Episode 66: Using APB Systems In A Small Town With Rob And Amy Burton

In episode 66 of the Professional Builders Secrets podcast, we’re joined by Rob and Amy Burton, owners of Ramton Homes based in Alberta, Canada. Throughout this episode, the duo delve into how they’ve grown their business utilising APB’s systems even while living in a remote area.

 

Inside episode 66 you will discover

• The critical benefits of the systems Rob and Amy are using
• The CRM system they use to set their business up for success
• How to best approach marketing and sales in a small town
• What it’s like working with a business coach and the hurdles they’ve overcome
• And much, much more.

 

Listen to the full episode to uncover how to grow a building company even when the odds aren’t stacked in your favour. 

 

Rob Burton - Co-owner of Ramton Homes

Rob has a diverse background in carpentry, cabinetry, and concrete construction, which allows him to understand the structure and final finishes of all their projects from ground-breaking to completion. Dedication to implement the field work to the office and budgets allows projects to flow smoothly in a timely fashion. Every project gets pure dedication from myself and our team.

Connect with Rob

 

Amy Burton - Co-owner of Ramton Homes

Amy started with a real estate firm shortly after finishing Business Administration at Lethbridge College. Not long after, she really grew to love all sides of the industry and community involvement. After their second daughter was born, Rob & Amy felt it was the right time for her to transition into the family business on a more full-time basis. Dedication to clients, project efficiency, and accounting makes for a perfect fit with Ramton Homes. Amy takes care of client billing, social media, project budgets and helping with anything else that may be needed.

 

Timeline

2:49 Ramton Homes and having a business in a small town in Alberta

8:15 What’s it like being married and working together as well?

9:18 What APB systems are you using and how are they impacting your business?

15:12 How do you approach marketing and sales in a small town?

16:42 How has technology contributed to your increase in revenue and sales? 

19:19 Can a building business just survive on referrals?

 

Links, Resources & More

Ramton Homes

APB Website

APB on Instagram

APB on Facebook
APB on YouTube

Join the Professional Builders Secrets Facebook group for builders & connect with professional builders world-wide.

Rob Burton:

As far as the business, we knew we needed some help there.

Amy Burton:

With APB bringing everything together, we just save a ton of time.

Rob Burton:

We know exactly what our costs are going in and what they're going to be coming out.

Amy Burton:

That has been the biggest, biggest thing for us. 

Amy Burton:

Go with your gut. It doesn't lie.

Rob Burton:

Don't undervalue what you do.

Amy Burton:

We're not just any custom home builder. 

Amy Burton:

It's more of an experience. I always like to say it's ‘the Ramton experience.’

Bosco Anthony:

Hello and welcome to the Professional Builders Secrets podcast, a podcast by the Association of Professional Builders (APB) for building company owners, general managers, VPs and emerging leaders. Here, we discuss all things running a professional building company, from sales processes to financials, operations and marketing. We have another exciting episode from the Professional Builders Secrets podcast. Joining us today are Amy and Rob Burton, Co-owners of Ramton Homes in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. It’s nice to have some more Canadians on the show. Amy and Rob, welcome.

Amy Burton:

Thank you very much. We’re excited to be here.

Rob Burton:

Thanks for having us on the show.

Bosco Anthony:

Absolutely. Well, listen, let’s start off with something very simple. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started, and tell us a little bit about your journey as a builder.

Rob Burton:

When I finished high school, I started in construction: framing, cribbing and doing all the manual labour. From there I went into cabinet making, so I did a lot of the finishing and things. I had a partnership fall through with the cabinet shop, so I started something new. I went and worked for a builder and I was site supervisor there for quite some time. He retired and I thought, “Hey, I’ll build a house.” So I went out and built a house. 

Rob Burton:

I did a lot of the work myself; I did the cribbing, framing and all that stuff. Then from there, I built another one and then I just kept going and going and we were doing new homes and renovations. A lot of the stuff was hands-on. Then I would say probably about eight years ago, it just got busier and busier and we were more hands-off and doing more management, and now it’s completely hands-off, all management, and it’s been really good. I think we’ve been in business for…

Amy Burton:

Coming up to 15 years.

Rob Burton:

Yeah. Yeah, 15 years now.

Bosco Anthony:

Wow. So you’ve transitioned from being in the business to being on the business. Tell us a little bit about your building business, what does it specialise in, and what’s it like being in a small town in Alberta as well as being a builder?

Rob Burton:

We are a custom home builder, specifically design-build. So we have transitioned away from renovations. We used to do quite a few renovations. Now we’re more just in the custom homes, and that’s really where my passion is and what we enjoy doing. We’re in a city of about 100,000 here. We have a good outlying area that we do a lot of work in as well. Lots of farms and we do a lot of work for farmers in the area as well, and acreages.

Bosco Anthony:

Well, Amy, tell us a little bit about how you started off in the business. Obviously, Rob started it and then you joined. What have been the ambitions of you both as business owners as well in building this business?

Amy Burton:

Rob and I have been together for 21 years, married for 16. I’ve been with him through his whole journey, from his framing and cabinet making and schooling and all of that. I was actually working for a grain company, so I was totally separate. We had just got married. We started Ramton Homes. We had a small office in our house. I did the bookkeeping. We made our logo on Microsoft Word out of whatever, just put a few little designs together. It was kind of funny, now that I think back. I grew out of working for the grain company, and I moved on to be in a management position for a real estate company, which I loved very much, and I learnt so much about the home industry. After that, I moved towards working more for the real estate board.

Amy Burton:

Then we had our first child. At that point, I started to transition back into Ramton, a little bit more hands-on, more in the office. It was more flexible then, because I was on maternity leave, so I was in and out of Ramton just when I was needed, up until about five years ago, when I came back in full-time. So I started in real estate, moved into being here for Ramton Homes, doing all the financials and stuff like that. That’s my passion, I guess. That’s where I started. I didn’t know a whole bunch about the building aspect of the homes, but I know a lot about the billing and the financial part. That’s what makes us a good team, I think.

Bosco Anthony:

Now, tell us a little bit about the ambitions of the business. Obviously, it’s grown since when you started and I believe that you are also working with a coach who has been on one of our podcast episodes before. I’ve been told you’ve been working with Clint. But tell us about where your business has grown, where it was and where it is today.

Rob Burton:

I guess we’ve just been really working on making it sustainable, something that we can step away from a little bit more than we did, back in the day, when we were working about 14 hours a day, six days a week, or maybe even more. Now it’s changed a bit. We have two girls, we’re busy and we’ve got other activities that we like to do. Not that we don’t work hard; we work very hard, but it’s just a better lifestyle that we have, and we’ve got a lot of that through the systems that we’ve put in place from APB.

Amy Burton:

I’ll chime in here. We started on spreadsheets, Excel spreadsheets. We called them ledgers. So actually, Rob created all that. He knew nothing about Microsoft, so he taught himself and created ledgers for every single job. That kept track of all the expenses, all the budgets, GST, rebates from appliances, you name it. We streamlined that, went paperless, and we started that on our own. We got into an online program, and now with APB bringing everything together, we just save a ton of time. Everything is paperless, everything is online, everything is synced from CoConstruct to QuickBooks. It’s been amazing. With Clint's influence on how to integrate all of that, it's made a huge difference in freeing up our time to do other things in the business and out, I would say.

Bosco Anthony:

Now, tell me a little bit about how you both discovered APB, and what has it been like working with Clint in the mentoring program?

Rob Burton:

I think we probably found it online, because we were looking for some kind of change a few years back, and looking for someone just to help us with the business. We can build houses like crazy and do just about anything in construction, but as far as the business, we knew we needed some help there. So I think we found it online.

Amy Burton:

We'd started with a business coach, a generic business coach in town here. We learnt a ton from her, but she didn't know how to build a house. She didn't know how the home building industry worked. So I think we were literally Googling and Rob found APB. All of a sudden, we thought, “Is this real? Did we really find a coach that is for custom home builders?” We started just by doing the programs online, not even meeting with the coach yet. I think we did that for a few years before committing to the mentorship program.

Bosco Anthony:

How do you both work together? Obviously, it sounds like you have different roles but you are both on the business today. Do you two divide and conquer? Do you get each other’s way? What’s it like being a married couple and also running a business together?

Amy Burton:

Awesome. Do you want me to start?

Rob Burton:

Sure, yeah.

Amy Burton:

Being really young getting married and having kids meant the beginning was not easy, because we didn’t know our roles. We didn’t know we were growing and maturing. Now, in hindsight, it all happened for a reason. But now we know our roles. Some days we hardly talk at the office, and not because we don’t want to, just because I do what I need to do and Rob and our other staff members work together at what they need to do. So I think that’s what’s worked for us.

Rob Burton:

Yeah, 100%. Amy looks after all the numbers and the accounting and my main role is sales and project oversight. From there, we have a good definition of where that splits. If we have an issue, we resolve it and get it going. We do spend a lot of time every day together, so that’s good.

Bosco Anthony:

Tell us a little bit about how you’ve adopted some of the APB systems. What systems are you using, and how does it impact your business today?

Rob Burton:

We definitely haven’t adopted all the systems. We’re working on that, but that’s going to be a work in progress for the rest of the life of our company, I’m sure. But I found one that’s helped, which we’re not terribly consistent with, but which has done well, and it’s the employee reviews. Construction slots has been super. We’re able to see what’s on the go financially and physically, what kind of work we have coming, and where we’re going next year. 

Rob Burton:

Also with construction slots, we can see what we want to put in there, what we need to market for, so that we can fill our construction slots with the ones that we want. For example, we don’t want three smaller renovations, we want to do one larger house that takes the place of three smaller renos. So that’s where construction slots give us direction there. Then I’ll let Amy talk about the financial management part of it, because I think that’s been probably one of the biggest things.

Amy Burton:

Yeah, the WIPAA (Work in Progress Accounting Adjustment) was probably the first thing that we really adopted. We felt like we were in a place with our company where we felt good about our numbers, but we didn’t trust that the numbers our accountant was giving us at year end were correct. Every year they would ask us, “What’s your work in progress?” At that point, even with my accounting background, I wasn’t sure how our accountant was getting the number that we ended up with. I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me. 

Amy Burton:

So WIPAA was the first thing. I just dived in. For three days, I said, “Don’t interrupt me. I have my headphones on, and I’m going to figure this out.” Once we figured that out, we quite promptly switched accountants, because we realised that our numbers were inflated, we were paying way too much on taxes, and our books looked way too good.

Amy Burton:

We felt like we were being lied to for three years, almost. So we switched accountants, we redid three years’ worth of year ends, got almost $50,000 in taxes back, and all of a sudden, we knew what we were doing. We had this amazing tool that was just a simple spreadsheet every month. That has been the biggest, biggest thing for us. I’ve talked to a few builders in Canada, one particularly in Saskatchewan, and I just told them, “If you’re going to do nothing else, just do WIPAA. It will change your life.”

Amy Burton:

But from there, that was a huge thing. Then just the targets tab is another really big one. It’s fun to see where we’ve come from and where we’re going and set that. Even just our yearly review, “Let’s review, let’s plan for next year. What are our big goals?” all that stuff. It’s worked out well for us, because we didn’t think we’d hit our goal this year. It was a big goal and we’re close. We may even go over, which is something that if you had asked us two years ago, we would have never thought possible.

Bosco Anthony:

What’s been the critical benefit of having these systems in place? It sounds like obviously there was a lot more financial awareness. It sounds like you’ve got some money back from the last three years using WIPAA. But if you look at and categorise the biggest impact for your business, is it time, is it efficiencies? Where do you think you’re seeing the benefits today?

Rob Burton:

The big one for me is financial clarity: having Amy be able to just give all the reports, having the accountants understand what we’re up to and having everybody on the same page. So financial clarity’s a big one. Time’s also a big one. We’ve got systems in place, people in place to do all the jobs that we have in the systems, so we’re gaining a lot of time back as well. It’s been a big help that way.

Amy Burton:

We have the confidence now. Even coming from a financial background, I went to school for it, I worked for different companies, but having the confidence in our numbers to give those numbers to Rob and have him understand them, that’s been huge stress relief for me. But also having Clint to bounce these ideas off has been beneficial. He will say, “Oh, that doesn’t look good. Something’s wrong there. Let’s redo your WIPAA for this month, to make sure everything looks right,” or, “Those numbers are off, where did those come from?” It’s been really, really beneficial, just having another set of eyes on things.

Bosco Anthony:

Okay. You talked a little bit about the systems. What about technology? Is there room for technology in the business, and how are you using it today?

Rob Burton:

Yeah, I love technology. As much as we can use, we definitely integrate. I think six years back we took on CoConstruct. I tried Buildertrend, I think, for six months and then switched to CoConstruct. I think they’re owned by the same people now. But anyway, I took two years, set it up really well, and haven’t looked back. That’s been an absolute saving grace and saves so much time. It’s fully integrated almost all the way. We took our leads out of there now; we’re using a CRM for that. 

Rob Burton:

But right past that point where the job starts, all the way to closeout and counting selections, everything is integrated. That includes payments, all the client communication, that’s all in there. On top of that, we’re using PlanSwift, Microsoft Suite and QuickBooks online. But all that stuff integrates into CoConstruct and that’s our main piece of technology used to run our company right now.

Bosco Anthony:

You mentioned a CRM as well. Do you have a custom CRM? Do you work with the Salesforce or HubSpot?

Rob Burton:

HubSpot currently is the one that we’re working with, and then we have one other one that’s doing some email stuff for us. But I think eventually, everything will be in HubSpot, just so we’re all under one roof there.

Bosco Anthony:

How have you approached your marketing and sales, and what’s it like marketing and selling in a small town? Do you rely on digital? Is it word of mouth? How does that work for you?

Rob Burton:

A lot of our work in the past has come from referrals. I think that’s changing a little bit as the market and the times change of course. So we’re going to more paid advertising and more content, tons of content. We’ve got a great website set up, and slowly and surely, we're adding more content to that all the time. I think from there, we'll just keep following the systems and integrating more content and ads, and getting those ads to the people who they need to go to so we can attract the right clients.

Bosco Anthony:

What are some of your focuses in the new year for your business as well? What are you looking forward to? You talked about potentially even surpassing your goals this year. When you accomplish such a big goal and then you realise that was great, most people say, “What's next?”

Rob Burton:

That’s fair, yeah. This year, our goal is to finish our company manual. That's going back on the board for next year. That was a big goal that we didn't achieve, but we're well into it now, and I think we have a great plan moving forward, so that's just a matter of time. Company manuals aren't built over overnight, so as we go through next year, that will get finished up. But a big emphasis will be put on sales and marketing. I think we're going to have a lot more time for that, now that we have a lot of this other stuff out of the way that we've been able to systemise and get under control.

Bosco Anthony:

It sounds like the systems that you've put in and the technology you've embraced have really transformed your business. Do you feel like that's the contributing factor towards the revenue and the sales as well, when you look back and see where you've come from?

Amy Burton:

From a financial point, I think it's really helped, because we know exactly what the house is going to cost before they even sign a contract. That's because of CoConstruct and the planning and everything that Rob's able to do with that. We know exactly what our costs are, our overheads. So, I think it's really helped, because we're not surprised. We're not surprised by anything anymore, so we can really focus on homing in on those things where we can maybe cut back on or things we can spend money on so that we can grow. It's just really helped to clarify everything, I guess. We know exactly where we are going and how to get there.

Bosco Anthony:

Now, you mentioned that you are a custom home builder in many ways. Is this something that you were always? Did you transition to this, and what is your business transforming into today?

Rob Burton:

We've always been a custom builder but did smaller projects and renovations. That's really something where we've just figured out that this isn't ideal for how we're set up, and we want to transition away from that and just do the custom homes for ideal clients every single time, and not have to have the fillers anymore. I think that's where the marketing comes in; we want to fill all those spaces in. That goes right back to our timeline that we talked about with the construction slots. So we're able to see in the future next year, what we have going, what holes we need to fill and market accordingly.

Amy Burton:

The first few years of when you start a company, you're kind of chasing. You want to get the jobs; you want to get your name out there. But now, we're more about building our brand and awareness, so that people understand that we're not just any custom home builder. We want them to know the quality of our homes. We want them to know what they get when they build with us. It's more of an experience. I always like to say it's ‘the Ramton experience,’ and that goes right from the initial phone call with Rob to when we're all celebrating at the end with possession. It's just becoming more and more that once people understand that, then they don't really want to build with anyone else. So that's the main goal.

Bosco Anthony:

Can a building business survive on just referrals? And I'm going to follow up that with another question, which is how are you known in your community and industry as well, because obviously, you've been there for a while and you've made a name for yourselves now. How do you think other people see you? And can you just survive on referrals?

Rob Burton:

That goes back to one of the first questions you asked about what it's like in a small community, and there are ups and downs to that. You get the great clients with the small town attitude; that's the upside to that. Good community feelings. Just about all of our work has been referrals. But I think as our marketing is working and we're getting the content out there, we're seeing those phone calls come in that are not referrals or maybe second-hand. “We kind of know about you, but we've seen the information and this is what we're after,” and that's why they're coming to us now. So I think a lot of our business in a small town is going to be from referrals and it always will be, but there's still room for all the marketing and the other content out there to attract more clients, not just referrals.

Amy Burton:

I think we always have to be aware, too, that people will talk here. So even if they may not be a direct referral, maybe they saw our ads, went onto our website and did all that research, but they will always talk, so they'll always find someone who knows us or whatever. I think, as far as we know, we have a good name in our community. I think we were always the young builders, we'd just started out, but now we have a good base under us. Coming up to 15 years, we're not the little guys anymore. We have experience and knowledge and a lot to offer.

Bosco Anthony:

Let's go down memory lane, and tell me a little bit about the past. Were you hesitant when you were first deciding to get into the building business? Did you think, “Is this going to work in our area?”

Rob Burton:

I don't think we were ever hesitant. I grew up working in the building industry, and my grandpa was a carpenter as well, so I had some background with that. I wasn't unfamiliar with it and I've always had a passion for building and quality. The cabinet shop I worked in was a super high-end cabinet shop. It wasn't just run of the mill, and I think that's why when we took to whole home building, we wanted to do a really high-end product. There will always be a market for that, no matter where you are. There's always going to be someone who wants and is going to get a really high-end product, and that's where we fit in perfectly.

Amy Burton:

Yeah, and I think we were young, too. We were 22 and 21 when we got married, so we were young. We didn't know any different. “Yeah, let's start a home building company. Sure, I'll download the free version of QuickBooks on our computer.” To go from that to where we are now, looking back, it's pretty crazy.

Bosco Anthony:

I think they call it shotgunning it.

Amy Burton:

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

Rob Burton:

Yeah.

Bosco Anthony:

So tell me a little bit about that time. Obviously, it's such a sensitive time when you're starting out. Most builders have a classical mistake that they fondly remember; that one defining area where they made that mistake that they'll never make again. Did you have any of those ups and downs where you were thinking, “Oh, we probably shouldn't have done that”? If you look back, is there anything there where you realise, “We really learnt from that”?

Amy Burton:

So many times.

Rob Burton:

So many. I'd say the biggest ones are competing in a cost-plus scenario, which we haven't done for years. But that is the worst building business model out there, because you're competing against a client who only cares about one number, and they're probably not going to be the greatest client. We experienced that a couple of times, for sure. So those were the hugest learning curves for us. 

Rob Burton:

We would have said, years ago, even three years ago, “You can't build a $2 million custom home and not do it cost-plus. It has to be cost-plus; you can't figure it out.” And now, that's a no-brainer. We’ve got it figured out to the dime. We know exactly what our costs are going in and what they're going to be coming out. Granted, we've had a crazy couple of years, but we've got that all figured out now too. So that would be by far one of our biggest learning curves.

Bosco Anthony:

And Amy, what do you think is the overall success factor for the growth? Obviously, you've been on the books, you've had that financial awareness and clarity as well, as Rob was saying. When did you know that you had hit your defining moment where you knew that things were changing and the pathway was changing for you?

Amy Burton:

Well, it's kind of funny, because over the years, every time I would step away from Ramton to go somewhere else, whether I helped start up a real estate company and was just getting into that with them, all of a sudden, Ramton needed me again. It was as if we were saying, “Oh, okay, yeah, we're picking up, things are getting busy.” That last time, when I was coming back to Ramton, all of a sudden, we realised, “Okay, we're finally hitting our breaking point here where we're moving forward, not just doing a few little things here and there with just Rob.” All of a sudden, we needed more employees and we needed more space, so we bought an office. I would say, it's been in the last six years. All of a sudden, things just took off, and I knew that I needed to be here and be full-time.

Amy Burton:

And now we have a few people working for us. One of the other challenges I wanted to mention was hiring people. The person you have the gut feeling about, go with your gut. It doesn't lie, whether it's positive or negative. So we've really learnt a lot in the last few years about that and made some mistakes. We thought we were finished making mistakes, but no, you're never finished. We've learnt a lot from that in the last few years. We have systems in place, yes. But we have a really great team now, so it was worth the mistakes.

Bosco Anthony:

And what's it like having a coach? Obviously, I've had Clint on this show before as well, and he's a wealth of knowledge. He's also from Canada, from the West Coast. But what is that like working with someone? Because I would imagine it's a pretty brave choice that you both had to make to say, “Look, we're going to commit to this. We're actually going to not just use the APB membership, but we're actually going to work with someone.” And there's a lot of trust that you've put in someone as well. What's that like?

Rob Burton:

Yeah, it is a lot of trust and it's a big financial commitment as well. For us, we knew this for years. We were looking for direction and we knew we needed help on the business aspect of things. Like we said earlier, we used a local coach here, which was great, but we wanted it very specific, and then APB was able to offer that to us. And with Clint, especially, it's been really good. It's almost like he's local, because he is in Canada. He's only one province away, so that's pretty cool as well.

Amy Burton:

And I found too, it always felt so overwhelming with marketing, social media, but then that felt important. But then financial and business growth felt important too, and I just felt like we never knew where to start. So it just felt really heavy all the time. But now that we have started working with Clint, it's just made it way easier. Every month we have direction. We're not the best. We don't get all our homework done always, but we try, and we always make an effort. But it's just given us direction, and so then it doesn't feel like such a burden, and we get stuff done, which is awesome.

Bosco Anthony:

That's good. Look, my only other question is, let's just say down the track, a time machine's invented, and you have to go back in time. Rob, what advice would you give a younger version of yourself and Amy, what advice would you give builders who are starting out today?

Rob Burton:

Well, that's a tricky one.

Amy Burton:

I'll let you think on that. My advice from the very beginning would be don't just do your paper stuff. Figure out what it costs, figure out what you cost hourly, and start simple, but just record everything. I think that is where you get in a knot when you're thinking, “Oh, I'll just get this done and do this and do these few projects.” But I think if people, I've told some of our trades, too, just find a bookkeeper and keep track of your stuff. It will never hurt to spend money on that and just get your financials figured out. So that's my advice. But you, Rob?

Rob Burton:

Don't undervalue what you do. I think that was another big, big thing for us; we undervalued the work we did and the product that we delivered.

Bosco Anthony:

That's a great piece of advice for our listeners out there. Rob and Amy, I want to thank you again for your time, your energy and your great story. It’s a really, really inspiring story as well. I'm excited to see what lies ahead for you and hope to have you back on the show again.

Amy Burton:

Awesome. Thanks so much. We appreciate it.

Rob Burton:

Yeah, thank you very much.

Bosco Anthony:

Thank you for listening. Remember to subscribe to Professional Builders Secrets on your favourite podcast platform, and leave a review. To learn more about how the systems at APB can help you grow your building company, visit associationofprofessionalbuilders.com. See you next time.