You Won’t Believe His Construction Business Profit Margins

vitaly here tries to make 50 to 70 in profit margins building custom homes and today you're about to find out how we're going to visit some of vitali's projects and pick his brain on hiring contractors managing customers and his very unique profit sharing strategy and a lot more [Music] all right so we're standing in front of one of the custom builds that you did for your customer let's start with your background and how you got into custom home building yeah for me it started out 15 years ago i was 18 years old just went out to work for just to do something i wasn't planning on doing construction wasn't planning on growing a business didn't know what i was doing i had a little bit of background in construction but it was just helping out a buddy and slowly grew i got a license got more work and kept growing every year and so this is the last three years where it's been custom homes for customers awesome for somebody watching that just wants to get into this industry doesn't have much experience what would you tell them about getting started to learn the skills and the things needed to know yeah simple it doesn't matter where you're coming from whether you got experience or no experience at all just do it go out there and you don't have to have a fancy truck thousands of dollars worth of tools you just need to do it um in washington where we're at it's a lot easier to get licensed and so some states you've got to jump through some hoops you got to take some classes and that's good and bad it's harder to get started but it prepares you better and there's money to be made just get going okay [Music] tell us a little bit about how you got started with your first build where did you get the money because a lot of our viewers are probably just starting out and they're they want to hear from you yeah for me it was a long journey i tried to cash flow most of it i was never able to fully cash flow the whole build i think this was the first one that went smoother before a lot of it was just small my first house was a hundred thousand and it was a rehab i i flipped that one did you buy that cash though no just regular that was the only time in my life where i just had regular conventional financing okay so you didn't use the bank once yes so that was the only time was my first house my personal house i lived in it remodeled it sold it uh rolled that money into another house rolled that money into another house and so my goal was to have a paid for house and at 28 i paid cash for a crappy house ended up putting way more money into it and it was a long journey so that um definitely took advantage of the two-year no capital gains rolled that into another house roll that into another house and start building all right so let's check out the deck what a beautiful deck massive how many decks this house has uh so two levels uh this is the bigger of the two this is all candle weaver not a single post and and so i mean we were able to do that with the steel beams in it it turned out really good it looks amazing sally um why don't we ask you about your budget when you got started what was your initial budget how long did it take you to break even okay well i started off at 18 real small and so uh 10 grand so my first uh i can remember i still remember going out telling people with my wife and spending eighty dollars on tools and that week i probably made a thousand dollars with those tools and i was out working um driving around in uh in a ford focus and yes with my kind of business you do have to keep reinvesting and so i've i've invested a lot into it you know there's more always another tool always another machine always something more to buy i'm looking at this house the facade of it and i want to mention something because you do this a lot for most of your builds this wooden sort of texture to it can you share a little bit about that the uniqueness of it and why yeah yeah so this one in particular we transition more into the contemporary modern with a lot of wood a lot of black the black one knows it's unique and we wanted to get that real high end look that's been around for a while but for the ultra rich and so we tried to bring that here and make it happen and it worked out very well and this particular sighting that you see almost transitioned into a whole separate business for me just i stumbled upon it and um why don't we leave that and that's true but why don't we leave that for you guys as a hack later in this video because it's really a game changer so keep watching to find out more about that and more what's the most challenging thing right now for you as a business owner is it a consistent challenge or is it something that's come up maybe in the last year or two what can you share on that the one thing that's been really challenging last year or was two is covet and all the supply and i've had to change suppliers for a lot of my stuff uh we are waiting a lot more to get things that used to be easier to get and it's just the cost of material there's always changing that you can't really even budget a build are you doing anything specific to adjust to these challenges what can you share with our audience maybe a tip or trick yeah definitely one thing i've done is i buy a lot of material um like that i don't yeah in bulk i buy it ahead of time so that i don't have that issue this can't come to a stop it has to continue to go okay and that's a big challenge right now okay awesome you guys make sure we'd love to hear from you as well through the last year or two how are you overcoming these challenges please comment below we read them we respond to them and it's a great value to all our viewers as well and most importantly check out our podcast upflip.com forward slash podcast where you can hear about two brothers making 160k a month remodeling homes check it out our podcast thank you okay vitaly we are at one of your many projects at this point uh give us a quick summary of what is special about this house because this thing is enormous i got a few going on this is one that is a little unique in the fact that we took a very very tiny lot this lot is only 200 square foot bigger than the house itself and because of the topography we actually have four full floors so this is by far the tallest house that i've built and probably the tallest one around here uh some unique features uh we got we're trying to emphasize open and views and big windows and we're standing on a sky bridge the sky bridge i've wanted to do this for a few years that's crazy we were able to do something like this on this house and so far we're happy with it so the garage is down garage is down there and then there's another floor below it that's cool you've got these tremendous metal beams i don't see that very often on residential construction there's i like the metal beams there's a few metal beams on my homes this one has a couple and it's a cost savings aesthetically it's it looks really cool structurally you can do a lot with metal what is your advice for keeping costs low and maximizing profits as a home builder just a couple things good planning um you don't have to know everything about it but don't do things without thinking about it budgets you know sourcing labor you know you don't just get to where you need plumbing done and you start calling plumbers start calling plumbers you know before you finish framing we had our sheetrock guy in here yesterday measuring and we're you know not even ready getting the right price is big but it's always also timing if say you are working with the bank and you have monthly payments and you're ready for sheet rockers but then you're waiting two months which nowadays is normal and and so that that was going to hurt you you know we have a house that we pulled the plug on because we had framers we had the material but we couldn't get trusses for four months wow and so we had to shift gears to another house because we could not start it and just let it sit and so that's what i mean by planning and a lot of it is really just material and then labor that is one reason i do things a little differently i try to take that out of the equation and i have a lot of guys that are in-house or full-time or i've worked with for many many years and i do a different kind of arrangement with some of my guys especially leads i have almost as much leads as i do just regular helpers which is unique usually have one managing four or five guys i got three leads and four helpers [Music] quick question on how many full-time people you have on payroll and then anything else you want to elaborate or add on with reference to these unique partnerships and working together with other professionals we got about eight full-time team members right now eight okay uh but they vary and those are guys that are on site or involved with day-to-day full-time and some of them are just skilled waivers and then we have somebody that's boots on the ground but also behind the scenes whether they're helping fund the goal is to go towards the profit split you know up to 50 50. i'm okay with doing a partnership where we have that and that's something that i'm slowly figuring out because it gives them an incentive they get to essentially earn equity in a project and then slowly take over some of what i'm doing and by helping me with that they get ownership of the company are we talking guys just like do do framing or they they get ownership of the yeah so these are skilled guys most of them are skilled high skill you know excavation framing foundation stuff that's hard to find uh expensive skill uh with experience and i try to structure in a way where they come uh we partner together they do something that i can't or don't want to do um and then i do something that they can't or don't want to do and and we'll make something happen all right so we're here at another project by vp vitali tell us a little bit about this project what's unique about it and what your goal for it is uh yeah so this is unique in a couple different ways very difficult to develop and couple cool features the wood that you see is from a cedar tree that was milled and cut from this lot that's pretty cool and i have quite a bit of wood that i'm trying to bring into this house um i also put a lot of that wood in that house which is a remodel this other house that he did years ago right i used to live there now this was gonna be my home and so you know the driveway i experimented and this is uh my first attempt at this kind of driveway [Music] whatever you can share with us in terms of kind of your revenue goals maybe on on one build just revenue we're not talking about profit margins just yet with the market today you know and it keeps changing i want to say uh we're somewhere between uh 7 800 at the low end to this house and another one um a little over a million maybe 1.2 um again that that that's just depending on the market and the day and it's it's all over the map right now the profit margins are different between house to house and and it varies quite a bit you know hayley's house that we did that was you know a lot of involvement and that has been my least profitable house you know so things changed it changed a lot so i probably could have sold that particular house for 200 000 more and so those are kind of the things with our market uh our location and and these kind of homes their costume is unique and there's a reason why a lot of people don't do it there's more risk involved you can dump a lot of money into a high end that then goes down in value and a lot of it is tied to land and i've been fortunate enough to buy land early on let's talk about financing builds we know that you have a very creative way of financing all kinds of builds in all kinds of ways for someone watching who's struggling to maybe put something together the bank says no let's talk about that i think it's a very important topic where do you find your money how do you partner up what can you share with us i know there's some insider secrets about whatever you can share definitely definitely so i do things very different i've never had much luck with uh the traditional go to your bank route um i started off way early on uh followed dave ramsey and so a lot of it was um i tried to cash i try to finance i realized early on that you're i'm i would not be able to scale in the market that we have and just i it's gonna take me forever and and so i did pivot and go to um non-traditional creative financing whether it be you know [Music] have partners come in whether it's borrowing you know money from family and friends i don't recommend that if you're trying to scale um private money is an option don't recommend that either i see um but yeah there's different ways of doing it um and it all depends on and and so that's one thing that's helped me in the last year but it's also uh major thing that held me back um you know going back two years ago and i could have scaled and i could have done more things i didn't want to go into creative financing um so i think there is uh there is an option to do that you just gotta be wise about it [Music] let's talk profit margins and remember in the beginning you guys we mentioned that vitality tries for 50 to 70 profit margins on a build can you elaborate on that as much as you're comfortable telling us what that means and how you've how you accomplish that yeah so basically for me before i start anything if i'm funding it i want to be you know 50 to 70 percent but those are on projects that i'm funding when we're talking a custom where a homeowner has land and they're funding it it's obviously different it's probably lower yeah so this is uh where i want to be for projects that i got a lot of my money invested you would need 300 400 to build a house now it can easily be 500 600 to build the same house and so i want to be 50 to 70 if i'm involved one of the big things that works out for me is i do a lot of stuff in house and i'm involved in a lot of the things that are expensive the things that will really hurt your budget i try to really sharpen my pencil on those things and and try to do it in house you know some of the big ticket items windows foundations in my area excavation you know and then when you go into roofing those can be very expensive and those are the things i focus to try to do in-house to get my numbers low and that's how the profit margins that does help sell the house for more and that helps put a little more money in your pocket so you've done a couple pre-sales and uh question for the audience is at what time is it a good idea to do a pre-sale when is it not i know it's market conditions what else have you learned uh so pre-sales are an interesting thing i usually don't recommend them at all at all unless you have to or unless you just feel comfortable with it i've done two uh very successfully i've spent a lot of time talking and and vetting i've turned down a lot obviously the benefits are you get somebody to come in and hopefully get some money up front and so that helps but i would strongly recommend to people that don't know how this works and if they're building their first home to not do it because you're dealing with people and if something goes wrong you know they there there's just so much things there i mean legal expenses that i've had a couple builder friends got into it last year and i know other builders that had to buy their way out of their contract and especially with the market shifting so much unless you know what you're doing you probably shouldn't [Music] in terms of equipment i know there's a ton of tools that you need to run a successful home construction business what do you want to highlight in terms of tools maybe for somebody's getting started and what do you typically spend a month on tools if anything yeah so tools are going to be a very big part of construction and running a business the more the better that's the easy answer and so on a monthly basis i'm gonna say at least a thousand to two thousand on little stuff right um and then you have your you know ten thousand dollar trailer uh you got your fifteen thousand dollar here there every few months okay and that's part of what i'm trying to really plan ahead and do and it's necessary for what i do with these kind of builds [Music] aside from practical skills what other skills or experiences have been most beneficial to you as you've continued to grow your business for me the number one is people skills it's just being able to communicate because business is easy until people get involved and i stole that quote from somebody else but that's the number one when i did i used to do a lot of customer work um where i'd have 200 customers total at one point in my business and remembering all these things communicating and serving each one and the way that they want to be served right that's going to make a breaker business and so i figured out that there's a way to really be profitable and grow your business with that being 50 of your business when uh doing the work yes you got to be able to do the work right sounds like basic stuff but most important very basic uh and and just be real you know treat them like you'd want to be treated and show up and work and you'll be all right as far as like key individuals to be successful in this business who would they be as far as home building right you definitely need a good relationship with you know an architect an engineer in my case i got you know storm water i got geo uh there's there's a couple more that i got to deal with i'm in the watershed so i can only do certain amount of work certain times of the year who else on the team though like an attorney you mentioned yeah definitely um again uh with with growth you you want really good tax advice you you know i just spent an hour and a half with my tax guy yesterday and that is a very big part of what i do when you have multiple properties you know you wanna you want to take advantage of some of the tax laws but then plan ahead for some of the ones that may hurt you uh an attorney um that legal advice is great you know how to structure business is it a corporation llc or you just run it you know as a sole prop there are all these things and getting good professional advice and i highly recommend paying somebody and yeah it can seem expensive to 300 an hour worth every penny it'll save you way more in the long run let's talk about finding reliable workers where do you find them what do you look for what's what have you learned in the past 15 years about that can be a challenge and especially now can be very difficult when you're hiring employees the first one is gonna be the most difficult the tenth one is easy i don't have a lot of employees i try to put everybody into some sort of a profit sharing partnership uh incentivize them some so that i don't have to motivate them to show up every morning do you offer any incentives bonuses yes so uh my first conversation is very simple uh oh i'll go over you know some of their values and then i do offer them that they have the ability to earn as much as they want and they have the ability to own part of the house it really is up to them and so i do have guys that come in and and their goal is to own up to 50 of a build uh the one we were at with the sky bridge i'm partnering with a guy in the end we are going towards 50 50 profit split i don't look at him as an employee he's a partner a team member even though i'm funding it and i'm running it and it was my idea he gets to be part owner all right we're here yet at another project by vitaly give us a quick summary about this project and what you intend to do here yeah so this is unique it's one of my bigger projects massive it started out as a three and a half thousand square foot turned it into a 5 000 plus and it's unique uh it's taken me a while this is actually something i took over from another builder uh he poured the foundation and then i took it from there sounds good it seems like they've used the entire concrete in town to pour the foundation plus everything else this is this is massive we'll give you guys an inside look incredible house lots of cool features i know you mentioned your clients weren't very involved in it but can you point us to some of the unique features of the house and anything else that you want to add and share yeah so this house was very unique and the clients were very involved a lot of this is their design so the big one on this one has got to be the windows tunnel so yeah this particular house for what it is uh a lot of windows and this was an engineering difficulty um even after we had it engineered it moved a lot so we had to come in and do a lot of steel uh the other thing about this house with the decks and this beam we actually have a massive 54-inch steel beam going through the whole house right this whole thing and they couldn't even deliver it here and so that was a challenge but it turned out really nice and both structurally looks good everything in this house is smart all the outlets um all the light switches fireplace uh there's enough cat6 or ethernet wires in this house to do 10 homes wow um and then there's there's just a lot inside of the walls that you don't see initially but it makes this home really nice beautiful though you got the really unique railings here yes is this pretty common or is this uh so for builder spec homes no for a lot of the nicer homes today yes um i try to do steel cables in most of my homes i like it we have a lot of it outside inside and just i think it adds to the overall look of the house yeah [Music] italia so i noticed this cedar on almost all of your houses and you mentioned earlier in the beginning that it sort of became another business and this is sort of a hack for you guys and what really helps you stand out and be unique can you give us the story about that where you get the wood at what cost and what does that do as a game changer i bought material but it became harder and harder to get and so what i ended up doing is buying a lot of pine because throughout my homes inside outside um i have enough pine you know for 10 homes i mean inside the other home all the ceiling so there's a lot of it and so i literally buy it by the truckload and because i have so much i'm able to get it a um and i'm able to get it at a better cost b and then i'm able to even make some money selling it and so what i've actually done i don't get into that i have some of my guys and my kids i teach them about investing and then so they put their money into it you know they sell it and they make some money and they learn the little bit of business and it could be a business of its own because it's last year i probably made somewhere between 15 and 25 000 just reselling it and it takes a couple hours a week maybe let's talk about how you manage if at all leads of potential customers that want to build maybe a year out do you keep track on an excel spreadsheet or is that even a thing for you so i'm constantly talking to people and and i got everything planned out for next year two years uh we got we're sitting on uh four permits for next year and then uh potential projects for after uh as far as customers goes i limit it to about three to four year at this point and we actually have to turn some away um just because i don't want to have too much on my plate do you use like a software that you can share with audience how to how do you keep track of all this stuff or did you just keep it in your head yeah no super high tech uh email um that's about it that's it there's nothing else no spreadsheets well i mean okay so yes so i got one guy that helps me a lot with it he does my cad he does a lot of my scheduling and and so he's the one that uh uh he's got software he obviously excel a lot of microsoft's products i don't really enjoy that part of it so i'm not really involved i i i do the delegation and he's my office cad design and so he does a lot of that you see on your payroll uh so it's it's a it's a unique relationship where it's a little bit of both he does work boots on the ground and then um part time uh it's a partnership profit split or or some kind of commission um and that way i don't have to push him to do something i don't have to motivate him he gets paid after or when it's done and it's done well are there any hidden or unexpected expenses for a homeowner or home builder that maybe a lot of home builders forget to plan for like what would that be definitely always uh there's known unknowns and there's unknown unknowns you always want to have that a little bit of extra money or you you want to have a plan because there's always going to be something changing price for material you know the of construction uh labor labor is big you know and if you're relying on outside help subcontractors i've had multiple subcontractors just not show up because you know somebody offered them a little more or because of scheduling a lot of your subs and and so having good subs good people involved good systems that's huge and every project i've had there's always something is it a percentage that you account for let's say 10 kind of question 20 what's been your practice or standard uh so typically 10 is good for me it varies sometimes i'll make some decisions that end up costing um a hundred thousand dollars more wow and and usually they're not you know overnight there you kind of plan as you're building all right real quick i know we've touched on like customer experience but what else can you add on to an exceptional customer experience what is that like for you uh well first of all that's the goal and that's what i try to go for every time and it's again what does it come down to um just communication that's still trying to find a way to best communicate with that particular customer and that's it and it's really that simple there's not a whole lot you don't have to impress them no magic tricks just have a conversation never hurts to over communicate uh sometimes it hurts some people don't need that and that's why first conversation you're trying to gauge you're trying to read the person do they want to have a 40-minute conversation about their dog or you know do they just want to get straight to business uh it varies i've had customer experience where i've talked for hours about something that has nothing to do with this and then they call me up like i want you to do it and they don't know nothing or they don't know a lot about what i want to do my plans they're just they trust me here's the keys here's our budget you know we're going to arizona you got six months so i've had that one customer that turned out to be a good friend and it really just started by us talking about something that had nothing to do with her home and her project man you guys are like big kids playing in a big playground that you really enjoy so i i can see that you love doing what you're doing i enjoy a lot of parts of it there's definitely things that i don't like um whichever way you can be it's definitely time consuming okay uh i am using this as a tool to uh carve out a good family life you know i got more kids than the average person how many kids by the way for the record so i got seven kids and how old are you um thirty five started early and so i got a teenager at home and then i got a one-year-old and then also uh very important to me is to spend a lot of time with my wife um that's key because otherwise this would take over and i would lose all that and so that's the part that i don't enjoy as much and i'm pivoting my business how i do things so that i'm not boots on the ground involved in every aspect that's gonna take a minute and so i enjoy a lot of it and the end result and some of the day-to-day boots on the ground i'm stepping out of and that's more because of my personal life and my personal values and what i want to do well it's time with vitaly let's do it this is from garrett stevenson thank you for your question how do you feel about 3d printed houses how do you feel about the new building materials and how will it affect people using lumber anything i've seen not a big fan of don't know too much about it just don't like what it looks like um i think it'll be a while before the technology is there to compete with what we have here okay awesome anita thank you for your question what's the most eccentric customer request you had from a client that he's managed to achieve you've managed to achieve eccentric something wild something that's like wow i had a customer that we did cruise ship purple and gold carpet that was insanely expensive oh wow gloss gold um popcorn ceiling uh she dumped a lot of money into it it was the most ugly thing i've ever done but she was super happy and that's all that matters that's all that matters this is from steward thanks for your question stewart how do you recognize and grow talent to be future site leaders supervisors etc motivated um they're they're hungry they're and also you know our values align that's more important to me anybody can learn the ins and outs but you can't really teach somebody to be honest or at least i don't want to be so i want to have somebody that's motivated and somebody that's got values that align with mine okay this is from adrian walker adrian thanks for the question how did you work your way up to where you are biggest obstacle climbing up uh not quitting there's a lot of times where it was hard and a lot of times you want to quit and a lot of times you somebody else and you think they made it and you you want to give up and then you just muscle through it martin thanks for this question what's your biggest monthly expense and how much of a deposit do you ask for upfront when the clients yeah so material is going to be the biggest when you're building land is by far the biggest before you even start when i do a pre-sale or with a customer i usually bill monthly or if it was something like haley then she ended up putting a 10 non-refundable deposit which is quite large for somebody doing what i do uh and that's one of the reasons you know worked out okay yeah probably climb my client last question from whiskey sour thanks for your question how can you afford lumber these days you don't buy your kids food or clothes uh no you just you budget for it uh it's it's tough and you just you make it work and you don't quit and that's just another obstacle there's many more and there'll always be some [Music] in terms of codes in this industry you've got code changes monthly weekly yearly as a home builder how do you stay on top of those where do you go for those resources or is it just kind of on the fly via inspectors no so definitely not on the flight that's the difference between somebody who's been doing it long enough right and we're somebody who just wants to yeah there's a lot of changes a lot of different codes last year was a big one with energy yeah and we're talking 20 30 on a house like this 50 60 000 difference just one month to make that code and so for me and a lot of the builders have been around we knew it you know months in advance six months in advance and so i was able to work with uh engineers and plans and and people at whatcom county to secure permits and that's why i have permits from last year that i'm going to start breaking ground on this year that don't have to meet the new codes nope they don't tricky so it's not tricky it's what everybody does i just knew about it and and you know it was an investment that i had to make a year ago for something that i would have could have done potentially in the next couple years and so that's one of those things where you know your regular home builder you know diy would not be able to do what is the best way to build relationships or connections with other professionals in the construction business as a home builder yeah if you're talking about professionals that are in the office engineers architects you just start by talking you know you align with what projects you guys work on and you start from there as far as other builders um that's one thing that's helped me there's a lot of builders out here and i know most of them personally and it's just a matter of you know having a conversation whether it's grab lunch or just stop by and talk to them and you know but they're your competitors do you see them asking if i don't no so absolutely not um i don't um we we help each other a lot you know there's a guy that's building down the road for me and sometimes we'll partner on you know some machinery um this summer when it was very difficult to get equipment i had four excavators throughout my job sites so i was able to either rent out or borrow let them borrow some equipment and and sometimes it works the other way where there's a bigger builder right next to me that will let me use you know so that that is an advantage i don't look at it as a competition there's enough money to be made building homes if we help each other we both are successful that's an awesome way to look at it [Music] do you have a brand awareness strategy what's working or what can you share on that uh yeah no nothing um i've never paid a single dollar for any kind of advertising don't have a website at the moment i'm working on one uh the hoodie that you see or any kind of advertisement it's uh my son started a little side business my 12 year old sarah simba's printing uh stuff it started out as jerseys for soccer team and so he made me a couple hoodies uh made my guys some hoodies some hats we're so getting into that but before a month ago i had nothing uh no never had a sign in my car never had any kind of advertising everything was word of mouth which i don't necessarily recommend if you want to grow and scale right i went about it the other way and it works for me and i actually am different the fact that i turn away good paying jobs uh we said no to a couple this year because i'm not ready to scale until i know i'm not going to sacrifice quality i see and that communication with the customer just goes down if if you have a lot of projects and so i'm moving in that direction just not there yet okay sally if you had an opportunity to sell your business quote unquote what do you think you would sell it for do you have an exit strategy to eventually leave all this and do something else great question so today book value is about it um you know some real estate truck tools not a whole lot more but that's a good question that got me thinking a few months ago uh to have an exit strategy so i am planning on relocating and so the thought the idea is and why i'm putting my business with a lot of the guys involved is either to get it to be to a place where i can sell it because uh you know the numbers on the books are good um i'm obviously doing stuff and i've been around for a while but that's not really valuable to somebody coming from the outside right yet and so the plan is to search somebody maybe somebody in-house somebody that can take over there or know the ins and outs or run it from you know in another location my for me i'm thinking of florida it might be something else where i don't have to be involved in every day you know boots on the ground right and so that's the step that i'm taking next and i'm making a lot of changes [Music] i love this question because it gives us an opportunity to learn but give us an example of an unhappy customer with a build i'm sure it's happened how did you resolve that situation what did you learn from it in terms of maybe avoiding it next time uh yeah so we i definitely have my share of small issues fortunately i was able to resolve every single one and so we've had issues and a lot of times just talking about it and and coming to a good reasonable solution uh the worst i've ever had they had an attorney i had an attorney and there were some possible litigations uh fortunately we avoided all that uh there was a little bit of a settlement if you want to call it that what happened like where did it start there was just an issue with the house it surprised us after you know weather and things started shifting and and i'm not gonna ever say that i build perfect homes i make mistakes other builders make mistakes the one difference between me and others is if i made a mistake i'll own it but i always tell them if you guys have any issues please come talk to me that's pretty cool and so that has you know had some there are some difficulties with that one house um it worked out really good we were able to resolve it um we're on talking terms you know i walked away everything's great and and i think that's just part of doing business you're going to have issues it's how you deal with them how far are you busy into the next couple years yeah so right now we're we got projects on our schedule going out uh at least a year year and a half so my year when i break ground starts uh summertime and so everything's booked up for this upcoming summer and so we're gonna have four new projects and i want to not take on any more but then i already got stuff in the works for 23.

nice because it just takes time right with permitting and engineering yeah so it takes a minute to get all that stuff and i like to have permits in my hand months you know before i actually break ground okay and so that's how i like to do it doesn't always work out but that's the plan what would you give your younger self as far as advice if you could do that before starting the business what would it be a couple words uh for me personally um i'm big on you know your business not taking over your family your life your whatever else you got i grew a family you know while i grow business and unfortunately sometimes the business takes over good time that you can spend with family and so and this is what i've been told and i tell all the younger guys you know if they're starting out they're married if they got kids don't spend 80 hours at work unless you have to the problem is most guys don't you can make enough money to survive but you always have that desire especially as a business owner entrepreneur you want more you know you you sell a house you make money you you want more right and so it's fighting that urge and slow down and enjoy life and invest into your relationships um for me my wife first kids and and you know other relationships past that so maybe not so much a business answer but for me it's big and that's where i'm making a lot of changes to do that i want to ask you about a mistake you made when you first started out can you think of one share with our audience and what you learned from it uh yeah starting out the the specific main mistake that i think a lot of people make is uh over promise under the web you know you you stretch yourself then you commit to a lot of projects without understanding how long it will take and so i mean i got a lot of stories where you know i'm driving around literally on a day visiting six seven different job sites this was when i was doing remodels and work for customers in their home i think and so i i see that across the board everybody makes that mistake you just take it on too much basically yeah you take on too much without understanding what it's like i think if you're in the handyman business or maintenance you know some kind of sophomore software some kind of other help to manage all that is a must that is one reason where although my business was growing doing that i was profitable my goal was to get out of that for that reason so that i'm not dealing with 10 customers in one week instead i have four in one year that works for me took me a minute to get out of that but that was by far the biggest mistake that i've made and that i see a lot of other contractors make tell us a little bit about this house and its unique aspects just give us a quick list and what's really the most unique thing this house got a lot of cool features i spent some time thinking about it you know there's going to be a lot of steel all this is floating you don't see any beams decks because this is temporary so you know that door is going to be a custom electromagnetic pivot door um we're waiting on that and so there's it's you know you don't see that every day i have no idea what that means um it just means that there's no handle and there's no actual uh mechanism it's all electromagnetic kind of like what you would see in a hotel when you put in your key card and you hear that click the floors i have a penny for in i try to have it in all my homes a penny floor so give us a description what that means can people think it's just like a one big mat that looks like a penny nope it's every single penny good one at a time and i cover with epoxy and it takes forever and i hate myself every time i do it but it's a thing i did on my first home and it's a thing i'm doing um so that's just more aesthetic vp signature type of deal it's just something yeah i like it and and so i do it and it's not something a lot of people do and i love it and it's something i want to implement in my other homes [Music] in terms of you know any any average person is going to look at this long and be like man this lawn is a mess it's steep it's tiny he sees no value but yeah you're managing to build what close to eight hundred thousand dollar nine hundred thousand dollar house probably north of that um so the tips that you can share with our viewers like you see something don't necessarily write it off and think it's bad or not profitable so how do you have the eyes for that obviously besides experience so i i have experience in these kind of watts in this area i'm right all my abilities he's an expert here so my builds are within a mile of each other i got into it because i couldn't afford anywhere else my first out was worse than this and i ended up trading it for a boat i had and so once i had it i was like i'm gonna make it work and i did and i learned a couple things i i got involved i know all the people that this is a pretty large hoa it's run a certain way um and and i was able to make it work and it's by far more difficult than going you know 10 minutes 20 minutes into town i enjoyed i've lived out here for 12 years uh i enjoyed the area i like doing this i like drawing up this particular house we ended up drawing with my partner on with pencil you know on a big sheet of paper and tweaking it and that's cool and it turned out we're happy with it [Music] last but not least to wrap up this interview we love wrapping up our interviews by asking um what is your favorite business book can you think of one that you've read in the past that you can share with our audience uh i can't choose one if i had to choose one it would definitely be proverbs i'm reading with my kids i've read it 100 times i think it's great um as far as other business books i pick and choose from a bunch of different ones and you know maybe that's not the answer for but you know dave ramsey you know robert kiyosaki um just money you know uh well money and people they both talk about people and relationships uh who move my cheese that's a good one e-myth you know there's a lot of really good information and i don't like one just one over the other i i really just do pick and choose and that's worked for me that's awesome well we've all enjoyed it i know our audience enjoyed hearing your story i appreciate that vitaly hey thank you so much

2022-02-02 19:49

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