EP220: How niching down made everything easier: Interview with Brendan Lawrence

Yeah, hey, thanks for having me.

Sure. I've been doing this about 20 years, working for myself for the majority of that, and kind of started off everything, new construction, remodels, exteriors, and now we specialize in mostly post-frame pole barns out here in central Oregon.

How did I end up in Oregon? Jeez. I've been all over the place. I grew up in Massachusetts. I actually went down to Florida for a couple of years. And then I saw a picture of a buddy skiing in Colorado. So I went out there. And then, I don't know, it was just one of those things where Denver was cool, but it was getting pretty crowded. And we thought Central Oregon would still kind of give us a fun place to live where we didn't have such big crowds. So we kind of ended up here. Yeah, as soon as we came out here, we got... pregnant with twins and then it was time to put on my big boy pants and and start diving hard into construction uh we've been here ever since

i i used to be i used to be a pretty strong ski bum like what are you talking when you see the guys living in their vans and just chasing storms that's kind of that was me

Yeah, actually, I did. In Denver, I had this workshop that I would rent, and I had a ski press and my designs and machinery for it. And then at night, I'd walk out to my van, climb into the bed in the van, and I'd pass out for the night out there. It was wild. But yeah, it was fun. It was cool. Got a lot of good skiing in.

Well, I've always done construction since I was, you know,18 or 19. So I was actually doing construction during the day and the skis at night. But I actually, it's funny because I never thought that I would get into construction. What happened was that I had a quick five-minute stay at college. My parents were pretty upset about that. I got nicely asked to leave. And there was this guy down the street, family friend, and he was pretty tough. And my dad kind of went down there and said, hey, I need you to kind of whip him into shape, make him start straightening this guy out. It backfired on him a little bit because I realized that I loved being outside and I loved construction. So about a year later, I said, hey, I don't think I'm going back. This is great. I was driving heavy machinery and getting to do all this cool stuff that I was hooked. So I've always done it. I've done it pretty much since I was 19. But the skis, I did think that I was going to transition into the skis as a full-time thing. I really had a strong feeling that to get the most out of life, you need to be doing what you love as a career. And I also remember just getting totally burnt out on it to the point that after a year or two, I just didn't even care if I touched the skis really. because it wasn't fun anymore. It had become everything and I wasn't even skiing anymore.

Yeah. I think that one backfired on them, but I remember it.

I just, I remember that day. I remember my first day working. And, you know, when you're 18 or 19, you've worked a lot of these inside jobs. Maybe you worked at the grocery store or whatever. And I just remember this first day, it was April. And the guy told me to go down, go down this long gravel driveway and go do something. And I'll always remember the sound and the feel of the gravel crunching underneath my boots with the sun on my, you know, just the breeze and the sun. And I mean, it was just beautiful out. And I'm like, how could I spend so much time working indoors and thinking that I wanted kind of one of those type of jobs when this is awesome. I don't know that I can go back. And that, that started it.

Yeah, I mean, you could pretty much hop on. If you're into off-roading, you could pretty much hop off-road just as soon as you get to the outskirts of town. You could probably make it all the way to Boise if you wanted or parts of Nevada without having to get back on a public road, you know, paved road ever again.

I think it's probably easier to say, what wasn't I doing?

Yeah, and I really thought that that was the way that you need to be to be successful. I mean, I had spent time working for plumbers, electricians, contractors, I mean, carpenters, the whole spectrum. And I really thought for the longest time, in order for me to be successful, I'm going to have to get really knowledgeable about every single aspect, and I have to get really good at it. And I want to say that even just a year, year and a half ago, If you ask me what I did, the answer would be a new construction or maybe remodels. But, you know, we have some big decks coming up and then pole barns. You know, we enjoy doing those, too. It's just kind of all over the place. And I totally forgot what the question was now.

Oh, yeah. Basically, I was doing whatever a word of mouth lead. asked me to do.

Yeah.

For a long time, I thought it was working out just fine. But I also used to look at things a lot different where my gauge on if I was doing good or not was, is the customer happy? Do they have a sharp looking product? It wasn't necessarily, did I make money on this job? Do I have room to grow? Do I have a path? So my customers were happy. And as far as, as long as they were happy, I thought that I was being very successful. I wasn't. And when I look back now, geez, it's, it's almost exhausting to think about. I mean, you go off and you do a bathroom and then you go do some flooring, then maybe you do some siding, some windows. And then maybe three years later, somebody asks you to do a bathroom again, but you don't have the data because the last time you did it was three years ago. It's like relearning all over again.

Yeah, I definitely had a mindset for a long time that I will never go broke if I know how to do everything. I think that one big problem there is that you're worried about being broke. Right. Instead of worrying, instead of just trusting that, you know, you're going to succeed. when you put your head down and just get to it in one direction.

Post-frame garages. So pole barns, mostly we do a lot of like RV storage and workshops.

No, no, we still will get calls for certain jobs like that. And we kind of just tell them at this moment, we're not set up to be their most efficient option for that. Right now we're, we're doing these, these pole barns and post frames. And that's kind of what we're set up for right now. And I don't, don't really humor them, the leads any further than that. You know, I'll recommend them to somebody if I can, you know, if I have a contact for that, but we're not pursuing them right now.

Well, for starters, I've got a helper. And he's a greenhorn, but the fact that let's pretend that we were still out doing everything, all these different jobs for a guy that's a year into construction, every single day is a new day for him, a new skillset, something. He's still at day one for every project out there. When you have a guy that you can take under your wing and just every day for a year, you guys are doing the same type of projects. It takes so much weight off of my shoulders because he's got a year of experience doing this every single day now. So there's so many more times when I'm able to kind of step away and do what I need to do, and I can trust that he's going to keep things going along. It also makes it a lot easier to have conversations about money, these investments that clients are asking, because we have so much data now about what it takes us to build these pole barns that we can just have conversations. very fluidly about how we're going to be able to give them the product that they're looking for in the price range that they need it to be. Where before it would be one of those things where you drive out there and you take a whole bunch of measurements, you put together one number and you really hope they didn't mess that up because you haven't done this for two years. Right. Yeah. So it's definitely made things very fluid. Even just things like the tools in the trailer. So many of those tools we don't need anymore. It's nice to just be able to really have the specialty tools that you need and not worry about, do I need to have router bits for this? Or do I need to have all these, do I need to have grout trowels for tile? You're getting rid of all that stuff.

Yeah, it is so much nicer.

I used to get pretty nervous when it would come to doing estimates because when you're doing everything all the time, your data is really kind of crap as far as I'm concerned. And you know that they're probably going to be making calls to other contractors who probably specialize in what they just called you for. How are you going to compete with that? And for me, a lot of times it would come down to maybe trying to be more personable than the competition. or get them to trust me. I didn't have really the tools that they had to be able to confidently go into these estimates and help these customers the way that I can now with PostFrame. PostFrame, I can go in there. You could call me on the phone and I could tell you what your project's gonna cost you. I don't even need to see your property right now. I could pretty much tell you within a window what this project will run. And if you're shocked by that number or if you like, whatever, we can in real time start crafting projects. that are going to fit inside what this customer is looking for because we have over a year of data right now of just strictly recording every single process of our post-frame construction. And it's really made it so that the confidence level is incredibly high now. You know, taking the benefits that I feel from it out of it, the benefits to the customers when they call us on the phone are through the roof now too because they're actually talking to somebody who's specializing in this and can really have very in-depth conversations. And I think that, I think it really shows and it makes a huge difference. The conversations that I have with our customers now with sales, it's a much different feeling than it used to be. You could tell that they feel they're in good hands right now and that this is going to go somewhere good for them.

I know what it would be right now.

yeah. If you asked me to do a hardwood floor estimate for you right now, it would probably take me five times longer to figure that out than it would to put together a 4,000 square foot building for you. It's allowed me to take the data that we gather every day when we're working and put different parameters and things in place on all of our estimating software. So we can actually, if you called me up right now and you said you wanted a pole barn and you gave me the information on it, before our phone call is done, our estimate's pretty much done. I already know what it is. It makes it so that I can also just, everything can run on a formula because we have all this data. So I just keep updating the formulas. I punch in some numbers and it makes my estimates come out super fast. And I know that it's incredibly impressive to many homeowners when you can come over and just give them their estimate. That's it. And compared to having a contractor out and then maybe chasing them down two or three weeks later and finding out that he still hasn't done it because he doesn't have all the variables yet. Yeah, it has certainly made things very easy to spit out numbers and keep the sales process moving with the customers.

It's been, I think that it's really powerful when you can pull up a company's let's just say their Instagram profile. You pull that up and you just see all of this pole barn information all the way down it. I think that there's a lot to be, I think there's a lot of trust that will come with that compared to if we had one pole barn and then we're doing a deck and then we were doing some hardscapes and then a bathroom. If I'm looking for a roofer, I'm not out looking for somebody who was just doing some electrical and somebody who was, you know, doing a deck the week before. I want to pull up their social media and see that they dedicate all their time to roofing and they're going to have all this experience that goes with it. So with social media, I've had a lot of jobs come in where the homeowners, they found our ads and then they social proofed us by going binge watching all of our social media clips. We're on a job site today where the guy said, look, I watched all of your videos and I don't need to call anybody else. So let's just work this out. We put together a deal and that was it. I've had two or three of those in just the last few months where they basically said, hey, we went and we checked out all your social media. You're our guy. So come on over.

It sounds exhausting. It

Yeah. I think that it also allows you to provide a lot more information to your potential customers because like for me, if I have to make content about pole barns every day, I can't just go walk around the same pole barn that we're working on for like, two months every day and say, hey, here's our pole bar. It's gonna be like Groundhog's Day. So you have to get a little more creative. Maybe you'll end up talking about like, oh, the lighting. Like here's an easy way to add lighting, which will do this for your pole barn. You have to get a little more creative with what you're showing out there, but it's incredibly helpful to your customers and it just helps grow that trust in you even more. Because you're really having to focus on how can I keep making my social media on this one topic engaging so that each time they flip down to the next video, there's something worth staying for. And you do end up getting...

And I think that those are the videos that sell you to the customer. You know, it's, it's one thing to have a nice video that showcases a great job, but that I feel like it will show the customers the potential that you have to do great work. But the, the stuff that I think will really drive home. this connection is going to be those videos that you're talking about, where you get into some of the finer details, options you can do, benefits, and you start kind of teaching them the construction side of it.

Yeah, it really helps, I think, to retain them too. You know, I know that for me, if I'm going looking for something, I'll flip through somebody else's social media. And as soon as it stops, you'll ask my attention now. You know, if their direction changes, then I change my direction too. And I'll go find somebody else who I can scroll for longer on their stuff to get the information I'm looking for.

It's really awesome. When you don't niche down, there's always a certain amount of relearning that's going to happen every single time you start a project. It's just impossible to try and remember all the ways that you messed up on something else. And by mess up, I don't mean like you'd botched the job, but I mean inefficiencies, things that you could have done differently. You're not going to remember that three years from now when you do it again.

Yeah. And now that we are doing the same thing every day, if we have that mess up, that inefficiency, we can stop and look at it and go, okay, well, how can, what can we put in place to safeguard us against this in the future? And it actually, it actually has value because the next time that we're going to do this is probably just two weeks from now. and you can start stacking these up on top of each other, it really makes a huge difference to be able to sit there and put this stuff to work. It's fun to see it versus just having it disappear off into the, you know, wherever the heck your old memories go.

Yeah, it's real cool being able to have just all these different files and PDFs. Like when we show up for a sales visit, having just a standardized PDF that has all the information that we need on it. And we just start filling in the blanks for ordering our metal, for ordering our framing. You know, we have forms now that we just fill in the blanks. How many of this, how much of that? Even in like company cam, our templates, you know, we have templates that we use now. Foundation, here's your template. Framing, template, siding, template. And you just go down the list now. And it makes it really easy to also communicate with guys who, you know, might be new on the job or trying to come up the ranks. You know, it's just. It's very simple. You actually have repeatable data now that you can organize and put together and show the guys. And I can't imagine if we were out like doing a bathroom next week, like how am I going to put together all of this stuff to show the guys? It's their first bathroom. And now I'm going to try and I'm going to try and remember all the information and then teach them all the information. Right. It's a lot easier now where I'm just like, hey, look, we already wrote down everything. Here's even diagrams. of the information in company cam for you to reference. So if you forget about it, here's the picture that reminds you, this is how we do it. Imagine trying to do that for every aspect of the house. You wouldn't have time, but when we're niche.

So it's been awesome.

I feel like I knew for a long time, or at least a few years, that if I ever want to stand a chance of not having to swing the hammer myself, I need to figure something out that's repeatable and that I can teach. That's not going to happen when we're just doing all these jobs, different jobs all the time. Honestly, what got me to pick the pole barns was I genuinely enjoyed them. I like that we're outside. I like that they're big structures. It's very satisfying to sit there and all of a sudden you've got this 2,000 square foot building. You're like, heck yeah, we just did that. Thing looks rad. This is great. I also wanted to pick something that, like with decks, let's say you're doing high-end decks. There's a lot of fine carpentry that goes into that. And I mean, I had my concerns about, well, it's going to take me a lot longer to build up guys and it's going to really hurt a lot when guys leave if I've spent two years teaching them how to do all this fancy deck work. And so, yeah, with the decking, you know, I just thought that this is going to be a real headache potentially. This is very high detailed work. And honestly, I don't even know if I have the patience to try and teach everybody this all the time. The pole barns was really hitting. It was really hitting a good spot for me. Part of it also is the variables. You know, am I going to do new construction? Am I going to do remodels? Do I want to have to be in charge of 20 different variables and lining up tile guys, then lining up plumbers and then lining up electricians and all of these different parts that go into these huge projects? If I'm not searching for pretty words here, like I'm just, I'm a scatterbrained person and I'm all over the place. And pole barns, They were kind of fitting my personality and my strengths in that there's limited variables to it. I really just kind of have to think about the framing, the siding that's going on it, some excavation, and concrete, garage doors too. But that's it, really, for the majority of the orders that somebody's going to want. What was that, five variables right there?

Well, it's something that I could wrap my head around very easily. Between my genuine just enjoyment of being outside, not having to worry about carrying mud into somebody's house by accident or making a dust storm, I'm outside. It's enough variables that I can wrap my head around it all day long. It was kind of a no-brainer at that point. We just went all in, and it was awesome. It's been great. I couldn't imagine a year and a half ago if I was still doing that. I wouldn't have progressed at all. Now that we're niched down, you can actually see, you know, an upward momentum for you. You're going places because you're focused now. It's a much different experience.

I was just going to say, think about your employees also. You know, it's one thing for the business owner to sit there and think about efficiency, but your employees also want to have things to be proud of at the end of the day. Yep. I know that watching guys over here when they're working, I mean, they're really proud of the things that they're accomplishing. And if we were all over the place, they wouldn't have that opportunity. So not only is it nice for me, but... It's given the guys a lot to be proud of. I think it really helps keep them around because they see their progress and they, you know, they, they have a lot of, they just have a lot to be proud of versus having all these different processes and confusion going on all the time and having to relearn everything they're doing stuff.

Yeah. And one of our guys, he asked a few weeks back, he said, hey, what do you think about me working four tens? He wants to start having three-day weekends. There's no way that I could have said yes to that if we were all over the place. But because he's been doing this now, he knows what to do and I don't have to be concerned. Yeah, I can't be here with you necessarily all that time, but I'm not concerned because you know what to do. You've been doing this and it's been working out great. He works his four tens now and he takes off. He's gone Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And he can do that because of all the hours he's dedicated to this one niche that he understands now.

I want to say that our first year, our sales quadrupled because-Once you started niching?

Yep. Okay. And it would be very easy to look at it and just be like, well, yeah, Brennan, you're building big buildings. But I don't think that that's what it is. What it is is that we are much better at selling now. And we're not selling because we're being deceitful to anybody. We're selling because we are the right answer. We have what you're looking for. We have the background. We have the knowledge to do this. And with that comes a lot more people saying, you're our guy. I want you to do this. So our sales have really skyrocketed since we started to do this.

Yeah, I want to say that January of 2024, we had it as a potential niche. And by maybe June of last year, we really knew that like, okay. We're not going to be doing other jobs. This is just what we're running with now.

Oh, night and day. Just the fact that you can sit there and pump out numbers and estimates to people in a matter of minutes instead of days. that's weeks worth of your life back. And yeah, it's, it really feels without a niche when you're just taking the job that calls you, whatever it might be, that is kind of like operating in survival mode, it feels like. And once you finally niche down, it'll be the first time that you feel a direction and like optimism towards what's in the future. I mean, you can. You can stay small on that path if you want, but if you want to have some big company that you're going to sell off one day or hand down to somebody, you can also start to see that. And it's not going to take long if you're just recording all of the data from your jobs. It's not going to take you long to start having some real good numbers to work with and start making decisions with. And you just kind of build on top of that every single job. You just keep on getting a little better, a little better, a little better. The days of having to relearn have come to an end. You're just full steam ahead. It's a completely different experience.

No, it hasn't. I'll be honest, if you asked me that same question 10 years ago, I'd be like, dude, that's a scary thing. Like I would be saying that with them. I think that when you are specializing in something, it's your marketing, your ability to retain people's attention and sales. It's so much stronger than when you're out there saying that you do everything. We haven't experienced any part, any portion where we're wondering if we're going to have a full schedule this year. It's just been very easy to, Yeah. To lose track of what I'm saying. Yeah.

No, you'll never hear me say that. It was like, I seriously used to think that I needed to get out of construction. I mean, it was that bad where. I felt that the only way to save myself would be to find something else to do as a career. Maybe I need to go take a job with some big company or maybe I need to go completely switch gears. Once I started to niche down, geez, I don't know if I've really had those thoughts since then. I mean, it has been incredibly optimistic and it's a whole different way of experiencing your company once you start to finally put it in such a direct line like that.

I wouldn't worry about it. I think that you are much more powerful as somebody who's niched down. And you're only going to be prolonging this new efficiency in your business the longer that you put it off. And I think that there's always going to be ways to find work. But what does that matter if you're just trying to scrounge up work that you have to relearn every single time you do it?

Yeah, I mean, we'll get those calls. You know, the way that I'll respond to them sometimes, it's almost always going to be a repeat customer that's making that type of call these days. And sometimes, you know, I'll just... I'll give them a reference for somebody else. If we have a really long relationship, maybe I'll say, you know, we're really busy. We're doing this. This is our thing now. If you want, maybe in the wintertime, maybe we'll get a big storm and we could do something like that for you, you know, but it's really just kind of almost like working for a friend if you're going to accept it at this point, because our interest is not in that. And I know, I don't care how much I love you. It's going to be such an efficient, inefficient week when we're over there working because we don't do that anymore. And yeah, it's just, it's, It's not worth it for us to spend the time there. If we take that same energy and we put it into just working on the niche business, it's probably going to be twice the return of just, you know, hitting the easy button and taking that bathroom job or something.

I was going to say, I also think that you had said something before. I forget how you worded it, but there's the, I feel like you'll often hear, I'm getting all of these calls for this. So I'm thinking that that's going to be my niche now. And then my mind immediately goes to like, is that niche good for you? Just because people are calling you for that right now, does that niche actually coincide with your strengths? Like for instance, we'll get a lot of like Barnominium calls. Barnominiums are pretty cool, but I'll tell people that we don't, what's that?

They are, but I'll tell people that we're not doing them. The reason I say that is because I specifically picked pole barns because it fits my personality. Again, I mentioned the variables before. I only have to think about five variables for the most part. The second that I accept a barn-dominium job, I'm right back to doing what I said I didn't want to do, and I'm thinking about everything from... engineering to foundation, electrical, plumbing, heating. And just because the phone is ringing for it doesn't mean that my company is going to benefit if I make that my niche. And we decided to keep it simple and we're rocking with it.

It's just that whole relearning thing over and over again.

geez. I got caught off guard with that one. Ah, the contractor profit blueprint. That's the one. No, honestly, I mean, it's as, I don't know if cliche is the word to say that that would be a good one, but it will change everything if you start approaching your business the way that you teach it. Because I would never want the version of the way that I was operating, let's say a year and a half ago. I can sit here today and say, man, this thing's going to go as far as I can imagine. The only thing that's ever going to stay in the way is the day that I say, that's far enough. I'm comfortable here. There's so much optimism and such a different experience that comes from following the methods in that book. And I'm not saying, I don't mean, just mean that it's going to teach you how to niche down or focus like that. I mean, everything changes. You learn to talk to people differently. And your whole mindset can change. And once your mindset starts changing, then all of a sudden it's like having all of these improvements just on auto dial, like just automatically placed in your mind and everything in your life will start to change.

Yeah. I

Cool, yeah. We're on all the socials, Tall Pines Building.

Yep. Might be at Tall Pines Builds. But, yeah, you just put in Tall Pines Building, Oregon.

Are you looking it up right now?

Thanks for having me. And hopefully we, we changed some people's minds today to take the plunge and start niching.