May 13, 2025 • 32 mins
Julian Miller, Director of Operations at NS Builders, shares how his experience in commercial construction built the foundation for his process-driven approach in high-end residential work. From implementing operational systems to maintaining craftsmanship, Julian explains why structure, communication, and internal efficiency are critical for builders looking to scale sustainably.
https://www.nsbuilders.com/
Introduction and Guest Background (0:00)
Impact of Commercial Experience on Operations (2:43)
Relationship Between Operations and Financials (4:59)
Operational Enhancements and Financial Impact (9:51)
Adoption of Technology and Efficiency Gains (13:53)
Profit Erosion and Internal Efficiencies (23:59)
Final Thoughts and Recommendations (29:30)
Find Our Hosts:
Reece Barnes
Matt Calvano
Podcast Produced By:
Motif Media
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to another episode ofbuilders budgets and beers.
(00:03):
Today we are joined with ourgood friend, Julian Miller from
NS builders up in Boston,Massachusetts. Today's episode
is going to be for the moreoperationally minded Contractors
of America, the individuals thatknow how to get worked on a job
site get product put up veryefficiently, but might not have
(00:24):
as strong of a comfort orconfidence when it comes to
financials, because Julie and I,we do back and forth in terms of
the relationship with operationsand financials and what needs to
be done and some tactics to makethis a nice, healthy, blended,
harmonious relationship for anyconstruction company. So let's
go ahead and jump in. We'll getto it
(00:53):
alrighty, Julian, we are live.
Dude, super, super happy to haveyou on the show. Thanks for
jumping on.
Yeah, great to be here. Reese,always a pleasure. Awesome,
awesome.
Okay, so for the listenerstoday, we have Julian Miller. He
is the director of operationsfor NS builders. Before I just
tell everybody your background,Julian, go ahead and fill in the
(01:15):
gaps and let the listeners knowwho's who's going to be talking
to him today. Yeah,I've been in the construction
business for close to, like 14years now. Started out in
commercial doing, you know,super large infrastructure
projects and laboratorybuildings, multi family stuff.
Fast Forward, got burnt out inthe commercial sector and wanted
(01:38):
to pursue the high end customhome building worlds, jumped
right into a custom builderlocally in Boston, my wife and I
ended up moving to NorthernCalifornia. Was lucky enough to
land a really cool job out thereand learn some pretty amazing
(01:59):
things, building like 20, 30,000square foot homes, you know,
super high net worth clients.
And then, you know, here we are,back in Boston, moved back to be
closer to family, and nowworking for Nick schifr at NS
builders. And it's builders beenin business for 11 years now,
(02:26):
and we're doing kind of avariety of remodels, custom new
builds, but definitely on, likethe higher end of the spectrum,
totally primarily in the BostonMarket, and a little bit north
and south of the city. Too.
Beautiful,beautiful. Okay, so I hear this
trend often. You know, it's notuncommon that guys will get
(02:46):
into, like, residentialbuilding, typically, like the
higher and stuff, with a littlebit of a background in
commercial. Now, just with yourI was, like, the first call it,
what, 10 years of your career,less than, less than commercial.
Six years. Yeah, six years, thefirst six years of your career,
yep, excuse me, um, you are inthe commercial world. How much
did that experience impact youroperational mind, we'll call it,
(03:09):
or at least, like your practicesthat are important to you. I
mean, 100% to be honest. Likecommercial world has a ton of
red tape. There's definitely alot of cons, I think, to the way
that they build ton a lot ofconsultants, so many people that
are, you know, touching acertain part of the project. But
(03:33):
I would say that the benefit ofof that experience was the
organizational structure systemsthat were defines that were, you
know, fairly efficient, that,you know, the teams, at least in
regions, were locally, followingthe same patterns. And so that
that kind of got instilled inme, definitely a type A
(03:57):
personality and like, I gottahave organization and structure,
and that obviously lends to,like, my position today,
totally. But yeah, it's played ahuge role in what we're doing
here at NS builders. And, youknow, trying to be forward
thinking in terms of the newtechnology that's out there,
both for financial but you know,other tools for takeoffs and 3d
(04:19):
scanning, starting to do somepre fabrication off site as
well. So lovely. Yeah, massive.
I loveit. Totally. Okay, so, and that
makes all the sense in theworld, right? I mean, you've
got, like, infrastructureprojects, large buildings,
you've got dozens, hundreds oftrades working all in the same
time, multiple people have ahand in it. It's got to be
process oriented. It's got to belike a tight operational motion
(04:41):
for it to make sense. Yeah, goahead.
No, there's, yeah, you have lessroom for error when more people
are involved. Maybe that's like,a little ironic, but there's,
you got to have those checklistsin order for things. Is to net,
(05:02):
the result that you're you'reshooting for, there makes
total sense. Makes total sense.
Okay, so, and with that said,like net, the result that you're
looking for, I want to focus on,obviously, with the nature of
the podcast being around projectfinancials, I wanted to hear
your take on the importance, or,I guess, the relationship,
rather, between operations andfinances, because we talked to a
(05:24):
lot of builders, and obviously,like, through the lens of
adaptive, it's an automated AItool that's, you know, taking a
lot of the manual data entry,and there's process efficiency
gains, but it's really more of alike an accounting tool. But we
see a lot of operations peopleget excited about seeing
adaptive Okay, so from yourstandpoint, being the Director
of Operations, heavy backgroundand commercial, what would you
(05:46):
say is, like the most importantcomponent, or the most glaring
relationship between operationsand financials?
I think it's there are so manymanual processes that are kind
of like, put in place, I thinkacross the majority, or a lot of
the residential custom builders,you know, it starts, starts with
(06:10):
the trades. Lot of guys areowner operators, you know, it's
not necessarily their fault, butthey don't. They don't have the
overhead to to be able to hire,like a bookkeeper, somebody
who's managing their invoicingprocess. So it can be cumbersome
to get invoices fromsubcontractors, which is mind
(06:31):
boggling to me, right? You wantto get paid, but you know, you
spend it all comes down to youspend a ton of time trying to
track down the correctinformation, you know, you're
trying to align it with maybe aschedule of values that that
you've developed through acontract with that sub right?
(06:56):
All of that information, youknow, comes to you, you're
inputting it to, you know,whatever software you're using,
and eventually it's making itover to the accounting team and
being able to streamline,streamline that process and make
it so, you know, perhaps it'syou're you're buying something
from your local lumber yard, andyou make that purchase with a
(07:19):
credit card. Hey, I can justtake a picture of the receipt
uploads to in this case, youknow, we're obviously utilizing
adaptive. Adaptive quickly isrecognizing what job it's for,
maybe making a recommendationfor how to job cost it within
that specific budget, and thenboom, it moves into the next
(07:43):
sort of flow of review, and thenthat gets populated into an
invoice. But in the past, Ithink a lot of that, even still
today, a lot of those purchaserpurchases are being made, and
people are losing the receipts.
You know, you you forget whatjob it's for, because maybe
you're running multiple jobs,and then, right, that's easily
(08:05):
translated to lost revenue, andnobody knows the difference. And
then, you know, it translatesto, well, how are we tracking
this in our books? Like all I'mlooking at is our our gross
profit, you know, is much lowerthan we were expecting it to be.
How could that be? So, you know,obviously, it's, it's a big
(08:25):
network that ties together, andI think you got to have harmony
between operations andfinancials. Otherwise, you know,
you're, you're going to have areally hard time being
successful totallywell. And I think that's even
like with the so that wasperfect. I mean, from an
(08:46):
operation standpoint, typically,what I see is, like, operations
are typically people, like inthe field too, right? Like,
operations are looking atproject managers, and they're
making sure that, like, subinventor relationships are at
navigating and, you know, theprojects they're moving along
appropriately. And I thinkthat's typically like, where the
disconnect happens is it's like,Look, I'm just a project
manager, or I might be a projectmanager that's might be stepping
(09:09):
up into more of a leadershiprole, and it might be titled as,
like an operations person, andunderstanding that yes, you're
getting an invoice handed to youin the field, or you're having a
subcontractor email that invoiceto you. Like knowing that the
flow and every step of aninvoice sitting in your inbox
for a day, two days, three days,longer than it needs to or gets
(09:31):
lost is going to be impacting,you know, due dates on bills or
terms for early discount fees oreven just getting that
individual paid, yeah, in atimely manner to maintain a
relationship. It's all hand inhand. So I see a lot of builders
and operations people, they'restarting to get more interested
in, like, speeding up thatprocess as a whole. But there
(09:52):
still can be, like, thisdisconnect of like, it's gonna
get paid or it's not that big ofa deal. So. Like, where would
you say you've seen, like, thebiggest benefit or impact
coming, like, considering yourbackground, even adaptive aside,
if adaptive was in that play.
But like, what have you seen,like, the biggest operational
enhancements that you guys havemade, and how has that impacted
(10:13):
financials?
Yeah, I think you know to startfrom the top. We we pay the
majority of our subcontractorselectronically. So okay, if
again, go back to adaptive likefor we connect all of ourselves
within the ACH payment.
Truthfully, like, that's huge.
(10:37):
Occasionally, we get a littlebit of pushback from subs. But
you know, the amount of timesthat people reach out and say,
hey, you know, I haven'treceived that check. It's been
three weeks. Go off in the mail.
We got to send it again, and youknow, it was missing the
signature. It's brutal,if I don't ruin your train of
thought here, do you want tokeep going? Go for it, because I
do hear that like, bizarre, butit's like, like, the
(11:04):
construction industry is marriedto a check. Yes, not, not money,
the check, yeah, the physicalcheck, yeah. Why is that? Why? I
don'tknow. Man, I literally got a
text today from a sub who said,hey, you know, been having
issues with checks showing up inthe mail. I can just stop by
your office and pick it up,and that's okay go.
(11:30):
I mean, it's just, like,drastically inefficient. It's
like, you're gonna drive, youknow, maybe an hour out of your
day to come and pick up a checkand then go bring it to the bank
and deposit it when you couldbe, you know, on a job site,
doing an estimate, whatever,anything other than freaking
picking up a tripto pick up a check, yeah, well,
and so why did, why don't? Whyisn't that normal? Okay, like, I
(11:52):
think that's like, okay, that'sit's obvious, or it seems
obvious to us, but why isn'tthat obvious to everybody,
what's the disconnect? You know,I personally, I feel like it
probably has to do with agenerational imbalance. Okay,
like, okay, you know, not, notto rag on, on the old dogs here,
(12:13):
because those are the guys.
Yeah, a ton of experience. But,you know, it tends to be those
companies who've been inbusiness for a long time,
they've been doing it one way.
They don't want to mix it up.
You know, there's like a fear ofbeing scammed, you know, which
is totally reasonable. Surethere's also, you know, maybe
they've already signed up with acouple electronic payment
(12:36):
systems through other builders,companies that they work for,
and they're like, I've just hadenough. I don't want to have
another freaking login. Youknow, send me a totally,
totally. That's, that's trulythe only, the only thing that I
can come up with that wouldvalidate receiving a physical
check as opposed to doing it'slike, when, when you get paid,
(12:57):
you probably are getting paidthrough direct deposit. Like,
imagine if your employer waslike, Oh, I mailed you a check,
but you're actually not going tosee it for two weeks, dude.
I don't get intolerable. Like,there's, there's no way that
would be tolerated. Like, in ourworld, I just, like, I would be
baffled. I'd be like, What?
What? Yeah. But it also goesback to like, okay, so
(13:18):
generational, sure. I get itlike old dogs, new tricks. Cut
me my check. It's in my hand. Ican feel it. I get it. I was
raised by one right? But theother side of this too is like,
do you think they understand thecost associated? Like, if you
just, like, broke down wheresome of these, let's just say
that a sub is in I don't know.
(13:40):
What do you work with a southernGloucester? Is that how you say
it? North Shore? Yeah, younailed it, sure. Gloucester.
Okay, great, yeah. Okay, solet's say we've got trim
carpenter up in Gloucester, andhe's going down to white oak and
Wellesley, right? What's thatcommute look like? What's a
Gloucester to Wellesley commuteat five o'clock on a Friday?
Look like, oh,I mean, hour and a half, two
hours, maybe would trap one way,or round trip one way, like, one
(14:04):
way, yeah? Okay, you get, youknow, smoke during rush hour
easily.
What about the Wellesley toGloucester? Yeah. I mean,
it depends on, like, the samemorning or day, but people going
out of the city, 100%right? Okay, so let's just say,
hypothetically, trim carpenter,yeah, in Gloucester, right?
That's where he resides. Cute,little family, healthy, little
(14:26):
business going on, but he's downin the city, and he's got a
couple of projects going, andhe's like, damn, I gotta get
paid by Nick and the team. Sohe's gonna drive over to Ms
builders. Where do you guys?
Where are you seaport? Where'syour office?
Yeah, we're right in SouthBoston, seaport area, beautiful.
So he's making his way down toSouth Boston, and call, like,
half an hour to get there, andthen he's got to get all the way
(14:47):
back to Gloucester, and it's anhour and a half, but he was
already going to go there. Butif you start looking at the cost
of, like, if you could have justgone from the job to home, and
you cut an hour and a half outon a weekly basis, not even
including the fuel, which, ofcourse, you're going to expense,
right? A business expense, butit's still time. It's like,
Yeah, dude, that's a that's $100call it. Let's say you're $100
an hour guy. That's $100by multiple jobs that you might
(15:08):
be doing too, right? You know,totally hitting up the other
builders. And, yeah,doesn't make it's insane. It's
insane. And then you think, andit's like, dude, okay, I get it.
Like, maybe that's your podcasttime. Maybe you enjoy it, sure.
But dude, you could listen to apodcast in your recliner at home
and still have money in youraccount. It's just crazy to me.
So Okay, no, that was like atotally a side tangent, but it
(15:32):
makes a ton of sense from anoperational and finance
standpoint, like just speed ofpayment, speed of payment,
cutting those steps outinternally. What does that look
like for you guys? Like, whatdid that look like before
adaptive or any ACH product?
Like, what would that would itbe like checks, printing them,
signing them, someone at thedesk? What did that look like
for you guys? Yeah, weso we've always kind of used a
(15:52):
either a fractional accountingteam or someone who's been
remote, okay, and so, you know,we had to use bill.com at one
point in time, sure. And so thatbill.com was was cutting chef
checks from like, a randomlocation. And so it was being
managed by the financial teamthat we had. I think I'm sure at
(16:14):
one point, Nick was probablycutting checks and physically,
like handing them to people ormailing them out. But, yeah,
that's that's no longer thecase. Like everything runs
through adaptive, and I wouldsay 99% of our subs have signed
up. And, yeah, super easy tolike track, and you can, you
(16:34):
know, send them a snapshot. Hey,this hits your account. They
also get a notification, youknow, they can see when it's
coming. So, you know, I thinkit's peace of mind for them.
Cool. Okay, so you guys havealmost just been like, and I
knowing you and Nick over theyears, like you guys are very
forward thinking, like, verytech driven efficiency process
type people. So that makessense. Okay, so I think, and
(16:57):
before I cut you off, I wantedto stop you, like, I didn't want
to ruin your train of thought.
But there, I think there was asecond piece that you were going
to be talking about, gettingsubs paid in a timely manner, is
like, a huge one for you. Butwas there, I think there was
another piece that you're goingto dive into,
yeah. I mean, I think like so sowe use Procore to manage all of
our project documents, but alsothe financial side of of the
(17:20):
business right now, and wereally like that, because it's,
it's it sort of houses all ofevery project, subcontractor,
Po, vendor, whatever you want tocall them, their cost of work.
You know, we're managing changeorders, both with a client and
the subs. And then ultimatelywe're we're connecting with
(17:43):
adaptive and they're pushingdirect costs, essentially the
receipts, back and forth, andwe're running all of our
invoicing through Procore,excuse me. And then that gets
connected to QuickBooks Online,essentially, and and sent out to
our clients. But it's the reasonwhy we've decided to do that is
(18:05):
because it's keeping everythingin one location and so totally
again, going back to thatefficiency discussion, and from
an operations perspective, ourproject managers can go directly
into, you know, each projectthat they're they're running in
the Procore, they can see whatis the current live health of
(18:25):
every project across the board,based on the budget, you know,
where they're at in a currentinvoice cycle. And that that
communicates directly with ouraccounting team. So, you know,
gives the accounting live lookat, you know, what's our current
AP accounting is communicatingto us. Hey, you know, we just
received payment from so and soclient like, are we good to pay
(18:49):
these guys? And we can gothrough that list pretty quickly
and check that off as, Yep,good, totally, low or not. So
yeah, we've, I feel like we'vebeen able to develop a pretty
robust and streamlined system atthis point, totally well,
and I think so there's obviouslyProcore is, like, a very popular
(19:11):
tool. It's, I would call it moreuncommon for, like, residential
builders to be on Procore. Butlike, let's even just like
Procore side brand aside, right?
We could say builder trend, jobtread, Rezi, oh, co
constructive, for the builderthat's out there. That's like, I
don't understand the benefit oflike, going to from an
(19:35):
operational like, bridging thegap between operations and
financials, and that bridgebetween software doing it, what
would your like point be to themto say, like, you've got to get
on software, like you can't dothis in Excel, you can't do this
in whatever. What would yourpoint to them be?
Yeah, I think, I think it'slike, it's pretty simple. It
comes down to, do you want tohave a true look into your
(19:57):
profitability? I. Like, let's dodevil's advocate. Let's say that
they say they do, what are theymissing?
Well, you could argue, okay,you're, you know, you're
manually entering the majorityof your information. There's,
there's got to be a percentageof of air like, human error that
is happening, sure.
Spreadsheets, uh, equations,whatever your formulas should
(20:22):
have. And, like, we've all beenthere, right? So, like, Yeah, I
think it's really you got to becareful that if you're solely
going to rely on that. But itcomes back to efficiency and
time, right? Like, you're,you're entering this stuff one
by one, as opposed to maybeentering it once and then it's
(20:42):
pushing down the line,essentially, and in populating
that information in multipleplaces, totally, yeah, having
having a true look at your yourprofitability, you know that
that obviously can lead to, hey,do I need to hire somebody? Do I
have the cash flow to be able tohire somebody? You know, can I,
(21:03):
can I issue bonuses to my teamif, if I have a team, you know,
what? What are the company goalslike, how are we tracking the
metrics? You know, it's just,it's creating a database for you
that you can make long termdecisions that are, hope,
hopefully beneficial to yourcompany, totally close to living
(21:26):
sort of in a vacuum and lookingat high level every day.
Sure, I always, you know, justcoming from builder trend, it
was always more of like, like aframework, right? It's like, it
provides a framework and avisibility into your business.
But I think it also it startsto, like, break out the team,
(21:48):
right? Based on who needs to be,looking at what function. That
makes me think of I think Nickhad a post recently about you
doing a stand up for your teamon a job site. Are you familiar
with what I'mtalking about? Yeah, you might
do this all the time. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Nick, Nick's point was somethingalong the lines of, like, he's
like the visionary, like thelike, the the Forward Thinking
(22:09):
guy. You're much more like theday to day operations side of
things. Like, would you saythat, you know, with products
like adaptive pro core,whatever, that allows you to
focus more so on your niche. Sothen in those circumstances, a
monthly stand up, you can havethe information that you need
towards Nick, he can have whathe needs.
(22:30):
Are you tracking? Yeah, yeah.
100% I think it's directlycorrelated to scaling your
business, right? Nick. Nick isable to kind of, like, maybe
peel back a little bit and notbe in the weeds day to day,
like, that's that's my role.
That's what I'm getting into.
But then he writes the abilityto zoom in on each project,
because all of that data,financially on each project is
(22:50):
is getting populated daily insome way or another. And so he
can, he can look at all thoseand get a sense like, Hey, are
we should have hitting the fanor, or things going well outside
of just sitting down with myselfor Tim our controller? And, you
know, trying to decide, like,are we having issues on projects
(23:13):
or or not? Save saves him somesteps well. And
I think that probably goes like,you bringing up, like, the
hitting the fan comment like,that happens a lot in
construction, right? A lot offires need to put out for sure.
And would you say that? Like, Ithink efficiency is one thing
when building, especially like,through the ones adaptive. Well,
(23:34):
I've already got someone that'sdoing this. What's the time
savings on this? Actually? Is itthat important? Like, the work's
getting done, but the efficiencyof having information to make
decisions. What's your take onthat? Like, sure, like, we're
saving time. Like, sure, we'resaving the trim carpenter from
Gloucester, from having todrive, yeah, the city right, to
pick up. But that's like, evenmore so is like, dude, the
(23:56):
immediacy of information to makebetter decisions is a huge one.
We call it profit erosion. Butdo you have any thoughts on
that? Yeah,immediately, what comes to mind
is like, have being able to havethat live look at a budget,
right, right? And maybe aclient's like, Hey, how are you
know? How are we doing with ourbudget? Like, we try to provide,
(24:17):
like, monthly kind of updates.
Here's a look. See. Here's wherewe have savings. Here are some
overages, etc, whatever. But ifa client in passing is, like,
which has happened, you know,hey, do we have any savings left
on? Like, the cabinetry, lineitem? Like, we didn't, we didn't
do a certain scope. Oh, I'm notreally sure. Let me, let me look
(24:38):
at it. Get back to you. Like,okay, now I'm realizing that I
didn't process like an invoiceor receipt, and it's not value.
I mean, you could communicatelike an entirely incorrect value
or right, or you start buildingassuming that you have this
extra cash that you don't right.
Essentially, yeah. So, yes, 100%Well, I do okay. So that's what
(25:02):
the client lens, right? Like andlike, luxury building, like,
brand is everything, right?
Brand, quality of product, like,all that stuff is like,
Pinnacle. They're like, theywant a great experience, right?
But even internally, right? Likethe profit erosion side, you'd
made the comment earlier oflike, if you're not taking
(25:22):
pictures of receipts or you'renot tracking costs, you just use
the example of, did I invoicethem for AP that we had? Yeah.
And like, is it showed upappropriately, right? We do? We
have a partner down in Dallas,Chloe Brown, wildest dreams
consulting. She does, likeoperations and like financial
consulting, she did a case studyusing adaptive she was able to
(25:45):
uncover $5 million and unbilledcost Wow, from one of her
clients. And that was like, overthe course of, like, whatever
his career business or whateverthat's that's but insane, but
it's insane, but do when youthink about it, is it like if
this guy's doing 10 million ayear in revenue, Colin, right,
he's been doing it for 10 years,right? That's 5% right? That's
(26:10):
like, not that crazy. And like,when you're thinking about,
Okay, we've got $20,000invoices, $10,000 $5,000
invoices. We've got $25,000 incredit card receipts a year,
right? That could be a quarter,right? But whatever you get my
point, yeah, right, the bleedinginternally is so brutal. Do you
(26:30):
have any like, real timeexamples on that, or any
perspective around that? Yeah,for sure. I mean, even before we
were using adaptive, like pastsystems that we're capturing,
using receipts as an example. Imean, I would probably say that
there was, like, five to 7% ofcharges that maybe they just
weren't being job costedcorrectly, right? Like they just
(26:52):
ended up in this random bucket.
And, you know, you you would gothrough, like, we call them
missing receipts, essentially,at the end of the year, you're
like, how come none of thesemade it into a job cost? You
can't go back to the client andbe like, Oh, hey. Like, forgot
to bill you for this. Like,project's been done for four
months. I mean, maybe, but, butit
(27:14):
goes back to brand reputation,right? Yeah. So it's like, if
egg on your face to go back tobecause, like, let's say they're
buying an NS product, right?
Call it, like, a three, $4million product, right, right?
And you go back and you're like,hey, we actually uncovered that.
We didn't bill you for 15 grand.
Like, can you, like, stroke as acheck? They're like, I just
bought a $3 million home fromyou. You should be getting this.
(27:35):
No, I'm not.
Yeah, right, yeah, it's crazy.
So, yeah, I mean, there'sdefinitely many examples and
even even sub invoices that getsent to, maybe it wasn't the pm
it got sent to, you know,another person on the team and
got left in an inbox, or theywere on vacation, whatever,
(27:55):
right? Like, there's nocentralized place for those
invoices to go no clear contactto find that stuff is going to
get missed totally, and yourprofit erodes.
Profit erosion, baby, profiterosion. Um, dude, yeah, no, I
think, like, obviously, like,just to kind of like recap here,
(28:17):
like paying subs for sure. Like,I'm I'm bullish on that. I think
it's like a very low hangingopportunity for builders to
adopt very low friction, whetherit's adaptive or any other
product for that matter. Likegetting to ACH is advantageous
for both parties, more immediatepay, better relationships, more
(28:38):
clarity, better documentation,less fraud risk, right? A lot of
that stuff. But I'm morefascinated with, like, the
internal efficiencies theprocess gains. Because I think a
lot of people, they get soldbuilders, not just people,
builders, get sold a lot ofsoftware that's going to save
them a lot of time and a lot ofmoney, right? And then the
builders always stuck there,like, what is this actually
(29:00):
saving me, right? And you startto think about the internal
intricacies of, okay, we mightbe like cutting someone's hours
in half of doing this. That'sexciting and fun, but the
slippage to be to use aconstruction term, yeah? So in
cash, what's what's that supertechnical? Yeah, exactly. But
(29:22):
you think about all the stuffthat you miss and you and that's
where it's like, those are bignumbers. And a lot of guys, they
just, like, chalk it up the costof doing business. And it's it
just doesn't have to be thatway. Yeah,
no doubt. And I think, I thinkone of the like things that
people either they don'tappreciate or they don't
recognize, is, like, regardlessof what system you have, I don't
(29:43):
care, like, how efficient it is,you got to put in the time to
set it up for how you operate.
And totally and it's never easyto make a transition between
softwares and, you know, flipyour operations upside down.
But. Worth it. And once you havea system, you know, especially
for us, as we continue to growand we hire more people, you
(30:05):
know, we we do have standardoperating procedures that are
ever changing and growing. Butyou know, the steps of how we
operate from a operationalperspective to financial
perspective are written outpretty clearly, and that makes
life so much easier, where youcan basically hand somebody a
(30:26):
playbook and say, Hey, this ishow we do things. You know,
spend some time working throughit, and then we can dig into the
specifics together. Yeah, wouldyou? And I think this is about
and we can wrap this up here,but I think that was just kind
of a fascinating note to end onwhen you talk about because
moving the software can be anightmare. Yeah, I will do a
little plug to adapt. If ittakes easier, takes less time to
(30:50):
set it up than it does to buyWink, wink, but it's really easy
to set up. The point is, islike, how much of that is
attributed to the processes thatyou guys do have outlined? Like,
let's say you guys moved fromPro core to insert product,
sure, right? Is that, is thatdocumented process making it
easier for you to move products?
Is that what you're suggesting?
(31:13):
No, I think I'm suggesting likeyou find a product that is
appealing or enticing to you.
Then you, you know, essentiallyagree to go all in, commit to
it, yeah, and then, and then youwork through it, and, like,
you've you figure out, okay,there's some kinks here, and
this is a little weird. How dowe make that better? You know,
just another plug for you guys.
(31:36):
Like, you've been super helpful.
The adaptive team has been, youknow, very responsive, getting
us set up and working throughlike, little nuances that we've
had. But, yeah, I think I don'tknow if it's necessarily like,
Hey, here's a playbook. Thiscould apply to any other
software, because they are sodifferent, and there are certain
restrictions depending on what,what, of course, but, but at
(31:57):
least, like, it gives you aroadmap for how you know, if you
want to look at this high level,like how payments should get
processed, and who the playersare that are essentially
involved in that process, that'syou got to start there, right?
Yeah, exactly. So,beautiful, awesome. Well, no, I
(32:19):
think this was great. Julian, Iappreciate you. I think this was
a good episode, just in termslike talking efficiency process,
some of the big wins that moreoperationally minded individuals
can consider and therelationship to Financials. So I
appreciate you, dude, youbet, man, thanks for having me
on. Of course, enjoythe rest of your week, too. Ta,
Welcome to another episode ofbuilders budgets and beers.
(00:03):
Today we are joined with ourgood friend, Julian Miller from
NS builders up in Boston,Massachusetts. Today's episode
is going to be for the moreoperationally minded Contractors
of America, the individuals thatknow how to get worked on a job
site get product put up veryefficiently, but might not have
(00:24):
as strong of a comfort orconfidence when it comes to
financials, because Julie and I,we do back and forth in terms of
the relationship with operationsand financials and what needs to
be done and some tactics to makethis a nice, healthy, blended,
harmonious relationship for anyconstruction company. So let's
go ahead and jump in. We'll getto it
(00:53):
alrighty, Julian, we are live.
Dude, super, super happy to haveyou on the show. Thanks for
jumping on.
Yeah, great to be here. Reese,always a pleasure. Awesome,
awesome.
Okay, so for the listenerstoday, we have Julian Miller. He
is the director of operationsfor NS builders. Before I just
tell everybody your background,Julian, go ahead and fill in the
(01:15):
gaps and let the listeners knowwho's who's going to be talking
to him today. Yeah,I've been in the construction
business for close to, like 14years now. Started out in
commercial doing, you know,super large infrastructure
projects and laboratorybuildings, multi family stuff.
Fast Forward, got burnt out inthe commercial sector and wanted
(01:38):
to pursue the high end customhome building worlds, jumped
right into a custom builderlocally in Boston, my wife and I
ended up moving to NorthernCalifornia. Was lucky enough to
land a really cool job out thereand learn some pretty amazing
(01:59):
things, building like 20, 30,000square foot homes, you know,
super high net worth clients.
And then, you know, here we are,back in Boston, moved back to be
closer to family, and nowworking for Nick schifr at NS
builders. And it's builders beenin business for 11 years now,
(02:26):
and we're doing kind of avariety of remodels, custom new
builds, but definitely on, likethe higher end of the spectrum,
totally primarily in the BostonMarket, and a little bit north
and south of the city. Too.
Beautiful,beautiful. Okay, so I hear this
trend often. You know, it's notuncommon that guys will get
(02:46):
into, like, residentialbuilding, typically, like the
higher and stuff, with a littlebit of a background in
commercial. Now, just with yourI was, like, the first call it,
what, 10 years of your career,less than, less than commercial.
Six years. Yeah, six years, thefirst six years of your career,
yep, excuse me, um, you are inthe commercial world. How much
did that experience impact youroperational mind, we'll call it,
(03:09):
or at least, like your practicesthat are important to you. I
mean, 100% to be honest. Likecommercial world has a ton of
red tape. There's definitely alot of cons, I think, to the way
that they build ton a lot ofconsultants, so many people that
are, you know, touching acertain part of the project. But
(03:33):
I would say that the benefit ofof that experience was the
organizational structure systemsthat were defines that were, you
know, fairly efficient, that,you know, the teams, at least in
regions, were locally, followingthe same patterns. And so that
that kind of got instilled inme, definitely a type A
(03:57):
personality and like, I gottahave organization and structure,
and that obviously lends to,like, my position today,
totally. But yeah, it's played ahuge role in what we're doing
here at NS builders. And, youknow, trying to be forward
thinking in terms of the newtechnology that's out there,
both for financial but you know,other tools for takeoffs and 3d
(04:19):
scanning, starting to do somepre fabrication off site as
well. So lovely. Yeah, massive.
I loveit. Totally. Okay, so, and that
makes all the sense in theworld, right? I mean, you've
got, like, infrastructureprojects, large buildings,
you've got dozens, hundreds oftrades working all in the same
time, multiple people have ahand in it. It's got to be
process oriented. It's got to belike a tight operational motion
(04:41):
for it to make sense. Yeah, goahead.
No, there's, yeah, you have lessroom for error when more people
are involved. Maybe that's like,a little ironic, but there's,
you got to have those checklistsin order for things. Is to net,
(05:02):
the result that you're you'reshooting for, there makes
total sense. Makes total sense.
Okay, so, and with that said,like net, the result that you're
looking for, I want to focus on,obviously, with the nature of
the podcast being around projectfinancials, I wanted to hear
your take on the importance, or,I guess, the relationship,
rather, between operations andfinances, because we talked to a
(05:24):
lot of builders, and obviously,like, through the lens of
adaptive, it's an automated AItool that's, you know, taking a
lot of the manual data entry,and there's process efficiency
gains, but it's really more of alike an accounting tool. But we
see a lot of operations peopleget excited about seeing
adaptive Okay, so from yourstandpoint, being the Director
of Operations, heavy backgroundand commercial, what would you
(05:46):
say is, like the most importantcomponent, or the most glaring
relationship between operationsand financials?
I think it's there are so manymanual processes that are kind
of like, put in place, I thinkacross the majority, or a lot of
the residential custom builders,you know, it starts, starts with
(06:10):
the trades. Lot of guys areowner operators, you know, it's
not necessarily their fault, butthey don't. They don't have the
overhead to to be able to hire,like a bookkeeper, somebody
who's managing their invoicingprocess. So it can be cumbersome
to get invoices fromsubcontractors, which is mind
(06:31):
boggling to me, right? You wantto get paid, but you know, you
spend it all comes down to youspend a ton of time trying to
track down the correctinformation, you know, you're
trying to align it with maybe aschedule of values that that
you've developed through acontract with that sub right?
(06:56):
All of that information, youknow, comes to you, you're
inputting it to, you know,whatever software you're using,
and eventually it's making itover to the accounting team and
being able to streamline,streamline that process and make
it so, you know, perhaps it'syou're you're buying something
from your local lumber yard, andyou make that purchase with a
(07:19):
credit card. Hey, I can justtake a picture of the receipt
uploads to in this case, youknow, we're obviously utilizing
adaptive. Adaptive quickly isrecognizing what job it's for,
maybe making a recommendationfor how to job cost it within
that specific budget, and thenboom, it moves into the next
(07:43):
sort of flow of review, and thenthat gets populated into an
invoice. But in the past, Ithink a lot of that, even still
today, a lot of those purchaserpurchases are being made, and
people are losing the receipts.
You know, you you forget whatjob it's for, because maybe
you're running multiple jobs,and then, right, that's easily
(08:05):
translated to lost revenue, andnobody knows the difference. And
then, you know, it translatesto, well, how are we tracking
this in our books? Like all I'mlooking at is our our gross
profit, you know, is much lowerthan we were expecting it to be.
How could that be? So, you know,obviously, it's, it's a big
(08:25):
network that ties together, andI think you got to have harmony
between operations andfinancials. Otherwise, you know,
you're, you're going to have areally hard time being
successful totallywell. And I think that's even
like with the so that wasperfect. I mean, from an
(08:46):
operation standpoint, typically,what I see is, like, operations
are typically people, like inthe field too, right? Like,
operations are looking atproject managers, and they're
making sure that, like, subinventor relationships are at
navigating and, you know, theprojects they're moving along
appropriately. And I thinkthat's typically like, where the
disconnect happens is it's like,Look, I'm just a project
manager, or I might be a projectmanager that's might be stepping
(09:09):
up into more of a leadershiprole, and it might be titled as,
like an operations person, andunderstanding that yes, you're
getting an invoice handed to youin the field, or you're having a
subcontractor email that invoiceto you. Like knowing that the
flow and every step of aninvoice sitting in your inbox
for a day, two days, three days,longer than it needs to or gets
(09:31):
lost is going to be impacting,you know, due dates on bills or
terms for early discount fees oreven just getting that
individual paid, yeah, in atimely manner to maintain a
relationship. It's all hand inhand. So I see a lot of builders
and operations people, they'restarting to get more interested
in, like, speeding up thatprocess as a whole. But there
(09:52):
still can be, like, thisdisconnect of like, it's gonna
get paid or it's not that big ofa deal. So. Like, where would
you say you've seen, like, thebiggest benefit or impact
coming, like, considering yourbackground, even adaptive aside,
if adaptive was in that play.
But like, what have you seen,like, the biggest operational
enhancements that you guys havemade, and how has that impacted
(10:13):
financials?
Yeah, I think you know to startfrom the top. We we pay the
majority of our subcontractorselectronically. So okay, if
again, go back to adaptive likefor we connect all of ourselves
within the ACH payment.
Truthfully, like, that's huge.
(10:37):
Occasionally, we get a littlebit of pushback from subs. But
you know, the amount of timesthat people reach out and say,
hey, you know, I haven'treceived that check. It's been
three weeks. Go off in the mail.
We got to send it again, and youknow, it was missing the
signature. It's brutal,if I don't ruin your train of
thought here, do you want tokeep going? Go for it, because I
do hear that like, bizarre, butit's like, like, the
(11:04):
construction industry is marriedto a check. Yes, not, not money,
the check, yeah, the physicalcheck, yeah. Why is that? Why? I
don'tknow. Man, I literally got a
text today from a sub who said,hey, you know, been having
issues with checks showing up inthe mail. I can just stop by
your office and pick it up,and that's okay go.
(11:30):
I mean, it's just, like,drastically inefficient. It's
like, you're gonna drive, youknow, maybe an hour out of your
day to come and pick up a checkand then go bring it to the bank
and deposit it when you couldbe, you know, on a job site,
doing an estimate, whatever,anything other than freaking
picking up a tripto pick up a check, yeah, well,
and so why did, why don't? Whyisn't that normal? Okay, like, I
(11:52):
think that's like, okay, that'sit's obvious, or it seems
obvious to us, but why isn'tthat obvious to everybody,
what's the disconnect? You know,I personally, I feel like it
probably has to do with agenerational imbalance. Okay,
like, okay, you know, not, notto rag on, on the old dogs here,
(12:13):
because those are the guys.
Yeah, a ton of experience. But,you know, it tends to be those
companies who've been inbusiness for a long time,
they've been doing it one way.
They don't want to mix it up.
You know, there's like a fear ofbeing scammed, you know, which
is totally reasonable. Surethere's also, you know, maybe
they've already signed up with acouple electronic payment
(12:36):
systems through other builders,companies that they work for,
and they're like, I've just hadenough. I don't want to have
another freaking login. Youknow, send me a totally,
totally. That's, that's trulythe only, the only thing that I
can come up with that wouldvalidate receiving a physical
check as opposed to doing it'slike, when, when you get paid,
(12:57):
you probably are getting paidthrough direct deposit. Like,
imagine if your employer waslike, Oh, I mailed you a check,
but you're actually not going tosee it for two weeks, dude.
I don't get intolerable. Like,there's, there's no way that
would be tolerated. Like, in ourworld, I just, like, I would be
baffled. I'd be like, What?
What? Yeah. But it also goesback to like, okay, so
(13:18):
generational, sure. I get itlike old dogs, new tricks. Cut
me my check. It's in my hand. Ican feel it. I get it. I was
raised by one right? But theother side of this too is like,
do you think they understand thecost associated? Like, if you
just, like, broke down wheresome of these, let's just say
that a sub is in I don't know.
(13:40):
What do you work with a southernGloucester? Is that how you say
it? North Shore? Yeah, younailed it, sure. Gloucester.
Okay, great, yeah. Okay, solet's say we've got trim
carpenter up in Gloucester, andhe's going down to white oak and
Wellesley, right? What's thatcommute look like? What's a
Gloucester to Wellesley commuteat five o'clock on a Friday?
Look like, oh,I mean, hour and a half, two
hours, maybe would trap one way,or round trip one way, like, one
(14:04):
way, yeah? Okay, you get, youknow, smoke during rush hour
easily.
What about the Wellesley toGloucester? Yeah. I mean,
it depends on, like, the samemorning or day, but people going
out of the city, 100%right? Okay, so let's just say,
hypothetically, trim carpenter,yeah, in Gloucester, right?
That's where he resides. Cute,little family, healthy, little
(14:26):
business going on, but he's downin the city, and he's got a
couple of projects going, andhe's like, damn, I gotta get
paid by Nick and the team. Sohe's gonna drive over to Ms
builders. Where do you guys?
Where are you seaport? Where'syour office?
Yeah, we're right in SouthBoston, seaport area, beautiful.
So he's making his way down toSouth Boston, and call, like,
half an hour to get there, andthen he's got to get all the way
(14:47):
back to Gloucester, and it's anhour and a half, but he was
already going to go there. Butif you start looking at the cost
of, like, if you could have justgone from the job to home, and
you cut an hour and a half outon a weekly basis, not even
including the fuel, which, ofcourse, you're going to expense,
right? A business expense, butit's still time. It's like,
Yeah, dude, that's a that's $100call it. Let's say you're $100
an hour guy. That's $100by multiple jobs that you might
(15:08):
be doing too, right? You know,totally hitting up the other
builders. And, yeah,doesn't make it's insane. It's
insane. And then you think, andit's like, dude, okay, I get it.
Like, maybe that's your podcasttime. Maybe you enjoy it, sure.
But dude, you could listen to apodcast in your recliner at home
and still have money in youraccount. It's just crazy to me.
So Okay, no, that was like atotally a side tangent, but it
(15:32):
makes a ton of sense from anoperational and finance
standpoint, like just speed ofpayment, speed of payment,
cutting those steps outinternally. What does that look
like for you guys? Like, whatdid that look like before
adaptive or any ACH product?
Like, what would that would itbe like checks, printing them,
signing them, someone at thedesk? What did that look like
for you guys? Yeah, weso we've always kind of used a
(15:52):
either a fractional accountingteam or someone who's been
remote, okay, and so, you know,we had to use bill.com at one
point in time, sure. And so thatbill.com was was cutting chef
checks from like, a randomlocation. And so it was being
managed by the financial teamthat we had. I think I'm sure at
(16:14):
one point, Nick was probablycutting checks and physically,
like handing them to people ormailing them out. But, yeah,
that's that's no longer thecase. Like everything runs
through adaptive, and I wouldsay 99% of our subs have signed
up. And, yeah, super easy tolike track, and you can, you
(16:34):
know, send them a snapshot. Hey,this hits your account. They
also get a notification, youknow, they can see when it's
coming. So, you know, I thinkit's peace of mind for them.
Cool. Okay, so you guys havealmost just been like, and I
knowing you and Nick over theyears, like you guys are very
forward thinking, like, verytech driven efficiency process
type people. So that makessense. Okay, so I think, and
(16:57):
before I cut you off, I wantedto stop you, like, I didn't want
to ruin your train of thought.
But there, I think there was asecond piece that you were going
to be talking about, gettingsubs paid in a timely manner, is
like, a huge one for you. Butwas there, I think there was
another piece that you're goingto dive into,
yeah. I mean, I think like so sowe use Procore to manage all of
our project documents, but alsothe financial side of of the
(17:20):
business right now, and wereally like that, because it's,
it's it sort of houses all ofevery project, subcontractor,
Po, vendor, whatever you want tocall them, their cost of work.
You know, we're managing changeorders, both with a client and
the subs. And then ultimatelywe're we're connecting with
(17:43):
adaptive and they're pushingdirect costs, essentially the
receipts, back and forth, andwe're running all of our
invoicing through Procore,excuse me. And then that gets
connected to QuickBooks Online,essentially, and and sent out to
our clients. But it's the reasonwhy we've decided to do that is
(18:05):
because it's keeping everythingin one location and so totally
again, going back to thatefficiency discussion, and from
an operations perspective, ourproject managers can go directly
into, you know, each projectthat they're they're running in
the Procore, they can see whatis the current live health of
(18:25):
every project across the board,based on the budget, you know,
where they're at in a currentinvoice cycle. And that that
communicates directly with ouraccounting team. So, you know,
gives the accounting live lookat, you know, what's our current
AP accounting is communicatingto us. Hey, you know, we just
received payment from so and soclient like, are we good to pay
(18:49):
these guys? And we can gothrough that list pretty quickly
and check that off as, Yep,good, totally, low or not. So
yeah, we've, I feel like we'vebeen able to develop a pretty
robust and streamlined system atthis point, totally well,
and I think so there's obviouslyProcore is, like, a very popular
(19:11):
tool. It's, I would call it moreuncommon for, like, residential
builders to be on Procore. Butlike, let's even just like
Procore side brand aside, right?
We could say builder trend, jobtread, Rezi, oh, co
constructive, for the builderthat's out there. That's like, I
don't understand the benefit oflike, going to from an
(19:35):
operational like, bridging thegap between operations and
financials, and that bridgebetween software doing it, what
would your like point be to themto say, like, you've got to get
on software, like you can't dothis in Excel, you can't do this
in whatever. What would yourpoint to them be?
Yeah, I think, I think it'slike, it's pretty simple. It
comes down to, do you want tohave a true look into your
(19:57):
profitability? I. Like, let's dodevil's advocate. Let's say that
they say they do, what are theymissing?
Well, you could argue, okay,you're, you know, you're
manually entering the majorityof your information. There's,
there's got to be a percentageof of air like, human error that
is happening, sure.
Spreadsheets, uh, equations,whatever your formulas should
(20:22):
have. And, like, we've all beenthere, right? So, like, Yeah, I
think it's really you got to becareful that if you're solely
going to rely on that. But itcomes back to efficiency and
time, right? Like, you're,you're entering this stuff one
by one, as opposed to maybeentering it once and then it's
(20:42):
pushing down the line,essentially, and in populating
that information in multipleplaces, totally, yeah, having
having a true look at your yourprofitability, you know that
that obviously can lead to, hey,do I need to hire somebody? Do I
have the cash flow to be able tohire somebody? You know, can I,
(21:03):
can I issue bonuses to my teamif, if I have a team, you know,
what? What are the company goalslike, how are we tracking the
metrics? You know, it's just,it's creating a database for you
that you can make long termdecisions that are, hope,
hopefully beneficial to yourcompany, totally close to living
(21:26):
sort of in a vacuum and lookingat high level every day.
Sure, I always, you know, justcoming from builder trend, it
was always more of like, like aframework, right? It's like, it
provides a framework and avisibility into your business.
But I think it also it startsto, like, break out the team,
(21:48):
right? Based on who needs to be,looking at what function. That
makes me think of I think Nickhad a post recently about you
doing a stand up for your teamon a job site. Are you familiar
with what I'mtalking about? Yeah, you might
do this all the time. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Nick, Nick's point was somethingalong the lines of, like, he's
like the visionary, like thelike, the the Forward Thinking
(22:09):
guy. You're much more like theday to day operations side of
things. Like, would you saythat, you know, with products
like adaptive pro core,whatever, that allows you to
focus more so on your niche. Sothen in those circumstances, a
monthly stand up, you can havethe information that you need
towards Nick, he can have whathe needs.
(22:30):
Are you tracking? Yeah, yeah.
100% I think it's directlycorrelated to scaling your
business, right? Nick. Nick isable to kind of, like, maybe
peel back a little bit and notbe in the weeds day to day,
like, that's that's my role.
That's what I'm getting into.
But then he writes the abilityto zoom in on each project,
because all of that data,financially on each project is
(22:50):
is getting populated daily insome way or another. And so he
can, he can look at all thoseand get a sense like, Hey, are
we should have hitting the fanor, or things going well outside
of just sitting down with myselfor Tim our controller? And, you
know, trying to decide, like,are we having issues on projects
(23:13):
or or not? Save saves him somesteps well. And
I think that probably goes like,you bringing up, like, the
hitting the fan comment like,that happens a lot in
construction, right? A lot offires need to put out for sure.
And would you say that? Like, Ithink efficiency is one thing
when building, especially like,through the ones adaptive. Well,
(23:34):
I've already got someone that'sdoing this. What's the time
savings on this? Actually? Is itthat important? Like, the work's
getting done, but the efficiencyof having information to make
decisions. What's your take onthat? Like, sure, like, we're
saving time. Like, sure, we'resaving the trim carpenter from
Gloucester, from having todrive, yeah, the city right, to
pick up. But that's like, evenmore so is like, dude, the
(23:56):
immediacy of information to makebetter decisions is a huge one.
We call it profit erosion. Butdo you have any thoughts on
that? Yeah,immediately, what comes to mind
is like, have being able to havethat live look at a budget,
right, right? And maybe aclient's like, Hey, how are you
know? How are we doing with ourbudget? Like, we try to provide,
(24:17):
like, monthly kind of updates.
Here's a look. See. Here's wherewe have savings. Here are some
overages, etc, whatever. But ifa client in passing is, like,
which has happened, you know,hey, do we have any savings left
on? Like, the cabinetry, lineitem? Like, we didn't, we didn't
do a certain scope. Oh, I'm notreally sure. Let me, let me look
(24:38):
at it. Get back to you. Like,okay, now I'm realizing that I
didn't process like an invoiceor receipt, and it's not value.
I mean, you could communicatelike an entirely incorrect value
or right, or you start buildingassuming that you have this
extra cash that you don't right.
Essentially, yeah. So, yes, 100%Well, I do okay. So that's what
(25:02):
the client lens, right? Like andlike, luxury building, like,
brand is everything, right?
Brand, quality of product, like,all that stuff is like,
Pinnacle. They're like, theywant a great experience, right?
But even internally, right? Likethe profit erosion side, you'd
made the comment earlier oflike, if you're not taking
(25:22):
pictures of receipts or you'renot tracking costs, you just use
the example of, did I invoicethem for AP that we had? Yeah.
And like, is it showed upappropriately, right? We do? We
have a partner down in Dallas,Chloe Brown, wildest dreams
consulting. She does, likeoperations and like financial
consulting, she did a case studyusing adaptive she was able to
(25:45):
uncover $5 million and unbilledcost Wow, from one of her
clients. And that was like, overthe course of, like, whatever
his career business or whateverthat's that's but insane, but
it's insane, but do when youthink about it, is it like if
this guy's doing 10 million ayear in revenue, Colin, right,
he's been doing it for 10 years,right? That's 5% right? That's
(26:10):
like, not that crazy. And like,when you're thinking about,
Okay, we've got $20,000invoices, $10,000 $5,000
invoices. We've got $25,000 incredit card receipts a year,
right? That could be a quarter,right? But whatever you get my
point, yeah, right, the bleedinginternally is so brutal. Do you
(26:30):
have any like, real timeexamples on that, or any
perspective around that? Yeah,for sure. I mean, even before we
were using adaptive, like pastsystems that we're capturing,
using receipts as an example. Imean, I would probably say that
there was, like, five to 7% ofcharges that maybe they just
weren't being job costedcorrectly, right? Like they just
(26:52):
ended up in this random bucket.
And, you know, you you would gothrough, like, we call them
missing receipts, essentially,at the end of the year, you're
like, how come none of thesemade it into a job cost? You
can't go back to the client andbe like, Oh, hey. Like, forgot
to bill you for this. Like,project's been done for four
months. I mean, maybe, but, butit
(27:14):
goes back to brand reputation,right? Yeah. So it's like, if
egg on your face to go back tobecause, like, let's say they're
buying an NS product, right?
Call it, like, a three, $4million product, right, right?
And you go back and you're like,hey, we actually uncovered that.
We didn't bill you for 15 grand.
Like, can you, like, stroke as acheck? They're like, I just
bought a $3 million home fromyou. You should be getting this.
(27:35):
No, I'm not.
Yeah, right, yeah, it's crazy.
So, yeah, I mean, there'sdefinitely many examples and
even even sub invoices that getsent to, maybe it wasn't the pm
it got sent to, you know,another person on the team and
got left in an inbox, or theywere on vacation, whatever,
(27:55):
right? Like, there's nocentralized place for those
invoices to go no clear contactto find that stuff is going to
get missed totally, and yourprofit erodes.
Profit erosion, baby, profiterosion. Um, dude, yeah, no, I
think, like, obviously, like,just to kind of like recap here,
(28:17):
like paying subs for sure. Like,I'm I'm bullish on that. I think
it's like a very low hangingopportunity for builders to
adopt very low friction, whetherit's adaptive or any other
product for that matter. Likegetting to ACH is advantageous
for both parties, more immediatepay, better relationships, more
(28:38):
clarity, better documentation,less fraud risk, right? A lot of
that stuff. But I'm morefascinated with, like, the
internal efficiencies theprocess gains. Because I think a
lot of people, they get soldbuilders, not just people,
builders, get sold a lot ofsoftware that's going to save
them a lot of time and a lot ofmoney, right? And then the
builders always stuck there,like, what is this actually
(29:00):
saving me, right? And you startto think about the internal
intricacies of, okay, we mightbe like cutting someone's hours
in half of doing this. That'sexciting and fun, but the
slippage to be to use aconstruction term, yeah? So in
cash, what's what's that supertechnical? Yeah, exactly. But
(29:22):
you think about all the stuffthat you miss and you and that's
where it's like, those are bignumbers. And a lot of guys, they
just, like, chalk it up the costof doing business. And it's it
just doesn't have to be thatway. Yeah,
no doubt. And I think, I thinkone of the like things that
people either they don'tappreciate or they don't
recognize, is, like, regardlessof what system you have, I don't
(29:43):
care, like, how efficient it is,you got to put in the time to
set it up for how you operate.
And totally and it's never easyto make a transition between
softwares and, you know, flipyour operations upside down.
But. Worth it. And once you havea system, you know, especially
for us, as we continue to growand we hire more people, you
(30:05):
know, we we do have standardoperating procedures that are
ever changing and growing. Butyou know, the steps of how we
operate from a operationalperspective to financial
perspective are written outpretty clearly, and that makes
life so much easier, where youcan basically hand somebody a
(30:26):
playbook and say, Hey, this ishow we do things. You know,
spend some time working throughit, and then we can dig into the
specifics together. Yeah, wouldyou? And I think this is about
and we can wrap this up here,but I think that was just kind
of a fascinating note to end onwhen you talk about because
moving the software can be anightmare. Yeah, I will do a
little plug to adapt. If ittakes easier, takes less time to
(30:50):
set it up than it does to buyWink, wink, but it's really easy
to set up. The point is, islike, how much of that is
attributed to the processes thatyou guys do have outlined? Like,
let's say you guys moved fromPro core to insert product,
sure, right? Is that, is thatdocumented process making it
easier for you to move products?
Is that what you're suggesting?
(31:13):
No, I think I'm suggesting likeyou find a product that is
appealing or enticing to you.
Then you, you know, essentiallyagree to go all in, commit to
it, yeah, and then, and then youwork through it, and, like,
you've you figure out, okay,there's some kinks here, and
this is a little weird. How dowe make that better? You know,
just another plug for you guys.
(31:36):
Like, you've been super helpful.
The adaptive team has been, youknow, very responsive, getting
us set up and working throughlike, little nuances that we've
had. But, yeah, I think I don'tknow if it's necessarily like,
Hey, here's a playbook. Thiscould apply to any other
software, because they are sodifferent, and there are certain
restrictions depending on what,what, of course, but, but at
(31:57):
least, like, it gives you aroadmap for how you know, if you
want to look at this high level,like how payments should get
processed, and who the playersare that are essentially
involved in that process, that'syou got to start there, right?
Yeah, exactly. So,beautiful, awesome. Well, no, I
(32:19):
think this was great. Julian, Iappreciate you. I think this was
a good episode, just in termslike talking efficiency process,
some of the big wins that moreoperationally minded individuals
can consider and therelationship to Financials. So I
appreciate you, dude, youbet, man, thanks for having me
on. Of course, enjoythe rest of your week, too. Ta,
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!