, as you've been working to get this outreach going, connect with these potential buyers and things, what are some of the lessons you've learned, shall we say, over the last little bit? What's [00:17:00] something that you went, wow, that just didn't go how I thought it was going to? Anything to share?

Jaclyn Centofanti: We did kind of immediately outsource some social media stuff, and I just kind of off-put it and said, Hey, it's not that expensive. It's not worth my time, it's not worth anybody's time, our time is valuable, let's outsource this. And nothing bad to say about the company, but it really only took about like three months to realize this just didn't get the vibe. That comes from being in the culture, being around, being in the office, knowing our customers, and this and that.

Again, the visuals were good. It was just something so simple as like language, the words that were used in a post or to describe something that you're like well, nobody in our staff would ever say it like that. Like, it's not incorrect, but it's not great. And so, that was something pretty quickly that Mark said, look, is this something you could do? How much of your time would it take? Can we really reel this back in and do it in-house?

And so, it's easy. Again, it does take time, but it's easier because I don't have to tell somebody how the voice should sound. Speaking [00:18:00] to that, now we're kind of adapting a little bit to using AI. That's been really lovely because I can say, here are some sample posts, and this is my voice, this is the way I want these. Can you give me some good ideas about blog posts or this or social media posts and this and that? And so, that's been an interesting new digital introduction for me that's super helpful.

Kevin Weitzel: It brings up an interesting point. Since you chose not to mention the company, which I'm glad because it allowed me to get this talking point in. Do you feel that the failure, and not that it was a blatant failure, but just that you couldn't keep progressing, do you feel that it was just because you were receiving regurgitated programmatic deployments? Or do you think that maybe there just wasn't the communication between you and that company to create that vibe of what needed to be portrayed in the communication?

Jaclyn Centofanti: Probably both. Again, like nothing was incorrect about it. It was just sometimes superfluous or like too many words or you're like, nobody would talk like that, or we need to be a little more low key and, [00:19:00] you know, a little bit more down to earth. It just seemed a little kind of like too proper, too whatever. But if I had told you, Hey, most of my clients are buying million-dollar homes, you would think maybe I need to speak to them like that. But they're not those kind of people.

And so maybe it was a miss on our part on maybe misconstruing who kind of our audience was. But then, it was almost that double work, right? So like, here's the samples, and here's the text. And I'm like, Oh, like, tweak this, change that, change that. Where I'm like, I'll just do it myself. This doesn't make sense. I'm correcting somebody and it's not their fault because here I am correcting and potentially could have learned right?

Like AI, you say, hey, that sounds too verbose or that's too many words or that's too snooty sounding or weird, or I don't like this word and they'll stop using it. And real people would obviously do the same thing. But, I think you got to live it sometimes to really, truly understand it. And I think outsourcing that makes outsourcing hard and we're not so big that it's impossible for me to do.

Greg Bray: Let's drill down just for a second more into your AI use, because I think that's something that everybody's still trying to figure out where that fits and some of that. Are [00:20:00] you finding it helpful? Is it working? Is it something that you're glad is there, or is it like, yeah, we tried it, but, you know, not really ready yet?

Jaclyn Centofanti: I love it as sort of a prompt. It's a good prompt. Like if I'm just, I need to get like three social posts up, or I'm thinking about doing a reel but I don't know what to do it about, or, I want to post another blog. Or I've used it even to help me write, you know, I'm working on those community pages.

So, if I'm like, Hey, Marina Del Palma is a community that we build in, write me a two-paragraph description about why somebody would want to live in this community. They spit something out, I'll read through it, and I'm like, Ooh, that sentence is really good. Or that's a really good way to describe it. And I'm going to still write my own thing, but it's really good, especially when you're in a creative rut.

Sometimes I use it to check myself. So, I did a blog post of the top five design trends that we saw this year because people love design stuff. And so, we came out with ours. You know, I spoke with our designer and I was like, I was thinking about doing these five things. And I think we went back and forth and ended up landing on the five things.

And I was like, [00:21:00] I'm just curious what AI would say are the top five. And there were a couple of overlaps or there was things I was like, oh, that's good too. And there were other things I said, not really our clients. So, had I done that, it would have maybe given me two good ideas and I maybe would have still made up three more. So, a lot of times, it's just a nice little extra creative point or a push or an idea or a prompt that kind of gets your creative juices flowing a little bit easier and faster.

Greg Bray: That matches with what I've heard others say that have found it useful is when it's more of the assistant, the sounding board, get me something I can edit, you know, and start working with. So, I'm not staring at just the blank screen with a flashing prompt and just feel the writer's block, you know, kick in.

But that's terrific that you're making it work well and learning it. And I think, frankly, figuring out how to prompt it as kind of the magic skill now. How do I tell it what I want and understand it? And even save some of those things for tomorrow, right? That I can just drop in and start over with here's the context, here's the prompt, here's the [00:22:00] background and the voice or all those kinds of things, so it's all ready to go.

Jaclyn Centofanti: Total squirrel is that, I saw this reel the other day and I was like, this is totally me because this is how I am with like my Alexa as well. So, apparently, I'm scared of robots taking over the world. I don't know. When you're telling you're like, that was too verbose, or like, that sounds really snooty. I'm always like, I'm so sorry. But you know, that sounds really terrible. Can we you adjust it to read this? Thank you. Just in case the robot comes to life. I want to be not the one that's on their hit list. Do you know what I mean?

Greg Bray: Apologizing or being polite to the AI. Hey, but somebody told me once if you're polite to it, it gives you better answers. I don't know if that's true, so.

Jaclyn Centofanti: It's always been my M.O. I've literally said to Alexa, I'm like, yes, ma'am. And then I'm like, I don't need to say that, I guess. But we're from the South. I don't know.

Greg Bray: That's right. Well, Jaclyn, as you are out there looking for ideas and things to use in your marketing, what are some of the places you go for inspiration? What are some of the companies you look to for ideas?

Jaclyn Centofanti: To Kevin's point, I love to stalk other people. I like to stalk other builders, other accounts. [00:23:00] Mark and his leadership team are in builder groups, industry-wide, this is common. So, there's like builder groups. When I was in marketing for the newspaper, the car dealers all went to car dealer groups. And so they would all talk about best practices and things that they do, and so same thing.

I mean, we have friendly builders, and let's say like Utah, that say, Hey, this plan is really economically easy to build and inexpensive, people love it, whatever. And they're like, do you want us to share these blueprints with you? And Mark's like, sure, we'll take them. We'll tweak them and whatever, because there's enough room for everybody, in my opinion. So, a lot of times I'll follow not really my local guys because I know what those guys are doing. I'm friends with a lot of them. I sit on boards with them and I say, guys, obviously, there are women involved.

But I like to follow builders in other regions and that way if there's a good idea or a reveal or, you know, hey, this is a good feature that they did, it's not stealing, it's not ripping off, it's not whatever, it's these are best practices. We're all putting this out on a public thing. I would be honored if somebody, [00:24:00] like, duplicated a reel that I did that was another builder in Wisconsin. What do I care? I'm not in competition with them. We're all kind of striving for the same thing.

Greg Bray: So, as we wrap up Jaclyn, thank you so much for your time today, but I want to give you an opportunity to share any last thoughts or marketing advice that you wanted to leave with our audience.

Jaclyn Centofanti: I would just say, try new things. I think I was very kind of anti-ChatGPT or AI at first because I thought that's ridiculous. I can write my own stuff. And again, it's been like a really, really big help for me, just prompting when you have those dead moments. Also, share knowledge because people are going to be looking to you and then ask for help. Again, because I was so new to this, I joke that I would sit down and be like, obviously you guys know, I know nothing about this, so I would love if you could share some things with me.

Whether it was permitting or this or that, and I was so incredibly grateful for people who were quote-unquote competitors saying, yeah, hey, sit down with this person and we'll walk you through like, what we do for X, Y, Z, or yes, I'm happy to share our plumber's information with you, or hey, follow [00:25:00] my page. We've been doing X, Y, Z, and it's working out really well. People a lot of times look at everybody as competition. I don't care what industry you're in, but really there's enough business, in my opinion, for everybody to go around.

Greg Bray: Amen to that. Totally agree. Well, Jaclyn, if somebody wants to connect with you and get in touch, what's the best way for them to reach out?

Jaclyn Centofanti: So, I lead our account, obviously on social media. We're @hulberthomes on Instagram and on Facebook. And then my email is Jaclyn, so my first name, J A C L Y N@hulberthomes with an S dot com. Text is fine as well. So, that's 386 503 8533 is my cell. I love best practices. So, if people have got things they're using and want to share, or they want to hear more about anything we're doing, I'm happy to share as well.

Greg Bray: Well, thanks again for being with us, and thank you everybody for listening to The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with Zonda and Livabl. Thank you.

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