Pre-Con Without the Chaos

Adam Copenhaver shares how Cope Grand scaled from small cottages to ultra-luxury builds in Charleston by systematizing pre-construction, translating “ankle-grabber” chaos into clear scopes, and making budgets readable to clients. He dives into cost code organization, lessons from the COVID lumber spike, working with owner’s reps, and how he uses Buildertrend to keep accountability visible.

https://www.copegrandhomes.com

Show Notes:

0:00 What we’re tackling today
4:15 How high-end builds work in Charleston
13:26 Making budgets clients can actually read
18:12 Cost-plus explained and where it wins
32:06 Fixed fee vs cost plus, what you really pay
37:55 When an owner’s rep actually helps
40:29 How we show receipts and progress
54:12 Markup vs margin in plain English
58:00 Change orders without the drama
1:01:04 Choosing work that actually fits us
1:07:19 Wrap up and next steps

Find Our Hosts:
Reece Barnes
Matt Calvano

Podcast Produced By:
Motif Media

Transcript

0:00

100% every builder is going to go through an evolution, a learning curve of fiscal responsibility. Mics are hot. We're live. Well, I guess not live, but we're recording. Adam. Appreciate you coming on the show, dude, yeah. Well, my pleasure. You know, you and I have got a rich history together, and I expect the conversation, as it usually is, to be very rich, very rich, warm, easy, conversational, no doubt, yeah, with a little beard, you know, massage in there, beard, tug, that sort of thing too. That's right, that's right. You know, the beard gets a lot of attention. I'm starting to think, like, I don't think I could shave it if I wanted to. Yeah, huh? That's part of your avatar. Now you can't get rid of it. Yeah, it's like, kind of a part of the brand. Not to say that I would shave it. I mean, I've had a beard for like, 1015, years. As long as I could have a beard. So anyways, enough about beard. Time, 15 years. Yeah, I would imagine you started growing one around the age of 12. Yeah, is that right? Okay, I'm 30. I started pretty damn close. I started growing fish, yeah, about 1516 right? There. It wasn't anything to write home about, by any means. I started with goatee, right? Got plenty of sunshine, committed to the process. And, you know, over the next few years, it flourished into a beard. Is that part of the process you need? You need sunshine, run your skin to grow facial hair. A lot of sunshine, lot of fertilizer. You got to really make sure that, you know, it comes in thick. I always, you know, when people do ask about the beard. Like, great beard. I'm like, Okay, sweet. Not everyone can grow a beard, but you really need to commit to it. And I always say, give yourself a canvas, grow it out longer than you want to, and then go to a barber and have someone cut it into something, and then grow it longer than you want to, and then have them trim it, and you'll have a beard in no time. It's a, yeah, it's a process. Thing, sunshine and fertilizer, miracle, grow aside. It's pretty easy process. I would not have, would not have figured out that it was, or, you know, imagine that it was that in depth of a process and a plan. But I do like it. You know, we're probably gonna talk a lot about processes today, so I dig the intentionality of it. I just can't grow it right there. Yeah, dude, everyone talks about these patches, or, like, the gaps, or whatever do. My cheeks are as patchy as they come, but you got to grow it out. You got to grow it out and let the barber do their thing and blend it in and everything looks good. Don't, don't write it off. Adam, don't write it off. You with a beard would be just fucking incredible. Yeah. You know, I feel like I could probably say that if it was a Midwesterner, rural America, maybe Boston. But there are certain places in the country where I think, and this is nothing that maybe this is totally off topic, but we're fine keep going. We do we expect that my builder, Bob the Builder, do we expect him to have a beard and not expect him to have a beard? I mean, certainly in everything that we do, we think about how, how we want to present ourselves, to reflect the work that we do, I would expect you to be an awesome builder, by the way. Yeah, yeah. Well, your name not to be raised, but Bob, but Bob the Builder with a beard, correct? I feel like it was just like a shoe in like, I don't know why you're doing what you do. You might as well be a Bob the Builder. Yeah. Well, the reason I'm not, I mean, I grew up with a home builder, and it was a lot of screeding concrete demolition, like doing just like stuff around the job site, and it just didn't click for me. That wasn't my jam. I wasn't I wasn't trying to figure out, like, how can I get couldn't finish carpentry or, like, super fascinated with framing or roofing. I was like, how fast can I get out of the situation? But I do have a massive empathy for the fine American contractor, and I have found my angle to support them, even though it's not with a hammer, it is with solutions. So, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, you know, it kind of comes with the territory. I think you're looking too much into this, like regional beard concept. I think, I think, you know, Charleston, South Carolina, would welcome a beard. For sure. That's just my take. Though, we can agree to disagree. We can agree. I, I, I'm all into inclusion. All everybody, okay, cool. Well enough of this rant. Adam, let's get the listeners a little background on yourself. Tell them who you are, what you and your brother have built, what you guys are doing. All right, yeah, hey, man, hey, thank you for mentioning Ben. Ben's not on here today with us, but he is a man. Ben and I are twins. We are birthed in the same day together. We grew up together. We share, well, we just share the same. Same upbringing, a lot of the same interests, and I think that we click extremely well in the business that we're in here in Charleston, South Carolina, building some of the most Bad to the Bone projects and most wonderful clients. And we've, we've had an advantage, frankly, because we are twin brothers, and we do help each other and support each other, and we we operate on the same wavelength, and we operate with the same mission and core values. And when you're in alignment like with somebody like that, you really do have an opportunity to generate momentum and get on a hyperbolic, rather than linear curve, growth curve, what you're able to accomplish together. So that's been great. Ben and I have had a lot of fun doing what we do. But it also wouldn't be, wouldn't be, without giving credit to the entire team that we built, too. So here in Charleston, you know, we just got a rock star Dream Team. I mean, it's on our T shirts, Dream Team, Charleston. I don't think we can officially trademark that, but yeah, that's what we call ourselves. We refer to ourselves as professionals, Dream Team, Charleston, bad to the bone, other things that encompass just people that love what they do and operate at the highest level totally. I know I love it, and you have always been like a, like, massively complimentary towards your team. You have always been like a team first leader, which I've always respected. And that's, I think, frankly, why I've been, like, drawn to you and your team so much is because you guys are running a really polished operation. And I talked to a lot of builders, so kudos to you guys. But with that said, I mean, I think even just for like, the sake of the listeners, they could look at cope grand they could look at the homes and the product that you're building, and they would certainly agree that they are bad to the bone, like you guys are building some very high end, very luxury, very disruptive product. And I think I just did a podcast the other day with a builder who's focusing on like, like entry level homes, like first time home buyer product, anywhere from like a 250,000 to a $400,000 a year product, or unit product. And Tupelo Mississippi and we opened this conversation up that it's like it can seem like intimidating, or like everyone has to drive in that direction. How did you and Ben and the team get to building the level of product that you are. Ah, yeah, that's a good question. One home, one step, one continued conversation of better and our best every day. And so I still remember, I remember our first projects. I remember our first house. Remember our first renovation. What was it? And the first house was a, was a $600,000 which, that's a high end house when we first started building. That's and what was this? How long ago was this? Almost? Almost 10 years ago now. Okay, 15 and that was the first one. It Sean and Susan payment, love you guys right here. They're incredible retired attorney, and they just really great clients to have, particularly in our first house. Remember the second one? Thomas Finucane, you guys, the finikins, are incredible. I just ran out run into them on the boat randomly with Mike Weaver, which is a mutual contact sound. We go to the beach on the boat because I'm giving them the experience of Charleston and and they're our second clients that we've got a house for, which was the fanucans, and it's just so grace to be in their warm embrace. But there are projects in there. So those are in the 600 levels, but there's renovations. There are smaller houses. I remember building our smallest house was about 700 square feet. Built it for 200 some $1,000 it was a two bedroom, one bath, family room, kitchen, completely hurricane esque. Proof. You know, very much high quality poem. And then I remember going into the million mark, and I was like, holy smokes, we're building million dollar houses now. And then I remember the $2 million houses and the three and the four and the five, and now we're topping near 10. And I say that very humbly to say it took an incredible amount of hard work, and it took a lot of hard work from not myself, but doubled up upon Ben, and then just commitment, tireless and relentless commitment from our team to be able to earn those opportunities, to be able to do so. And you you can't just go from one to 10. You really do need to make those incremental steps to go to build those projects to be able to build the muscles, to build the processes, to build the systems, to build the protection devices for your clients at each incremental higher level, because the higher that you go, the more the risk on those projects, the more the liability and and it can collapse and fall down. Really. Easily on yourself, if you're not prepared and you don't have the muscle to be able to drive through and provide the level of service and quality that those projects do require totally well. And you talked about like, like, I'm not going to call it the obvious, but probably like, the comment that gets made the most is like, the amount of hard work that goes into it. And you talk a lot about, like, the effort that goes into it, the incremental steps, the learning, the process development, the insulation from risk and liability, all that stuff. I can't imagine that you're just like, you just get done with a $500,000 home. You got a $750,000 home in the pipeline, and you're all excited about it, you go, we should really start building processes. And actually, it was, you correct me if I'm wrong. But what were some of those hard earned lessons that you guys came across that prompted you to lean more into the process, development, the insulation, and then ultimately building yourselves to a position to be able to take on these much larger projects? Yeah, I think that is, I think that's a really good question and realization that, you know, on the organic growth map. And I do think that organizations and people grow at different different paces, right? And most of that evolution, or most of that growth, is through their unique learning opportunities, their unique experience. And in the beginning, I've got to say that Ben and I were actually after a volume. I remember my vision board. I remember how many homes I wanted to build in a year. It was 16. I thought that if I got 16, that I would meet my financial goals. And those sort of things we did, we did just about get there and and then we pulled back. And the reason people back is because obviously, your goals change after you learn more and, and we shifted gears from not wanting to do volume, we figured out that our skill set was better aligned to provide customer service to discerning clients, no matter what price point that they're at, right, but we were no longer after that volume. But the benefit of going to that that volume experience was it allowed us to experience and learn quicker than we would have otherwise ever done. Love it. Imagine building one or two houses a year versus building that we were up to, you know, having 12 projects going on at one time years ago. We learned so quick, and we learned well, and we are very good at just taking those learning was learning moments and put them into a, what we call processes, systems and processes so that we can create repeatable systems with predictable results from that those beautiful thing happens, where chaos is probably, although maybe not always defined that way by builders. It's the biggest stressor that any builder has is this thing that comes in, what I call ankle grabbers, and creates chaos. And you're like, how do you figure all this stuff out? You know, how do I keep on falling in these pitfalls? Why do I keep on getting my ankle tripped up each of those moments that we found doing volume, we put into our custom process, and we made sure that a lot of those mistakes are mitigated, vetted out, and we're not experiencing them anymore. We are in this unique, you know, industry, and particularly here in Charleston, what we're doing is building we're doing is building every unique house. Each one is unique and to a unique client with any budget and unique location. So every single one is different. It's not like we've planned, you know, home Plan A, B and C, and we've done each of those homes 100 times, and we know exactly what to expect. So that's also the unique challenge and what drives us. Because if I was just building plan A, B or C over and over again, my brain would probably dismiss myself from it. I would totally wouldn't be engaged in it. I wouldn't be excited about the growth and doing this next one and doing that one and doing it better, because we probably would have figured it out pretty damn quickly. Okay, damn quickly. Totally like, and that's a, that's a great answer. I mean, it's a culmination of things in your comment, of like, just getting the repetition and the volume of units that you were building, the projects that you were doing. I think that's great. I mean, I we see it over at adaptive. We see it. I saw it in other parts of my career. Is like, you need at bats, right? You need at bats. You need to, like experience the process until you can start making the process better. What were like, tactically, like, dust off the cobwebs, dig back, what were some of the biggest learning curves, or, I guess, like ankle grabbers, as you call them, yeah, when you were building it volume, that just, like, totally stood out. You're like, damn, I wish you would have done that better, or you applied it. And you're like, we're totally building a process around this to prevent it from happening again. I'm putting you on the spot, but you can take a minute think about, yeah, there's, you know, what I'm thinking about and laughing about is, there's many. Things. But I think the most meaningful one, maybe for our audience, is the opportunity to have a very accurate and detailed expectation of the financial performance of the project. Okay, totally making you know, if you're moving at 12 different custom homes a year, there's going to be some level of assumptions that you're making. And you know, especially with a smaller team, so to speak, we've got it. We've got a bigger team. And one of the assets of one of the features of a bigger team is we get to get into the details and figure things out in pre construction. We are not a one man show with a pickup truck that. Well, I've done this 100 times. I can do it again, and you make assumptions like that, and that's okay, completely okay. There's a different level of service that different level of clients are looking for. When Ben and I were younger in cope grand, we were setting up budgets on, you know, first, you know, call it the yellow pad, and then Excel, and then we quickly found builder trend. But even in builder trend as a job costing software platform, you can still take the easy way out. You can still have a budget that has 20 items to describe the full scope of construction of a house with just bigger buckets and buckets that maybe don't include a lot of detail. That's not what our estimates and our proposals look like. How many line items are you running in between, depending on the project? In between 60 and 80. Beautiful. Okay, I'm glad you didn't throw like 202 50 years. We did. We actually, I went through a phase of, okay, we got to track this. In order to track it, we got to measure it. So we need to be extremely detailed. And what I figured out, and I'll give an example of that, we used to do rough plumbing, finished plumbing. That's pretty easy, right? Those are just two items. We figured out that there actually is confusion and chaos with more options. So totally the project managers would get confused. Of okay, from an estimation standpoint, we've got 250 line items. Well, which one do I code CMU block to totally in addition to that, it's like you broke out the CMU block, you broke out the mortar, you broke out the labor, you broke out the rebar, you broke out the block, fill the stucco. In reality, it's getting done by all the same contractor, or two contractors, and then when their invoice comes in, you're like, how do I split this up into these cost codes that they were budgeted for? So there is chaos if you if you try to get too detailed, and so we've just got very specific on the scopes of the work. And frankly, it's by which invoices are we receiving and what scopes of work are in those invoices. That's how our budgets are set up. That is love. Go ahead, yeah, so it's just given, I think it's given the appropriate amount of detail and given the efficiency in now that we're also running, you know, for years now, running cost plus budgets, man, you want to try to confuse a client, yeah? Throw a bunch of Cost Codes on a cost plus budget, totally liability. You want to create a bad relationship, to be unorganized on a cost plus budget, try that out. Totally, totally well. And I think, like, even more so, like, whether it's a client or it's an employee or whatever, or even just, like, reflective on a project, and how do we do? Like, you've got to remember that the cost code needs to be telling a meaningful story, right? And the more that you add to it, it dilutes that story that you could potentially be telling. And when you to your point of, like, adding, I can't remember the phrase you had, it was like, when you when you add volume of cost codes, it creates confusion something along those lines, which is accurate. But basically, if you do that, you're by default with the confusion not using Cost Codes appropriately. You could be bucketing stuff in the wrong area. And then when you're looking at your historics, and you're running estimates and bidding and stuff in the background, and you're looking at pre con, like, how could we be running this better? You look at this big, diluted list of cost codes that don't mean anything, it's like, we don't need to track the two by four what we should be tracking, framing, right? And then we can go back on our historicals, and we can look and it's like we just did a 6000 square foot home. It's effectively the same product as what we had done here. This is what we can look at from a job costing standpoint. That's the entire intention of it on that thought, I'm curious, have you? Was there ever a point when it comes to because you'd mentioned that you went that you went to that level before, like, the tons of cost codes we got to track everything? Was there ever a point where you guys almost like, lost control on this thing, or you almost like you almost thought you were going to lose a big project, or, like, the business was going to go south, type of situation? Uh, losing control, or business coin cell. No, that might sound come on. There was a time Adam was there. I'm just, I'm just busting your chops. You're right, yeah, you should do that. You should definitely call me out, like, come on, Adam, remember, dig deep. I'll try to dig deep. But let me finish my first comment. There was never a time that I felt over leveraged, at risk, right? There's always issues, or there has growing a business, right? There's business issues potentially took on the wrong client, but there was never anything that Ben and I or our team were not willing to make sure that we were going to be safe and we were going to be doing the right thing for whoever was involved, teammates, Team organization, our clients, our trades, our suppliers. So I would think that there has been plenty of things that tried to sink us, but I think the resiliency behind Ben and I and the team really haven't ever gotten us close. And I'm going to knock on wood that I don't ever want to I don't ever want to be tested like that, but I do think that we've also had a wonderful team of advisors, clients, accounting professionals, that have always looked after our best practices and what we were doing to help make sure that we were keeping everybody protected. Love it. Love it. Well, I think me another but give me an example if you throw out, if that's a question that you might get to with other with other folks. I mean, where are some other folks almost lost it? So I think that the like, the reason I bring up the lost it thing, is because there's like, a statistic out there, and this is certainly like, not to the decimal accurate, but it's something along the lines of, like, 60% of builders fail because of bankruptcy, which is typically because of poor cash flow management, right? And that goes and that goes into, I mean, you made comments about running cost, plus you made comments about tracking cost and cost coding. And I, every time that I talk to someone about it, it's not as much of like, they almost lost their business because of it. Actually, there was one that I just had recently, and there was like $180,000 issue. But it's not uncommon for me to talk to builders, and candidly, Adam like builders like you that are building very high end luxury products that at some point they were looking at like a 50 to 100 and 1000, $100,000 loss, and, like it put them in a really hard situation of, like, not making what they should have, or years of thinking they were making x dollars, but actually coming out after, like, a forensic analysis on their books being like, you might have half a million In cash in the bank, but after we run whip, you're actually down. You're under billed 80 or 800 grand, right? Yeah. So it's like you're effectively $300,000 in the hole, right? That's what I'm talking about. Like, do you have any stories like that? That's like you and Ben came across and you had to dig out of, oh, yeah, 100% I mean, we've definitely written some checks. I hope to never write one again. But just clarify you say you've had like you and Ben like out of the savings account, just had the fuck had to write a check grant savings account that was unexpected to take care of situations, yes, and most notably, I mean, it's happened. It's happened number of times, but most notably, it was during covid. Yeah, absolutely. While we have provisions in our construction agreement for escalations of materials, it was not uncommon during that time to find the price of the lumber package, even though we said, hey, we have no idea what this is going to end up at. We don't know there were lumber packages that were 6080, 100 over$100,000 over what we originally budgeted. And anybody that's builder that's listening this, anybody else might think that that's BS, anybody that's a builder that's listening to this is going to say, Yeah, I remember that, and I experienced it too. And during that time, 100% did we have some I remember in this office, like having conversations with our clients, and they get really emotional, and I can understand why, if I was sitting over there and I'm facing what do I do? Do I continue construction with my house? Or do I knock up with the 60 grand or 80 grand, whatever it might have been, and honestly, like Ben and I came out, doing the right thing, living by the golden rule, supporting our clients, wanting to survive, that those builds with an excellent reputation. Would I have done it differently these days? I think so. I. Um, but, and when I say differently, I would have, I would have been a lot more prepared for how to have those conversations, potentially how to make other modifications, maybe even provided loans, rather than just saying, hey, we'll take care of this, and it'll come out of whatever proceeds we expected to make on the job. So there's probably plenty of people out there listening, thinking, you guys are idiots, like, why would you ever make that business decision when you're trying to grow a business, when you're trying to grow a business, not everybody went through those growing pains, right? Of having to make those decisions, uniquely they were ours, and uniquely we made those decisions. And will I do that a number of other times in this career, I'm certain that I will to do the right thing for our clients, to make sure that we're standing behind the work and the commitments that we made, regardless if whose fault is it totally you've got to go tactical. You've got to go like, in the weeds of what you would do to prevent that. Again, you made a comment of, like, providing loans, being more prepared to have those conversations. Like, Sure, let's do it. We go deep. Because I think that is, there are certainly builders that listen this podcast that are empathizing with you right now. Yeah. What would Ben or Adam do? Go ahead, yeah, I would say that what Ben and Adam would do is, what we're doing now. We we would bid our projects certain to the penny, right? We would, we would take our expectations from our suppliers or subs, then we would build them in, and we would say, Okay, this is the cost of the project. We'd arrive at the combination of all the quotes and everything, and that's it. Through years of experience, we understood that well. We're going over budget on this. We're going over budget on that incrementally by 1000s, maybe sometimes even 10s of 1000s. And so we're learning from these and we're saying there's no need to do that again. There's no need to just to take this bid, take it at face value, or understand that there's something missing from the scope of work, and use that now with our experience, we're building those scopes of works with our with our subcontractors or trades or suppliers, and we're saying, no, actually, we know we're going to need these things that are going to become required, that plywood that's going on the ceiling of the porch to accept the TNG tongue and groove. We're going to need that in our humid, hot South Carolina climate. Otherwise, these boards are going to go and sorry, these boards are going to do these things right and warp. And somebody might have an issue with it. Somebody might not. We are because we know we can do better. And so we're building in those facets of materials that we know we're going to use. And so we're protecting the budgets, protecting our clients. And in our stipulated some budgets, certainly our clients get the benefit of any savings that we're able to develop through any means possible. And so it's planning for those conversations before they ever get there. It's budgeting to not have to deal with the cost of regret, totally budgeting properly, to not have to deal with the cost of regret, which, for clients can stick around for years and decades and for as long as they own and experience that home. And so I think that's an important aspect, is one of the things that we do today to protect those conversations of project overruns and and proper accounting, is just getting super specific and detailed and having great conversations about the scope of work and the project and the level of fit and finish that wouldn't deliver totally, totally. I love that. Like getting subs and trades and vendors involved early, but also like, I think you're making an exceptional point, emphasizing the importance of Job Costing right and looking at your numbers. I, again, I did an episode with with Shane glass. He's running like multiple entities in Ohio, and he is just like, an absolute stickler on categorization Job Costing like, making sure that things are consistent and even consistent and accurate, and even if it's wrong, right, even if it shows an overage, at least you can act on that in the future, right? And then you can come to the table with the sub and be like, Look, this is what we did last time on a very similar situation, using plywood and between the tongue and groove to prevent stuff from being warped. And we missed it here, and we were 10,000 over. We're gonna need this in place on this one, and this is what we need you guys to bid us on, so that we can be more accurate. That's huge. It's huge. And I think you're going that extra step. I think a lot of builders, they look at this and they go like, why do I need a job cost? Or, why do I need a job cost of that level. I hear a lot of builders that are still doing three cost codes, subcontractors, material and labor. And you go, fine, right? Like you're keeping your like, your P, L, clean. And I guess, like, you have an idea. Of what your material was, but you prevent yourself from ever being able to go back to the dialed in accuracy that you're talking about if you're not doing that, if you make that effort, then you have to use it. Yeah, I think that's chaos at every level. I think that's uncertainty at every level. I don't think that I can meet expectations to a client without giving them the level of detail that our clients are asking when they're asking us to build multi million dollar projects totally or even or even less. I mean, we still take on projects. It's all about the clients, but we still take on projects that are sub million all day long. I mean, construction costs and labor costs are difficult to do so, but as long as we're in alignment, our team on on the goals are our rules for clients, and also the scope of work related to the financial exchange that we're trying to make together, then we'll do it 100% it's about the client. But yeah, I like, I like, I like that. You mentioned I actually wrote down Shane glass. I guess, I guess I need to go be a builder buddy with him, because I think that we share, I'll make an interest from sentiment, with being able to provide certainty through Job Costing not only certain to the client, but x, but certainty and the expectation of how well is your business actually going to be able to perform and protect your team, which protects your clients. I mean, I think that's huge. Is, is oftentimes we talk about doing what's best for the business, I say what's best for the business and best for the clients. Because ultimately, if it's best for the business, it is good for the clients. And I think some individuals clients that are looking for the lowest price contractor are really only and this, there's always exceptions to the rule. Are really always shooting themselves in the foot. Is, you know, I can be the most impressive contractor to anybody by going out and using all the lowest bids that I get on a project. But go ahead. Reese, tell me what happens if we use all of LS bids on a project. You're going to change order the show to your customer, and you're going to come at the same number that the guy was before. That's what I've been hearing. What do you think? Yeah, yeah. I guess it's a common, low quality product too. Go ahead. Yeah. I guess the combination of that totally missing on job site supervision, quality management, code enforcement. We all know that building inspectors are generally awesome. They still miss things, right? And so the more eyes you have on a project, the better the outcomes are going to be. If you really don't have any supervision there, what do you what are your expectations? And then, you know, we're in a wind driven, rain, humid, hot, earthquake prone, hurricane prone environment here in South Carolina, with salt air that was very corrosive, I mean, and what you're going to end up with is with an investment that's going to last a fraction of the time, yes, that you really intended that investment to do so, I mean, it's no it's no secret that, but we talked about it that the lowest cost, the lowest cost bid. And we've learned this lesson earlier in Cook grants days when we were bidding projects with subcontractors. It also applies to our clients. The lowest bid will always be the most expensive. It's just over time you're going to pay for it, whether it's a change order or in fixing problems that weren't taking this consideration. Go ahead. So, so what does a client do when you, if you, if you come to that realization there, Reese, you as somebody that might be interviewing a builder US per se. All right, Adam, I was totally focused on finding the lowest bidder because I wanted to maximize my value. It kind of totally battleshipped me there and took the wind out of my sails. And now I'm thinking, What do I do? Does it mean I have to use the more expensive builder? What do you? What do you do for these clients that want that are focused on I'm one of them. I'm focused on value, right? I'm attracted to the lowest cost. I'm not somebody that picks the highest cost or the medium, sure? How do you How might you and I get to work together? If you know, I'm not the lowest cost provider, this might be fluffy, but my answer would be like, You need to help the consumer identify the value. Yeah, holy smokes. That is, I don't know. I wasn't expecting that we're gonna be on the same wavelength, but that, in other words, it's exactly what I was thinking, dude, it's your job as the salesperson in my world, or the business owner, which is a salesperson in your world, to help the customer identify what their value. Is, yeah, and where, and if they, if they don't share the same value, then they're not a customer for you, right? If there's someone, if there's someone that's like, I want Adam. I want a 2500 square foot right on the water, and I want it to be 800,000 bucks. You go. You are out of your mind. There is no way we can do this for you. But why do you want it to be 2500 square feet? I square feet? Why do you want it right on the water? Why do you want it to have these finishes? What are you trying to accomplish with this asset? Why are you even talking about building a home? If those are your expectations, what are you trying to do right now, in my world called discovery, that's what do I think? That's what I think. What do you think? Well, obviously, many of things, but one, a podcast. So you've got really good asking, really great questions, really great questions ultimately produces really great clarity and really great conversation. That generates a level of conversation for expectations to come into alignment. I mean, when? When all you get to do is value a builder on their cost, you really do miss every opportunity to understand the value for the next several years of relationship or decades to come, if you end up in some dispute. So I would you know if there's, if there are building clients out there listening to this conversation, seek your clarity, you're making a really big financial investment. Okay? And so there's a number of ways that you can do that. You can do it yourself. We can hire somebody to do it. There are plenty of owners representatives, which are not big in Charleston, but we've been invited to a number of projects now with more and more of them, and I'm excited to get to work with them. For that reason too, is because it does help clients understand the lingo, the conversation, having somebody in their corner so that they can understand and hit the easy button on how to relate to what they should truly value in the building process. Now, it's not necessary. It's kind of still relatively new in Charleston, particularly coming from working in the DC market. Of course, owners reps were a big thing up there, but I'll tell you that they can be, you know, as a builder, they can be your worst enemy, or they can also be the project's biggest blessing. And the differentiator on that is whether or not you're able to provide the level of detail and organization and transparency that they require to perform their job as an owner's representative? Totally get that. Get an owner representative. Definition out there, just for the for the listener trying to build their own house. Yeah. So an owner's representative would be or commonly referred to as an owner's rep. Is in my previous life, you know, in construction, one of my roles was working with an awesome commercial contractor in DC called Clark. Okay, cool. Yeah, so Clark is gigantic man, still fond members Clark. But anyway, listen, we were building these really big super structures and that sort of thing. And there was owners, representatives involved from the stakeholders of whoever the project was, so whoever the client was, oftentimes, clients were big financial institutions, and so they would have inspectors that were in between the owners and the builders or the contractor. And those were referred to as owners, reps, in their capacity, they would come out and they would do their inspections and inspect the draws and expect for quality. They would have conversations with the builder that would handle, be the intermediary to handle conversations in between really busy owners and really busy builders or contractors. And so it's an intermediary, is what it is. And oftentimes, on your larger projects, you're going to find owners, reps that come in are hired by the owners to be in there, you know, to help them, assist them with the project, and understand what's really a priority for them to need to know, and to help save their time and add value to the experience totally. It's, it's, it's, I see it a lot with really high end luxury, and that makes sense. Was just like the way Charleston is blowing up. But yeah, it's typically, it's someone who, like they do, they've got the they've got the capital to build an asset like you guys are building, and they'll send someone down that can just be like boots and like boots on the ground, help with decisions, make sure that everything's going the way that it needs to be going, and what they're buying is getting delivered is like a way that I see it? Yeah, I'll tell you. Do I feel it's completely necessary? I think that, I think that it depends on the client, honestly, and the. Builder, probably, and the builder and the builder probably like, how, like, what, like, how quality of a builder, how focused is the builder on providing and delivering a quality experience and product? I think that that's probably, yeah, you were going a different route to get to the same destination that I was thinking of is, let's, you've, you've watched him probably participate in a number of webinars and podcasts that we've done on our processes, our systems, namely our software that we continue to support and use, which is buildertrend. And I think that the level of organization that building software's communication devices have gotten to that the client experience is so much more robust has the opportunity to be so much more robust than it ever has been with the level of documentation, the presentation, the organization in which you do it, the routine, the timeliness, and so builder trend has been a huge asset for us to not take an owner's representatives place, but certainly report on the information that an owner's rep would be reporting totally if I was a if I was a bad builder and I wanted to provide information that wasn't accurate, could I do so sure? Would an owner Sure? But what I'm saying is you'll be out of business if you did that repeatedly anyway. So I don't expect that there's too many people out there doing that, but what I'm saying is there are plenty of tools to still continue to make clients very comfortable and very certain with the progress and the the schedule and the financial accountability of Every product project throughout the progress of construction. So talking about that, I still think, and you know, as we're on, as we're as we're in your environment with adaptive which is financial literacy and responsibility totally, you know these questions that you were asking me earlier about mistakes and growth, 100% every builder, no matter where he comes from, he's going to go through a level, an evolution, a learning curve of fiscal responsibility totally and it's, it's one of the fiscal responsibility is, I don't know, and this is maybe just me thinking that most people are good in this world, but I think that these, like, financial responsibilities don't come at a at, like, in a malice experience form, like they're not trying to do it intentionally. There certainly are builders out there that have tried to pull the rug over a client's eyes to try and make a buck, but I think a lot of it does come from just with, like, the nuance of what they're building. And I think a lot of builders get into this for the passion for the trades and for the craft and delivering a very high quality product, and just like the sheer amount of variability that happens in those builds and delivering that product can really hurt their ability to uphold that financial responsibility. And I think that's where products like adaptive, like builder, trend, pro core, like, truly, you take your pick, that's really like, what they're trying to solve for is insulating the builder so that they can uphold that financial responsibility to the consumer, which I think most of them do want builders. Do want to do that as a builder, I really want to be focused with our clients, I was gonna say in the field, in the field with our clients, totally building beautiful homes while building beautiful relationships and totally maximizing the the opportunity To have the best experience, or the grand experience, and so if that requires me to always be in the office doing financial reconciliations, and you know, there's, in our business, there's, I don't know, 300 invoices that come through every month at least. That's insane. It's insane, right? And so the variability I'm talking about Go ahead, yeah, and if, and if we didn't have processes and systems in place to deal with them efficiently and accurately, you can imagine where my time would be taken and be taken away from the clients, away from their experience, away from the quality control, away from all the creative work that we get to do with the architects and the engineers. And so when I think about the need for software's and processes and systems, it's a necessity. It's like totally liability thing. It's, it's, you're not a builder if you're in the business, working on putting out the fires all the time, and I think that, hey, we've been there in some levels of capacity before, feeling really good about breathing today, about not having those issues. There's always little nuances and leveled up things. And, you know, innovation here and there. But. Think that that's a big part. You know, I think if there's, if there's builders that are out there still thinking about, man, I'm struggling with this financial stuff and the upkeep, and my wife's doing it, and my advice would be, you got to step back and step out of it, and you got to say, you got to realize that there's a quote. And I'm going to get this quote and I'm going to get this quote incredibly wrong, but I'm going to get the essence of it that every system that you design and the results that you get from it are in perfect alignment with the way that you designed it. So you're going to get the results that you designed the system to give you totally if you reflect on that, and you say, Holy smokes, I'm the one here. My design of this system or this process is the reason why I'm getting these results. Okay. So then you say, All right, what's the most important thing to do first? And I'm going to say, You got to get it organized. Okay, you got to get it organized. So then, once you organize, you can realize your priorities, and then you've got to get resourceful. So get organized, prioritize and get resourceful and identify and make the hard decisions that my wife or whoever else might have been running my books or doing my bookkeeping, if they don't have the knowledge they need to be prepared to do the organization and the fiduciary responsibility associated with accounting, to make sure that the job costing and the budgets and the reporting are all up to date and accurate totally. Then you've got to find somebody that can and adaptive, I think, helps out in a really big way with that or something or something. Go ahead. Go ahead. There are opportunities for you to be resourceful today, to find the physical manpower or woman power help. There you go. Woman power construction. That was easy for me to do. Woman power, that's great. I love it, man. Sorry, these are the things that I get excited about. I can't I can't hide it. You're good. You're good. Keep going. All right, so either find the woman power, find the technology, the software power, or find the AI power. You know, there's some incredible advancements that are coming to help. I mean, I've talked about this. I remember maybe last year, it was a podcast or something, or something I was invited to, and I talked about, holy smokes, after after college, after our education, no matter where you stopped, somewhere between 18 and 22 or 24 most everybody stops learning, maybe stretch it into, like, the first five years of your career, where you're learning new stuff about a career in an industry, and then you start to really plateau. So your growth curve goes like this. On learning, you kind of flatten out, and then it's just horizontal, or maybe right on a decrease. And I was saying, I was making the point, don't let yourself do that. There's an insane amount of podcast, webinars, online content, people sharing in our industry to help level up. There's people that are always willing to have a conversation. I'm one of them. Anybody that's listening to this, look me up at cope grand homes, Adam at cope grand.com you can email me, call me and say, I've really got this issue. Would you mind just spending five minutes or 10 minutes with me to help talk me through it? And I will, and there's 1000s of people that'll do that now. You can also talk to AI, if you totally talking to somebody about these issues. There are other resources out there to get help. And I guess this, this content here is kind of, really, I feel now, is kind of directed towards, how do we help other people? How do I share my experience to help others? And that's really, actually bringing me a lot of gratification to be able to share that, and hope it does too well. Hey, that was beautiful, by the way, but other that's why I'm doing this. That is my entire role right now, head of construction network, like cool title, sure. But what does that really mean? That means getting builders on to share their stories, building community, getting them to network, knowing that so many builders run into these challenges and they have all these insane careers with all these learning patterns that are willing to open up and share to better the industry. That's really what we're doing. So I love that you shared your contact. I love that you opened yourself up to this because you don't. You don't have to be the one and a half million, $2 million a year guy who has gone from remodels to getting into doing a new construction home, and you've hired a bookkeeper who you found on Craigslist, who was there for six months a year, and you thought they were doing a good job and handling your invoices, and you were just happy to get out from underneath them. And then all of a sudden, you turn around and your books are a mess, and you fire them. And then you go and try and try and find money you. Still the client's money, right? Like, they're doing all this crazy stuff. And, like, of course, I use a financial example. But the point being is, like, you need to step back to understand what you've built and then focus on, get organized, prioritize, and then get the resources in place. Oh, man, you just did it. Like, just like that. It's good. It's good. We might name the episode this, organize, prioritize resource. But point being, that's what it's about. Like, that's what it's about. And I always my big, like, my big soapbox recently, if you go through this episode, is like, you look at all these builders over the last and we're coming up on time. We've been way over so thank you for giving me more time. Point being, is my big soapbox has been in the last five years. You brought up covid from like, a price escalation standpoint, right? Commodities were insane. Supply chain was nuts. Totally crippled. Building processes like brutal but that also brought a ton of appreciation to the market. Insanely low interest rates, and that gave builders in the last five years an opportunity to explode, and they didn't know what they were scaling. They they knew they could run out and go double their top line, right? They knew that they could go out and double their volume in projects, but they hadn't taken that step back to understand what they were scaling, to execute that on a positive level. And that typically results in a step back, a really bad experience that's going to prevent them from ever doing it again. And it again, even hurting that learning curve even more. And that's what we're trying to prevent. The literally, the entire reason why I started this podcast, and this is important for you, because I don't know why you're not doing a podcast, but the entire reason why I did this podcast is because I wanted to pro or I wanted to make project financials less intimidating to builders, because I had nearly 10 years of listening to builders say, I have no idea how much money I'm making on my projects. I hate getting into the weeds of my financials, and that's why we're doing this. We're getting real stories from real builders and real construction accounting professionals to make this topic less intimidating, so that builders can get out there and they can crush they can build their widget, whatever that widget is, whether it's a starter home for $200,000 a year, or it's a beautiful, beautiful luxury custom, $8 million product, $50 million product, whatever it is, and you're gonna hit your margin, you're gonna make money. And it's not just about stuffing your pockets. It's about hiring great people and getting them into a position to take great opportunities and grow as individuals and contribute to a community that's going to have a healthy, thriving business. End of rant, that was the end of preaching, because that was all really great stuff, and it did, you know, just to add this one nugget I did, you reminded me of something during covid, we never knew how much it was costing us to run our business during covid. Yeah, overhead. It's a real thing. Well, those builders out there, me included. I mean, we don't respect actually, how much it costs to hire, retain, keep, and pay the professionals do their work. And so if you think that part of me, if you think that it's okay for a 16 month job to go to 18 months and you're running multiple jobs at a time, you're you're losing, you're losing bleeding, you're bleeding, and covid caused that. Covid caused a lot more of that. We did not respect how much time actually the supply chain was actually costing our company. And so while everybody thought that the market was going bonkers, and US was builders were doing incredible, how well we weren't. Dude, it's far more complicated. It was two years of that we just were not and to your point, when you're when you're not paying attention to the financials, and you think that you get to look at them once a year, a couple times a year, that's one of the things that that we've got now, is how much, how much are we earning related to the overhead, right? It's a real number. It's a real KPI. And I'd offer you guys as builders to figure out how to measure that with either on your own to a simple calculation, and your bookkeeper and keep track of your target there, because a margin, a percent margin is a percent margin. And some builders get super excited when they get to earn it. But we participate in some coaching, some professional coaching. And Scott Beebe, his thing is, $1 is not $1 right? $1 is never $1 and once you break it down and understand all the costs that are incurred with earning $1 you realize that at the end of the day, you're left with a penny or two cents or three and that minimal, that small of a margin, can be sucked up like that by mistakes, and if you make repeated mistakes, you're negative. You're actually negative. You took all your clients money, you paid all your people, and now you owe people to build and finish their houses, or you go out of business and you leave them at risk. That's a very dangerous thing, so I preach all the time. I'm. Being fiscally responsible. So go out there and get the resources. Know what your PNL, your profit margins are, keep ahead of your forecasts and be real with clients. Do not take on jobs just to earn them by using a lower margin to beat competitors. Understand there is a cost of doing work and supplying what we supply in every market. And if you're not there, you're not running, you're not running a business that's going to be around for you, your children, your clients, your team, employees. Yeah, and I think, I think clients, you know, as they hear that too, I think that that should resonate race. You know, those folks that do get the shiny object, I'm going to go with the lowest cost builder type of thing to get the best deal. You're running a risk that that builder is probably running a Ponzi scheme of using the last deposit they got to start and finish your house, your money is going to be on use to finish the last house in the project, if they don't have somebody else, your house isn't getting finished. Yeah, dude, yeah. Makes me sad. It makes me sad. And that's where, like, I think another thread that I'm super interested in doing, and again, we're like, over on time. So if you got to get to it, go to it. But the other thing that I'm interested in doing is educating the consumer to the value of the asset that they are purchasing. I don't think the American person understands that when they are building a home, that they are buying an asset, and depending on how much they invest in that asset is going to dictate what that asset will do. I think you look at a lot of these volume builders, and this is the third time I brought it up on the episode. Then I had with with Thomas Joseph, I made the comment about, like, the DR Horton and the Lennar product, okay? And I just use them as big national builders. That's what happens when you're the big dog. You get made the example, right? And I talked to a lot of people that buy and built like people in my generation, they're buying into those homes, right? And there's certainly nothing wrong with them. But the majority of the problems that I hear is or stories that I hear, they move into that product, and they built 1000s of units over that year. They move into that asset that they bought for 600 grand, 700 grand, 500 grand, whatever. Grand, whatever it is, which is a lot of money, and they're six months into it, and they have drywall falling out of the season ceiling from a plumbing leak or a toilet that's not fit. And it's like falling off or a garage slab that's cracked. And it's like posing foundation issues secretly affecting their health, exactly, and that's what I'm saying, is like educating the consumer as to why a quality built product and asset to that level is far more important than whatever I can beat a contractor up on price, because if you do that, you're gonna run into those issues. And you made the comment earlier, I took the change order out. But you took the you're going to pay for it at some point, whether it's in mold and remediation, whether it's fixing and repairing the home, whether it whatever it might be, you're gonna pay for it. So if you can't afford a 2500 square foot home, build a damn good 1200 square foot home, 1500 square foot home, that gets something that you can do. Yeah, and that's the that's the opportunity to have those conversations with clients, you know, getting them, we started off this conversation of being educators and getting them to understand what it takes and the proper level of investment that they want to make to get the exchange that they're looking to get. It's getting them to certainty on what they can have for what they want to invest totally not sugarcoating it. To say I can deliver something better than anybody else, the same. So many people, when you do that, use car salesman. Use, damn it, man, it's it's unfortunate. Every industry has it, but, yeah, it happens in construction, you know, it does. It does. And that's where, like, I don't know, maybe, like, a part of me does think that most people are good, but I think that, like, people make desperate decisions, desperate situations, and I think you can mitigate a lot of that desperation if you just take a step back and just take a step back and focus on getting organized, organized, and then a resource. Understand your resources. That's right. That's right. What level? What's the value of the investment of picking the right person and having the best experience, dude, I think that. I think that's an obligation of a builder helping the client get there. Speaking of the the obligation of a builder is helping people get theirs, is taking that to the next level of a build, or having those conversations with their subs and suppliers totally. Totally, totally. There was a lot at the contractor coalition, someone talking about, like, that subinvented relationship, and I think it's so crucial. I think it's, I don't think, I think the people that just look at vendors and trades as just like people that are executing the work, just like such a short term goal, like, if, like, if you're getting into this thing, and you're a new builder, and you're not prioritizing, like, really building a strong relationship and curating a good, like, motivated crew of people that are excited to work for you, you're missing the boat, because the faster you start, the more tenure you're going to have, and the better product and outcome you're going to have with those individuals. I think relationships, well, there's a certainly our Creator. The you know, is the meaning of life, but looking back, the one thing that we can take with us is the value of our relationships. And man, we have, you know, luckily, we're fortunate to get to work on those and have them and create new ones and repair old ones every single day. Yep, and that's talking about being fulfilled. I might leave us with that. I might I might say, hey, of all the things that are worthwhile and meaningful in life, in this industry, in construction, it is being transparent, having wonderful conversations and building the most wonderful relationships that you can. I love it. I think that's great. Sorry to get deep on you on that. That's what it is. Great realization for me again recently, and I've been sharing that with some other groups and other people. And so it came back up. Because I think it really is transformative, monumental, and how we deal with things totally what I think it grounds the episode, right? Because that's, that's, I mean, that's really, um, that's why you do it. I mean, I think you can, like, argue, like, do it for money, you do it for this, you do it for that, but you don't really get, you don't get to the money without relationships, right? The money should be the byproduct or the outcome of Have I ever told you? Have I ever mentioned in front of you? I've ever mentioned in front of you because we've spent some time in different events, in different forms? Have I ever mentioned you that that US builders are just fools with egos, fools with egos. I mean, I don't think. I don't remember it. You might like your brain. You have an incredible amount of retention. So I'm sure, I'm certain now that I've never brought it up in front of you, but I will explain that US builders are just fools with you guys. I started saying that years ago after self reflection, saying that, man, our ego just wants to build the most beautiful homes and beautiful projects and unique and character and all this stuff, right? Put whatever, imagine whatever home or project that you want to build. Those are our egos. But gosh, are we foolish? Because if, if we're after it to create a successful business or we're going to make money this, this business is the toughest one that we could ever imagine to run and and create a successful career that provides predictable and repeatable results. I really do think that in a lot of cases, we have to take our ego, I have to check our ego out the door so that we're not fools, because it's really easy to get captivated by the shiny objects and building beautiful things. But if, if we think it's going to be easy, we're just fools, another fool in this industry. You got to watch the Trent Waldrop episode. It's getting ready. It'll drop, I think, like, what next week? Next Tuesday? What is it to the sixth today? You gotta watch it, because I admire that guy, Tupelo Mississippi. He isn't trying to compete with the biggest and the baddest. He is just totally focused on building a quality, price sensitive product for people that just want to get into a good house, he like the ego gone, biggest heart in the world, totally focused on just like, dude, I'm trying to sit across the table from people that are trying to get out of a mobile home, having zero ever like expectation that they could get it even build a house, let alone buy one. And they can sit across the table from me, and we can talk about, what are what is their budget? What are they trying to do? Cut square footage out, add square footage in. Talk about finishes. Talk about quality, structure. Do they want? Tyvek, do they want zip what's that going to do to the home? Like he is all about it at a level of consumer that I think, and I agree with him is totally forgotten on so to your point of like egos or fools with egos, like, you gotta listen this episode, because that's what we talked about. And he is, I thought it was just a super compelling episode. And no doubt, yeah, I love inspirational, yeah. Mississippi, sir, dupelo, yeah. Barely has one. I. Just gotta listen to it. Yeah, you gotta listen to it. You gotta listen to it. He's just a great dude. He's a great dude. He's got an awesome story. You gotta listen to it. It reminds me a lot of that comment you made fools with egos now, and I want to change that. I bring it up because I want to change it totally. I want this to be an industry with the smartest guys in the room, and I want us to share best practices. I really do want us to share in best practices. I don't think that that's where we need to compete. There's obviously the right things to do in business, the right things to do in accounting, the right things to do with communication and a way to be accountable, and I think we can all share and help each other with that so that we don't have to be foolish in what we're doing to expect results that we're never going to expect or get. Sorry. Totally 100% you keep your phone on. Adam, you keep your phone on I'll be giving you a call. I've got some I've got some stuff up my sleeve in terms of what you're talking about. But, dude, I don't know. We've got the record for the longest podcast here, and I actually do. I want people to like and subscribe and follow and comment if they made it this far, because I love it. I've been, I've been going, like, much more conversational, much more long form, like, I dude, I kept these, like, almost religiously, like, 30 to 45 minutes, 4648 but gets into 50. We're deep territory. We're in an hour and six. And I love it. And you and I could probably keep going for another couple hours. Yeah, we could. We could. I'm actually, yeah, let's just save it for another time. We'll we'll discover some other really cool topics that might be timeline for the audience. And let's save it. You and I just like talking anyway. So let's do it. We do. We do actually, hang on while we're here, I'm going to be in Charleston. I'm going to be putting on an elite builder dinner in Charleston, an elite builder dinner. That's right. That's right. Elite builder dinner. What's elite? That's what I said. Keep your phone on you. I'm literally just, I haven't, I haven't invited anybody. I just have, I have the location set. It's not even on my calendar. This is we talked about the date. It's the end of August. I will text you the date, but we'll keep it going there. What did I think it was because I'm going to be in Minneapolis September for this point being we'll keep it ripping there. I'm going to get you the details on it. Adam, I appreciate you. Sir. Always good chatting. I'll try and I'll try and tack on. Actually, we should probably do a weekend. Probably do I could do like the elite builder dinner, then do a weekend and hang out with you and Ben, that sounds great, but we'll get the experience. Yeah, talk to Mike Weber, see what he thought Big Mike. I'll have to shoot him a text. I think I saw some stuff on his Instagram. I have a feeling that Mike Weaver does exceptionally well in Charleston, South Carolina. Yeah, I think he does. I think he did. I think he really enjoyed himself. Of course, he got the whole experience. We did projects. We did project tours, we did site tours. He got to visit the Keeble golf course. That's what I'm saying. I feel like this is right up Mike's alley. He's like, Yeah, I can't come here and not go or swim or do the ocean. And we're like, well, well, how about just get out on a boat? He's like, Yeah. So that's what I'm saying, yeah. But somebody might have hopped on a boat, went to the beach, and the Dolphins are swimming. And it's like I said, the clients, it just so happened where we pulled up next to some clients of ours, and we're like, Wow. You never expected it was a Thursday afternoon or something like that. Wow. Did you get EMS in their house, in that client's house? Did you guys use MJ tile in that house? Um, or was that before you knew? Mike, no, we are working on having some EMS or products in some of our houses and and honestly, why don't you just put all of your Why don't you do all MSR in your house, in your house? You know, with, I'm just, I'm not going to make that commitment on trying somebody new to develop or devote all of our projects to it. However, we have projects in different stages. So so long as we have a great experience on these first couple, we will continue to do it, and maybe that will turn into all of them. Well, I think you could forecast using it all, because I hear great things about Mike and I mean, I don't talk to a lot of tile people candidly, but that guy knows tile, and that guy knows quality, knows how he's very resourceful. What did you say? And he's texting, and he's texting, okay, I'll be here tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Mike's the guy. Yeah, Mike's the guy. Okay, cool. I'll get you dates on that. We'll get down to South Carolina. It's the end of August, so I'll get you actual dates. I'm pretty sure enjoy the hell out of that move, man, dude, it's gonna be, it's not gonna be a grind. It's just, it's exciting. It's exciting because you get to, I mean, not the career, but most of the career, but it's a fresh start. I was sharing with somebody that's in my network, was telling me about their having a tough time with their daughter, who's 18, and, you know, the friends are going to college, and she's not yet, you know, she. Hasn't left for college yet. And I was like, No way. This is such a cool opportunity. I wish she could realize that. What I didn't realize I was in the stress point that she was, where I felt like, oh my gosh, my whole world was getting ripped apart. I'm losing everything all that. Like, no way. Now this is your opportunity to go reflect on, like, all your friends that you made up to this point, like, love on which experiences that you really cherish the most, and say, Wow, I'm never losing them, but now I'm going to a place where I get to make more friends, and this time I get to say, oh my gosh, I really like these people. I'm going to go focus on this group and how to make those friends, and then I'm going to put all of them together, and it's going to be awesome, and the rest of life is going to be grand. And I was like, the opportunity is in is in gratitude, but also reflection. Because I think that we can all like she probably is, is maybe stifled in her own world, a little bit totally the opportunity. So you, you man, you get this opportunity to move again and really make it better than ever, 100 I'm so stoked. So I moved to Boston right out of college, and I was there for a year. And I think that's probably like, with this gal, what I'm picking up on is like, she's probably like little analysis paralysis, like she just needs to do one jump, she just needs to go, like, go somewhere and do something, and then from there, it's like, it's never going to be easy, but you're always like, in the back your mind is like, okay, I can do this type of thing, you know? And that's what we're stoked about, is like, just like, total fresh perspective, been in Colorado for five years, done a lot of really great things from just like, like, an experience standpoint, passion standpoint, and we're super excited to go and explore New England and do it in Boston. In Boston. We got a great team out there, super stoked to work with them in office. I've been remote for five years, since I was a builder, trend, dude, five and a half years, almost like, Dude, it's been a grind, and I cannot wait to get into an office setting, make friends, drive results, just like, do all the things that are important. So yeah, you get to take that chair into the office with me. No, but we are going to take it with us. Obviously, Dude, we got one of these guilty to be the first thing that's unpacked, the first opportunity to sit down. Yeah, before the couches and the beds come, you might be sleeping on it at night. That's right, that's right. Yeah, no, the Kelty is definitely coming. But, yeah, no, we're super stoked. It'll be good. I appreciate you. You have to come up to Boston too, because I'm gonna do a podcast studio up there. We could have you in for for a podcast episode of The and the studio. Yeah, you know what? I've never been to Boston. I mean, I think we talked about that with the coalition seven through or something, yeah, but I'd love to go, I think probably like that particular time of the year where Boston's actually Boston. I'm not sure if that's baseball season or if it's fall. It's probably not winter, probably dude, like, right now, honestly, September, October. Yeah, those are always but we'll make it happen. Yeah, well, and you could just come up whenever. I mean, Boston's a great city whenever people complain about the weather, but I grew up in Nebraska, so like, I'm like, whatever wind and cold isn't a big deal. You're from Charleston. You might, you might not from Pennsylvania. Oh, okay, okay, okay, so yeah, that's why I moved I was like, No way. Don't want that anymore. Like, if I have the choice of extending my spring, summer and fall, which is exactly what Charleston does effectively. It also removes the gray slushy stuff, right? Using language appropriately, that sticks to the bottom of your boots and your pants that you just can't seem to shape and you drag into your house and all those stuff. Like, no way do I want? And then plus, like, oh, it's wintertime. It's gonna be super cold. I can't wait for the snow, and then it doesn't come anymore. Like, if I'm gonna be in the north, I mean, I guess I'm gonna want the snow, and it doesn't snow, and it's just gray, slushy, icy, nasty stuff these days, just brutal. I mean, that was, that was Nebraska. Oh, sorry, that's what you're going back to. Yeah, I'm just empathized. I mean, it's like, it was like 90 days of not zero sun. Yeah, that's how it was at State College. When I went to Penn State it was like three months, three months, seven days of not seeing the sunshine. And I'm like, I can't do that. Bruno, yeah, yeah. College football season basically ended too early. And after college football season, it was like, what? Wait a second, the whole why are we still here? Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, well, okay. Well, the wife and I will break up the winter and we'll come down to Charleston to see you guys get a little sunshine. Yep, awesome. Appreciate you, sir. We'll talk to you later. All right. Cheers, thanks guys. Yep, thank you.