From Foundations to Profits: Ralphael Locklear's Marketing and Money Mastery in Construction (Part 2)

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

  Hello and welcome to the Green Industry Podcast, your go-to guide for building a more profitable and thriving lawn care and landscaping business. Your host, Paul Jameson, is the author of five bestselling books, including Cut That Grass and Make That Cash and his latest, Level Up Your Money, all available on Amazon and Audible. Now get ready for more expert insights and practical strategies to boost your business and level up your life. Here's Paul Jamison.

• 1:07Speaker 00

  Today on the program, we're going to continue with part two of our conversation with the CEO of a construction company in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Raphael Locklear. They create some amazing projects, stunning custom homes. Some of these homes are just absolutely unique and breathtaking, just absolutely beautiful. And we're going to pick Raphael's brain about how he gets his ideal customer and avoids customers who are not his ideal customer, how he cash flows and prices his work. And what he's learned over his 20-plus years running his business, over 25 years of experience now, is his business Southeastern General Contractors.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  So a lot to learn on today's program. Again, this is part two. We had part one yesterday and I personally would love a luxury custom-built home one day. And so we'll learn more and more about all of that from Ralph. So without further ado, enjoy part two with Raphael.

• 2:11Speaker 00

  Well, you mentioned back as a 22, 23 year old kid, you, you understood the importance of advertising, but that was 2004, that was 2005. Now we're in 2025, headed into 2026, where the world of marketing and advertising is completely different. What is landing you your best customers this day and age? What, what are you doing for your marketing that's working, you know, 20 years later?

• 2:43Speaker 02

  When we first got started, it's always been video. We were the first to market with that. Even back then, I, um, I was doing videos documenting kind of our journey, not as much, not as often, but that's what's made our, our business what it is today locally. And like today, we, we still leverage that in the form of even if it's just short content, sometimes long form content, showing people different things behind the scenes of a build, educating clients on different processes. But mostly it's always been video content. A lot of people used to see me on the job site. There was a saying at one point in time, somebody said something along the lines of,

• 3:25Speaker 02

  uh, you know, all you do is make video content when I see you on the job sites. And, you know, back in the day, it was something that was laughed at, it was ridiculed, you know, our branding is a cartoon mascot, which, you know, that was something first we did also wasn't a thing. And now you see a lot of folks, at least in our local market, you know, with the wraps like we have with different cartoons, different, um, you know, things of that nature. So we kind of set the trend in our industry when it came to that. And video has been the thing that's always moved the needle for us. We are able to now not have to necessarily compete on price when people do come into our funnel and opt in or raise their hand that they're interested in designing and building. They're already

• 4:07Speaker 02

  pre-sold on our company. They already know who we are, what we're about. They know my story. They know the story of this company. They know what makes us different, better, more, uh, you know, unique than anyone else. And they also know that we're not the cheapest. They're not coming to us looking for a cheap price. They're coming to us because they want certainty. They want peace of mind and they want to know that when. This contract, when Southeastern is doing the job, they know that it's going to be done right. We're not perfect. We're going to make mistakes. Custom homes is at times custom headaches. We're only building this particular project, this particular way, on this lot one time. And there's going to be challenges and things that we're not going to get perfect. And I just tell people, you know, if we had the luxury and ability to go out and build that same project two times,

• 4:51Speaker 02

  then of course we would be able to pretty much master it, and especially if we was able to do it three times. But we are never really afforded that luxury because of custom homes. Now, we do also do commercial developments, commercial buildings. We do government contracts now. And but it all started with with video content. Even back then, we were, that's what's always worked for us.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  Okay. I'm curious about when people call your business, are you using any softwares or AI or anything to handle? Because your team's out busy, you're working. How are you handling the phone calls?

• 5:28Speaker 02

  So we're using first and foremost, callrail.com, which is an absolute great tool for us. It allows me to put unique tracking numbers on basically anything and everything. Our vehicle app has its own unique phone number. Our website has its own unique numbers. We can put unique numbers on any video content we put out. And what that allows us to do is to log in and see why it's producing results as far as bringing in calls. And then when the calls come in, it can be routed to any number of people on our team. We have an app, it comes with an app, so we don't have to be stuck by a dedicated landline.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  We can have our mobile devices and take those calls anywhere. It allows us to sound extremely professional, even no matter how small that you are. You can create call flows, call greetings. We customize our own with my voice, with background music. And we basically made our own IP, you know, internal phone track. We made our own internal like system for handling those calls. And it just made us look like a much bigger company starting out than what we actually were. And now we are looking to integrate AI into that when we find the right tool. We've tried out a couple. But we haven't fully settled on which tool that we're going to actually integrate. So now we're still handling those internally with live, our live team.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  But we have tried out some that sound very convincing, sound almost human-like to where it was indistinguishable between what AI sounds like and what a real person would sound like. But it takes a lot of time to program, to upload, to write documents, the knowledge base and all of that. But it's shown very promising. We've tried some that did a very good job initially at handling calls, answering questions. However, it was a little bit too much of a lift on the backend to fully integrate. So we're on the look now for a better, more seamless tool that we can integrate without it being such a heavy lift with the programming.

• 7:34Speaker 00

  You mentioned wrapping the vehicles, using Call Rail. Are there any other marketing strategies that you think are really setting you apart?

• 7:45Speaker 02

  YouTube ads, Facebook ads, all of them, video ads, by the way, locally with our market, targeting, you know, like 30 or 45 mile radius. And we have our list of callers that we can export from Call Rail, from people that has called us over the years. You can take that, download it and upload it into places like Facebook and things like that, create what's called look-alike audiences if you want. Get in front of people who look like your target customers, target people who's already called your office. We've tried Google search ads and all that, that kind of works as well locally. But we go all in on our social media content with video. We have a lot of people wanting to sell us radio ads. We've tried things like that.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  But the biggest bang for buck is always been video for us because people watch that, they connect with you. If your story and your, you know, what you're recording resonates with them, then they get to know you and we're advertising locally, right? So the idea is that they're not ready to build now. Most people might not be ready to build if they're ever going to build, but when they are, we want to be top of mind and the best way to top of mind is creating content that educates them, makes Some laugh also is, you know, we try to add some humor in it. And just also have fun with it. I mean, we're out there doing all this stuff anyway. Why not just pick up a camera, record and show people what you're doing and why you're doing it? And I think something that also that works really well is being your true self.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  You know, you are, you are who you say you are, you know, when they see us on the job site and they see us shining lights down a wall. That before we allow the painters to say that we're done or the sheet rock guys, we're making sure that we're doing a level four, level five finishing. We're showing people how to do it. I know some builders don't like that. I've had some people call me like Ralph, you know, what, what are you guys doing? Like, why are you putting that out there? Because now clients are starting to ask that other builders do that. And that's not the standard, you know, and there's a lot of people that build homes, spec homes, semi-custom. There's not very many truly custom home builders. But I, I show exactly what we do. My goal is I want to educate everybody on what right looks like.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  You know, and what quality looks like. Most people don't know what that looks like. So we do our very best to try to make them aware of what that is.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  And what platforms do you find have the most success? Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, what, what's kind of your priorities with the videos? Where are you publishing them, uploading them?

• 10:12Speaker 02

  Yes, primarily Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, surprisingly. I didn't think that TikTok would generate much leads just because of, you know, most people's just there, you know, just endlessly scrolling. But it's generated leads of people wanting to actually build homes, which was surprising because we kind of tailor our approach. Some videos we'll post here, but we won't post there depending on, you know, because we got different audiences on different platforms. Like Facebook, those people know me, like especially on my personal profile. I've got probably, I don't know, I think it's around 5,000 or maybe 10,000 people. But everyone, a lot of those people know, truly know me. And so I'll make, you know, content I'll post there is totally different than what I'll go post, say like on YouTube.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  YouTube works great as well. One of the hidden gems that I know works extremely well is YouTube ads. And you can go and create a 15, 30 second video, advertise it on YouTube locally within a 20 or 30 mile radius. And one of the, one of the things that we do that works very well is I craft it in such a way to where you only pay if they watch longer than I think it's either three seconds, maybe three or five seconds or something like that, whatever, whatever the term is. But if they don't watch, if they click skip, you don't pay. So one of the things that helped us out in the very beginning, and this has been like this for a while, you can run your ads and I create mine to where I want them to skip. Cause

• 11:40Speaker 02

  most people is not going to be building, right? So I will just put my name and my company name in the first three to five seconds. Hey, this is Raphael. I'm with Southeastern General Contracting.com. If you're looking to build a custom home and you're in the Fayetteville area, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But they've already skipped. You know, a thousand people watched that. 995 people skip, skip, skip. But the person was like, wait a minute. Yeah, I live in Fayetteville. Yeah. I'm looking to design and build a custom home. And they keep listening. There's a tracking phone number that they can call on their phone and boom. And now we go in the call row, we see, wow, this lead came from this video that we advertised on YouTube. Wow. And we spent, you know, 500

• 12:20Speaker 02

  bucks in the, in the ad spend and it landed us a half a million dollar custom home design bill. You ain't gotta do that, but one or two times. And you're like, okay, let's dump some more money in on that. Facebook kinda works the same way too, where you can, you can do the same thing, uh, where you can advertise and then we do it, no matter which platform, we always follow that same kinda trajectory where we wanna be able to track when they do actually engage. So Tik Tok, yeah, we're doing more with Tik Tok. YouTube for sure. Facebook, if I had to put them in order.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  Facebook, YouTube, and then TikTok. One of the other things.

• 12:58Speaker 00

  Go ahead.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Go ahead, I'm sorry.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  I was just gonna say Instagram.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Instagram is automatically tied to Facebook. So anytime we're pushing something out to Facebook, it automatically goes to Instagram. So we don't, I don't, you know, I don't get in that. Yeah. And one of the platforms that we haven't leveraged, but now they're changing and embracing content is LinkedIn. And so on our government side and on our commercial side, this is something that we're going to put way more effort into testing with video content. And I think our strategy will be different for that audience. I think they tend to be more professional, more upright a little bit, not too relaxed and can't maybe joke as much with some of our content and all that. But we're gonna try and do the same thing. Great thing that I found out about LinkedIn is you're targeting,

• 13:44Speaker 02

  like Facebook, you can target, you know, crazy targeting, right? LinkedIn you can too as well. One of the things that I've noticed on our government contracting side, we have our capability statement for those who know government contract and you've got capability statement, which is like your company resume. And then we took it a step further. Again, we're a video centric company. I wanted to figure out how I could differentiate myself in marketing advertising to the government, right? I go to all these government seminars and things like that. And there's thousands, tens of thousands of people there. And then one of my first ones, I realized, my goodness, I realized what a challenge it was because you've got a document that you're passing to the government contracting officer, right?

• 14:27Speaker 02

  And then you see they take your document and they place it in a stack with 500 more or 1,000 more. And from there, I'm like, okay, wait a minute. We're one in 10,000. How in the world are we going to stand out and be memorable in this type of setting? And I didn't know that, you know, LinkedIn at the time didn't have all these capabilities. So we created this here and. And this came also when someone told me that it couldn't be done, or that it was impossible. Remember I told you before that word I like is impossible. I see it as impossible. So after leaving that event, I'm like, this sucks. Like, we literally have no edge over anyone. And I'm like, videos always work for us. How can I get in front of these people with the video?

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Well, I can't because I'm networking in person unless I just show them on my iPhone. So let's try that. Uh, kinda worked, kinda didn't. So I saw this visually. I came up with this idea and then I happened, I happened to actually see a wedding, uh, a wedding card that had a video on it with the first iteration of this. And then I'm like, wait, that's it. Like, I can do the same thing for our company, right? That I can hand and I can give this and I can leave this with the government. And then the next problem arise, wait, wait, wait a minute, hold on. You can't just give government contracting officers. Cause this could be conceived as a gift. It has to be less than 20 bucks. Thanks to number. So I had to go figure out how I can get this below 20 bucks.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  And the re, and how we were able to do that, you know? We know how to design. We created the graphics ourself and we did all the heavy lifting. And then we found a manufacturer to create this. And what this does, we give this to contracting officers and it's under 20, we get them for under 20 bucks, but it's a video that we leave in their hands.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  Wow. Wow.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  And so it, this one's probably dead. We didn't charge it, may need to be charged, but you see the screen here. And when you open it, we, we can customize whatever video goes in here. And normally what happens is, is a video customized specifically for the government. This says, hey, I'm Raphael Locklear with Southeastern General Contractors. We're a Native American owned 8A hub zone company. We have between 10 and mid, 10 and 20 million dollars in bonding. Our next codes is blah, blah, blah. We've got excellent CPAR's rating. We've got multiple service contracts out at Fort Bragg. And if you're looking for someone that you can sole source to, feel free to reach out to us and feel free to pass this around to any other contracting officials that you know. And this has always been a showstopper.

• 16:59Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  And got people to know. Who we are instantly because nobody else did that. And we were the first to market with passing that around to government contracting officials. And so again, video in different formats, different, you know, ways that we just creatively figured out how to use that to sit to sell. And to tell the same story consistently over and over and over.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  So good. Well, I really appreciate your time today. This has absolutely flown by. I know we're up against the clock here. Is there anything we're leaving out here that needs addressed?

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Brandon, you see anything we else we need to address? Our time's up.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Not really. You got any other questions?

• 17:39Speaker 00

  I mean, I did. If you have time for one more, I did have one more. If you need to go, we can end it here.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  No, I'm not time. I'm

• 17:47Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  disposal.

• 17:48Speaker 00

  My other question is, you mentioned earlier that you're not in the construction business. You're in the people business.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 17:56Speaker 00

  So you've seen good customers, bad customers, good subcontractors, bad subcontractors. What have you learned over 20 years to kind of sharpen your discernment as you're dealing with people to keep the bad ones away? And to be linked up and connected with the good ones? And what could you share with someone who's maybe in that first five, 10 years of their business? Like, man, I keep getting linked up with the wrong subs, the wrong customers and like I have discernment like a butter knife. How do I get sharp discernment like a, you know, 20 year veteran like you?

• 18:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. So when I started figuring out that I gotta fix this because you're right, that can ruin, that can. Man, I've lived through that season and it's not fun. What that looked like for me was having six or seven custom home builds at a time with not the ideal types of clients. You know, had the money, but is that really your ideal client? Is it just anybody who's just got the means and the money to hire? Cause that's at one point in time, that's what I did and I took on too many. And, you know, it was, it was very tough to get past. What I did to try to overcome that was I had to get educated. You know, I had to know what, who is my ideal client? Who isn't my ideal client? You gotta put it, pin the paper and figure out what that looks like.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  If you don't really know, you already, you, you, you cut, all of us kinda know who our ideal clients are, who the people we like working with, why? What are their characteristics? The people that we don't like working with, why? What are their characteristics? And there's a book that I had, um, that I had listened to. It's an audiobook. The name of it, I think is Toxic Clients. And it was a book telling different stories about painters, about landscapers and stuff like that, and experiences they went through. Some are, some are kind of a talk that we're having now. And it broke down how you can start to identify who is and who isn't quote unquote, potentially a toxic client, or who is the ideal client? And after reading the books and after listening to the audiobooks,

• 19:56Speaker 02

  and after going back and reviewing some of our past jobs and realizing, well, guess what? It's our fault. Where's our process? Who, we don't even have it clearly identified who is our ideal clients. And it forced us to start changing our SOPs, our Order of Operations. And like now, we have a system that most of the industry, if you really learn the system we follow, other custom builders is gonna be like, dude, there's no way we can do that. Like, you might can do that, I can't do that. I'm gonna build a group with 20 other builders. So, you know, I, I understand the builder's perspective. And so what does that look like for me? I learned, I gotta have a system that produces ideal clients.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  And I got to be okay with not working with 10 clients and only working with maybe two.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  But then there's, the problem is we're out. We, I mean, and I'm not gonna make any money. I can't cover payroll. And I was faced with that question at one point in time was like, well, that sounds all good that you only wanna work with ideal clients, but all of us don't have that luxury. We gotta pay the bills. And this is what one of the other builders had mentioned to me. I'm like, well, I hear us complaining about the same things all the time. And either are we gonna fix it? Or are we just gonna keep dealing with the same problem? Because for me, if I don't fix the problem, I, I'm not gonna continue doing what I'm doing. So I made the decision, I was willing to roll the dice and say either ways I fix it, or it don't work. But I'm not gonna work with 10 clients that are not ideal for the sake of just making payroll or whatnot. I would rather only work with two. And so what does our, our ideal clients look like?

• 21:31Speaker 02

  For us, when we're looking at custom home building, People have, our ideal clients already have their land purchased and paid for 100% in full before they even find us. And when they do find us and they have their land paid in full, they're typically either going to pay cash and no loans, or they have at least 100 to 200K liquid that they're going to put towards their loan because for us, the custom homes that they're going to build, number one, will not appraise for what the bank is going to say that they're worth because oftentimes they're going to want to compare and do comps to either spec homes or semi-custom homes. So for our clients, they have to be able

• 22:13Speaker 02

  to pay the difference of what the shortfall is with appraisal. And a lot of people, that takes, that probably takes 90%, 80 to 90% of the people out of the market because not many people has that ability to pay 100, 200 grand or more for their land and then have another 100 to 200 grand or more to put towards their luxury home or their custom home. But they're out there. And out of every 10 to maybe 15 people we talk to, there's normally one or two in that, in that group of people that is our ideal client. And the thing I've found is that with those type of people, they're willing to pay higher prices for the results that they're after, which essentially means I don't have to do,

• 22:55Speaker 02

  you know, six homes and make, say, $10,000 a piece or $20,000 a piece. I can maybe do two or three and make $200,000 a piece or $100,000 a piece or whatnot. And the clients, they perfectly understand and they know that, and it's a different type of client. So when you're going down this journey of trying to discern who's your ideal client and who's not your ideal client, you need to have those types of conversations and know that, yes, it's going to be a struggle and you're not going to have as many clients. But when it works, you're going to have leased clients and make more money. And those leased clients will be clients that you're, it's a blessing all the way, all the way around because you're helping them, they're helping you, everybody wins, and your quality of

• 23:39Speaker 02

  life increase, you know, increases tremendously. But it is a process that you got to go through and figure out.

• 23:49Speaker 03

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• 24:57Speaker 00

  So good. I'm so grateful for all your insights today, Ralph. And Brandon, thanks for setting all this up. And Simone, I appreciate it. This has been full of knowledge and wisdom. We appreciate you taking time to share all this with us.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  Thank you. And so I guess, Brandon, we're about ready to wrap this up. But before we do, there's always like one question whenever we're done with this. It's like, man, I remember to ask that one question. Is there anything else that's lingering that we can knock out before we hop off?

• 25:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, it would come to be with cash flow. How do you manage, because you're at such a bigger skill than our landscaping industry. You know, projects are 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30,000. You're talking, you're talking $4 million, you know, or these massive amounts. So how do you have the margin to keep everything running smoothly and sleep peacefully in the evenings?

• 25:51Speaker 02

  So yeah, that's the struggle. How you learned that is, I think, the best way to learn it. Is, you know, you gotta kind of go through it the worst kind of way and figure it out and, and, and face that, that beast that's like, okay, well, hey, listen, cash flow is a problem. How are you going to make payroll? You didn't get the draw that you were supposed to be getting because whatever happened and now you've got this overhead, this payroll. And we all lived that, right, as entrepreneurs? And at the same time, it, it should force us to figure out how to fix that. For me, when I ran, when I ran into that situation, it made me realize that I wasn't charging enough, number one, on, on what I was charging clients and that I had to charge more.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  A lot of my problems come from the unknowns when you're starting, building a custom home and you, before you even get the footing or the foundation in the ground, you're already $20,000 over your original budget and you haven't even got started. Well, I faced that a few times and I faced having clients to where we didn't have that conversation and guess what? They didn't have the liquid funds to cover it. The banks wouldn't fund it. So guess who had to pay for that lesson? That cost of tuition. I did. And thankfully, one of the things that's helped me is staying lean as long and as much as you possibly can and putting everything back into business. Um, you know, even when you've got the money to go out and buy all this stuff, you shouldn't, you should keep the money, put it, reinvest it back in the business.

• 27:15Speaker 02

  Focus on delivering the best service, uh, finding creative ways to stand out. And a lot of times it's just the little things. In today's market, it's not hard. It's, it's, it's easier in today's market to stand out. Just show up 15 minutes early. If you do that alone, you're already ahead of everybody else and answer your phone by the second time it rings. If you're, there's advantages of being small and advantages, you can outdo the big boys because they think they have the luxury of not doing the basics and being on point with that. And then with the cash flow, what I learned is I started on my business, I started, I had to learn how to sell. I had to learn whatever it is I needed to convey to my clients, I had to get them to the point to where they would say to themselves, hmm.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  You're right. That does make sense. When I'm telling them, I have to have at least a 10% buffer onto whatever number that we're going to agree to. And here's the way I do it. If I'm negotiating with you, building your family their custom home and say, hey, we're agreeing to, you know, 850,000, we're agreeing to 1.2 million dollars. And that's today's price, like today with the list of features that we want, right? But it's going to take us at least eight to 10 to 12 months, or possibly even more to build. And let me ask you something. Do you know what the rate of inflation is year over year?

• 28:31Speaker 00

  5%?

• 28:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, 5% every day of the week. So at 5%, if we're building 1 point, say, 2 million dollars and a year goes by and that increases 5%, what's that amount?

• 28:48Speaker 00

  70,000?

• 28:50Speaker 02

  70,000 or so, right? So now here's the thing, who's going to take that loss? If we don't account for it?

• 29:00Speaker 02

  Me. And I'd stay quiet, just like, just like I'm doing right now. I'm just straight like I'm doing. And we'll have to have that conversation. And I'll say, then it starts to get a little bit uncomfortable. And I'll say, hey, listen, I'm sorry, you know, this, this isn't kind of probably what you would like for it to be, but we need to have these types of conversations now. And I'm hoping you're seeing that I'm doing it in your best interest because we haven't signed a contract. And I want you to know all this stuff upfront before you get committed because a lot of builders, you know, we will close deals and we'll handle all this later. And then it becomes a problem. I want you to know the worst case scenario upfront. So that 10% is 70,000 dollars. That needs to get added to the cost of what I'm proposing because I'm not building for today, right?

• 29:44Speaker 02

  The price that we're agreeing to is as of today's price, but six months into the build, eight months into the build, price is stated going to go up. And I need to have the means to cover those increases by anticipating that 5% cost of increase just due to natural inflation. And we're not talking about the tariffs. We're not talking about anything that can happen from here to there. So in reality, To be successful and to plan for the worst-case scenario and not say that we're going to have the worst-case, but at least plan for it, we need 10 to 15 to 20% above what we say we're comfortable for. Now, if 1.2 or 1.5 or whatever the number is, if that's a stretch, that's okay. This is where we get to get creative and be smart and solve the problem before we even start.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Because my designer is in-house, I know how to design, he's been with me since I got started, guess what? $70,000 is what we just used, right? Now, you're wanting to design a 5,000-square-foot home. Maybe you're like a lot of our other clients. When they get in and five years down the road, you realize they didn't need that much square footage. And I have a lot of clients tell me that. Well, you know what? I could have lived with a 4,000-square-foot house. Let me do some math for you real quick. And then I'll just pull out the calculator, I'll say $1,000, uh, 1,000 square feet times, say, $350 per square feet. Boom. And I say, that's that dollar amount. Now, if we can go with a 4,000-square-foot home and make that work, this is how much money you would be saving. And we can include these contingencies or these budgets.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  And so that way, when we run into that, or if we run into that, it's not a problem because we have already planned for it well in advance. And the idea here is to talk about this upfront, so when we're building, no matter what happens, we can go through it without any of the hiccups where people start and have to stop midways because they didn't fully count the cost. And I hope that you see the value in what I'm doing here because, you know, even if you hire me or not, um, you're going to leave here with a much better understanding of what it really takes to be successful at doing this. And if our numbers are too high, which sometimes they are, at least you can go to another builder who maybe is willing to build at a cheaper price. But now you can see if they're willing to incorporate the things that we've just mentioned.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  That's the way we handle, you know, that and then the cash flow is if they go forward with us, I'll let them know that on certain draws, which is to- and this is totally against industry norms, and I let them know, I say, you know, what I'm about to say. It's not the industry norm. I know the reputation that we have in the construction industry. However, there's always exception to the rules. We've got 20 some years in business. Go check out our reviews. You can go talk to clients who did exactly what you're about to do in paying cash upfront or paying on front loading some of the draws, whatever that is, but to handle that cash flow issue. If you're getting draws, I let clients know that I structure my draws to where I don't have a cash flow issue. Cause that's the number one problem that contractors have.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  But our goal is not to have that. And how we don't have that is by ensuring that we're not putting all of our draws at the back end of a stage. While we've already fronted the cost and then waiting another 10, 20, 30 days to collect. And that gets us in that perpetual cycle of not being able to catch up. I let my clients know that. And I say for me to overcome that, I, I have to structure at least half of my draws to where they're tied to the beginning of a stage and not the end of a stage.

• 33:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's good. And you're in North Carolina. I'm down here in Florida. I know we have some listeners that are in California and all. There's all kinds of crazy laws out there, but in North Carolina, you know, that's, that's good.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So let's put that disclaimer out there. This is what I do. Don't mean that everybody should do it, but I'm completely transparent with our clients. And, um, you know, when they go into it, they're fully bought into what we're doing, how we're doing it. And, you know, we did deals where it's, it's been 100% cash basis. No banks involved. Sometimes there's banks, sometimes there's draws, sometimes there's S growth. Every deal is different. That's the beautiful thing about, you know, when you're doing custom and you can directly deal with owners. There's no one deal that's ever the same.

• 33:43Speaker 00

  That's good. Well, this has been awesome. I, I really appreciate your, your expertise and your time and your inspiring story of how far you've come from that, that older gentleman that told you, get out of here. And you launched your business in 2004 to, to be here today. It's an inspiring story. Is there any closing remarks you want to share with a, a young entrepreneur who's more towards your 2004 stage?

• 34:09Speaker 02

  I would just say it's going to take you a long time. You know, it's going to be hard and just choose your hard. No matter what you're going to do, it's going to be tough. Just don't expect immediate results. You're going to have to spend your time doing something, even if it's working a normal job. So why not go for your dreams? Find out what your baseline is. Everybody has to make a certain amount of money to live and pay their bills. Find out what that is. Figure out a way to cover that and then go for it. You know, and when you go for it, give it everything you got. There's a thing that's called work-life balance. That's something that I think we all struggle with too. And I still struggle with it. I think anybody who's a really hardcore driven entrepreneur.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  I tell people, you know, a lot of people think that, you know, well, man, you may work too much. You're going to hear that from your family, from your friends. Just know that if you're wired like that, it's not for them. They don't see things. You know what I mean? And it's okay not to be normal, but also too surround yourself with the right team and make sure you love what you're doing. And one thing that I'll leave with, I have had to come to this understanding. You know, um, we worked six days. We're supposed to rest one. And sometimes I've tried for many years. I'd work and I'd brute force seven days a week, almost 18 to 20 hours a day, and couldn't make no headway and was just running up against brick wall after brick wall after brick wall.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  We need that day of rest and clarity and seek wisdom, seek mentors, find people who's already done what you're trying to do and go work for them and put yourself in a position where you can work for them for free. And that's a tough order, but I found out and I've talked to enough people to where when you go talk to really successful people and you ask their story, somewhere along their journey, it's, it's that they're willing to go do the work, help someone out, work for less money or even work for free, as long as it keeps them moving down the path of success.

• 36:05Speaker 00

  Well said. I'm, I need to work on that. I've gotten in the habit of the seven days. I know it's wrong, so I've been trying to take that day of rest. That's a very timely word for me. I appreciate that.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. And listen, I mean, I, I struggle with it, you know, cause and work is worship for me. A lot of people don't understand that and I, my wife, my wife's in the business with me. My daughter's in the business, my nephew's in the business, people that Troy's in the business that, you know, 20 some years and even with them, they don't get it and they don't see it like this is a, most days this has not worked for me, especially now in the season that I'm in. I've, I've visualized these days, you know, only time it's work is when things isn't working. When it's working, it's passion, it's joy. And so how can we count that as work, you know? So, I mean, it is work. For me at this point, doing like

• 37:02Speaker 02

  what I'm doing now, reaching out and sharing and helping inspire, hopefully, and motivate other people to go out and do what it is that God's put in their heart to do. And if you already see the end result before you even get started, that's, that's all the proof you need. Cause if you can't see it, there's a hard, there's a, there's a hard chance that it's going to happen if you can't see it. But if you can see it clearly, then that's proof that it's already done. You just have to be willing to do the work throughout the process to get to it.

• 37:32Speaker 00

  So good. Well, I really appreciate your time and all these insights and motivation. Do you have, is there anything else burning on your heart you want to share?

• 37:42Speaker 02

  No, I think, I think we should, you know, stay connected and do this again. And there is some other stuff that we're going to be doing that we got in the works with trainings and people that want to learn the build process, the order of operations, the costly lessons, learning, man, if we learn, listen, I've probably got $20 million in losses over the years that I've probably, if I really sat down and counted the cost of mistakes and missed opportunities and not knowing, find somebody, you know, find somebody who's already did that and learn from them. People say that the, the best way to learn is from experience. I used to say that. I don't believe that anymore. I believe the best way to learn is to learn from other people's experience.

• 38:26Speaker 00

  I agree.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Find them and go learn from their lessons and that way you can kinda save yourself a whole lot of heartache because any one of those lessons can take you out depending on what kind of business you're in. So surround yourself with people who are already doing what you're trying to do and model, mimic, put your own spin on it. Don't try to recreate the wheel all the time. That's one of my blessings and curse and, and sometimes when I do get stuck, that's the reason why is I want to get too creative and just want to recreate something that's already been created and get stuck. So.

• 38:58Speaker 00

  Cool. Well, I really appreciate your time, Brandon. Thank you for, for all, I don't know if you can hear me, but thank you for getting all this set up and.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  He said, thank you, Brandon, for helping us. Oh, yeah, anytime. Yeah, cool. Pleasure. All right. Well, thank you. And you guys will send us a link.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  Yes, I'm gonna send it to the, the audio, have an audio engineer. So the audio will come out on Spotify and Apple this week and I'll send you the, I'll email you the link and then the video will take longer. That might be out in, in a week, two, three weeks. We kinda got backed up on the video, but when it does come out, I'll send you the, the link and then we'll have some shorts from the highlight clips of what you said that will be for like Instagram reels, Facebook reels and you're more than welcome to use those however you'd like. So.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  And how did you, um, one question I did have while you was talking, how did you, how do we get to know one another, Brandon? Do you know? Uh, Carl Row. Carl Row? Okay, cool.

• 39:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I asked Carl Row who, um, you know, if they had anybody with a good story or anyone in the trades that they had, they recommend being on our podcast and they're like, oh yeah, we have some folks from Fayetteville, North Carolina. So.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Okay. Cool. Cool. All right. Sounds good. Thank you so much.

• 40:12Speaker 00

  Thank you. Nice meeting you.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  All right. See ya.

• 40:16Speaker 00

  I hope you enjoyed this program. I certainly did and hopefully we can get Ralph back on for part three one day. Love to pick his brain more about building a luxury custom home. So, so much to learn and he's definitely got 20 plus years of doing this and I think he'd be a great. Guest to pick his brain about that. We only had the interview scheduled for 45 minutes and we're going an hour, you know, we already went an hour and I just, I had more questions. But I was like, I don't want to, I don't want to overwhelm them. So I figured that was a good ending point for now. And he seemed open to having him back on the program. So we shall see what we can do with that. Well, in the meantime, in between time, if you're looking

• 40:59Speaker 00

  for an audio book to help you take your business to the next level, our new project is out there on audible. It's called Level Up Your Money. It's my new audio book and it's narrated by Mr. Producer. So the paperback book, essentially, he reads word for word what's in each chapter. But then at the end of each chapter, we basically do a podcast interview that you can only exclusively hear on the audio book. So, so at the end of every chapter, that's correct. Thanks, Mr. Producer. Every chapter, we did a interview, an author interview where Mr. Producer asked me questions about that particular chapter. I got this Instagram DM. I want to read this

• 41:41Speaker 00

  to you really quick. This came in last night from Johnny Mo, who I used to watch his YouTube channels when I was starting my, my lawn business. He was my goat. I mean, I would get pumped up. He'd have his New York Jets logo in his basement and he'd be teaching about running lawn care business. I just learned a lot from Johnny. So he, he sent me this text or DM, I guess I would call it on Instagram last night. Hello, Paul. Just wanted to reach out and say I got your audio book on Level Up Your Money. Paul, this is your best book. This so far is awesome. Thank you for writing it. The principles are fire. Ooh wee. When I read that, I was, I was

• 42:23Speaker 00

  fired up. I was like, let's go. So that's what Johnny Mo had to say about our new audio book. And that's just super inspirational. So you can take a listen to Level Up Your Money. It's available on Audible and Mr. Producer will put a link for it in today's show notes.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Marty, producer of the Green Industry Podcast. This episode is over, but check the episode notes for links to products and services that you heard about during the episode. And thanks for listening.