Builder Stories

Jared Davis left Stripe to take over a family business that sells house plans to builders across the US and Canada. Today Architectural Designs represents 28,000 plans from around 200 designers and sells to tens of thousands of builders every year. In this conversation he shares what that buying data reveals about regional growth and shifting design tastes. He also makes the case that a stock plan can get a builder to a custom design faster than starting from scratch. In this episode you will learn: Why the "pre-drawn" stigma is costing builders time in preconstruction The question to ask before hiring an in-house designer The home style that dominated the last decade and what's replacing it The regions where home building growth is spiking, according to what people are buying What a life-size floor plan walkthrough revealed about how buyers decide Resources: Hear the full conversation on Builder Stories. Learn more about Architectural Designs here.

An agent is just a program that runs on a timer and does one job for you. IT Director Jeremy Wood has about 30 of them working inside of a large, 80 year old design build firm that handles projects from handyman jobs to whole-house remodels. They sync the CRM, process AP, reconcile vendor invoices, check estimates against scopes of work, and much more. Here, Jeremy explains what agents are, how to run them, and why the version most people picture is the version you should never build. He even used agents to select construction software and had a graded shortlist of options before he ever spoke to a salesperson. In this episode you will learn: What an AI agent really is in plain language, and why the simplest ones are doing the most valuable work at Neil Kelly The one thing Jeremy refuses to let AI do in a business process, and what he has it do instead What Jeremy learned he was really building when he thought he was building agents The three levels of company technology, and why agents only work if the bottom two are solid Why mid-size companies are falling behind smaller ones on AI right now, and how a small shop can turn that into an advantage Resources: Hear the full conversation on Builder Stories. Learn more about the Neil Kelly Company here.

Todd Milton inherited his father's sterling reputation as an Appomattox, Virginia home builder, then nearly ran the company into the ground. He then attended a two-day conference that exposed how badly he had been pricing jobs, and that same year he closed the books $100,000 in debt. He rebuilt his pricing, rewrote his contract into something that protected him, and slowly turned a business run off a legal pad into one with real financial software behind it. Today he's learning when and how to step back and let his team lead. In this episode you will learn: The pricing myth he believed for nearly a decade that bled his company dry The unconventional method he used to climb out of six figures in debt The formula that finally showed him what he actually needed to charge to turn a profit How long it really took before his marketing investment started paying off The advice from a client that changed the way he leads his team Resources: Hear the full conversation on Builder Stories. Learn more about Todd's work here.

Canon Baldridge started Integria in 2023 with no connections in California and no book of business to fall back on. Every hire since has forced him to redefine his own role, from hands on tools to project management to marketing and sales. He has assembled a stack of software and outside partners piece by piece, adding each one only when the last version of the business stopped working. Three years in he is rebranding as a design build firm because a run of change orders proved the model itself had outgrown its usefulness. In this episode you will learn: The software stack Canon runs a four person company on, and the one piece he preaches like the gospel The outside partners Canon relies on for clarity, branding, and administrative help How Canon divides work between a virtual assistant and AI so neither one runs unchecked The weekly meeting he and his wife have not missed in two years, and the $200 rule that guarantees it The two words Canon says every owner needs before they can build anything worth keeping Listen to the full episode and learn more about Integria here.  

Dan Flansburg started his New Jersey remodeling company in 2011 with a truck, a set of tools, and no business plan. For three years in the middle of that run, several of his employees took home more money than he did. Around 2018 he stopped treating marketing as an expense and hired a real web team, an SEO company, and a professional photographer. Three years ago he added video, and he now calls it the biggest change his company has made. In this episode you will learn: What Dan tracks on every job and the three years he lost by not tracking it The six weeks off his feet that taught him to delegate for the first time The two outside programs that helped him scale the company and improve operational efficiency How he handles scripting for his videos, and who's on the video team The two kinds of callers he can tell apart within a few qualifying questions Listen to the episode to learn more. Resources: Learn more about Flansburg Construction here.