Discover Effective Strategies to Boost Your Earnings and Achieve Your Profit Goals

Are you constantly striving to hit your profit goals, yet finding yourself coming up short?

It can be tough for builders to maximize their profits while also providing quality work and satisfying clients.

In this episode, we’re here to help you uncover common pitfalls that might be limiting your profits and gain valuable insights on how to achieve your desired financial targets.

Join us and Shinn Builder Partnerships in uncovering the game-changing solution you’ve been searching for. Watch/Listen/Read now!

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Transcripts:

Rick: Today in Conversations That Convert, we have a special guest for interviewing Emma Jane Wildermuth from the Shinn Consulting Group. We’re going to talk more about what they do for builders, how they can help you out, and some of the biggest impacts they see coming up for builders. In 2024, let’s get started.

Narrator: Welcome to Conversations That Convert. Every week, we’ll spend about 10 to 15 minutes tackling relevant lead generation, marketing, and sales topics for remodelers, home improvement companies, and home builders. Conversations That Convert is brought to you by Builder Lead Converter your perfect sales assistant.

And now here’s Rick and Daiana.

Rick: Hey everyone, welcome to Conversations That Convert, Daiana is off today. But I want to introduce a very special guest to the show. This is Emma Jane from the Shin Group. Emma, welcome to Conversations That Convert. 

Emma: Oh, thank you for having me today, Rick. I’m really excited to join you today.

Rick: I’m very excited to have you as well. We just got back from the International Builders Show. We talked down there, and I don’t think I even shared this with you, but back, I mean, I’m dating myself a little bit here, but I first heard about the shin group back in, I want to say the early nineties, 

Rick: I began my career, because your dad, Chuck, Chuck shin was kind of like the guru go to guy for our builders that wanted to figure out their internal processes and focus on, uh, efficiencies and profitability and all that stuff.

And so here we are, second generation now, and you’ll be able to tell your story of you being in the business. And I finally got to meet Chuck who at the builder show and how old is he? 

Emma: He will be 80 next Friday or no, this Friday, actually. 

Rick: He, well, yeah, don’t get that wrong. 

Emma: St. Patty’s day is always a 

Rick: special 

Emma: day.

Rick: And your mom is also Emma Jane. Is that right? She’s 

Emma: Emma. 

Rick: Yeah. 

Emma: It’s a family name. I’m the fourth generation. My daughter’s the fifth generation. We’ll see if it continues beyond that. 

Rick: Well, and Emma, your mom was really instrumental in the business too. She’s done a lot with the accounting. I mean, you can tell all that story as well as we talk, but, um, Super exciting to have you here and, and, uh, talking to us on the show.

But why don’t we start off with just giving us some background on, on the company and, you know, who are you and, and, you know, how did you get to be here talking to me and conversations that converged? 

Emma: Well, um, our company actually, the. The inception of our company, it goes all the way back into the sixties.

So Chuck started with the NHB as a, um, inner, uh, as an economist, a junior economist, and, um, fell in love with the home building industry, as he says numerous times, it’s a disease. Um, and he, uh, He got, um, he met Lee Evans in the early 70s and was recruited by Lee Evans and the University of Denver to come to Colorado.

So we picked up, moved our family to Colorado and my mom and him helped out at the University of Denver. They helped get the construction management school set up with the business school. Um, and one of the things that he thought was really important is that his students would have to a way to get experience before they went out into the real world.

So Chuck and Emma started a home building business for two reasons. One, to give their students an opportunity to get experience and two, to use their business as a laboratory. So all of the concepts that they’ve been studying since the sixties, they put to the test in their home building company. 

Rick: Um, 

Emma: they built homes until the early nineties.

So you are correct in saying in the early nineties, um, Lee Evans was retiring from doing seminars and Chuck and Emma went to him and said, Hey, there’s nobody here to do seminars for you. So they took over the seminar. the seminars from Lee Evans and they expanded them. So the concept behind all of our seminars and our education is based in, um, education, education first and foremost.

And it’s almost like, I like to call it, it’s like an MBA for a home builder in builder language. So you go to these classes and they’ve teach you how to manage your company in a way that builders can understand and that builders can relate to. And it’s programs from managing for profit for the whole company to the superintendent and to the purchasing agent.

Um, and beyond that, we work with our clients one on one if they want us to come in and help them, um, implement some of the things they’re learning in our classes. 

Rick: So let’s, let’s dig into that a little, a little bit more. And I never knew that Chuck and your mom also had a home building company. And so, yeah, so it’s like, well, instead of we’ll be the guinea pig, right?

So we’ll test it out on our own. If it works for us, we can improve the concept to somebody else. That’s a very cool, very cool concept. And I remember Lee Evans. Now I do remember that name. I didn’t realize it was right around the early nineties. retired. But let’s dig in a builder comes to you. U are some of the typical i bring to the table that y as 

Emma: part of your education Profit profitability in their organization.

There’s inefficiencies in certain departments. So for instance, a lot of, a lot of the builders we were working with in the last couple of years was in their purchasing department to help them get their purchasing department set up and working efficiently with the supply chain as it was during 2020, all the way through till about 2022.

Um, The purchasing departments were hiring brand new people who really didn’t have a whole lot of experience in home building manage in home building to begin with. And purchasing was just as Ed, Ed Houck says, please, please, please, when, when, when. Um, and so we’ve had to go through and help some of our builders get that purchasing department back in order and help them really understand how to get back into negotiating and getting the, the department to be more efficient.

Um, the other issue, you know, obviously we saw this, the schedules. Kind of go by the wayside because they just had to try to get things done as best they could. And now trying to backtrack that. So we have our consultants who’ve gone in and really find helped the builders fine tune their schedule and get everything back on track by, by evaluating what their systems like, where the holes are, how they can work with their trade partners better, how they can work with their systems internally as well, and really fine tune that schedule and get their schedules back on track.

Rick: Are you saying Emma, uh, that So pre covid, let’s just say 

Emma: we were 

Rick: pretty good with our purchasing, we were pretty good with our scheduling and then covid comes in and Everything goes haywire again. And so now you’re kind of. Untraining and bringing people back to 2019, if you will. 

Emma: Yeah. I mean, yes, there’s always room for improvement.

And I think what COVID did was really show where the pitfalls were, where the holes were in the systems that were already there, or may not have been as solid as. As they believed, um, in the past couple of years, what we’ve been doing with our builders is really helping them get back to the basics and understanding where they have to, where they have to look in order to fine tune where their, where their pitfalls are.

So we’ll look at, I mean, even looking at just the financials, a lot of times we’ll look at a financial statement from our builders and be able to, to pick out. Um, where their inefficiencies are. And that’s one of Emma’s specialties. So a lot of times if we’re, we have a builder, we’ll ask for them to send over their financials, we’ll sit with Emma and she’s like, Oh, they have too many employees or they don’t have enough employees or their direct construction costs are off or their schedules are off.

I can tell by their finances, how the financial expenses that they’re, they’re spending too much time with, with a product on the ground and not getting their things. Their house is done as quickly. So there’s a lot of different ways that we’ve gone in looking at, um, the builder and, and helping them figure out how to fine tune that.

Rick: Well, and let’s plug Emma, your mom’s. Mm-Hmm, . Let’s plug her book, the book that she wrote back in the early seventies. What’s the name of it? 

Emma: It’s actually right there. Um. On the other side of my shoulder, accounting and financial management. I have it very strategically placed. So on all my webinars, you should be able to see that.

Um, she wrote the first edition. I believe it was in 1975. Um, they rewrote it a couple of times and then this, and without putting an edition number, and I believe that’s the sixth edition she’s written. It will be the last one that she’s written. She’ll be 79 at the end of April. So she doesn’t have any plans to write any more accounting books.

Rick: And the numbers don’t lie, right? When you look at those, it’s just like, no, the numbers don’t lie. So let’s talk, let’s go back to purchasing a little bit. Um, I hear, this is the common story is that inflation keeps going up. Trades keep wanting more and more money. Suppliers are raising prices. Obviously the builder is saying, well, I need to raise my prices until they get to the point where now they’re saying, I can’t sell them too expensive, you know?

Right. So, What should a builder be doing today as it relates to purchasing? 

Emma: So it’s, that’s, it’s kind of a loaded question because there’s a lot more than just the purchasing. It’s really evaluating your product and evaluating where the waste is. Um, and with your purchasing as well is looking at your, um, what you’re putting into a home and really evaluating are those things adding value to the home or are there things that you can take out and we’ve done a couple different webinars where we talk about the bones of your house and making sure you’re building your your envelope efficiently and then really leaving the money where it needs to be to make the house look nice and and welcoming but also being aware that some of the things that builders are putting into their homes.

The buyers don’t have value for that. They don’t value those things. And as builders and as owners of our organization, a lot of times, I mean, somebody was asking me, um, builders homes that they build, regardless if it’s production or custom, they’re, it’s literally their baby. These homes are their baby.

And they put, they want them to be perfect and beautiful. Their representation of who the builder is, particularly with the builders we work with, we generally work with midsize private builders. And, um, so they’re very protective of making sure that everything looks nice. However, um. Many times they’re over putting too many things i buyers aren’t willing to so they’re losing margin inflating the cost of the price of their home.

So a important to do is go bac What am I putting into my home? Am I meeting the numbers? We recommend a, a direct construction cost of about 50%. So if you’re selling a house for 250,000, I know that’s not realistic, but it’s easy for math, $250,000. Your direct construction cost should be about $125,000.

Interesting. Um. So if you’re using that as a metric now that now you’re not focused on the emotion so much, you’re focused on the numbers and then you can add the emotion and getting your team together and really working with your internal team and your trade partners to help find ways to save costs.

Rick: Yeah, that’s that’s really, that’s really interesting. So let’s, let’s look at the next thing you mentioned scheduling. What should a builder be really focusing on as it relates to scheduling in 2024? 

Emma: Again, um, looking at the efficiency of your, of your systems, um, but working with your trade partners and working with your team to figure out where those pitfalls are, where are you losing time, really diving into the numbers on your schedule, looking at your schedule and seeing, okay, how, how many times did we allocate for this amount, this particular Uh, part of the production.

Let’s say it’s framing. How many days did we schedule for framing? Are we still staying within that same time frame? Or is our framer taking more time than they need? Are we, um, and if so, why? Really digging in and asking why? I know one of the things that we talk about in our classes, particularly Ed’s favorite thing is talking about the manpower report.

And, you know, when you go to kindergarten, what’s the first thing that the kindergarten teacher does? They take attendance, right? Is Bobby here? Sarah? So and so and so and so. And then, you know, you have a full class. Many times we don’t take attendance of who we have on the job site. And so really taking the time to understand who’s on the job site, making sure you have the best teams, making sure that, um, they’re there for the scheduled amount of time, making sure that you also have your, your team, your trades being respectful of the person who’s coming after them.

That’s very helpful. And it comes down to. being the builder of choice. And that’s one of the things we talk about all the time is being a builder of choice, making sure the schedules are correct, making sure you’re working with your trade partners correctly. If things are out of whack, talking to your trade partners, why, why is this taking more time than, than we, than we allocated?

What are you missing? What can we do? How can you do something different and really making that partnership work so you can start focusing on improving the whole system. 

Rick: Just at the show, I presented at the builder show, I presented a program with a client of mine, and he was talking about his process that he goes, goes through.

He’s a custom builder to actually nail the, the plans and specs and prices. And it, when it’s a renovation, um, and or a teardown, he will invite all of his trades. He says, all of them to go to the site and make sure he goes, Hey, look, tell me, what are you seeing here? What am I missing? And he said, if I asked.

My trades to do that for every single bid they had to do. And I was only getting 30 percent of them. He goes, you know, they would be really hesitant to do that. But he goes, one of the things I focused on is that I put everything in place up to that point to make sure that there’s a 90 plus percent chance I’m going to get this job.

So when they go out there, they know that they are going to get that job. So going back to what you’re saying, being the builder of choice, he tries to be that builder of choice with his trades. And also he, um, The other thing he recently said is that he now, um, does job costing like every two weeks, you know, looking for those variances between purchase orders and invoicing and, and then, you know, working with his trades and suppliers to find out, okay, if there is a variance, why is it, what, you know, was it a mistake you made?

Was it a mistake we made? Was it a job? Soup that told you to do something that wasn’t on, you know, the purchase order. And you know what? Why? Um, so I think that’s a great advice. Kind of you’re you’re exactly resonating what he mentioned as well. 

Emma: Oh, that’s great. 

Rick: Yeah. One other thing I wanted to go back to, which you, you talked about a little bit, which was the job costing and, you know, looking at those numbers.

So we take the emotion out of the numbers. So 50 percent of our, uh, of our costs should be job site materials, uh, if you will. And, um, so going back through NEHB, I went through the Institute of Residential Marketing. They gave us this equation that I still use to this day. And it’s, it’s a value equation.

So it’s like for your consumers, what do you, what do your consumers value and what don’t? So the equation was price performance divided by quality perception. So, and the way I explain it is this. I said, go into a dollar store. So everything up and down the aisles is a dollar. Now you walk down that aisle and you might look at one thing and say, Hey, I wouldn’t pay 50 cents for that, right?

In your mind that, you know, your, your quality perception is lower than the price that’s being asked. So value was not established, but the other, but in the other side of the aisle, you might look at that and go, Oh, that’s only a dollar. I’m willing to pay a buck 25 for that. So now, okay. The quality was higher than the price asked.

So value was created. And I, and I say, now imagine. That your lead is sitting across the table from you and you have plans, specs, and a contract, and you push them over there and they have a huge pile of cash. That matches what the number is on that contract What you’re asking them to do is to push that cash over to you because they feel like what they’re getting in return Is equal to or greater than the money they are exchanging so going back to yeah the features and things you’re doing in your home If they do not see value in there, you’re right.

That’s coming right out of margin. And I didn’t do it that way, but if it’s coming right off the bottom line. 

Emma: Right, exactly. And, um, some, we’ve had some builders who literally take all of that stuff and make it all option, the option, all of it and see if by, if builder, if buyers will buy it back and if they won’t buy it back, they’re like, why are we offering it?

Why are we offering it? So sometimes, you know, if you’re really, you can get really, crazy and take everything and I, this is not what I recommend necessarily, but you know, taking some of those things out. Of the house and you know, you don’t wanna strip it down, you know, maybe you’re afraid to strip it down, but maybe strip it down a little bit and take some of those things out and add your margin and sell it back and see if the buyer, if it has value to the buyer and if it doesn’t take it out.

Rick: Yeah, exactly. We, um. So one of the things that we do is part of our, when we’re working with the client and we’re doing a booking campaign, so we want to create a compelling reason for where that lead wants to talk to the builder about their projects. That’s always the hardest first step is to get them on the phone.

So once we’ve given them a compelling reason and they booked that call, part of the follow up process is that we’ll send them a little survey and we’ll say, hey, Emma Jane. Tell us what you need, want, and wish for in this project. Uh, and this is actually the only reason we’re doing this is simply price conditioning, but at the same time, if there’s a need there, that means that that’s non negotiable.

I’m not doing a project unless I get this. And so I said, you know, I grew up as more of a semi custom builder. So everything was base price plus options. And one of the things I realized real quickly is that if I put too much On what we included in the base price and not enough emphasis on what they needed to have in the home There was a real disconnect there and they would look at stuff.

Maybe we were including and say I don’t need that That’s not a need, you know, that’s I don’t want for that much But the same time if they said hey rick, this is a need they’re telling me that’s a hot button There’s nothing more important than that And if I did not have that included in my base features, they would look at me and go like well Who would build a home that didn’t include that?

Rather real quick, I’m like, you know what? I’m gonna get away from doing base price plus options. I’m gonna take everything they need. I’m gonna make sure that’s all incorporated in that lump sum number. Mm-Hmm . And then I’m gonna go for those wants and wishes and I’ll option them out so that now they’re gonna upsell themselves, but at least they know the needs are there.

And also from a pricing standpoint, what I figured out was everyone had champagne taste in a beer budget. , yes. But if I presented the lump sum with the needs in it. I could hit the budget. So now it’s like, Hey, I’m collaborating with you. I’m working with you. Look, we can get this home or renovation project built for your budget, but these other things you listed here now you can pick and choose which ones you want to include or not include.

Emma: Exactly. And a lot of times I feel like, and we did a, we did a, um, webinar with Lita Dirks, who’s a designer. And one of the things she talked about is like really focused on the things they can’t have later. Like there’s certain things that that should be part of it. If you can make it part of it are things that are difficult to add later for the buyer so that they feel like because a lot of times it’s like they want to feel like this is the house that they want to fall in love with regardless of its entry level or the Luxury doesn’t matter.

Whoever’s buying, they wanna love their home. And so making sure that you’re looking at those, at that consideration as well. And I thought that was a really good point that, that Lita made is that making sure that it’s something that they can’t, that’s difficult, like carpet, like, you know, certain things that are very difficult to add later.

Rick: We’ve talked about now. Uh. Scheduling, we’ve talked about purchasing. What are some of the other areas that you see like are a pretty big need for builders when they, when they come to you, that is like, Hey, this is some, this is some low hanging fruit that you could make some improvements on pretty easily.

Emma: Um, a lot of builders right now are focusing on growth, but they want to have, um, smart growth because, um, and, and we’ve talked to several builders, um, They are excited about the opportunities that are coming up in the market. You know, this is the best time to be a builder and the craziest time to be a builder, um, because of the potential there is for demand with the baby boomers moving and the millennials moving.

Um, there’s a lot of demand and we, as we saw in 2020, there’s pent up demand. That was just. Okay. That was just pulled forward because of circumstances. Um, and now we have the, the issue with, um, affordability, but there’s a lot of builders who are excited to grow with a little bit of caution every six months, since March of 2020, we’ve had something different hit us from, from supply chain to, you can’t open, you can’t be working to, um, affordability to whatever, everything’s changed.

So we have a lot of builders that are looking to grow. in a smart way. And so we will work with them and help them manage their growth plan. Um, help them focus on the things that are important. Um, organize their team, help their team structure. Um, and we do have an excellent Jim Weigel, one of my, um, my consultants here.

He’s great at working with a builder to really organize the, get their organization set up so that they can grow. And what does that structure look like? How does that lead? What, what leadership needs to be in place? How do I coach the owner? Um, we were working with a couple of builders who does, they’re The next generation is taking over.

How do we coach the owner and the second generation to really focus on? This was a mom and pop operation. We’re in a position now where there’s substantial growth opportunities. How do we make our organization a company and formalize everything? What are the things that we need to do to formalize that?

So that’s one of the things that we’ve been working with builders on a lot lately too, is really helping them get the structure in place, the disciplines in, in place so that they can start to grow in a smart way. 

Rick: You made a good point there where there’s always that transition where you, you created a job for yourself and now you want to become a real company, right?

And so yeah, what does that look like? So how do you, how do you work with your, your, your builders? It’s like, so if I’m a builder, I’m interested in your services. What are the different ways I can work with the shim group? 

Emma: Well, that’s a great question. Um, one of the way the best, the easiest way to figure out to get really get to know us is to take one of our classes and we like to have everybody start there.

Our next classes are in the fall. We just finished our spring session, but managing for profit is always the best place to start. Um, if you don’t want to wait all the way until our fall sessions start, we also do coaching one on one coaching. Um, We can do a mini audit where we’ll, uh, work with you remotely and look through your financials and kind of start pointing out different areas you can work on until you have an opportunity to get to a class.

Um, and we also do private classes. So we have a couple of builders who are like, Oh, we’d like for you to come in and teach our whole organization. So we might do a private, um, superintendent class, a private, um, Managing for profit class. And we can also do a full blown audit where two or three of our consultants will come out on site, literally lift the hood of the organization, look inside, interview everybody, kind of come together with your with you at the end and come up with an action plan to help you accomplish the goals that you’re looking to accomplish.

So we have an array of things that we can do to work with you. Um, yeah. The one thing I think that sets us apart from everybody else is that everything we do from education to our consulting is rooted in solid management systems. That’s what our education is based on. Years and years of research, um, are, you know, when Chuck and Emma did the laboratory with the home building business, all of the things that we teach are rooted in those fundamentals of, of management so that they’re repeatable for years to come.

Rick: Yeah, for sure. And that’s, you replicate, you create the ability to replicate and duplicate a profitable sale so then you can scale your business, you understand your key performance indicators, and ultimately you’re measuring, you’re managing by the numbers now versus like Your gut right you pull the emotion out of it and that is that’s such a good point You know, and I know custom builders struggle with this probably a lot more than production builders is they go out and build this Grandiose mawa home right and you know It’ll be a home that quote unquote they would live in right and then it sits on the market and they can’t sell it And ultimately two years later they move into it because they can’t get rid of it But so in other words, they build a monument to themselves and uh, I think it’s It’s so, um, invigorating to understand, to be able to remove the emotion from that business.

Like I said, this is my baby. And hey, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve got my business this far, but I’m not going to get it where it needs to go, or at least where I want it to go, unless I start to pull back and I get the emotion out of the business and I really manage the business based on, based on the numbers and 

Emma: such a valuable lesson 

Rick: there.

So your classes you mentioned, do you guys do them on site in Colorado? Do you do them virtually or both? 

Emma: We do have some virtual classes. Um, actually tomorrow we’re going to do an, uh, Negotiating workshop that we do virtually. Um, and we do have some workshops where we’ll do four hour workshops, um, online virtually, and then we also have a construction technical class that we do online, where basically if you have somebody, um, like a superintendent or somebody even in the organization that doesn’t understand the construction process, we partnered with Ibacus.

Um, and they usually have their classes as part of a bigger package and they allow us to resell their classes online. Um, so you can just do, uh, one class at a time, but most the, I believe the most value that you get from us is when you come to one of our classes, um, in person. And I, I think back to my son who was, um, in engineering, he was an engineering student, just graduated college this last December, um, during COVID.

And he’s like, mom. It’s so hard to do class without being around other people. 

Rick: You can 

Emma: only learn so much from the professor. And not to discount anything we do as a professor, but hearing how the other people interpret the information and having the opportunity to have lunch with, happy hour, snack time, because we do offer snacks at our events, but having some, you know, coffee time with all these other people and hearing how they’re building in different parts of the country or how they’re interpreting the information, how they’re going to go home, And use this information is invaluable.

And not to mention that we’ve done online classes. And let me tell you how many people I’ve seen take a phone call while they’re on zoom with me and not listening to the class. They’re missing out on two thirds of the class because they’ve got described distractions from their own office. And so at least when you’re in a live session, you feel a little bad if you have to take a class and walk out of the room, but you come back and you’re in that room and you’re You’re present 100 percent when you’re taking a live class with us.

Rick: That’s so, so intuitive because you’re right is exactly right. You know, I mean, I have three monitors, you know, a zoom classroom, you like that. I’ve got monitor over here, things happening, you know, my phone’s blowing up and things that you’re in, you know, you, you do lose that focus, but, uh, the, yeah, just talking to your neighbor or another builder or saying how this is how we do things, or how would you handle this?

Or I’m dealing with this. Do you also deal with this? I mean, that’s obviously the. The benefits of group coaching and having like that retreat. I know we have a mutual client, Danny B from Regency Homes, who just told me he was just in, I think, was it Texas with you guys? Maybe? Yes. In 

Emma: Austin, Texas for a builder group.

Yes. 

Rick: For a builder group. And then I know he gets a ton out of, out of those just by talking to his peers. In addition to the information that’s being presented by you guys. 

Emma: We actually have a really fun, I did, I almost forgot about this one. We do an executive summit every year. And this one I’m really excited about.

Um, I’ve made up my own title for it. It’s not the one that we’ve been advertising, but, um, our topic is human intelligence before artificial intelligence. Um, and that’s going to be in Cape Coral, Florida. On April 21st, 22nd, 23rd with a opening reception on the evening on Sunday evening, the 20th. Um, we’ll have a guest speaker from outside the industry who will talk about change management.

We’ll have builder speakers talking about different processes and how they’ve implemented technology, but how, like what you have to do before. for you, implement your technology so that your technological advancements make sense and actually help you become more efficient instead of hindering your efficiency.

Um, so I’m very excited about that program and we have 10 spot 10 spots left. Um, And, uh, we’re going to have breakout sessions. So we’re going to break the group out. And I love breaking, doing breakouts because I like to look at the list of builders that we have, if a builder’s coming, a lot of our builders will use this as a retreat, if you will.

So they’ll bring their management team and then they’ll stay a couple of days. We have one builder in particular, that’s bringing. They’ve got two divisions. They’re bringing six people from each division, and then they’re doing a executive retreat after they finished with us, but I’m going to break everybody up and try to keep it so that you’re non, like you’re not in the same markets, um, so that you can speak freely and we’ll have three different groups that go to three different, um, workshops and then all this, now you’ve just expanded your network.

So you’ve expanded your network to be able to talk to not only us, because once you become a part of Shin. Part of the family, but now you have this network of builders that you can talk to and reach out to anytime you have a question 

Rick: if they want to come to if builders want to come to your classes, they fly into Denver.

Is that right? 

Emma: Um, no, I’m sorry. We do that in the fall. They’ll be in Denver, but we do them in Atlanta, Chicago. We did one in Austin. We’ve not gone to New Orleans. We 

Rick: go around the country. 

Emma: We go around the country. Yeah, the one in April is in Florida. Yeah. Yeah. 

Rick: April’s uh, Florida’s a beautiful place to be in April.

Emma: Yes, it is. 

Rick: For sure. All right. So last question, uh, any words of wisdom for a builder that’s considering making some changes to their business here in 2024? 

Emma: I would say, and be curious, And really take advantage of your, of your resources and the people that are willing to help you, um, make sure that you are paying attention to what’s going on around you and ask lots of questions before, as you, as you’re implementing change, as you’re looking to, to the future.

But there’s lots of great opportunity for builders right now, and I’m really excited for their opportunities. We have a great, we have some great resources on our website that you can check out if you, if you, um, are looking at doing anything new and different, but really stay focused and stay disciplined as you move forward through this next five to six years, because there’s great opportunity for all the builders.

Rick: You had mentioned your website here. I’m going to put it up on the screen. We’ll also put it, if you’re listening to this, we’ll put a link below wherever you are, uh, hearing this or watching this video, is that the best way for builders to get in touch with you? Yeah. 

Emma: Go to our website. You can also reach me directly at E J S.

Wilder at shinconsulting. com as well. So you can reach me anytime. Um, and I do my best to respond to you within the same day. So if you have any questions or need anything, we’re here to help. And thank you again, rich for, for having me on the call. It’s been very exciting. 

Rick: Absolutely, yeah, and thanks for the great information here, Emma Jane.

So shinconsulting.com, that is the website, and we’ll also put the link here right below the recording. So again, thank you everyone for joining us for Conversations That Convert, and for my brothers and sisters in Christ, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all always.

See you next time on Conversations That Convert.