Felipe: If you don't show up in social media, they can't get to know you. They won't like you or trust you if they don't know who you are. So you're right when you say, like, I'm a great builder, I'm sure there's better and and there's worse, but I'm not gonna get the job because I'm better. I'm gonna get the job because the person trusted me and they believe in what I'm doing and they felt comfortable. Right? But how do they get to know you They don't. They they're gonna research you. So when they research you you better be out there doing the thing, right? Or else you're gonna lose the job, even though you're the top builder out there that can build the nicest home.
Eric Mollerup: All right, welcome back to the Builder Backstage podcast, everyone. I have a very, very special guest here today, Felipe, owner of Versa Homes. Felipe, I'm I'm thrilled, I'm excited. How are you doing today?
Felipe: Good man. How you doing?
Eric Mollerup: I'm good, I'm good. I I've been meaning to get you on here for a while, so the fact that we're talking I I think it's gonna be an interesting one for sure.
Felipe: Well let's get to it. You don't mind if I have a coffee while I'm at it, right? Perfect. This this is my black water.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, absolutely. Felipe. Yeah. I don't mind. I have my water bottle right here. Go ahead. There we go. There we I've had two already today, so I'm yeah. Yeah.
Felipe: That was awesome. Right on, man.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah. Felipe, you you have one of the largest followings in the call it custom home building space. by following I mean, you know, you have both clients that follow you, you also have home builders that follow you. how did you build up such a large following? I mean, kinda start from the beginning. How did that start?
Felipe: I don't know if I have the largest, maybe maybe in Vancouver, BC, but but you know, I just doubled down on a book that I read I'm gonna say about four and a half years ago by I think it's Sheridan, which is called my brain's not working right now. They Ask You Answer. Okay, and they ask you answer. It's kind of about how you should market yourself you know in Google and how you should do blogs and but there was one section that caught my eye which was the videographer. Like four and a half years ago he said, and keep in mind I read it four and a half years ago, but he wrote the book three years before that and he said that videography was gonna be the next thing and it's going to delete head of marketing. So head of marketing was going to be now videographers, right? And content creators. And he nailed it in the head. So I kind of read it, jumped on it three years ago, hired a videographer, and just started documenting and trying things and and, you know, kinda trying to see what I should be doing with his videos and it was very cringe at the beginning. Sometimes still cringe, you just keep trying new things, right? But you just gotta go for it, you know.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah. Yeah, f and the cringe part, Felipe, I'm still cringe in my videos, so I but yeah, you gotta
Felipe: Ha ha ha.
Eric Mollerup: take that first step, right? Make something happen one way or another.
Felipe: Everyone is and and it and it really doesn't matter, right? It it it what matters is that you're moving forward. yeah, I always say it's kind of like, you know, I was a guitar player and when I started playing guitar, my my left hand felt cringe, like you're like, how do you do this, right? And then you just start playing like crazy, right? So when you s you're a baby, you keep falling and when you start to walk. But eventually you're you're sprinting, right? So you just gotta do it. Keep doing it. Don't worry about what people think and just focus. Put your blinders on. Look forward, right?
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, wha when you started with the content, was it meant to be more geared to and then we'll get into that, but to Versa homes and how do we, you know, put more content out for Versa was it more meant for other builders?
Felipe: Yeah, so so what was happening was this first it was all Versa. So three and a half years ago I you know, I was doing my thing and I started to do videos about my job sites and what we do and our process and and it started to really work and I had a lot of builders reach out and they're like, Hey man, can you pick can I pick your brain? You know, take you out for coffee. I'm like Ugh you know, and I I I would go and do it, have lunch, you know, give some advice, leave and you just never hear from them again and see how they're doing, right? So it happened quite often until one day I said, You know what? I sh I should just start coaching. You know? I reached out to my coach. I've always had a coach. I've had mentors and coaches for the last ten years. and I reached out to him, I said, How do I do this? And and it was Dan Martell, and he goes, I think you should do it. So about a year ago, I was on a plane with him. We were in his private jet flying from city to city, New York to Florida. We actually saw Tony Robbins and stuff, and he said, You know what? I'm gonna teach you the framework and I got the framework. He told me exactly what to do and I applied every single thing exactly as he told me. You know, you don't wanna not listen to your coach. You do exactly as he says and and it worked out great. You know, today we have about fifty six guys in the group.
Eric Mollerup: That's in the Versa met I see behind you, that's the Versa method group, right? Got it, okay, okay, got it.
Felipe: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So there's Versa Homes and then there's the Versa method, which I teach exactly what I do in Versa Homes to new builders, right? Not new builders
Eric Mollerup: I see.
Felipe: actually. There's s a lot of builders that have been around for a while but haven't been able to figure it out. And we help them figure it out, you know. and we've we're having huge success with it. The guys that are showing up and writing things down are focused are tripling their revenue, you know, which is pretty cool to see.
Eric Mollerup: Amazing. Yeah. G give me a breakdown. So I'll I've I've checked out the you know, the the the coaching group. Of course I'm not a member, I'm not a builder, but
Felipe: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Eric Mollerup: is it like what's the main focus behind it? 'Cause you said tripling, revenue, things like that. What's the main philosophy?
Felipe: Yeah. Yeah. So so so here's the thing. I actually teach business, right? I paint it with coaching for builders and trades because that's what I do. so I'm niching myself to that. But actually my coaching group, I have website guys, I have automation agencies, I have different people, I have a marketing company as well in there because they understand that what I'm teaching is actually business. and it applies to anybody, even though I'm painting it with, you know, construction. Every business runs the same and what I teach, it it's my my four method, which is marketing, sales, systems, and mindset. S S right? and I teach that because it's very simple. You need marketing to grow a company. Once your marketing is working, if it works well for you, you're gonna have to learn how to sell or else everything you did in marketing is gonna go out the window. Because if you lose the sale but the marketing was working, the marketing now goes out the window. Now, same thing for marketing and sales. If you don't get those two right, you don't get the job. And if you don't get the jobs, you can't implement systems. And if you do get the job and you have bad systems, all your marketing efforts, your sales efforts gets ruined by running that that job site, you know, in a bad way. Because your systems were bad. Now, if you did all three right, marketing, sales, systems, you're gonna be busy. And if you're busy, We want you to have the right mindset of a leader to make sure that you understand how to run a company and not be in the company telling people what to do all the time. Right. So those four metrics is all you need to grow your company. and of course, in each one, there's a lot of lessons that we teach, you know, in marketing, how to run your social media, you know, how to market yourself on your website, how to make sure that you are actually targeting the right avatars. This is a huge thing. Builders go, anyone that wants to build a house, you know. I'm here. That that's a messy marketing scheme, right? So you gotta be really niched down to like for example, for us, we are marketing for executives and entrepreneurs. That's it. Nobody else. Right? That's
Eric Mollerup: Executives and entrepreneurs, okay. Yeah.
Felipe: it. That's the only the only people we build for, right? And why? Because we have systems and they appreciate systems, they appreciate how a business is well put together, they don't have to worry about anything. We take through the design process. We we do the thing for them. They're not really involved. They don't wanna be dealing with numbers and they don't wanna be dealing with spreadsheets and budgets and all this kind of stuff. That's why we created, you know, the fixed price method for us, right? Which works really well for those people.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, and and I I wanna get into the fixed price method because that's a huge topic and we have
Felipe: Mm-hmm.
Eric Mollerup: I've spoken to builders who swear by it and then I've spoken to some who are like, absolutely not, I'm never touching that, right? So we'll get into that. I wanna ask you,
Felipe: For sure.
Eric Mollerup: Felipe, your point on picking a specific demographic or niche and sticking with it, I think is important and saying that,
Felipe: Very
Eric Mollerup: hey, we will build your house, we'll remodel your house, we'll do a home edition. We'll fix your fence. That is not really from what I've seen the way to grow. So tell me how
Felipe: Not at all.
Eric Mollerup: do you find that you have to break that mindset sometimes in some builders who come on board with you? Or is it like a very obvious fact already?
Felipe: Hundred percent. That's that's that's part of changing their habits, right? Because as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, you just want some cash flow coming in. So you'll take anything that comes your way to make sure that you're making money and to make sure that your company's running. You know, and that's okay to do at the beginning, just to kind of build up that cash flow. But eventually you have to really detail who you're after because imagine okay. Who would get a job? You said fencing. Who would get the job? A contractor that does everything or a specific fencing person that's really marketing fencing out there. The fencing person wouldn't have their marketing really dialed in. So Google would like them better. It's all about fencing, you know. when you're online talking about your business, it's just about fencing. You know, and then you have the contractor's like, well, I can build you a fence, but I also build houses. And and their marketing is so all over the map that Google won't find you, even it won't resonate with people on Instagram or or on your social media that you're at because you're just all over the map. People always want to hire the specific person for the specific job, the professional, right? So if I want a good fence, I'm gonna hire a fencing guy, right? Sure, you can anyone can build you a fence, but when it comes to marketing, how do people find you? Right? You have to be very niche.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, exactly. I also find it interesting what you said about the how typically I don't know if it's a hundred percent of the time, but typically higher net worth you know, clients who have money, they
Felipe: Mm-hmm.
Eric Mollerup: want you to just handle things for them. Would you agree? Where they don't want to be just nitpicking every little thing. They would rather have you handle the full process, one team, one roof. Would you agree with that?
Felipe: I I not only agree with it, I live by it. So I'll give you a perfect example. When I built my first house, you know, I didn't build it, my people did. I didn't want anything to do with it, right? I'm talking about my personal home, not my customer's home. right now we're building out an office. I hired a contractor in the commercial space to build out my office. Although I can build it myself, I have the team, but I don't want my focus to shift away from my business. I don't want anything to do with it because I'm busy. I'm a busy entrepreneur. So I said, hey man. Bartek, you got this, you know, call me when it's done. Here's your money, right? And that's how people with the value of their time think. Right. If you think that you want to save pennies, if I was to do my office right now, I could save probably about 200 grand, you know. But the amount of money that I could drop out of my back pocket that I'm not seeing because I didn't go to my client's job site. I didn't attend this meeting that could have got me another job. I didn't go to the design meeting, right? I would be dropping clients, I'd be dropping any kind of opportunity that I have because I'm too busy building my own office, right? So when you start to understand your value, you know, then you're gonna pivot and think like, you know, a wealthy person. And that's what wealthy people hire people that will just take care of things for them, right?
Eric Mollerup: Absolutely. And on the topic of Dan Martell, the buy back your time book, I think goes over this precisely. And
Felipe: How do we say?
Eric Mollerup: in in that time, like with your office, sure two hundred grand, you could use that time to go and sign another client for many times more than two hundred grand, right? Yeah.
Felipe: Hundred percent. Yeah. If my focus was in my office, I would not be getting new new leads. My my goal is always to be a leader in my company and to only deal with the revenue generating items, right? And building out my office is not really revenue generating. It's actually gonna lose me money. But people that don't think that way think, Of course it's generating me money. You're gonna save two hundred grand. No, if you don't do your job the way you're supposed to, you're gonna lose millions of dollars.
Eric Mollerup: So how do you you're telling me this and we both understand that. How do you take a builder who's done very well for themselves but they're still actively involved in just about everything when it comes to even marketing, social media, sales,
Felipe: Mm-hmm.
Eric Mollerup: operation systems? How do you what's the starting process? Like where do you begin? Because there's a million things that they can
Felipe: Well, the the first thing I say is let's review your calendar, okay? I want you so I I put him through an exercise and I say, Listen, I want you to put everything you do for the next two weeks in your calendar. Right? If you wrote an invoice, I want you to put wrote an invoice, did invoicing. You know, if you if you answer phone calls, I want to s I want to know that you answer phone calls. If you had a client meeting, I want to know that you did a client meeting. And I say to them, I want you to market red if you don't like doing that, and I want you to mark it green if you love doing that. And then we're gonna audit it. So then I go through the calendar and I say, Hey, Eric, you were doing invoicing for two hours. And he goes, Yeah. Are you not a high-end builder? Like you you do ten million a year? Yeah. Yeah, I do. Okay. So let's break it down. What's your profit? They'll say a million dollars, right? A year. Okay, great. Break it down by two thousand. They break it down by two thousand, that's five hundred bucks an hour. Would you hire somebody To process invoices for $500 an hour? I'd go, I never thought of it that way. Well, you're paying somebody $500 an hour right now to process those invoices. So how about we pay somebody $25 to $30 and you hire them so that that takes it all away? And now you have more time to do revenue generating things like go meet your clients, go look for new relationships, go talk to architects, designers, right? And also have time to Build your systems so that your company runs without you.
Eric Mollerup: I love it, yeah. Yeah, it's it's simple but at the same time I think that it's not really done. It's so obvious, it's so in your face, but it's not really done, I wouldn't say that often.
Felipe: Well, it it's the mentality that if I pay somebody it's gonna cost me money. And I argue that if you pay somebody, it's going to make you money. That's the shift, right? And that's where a lot
Eric Mollerup: Absolutely.
Felipe: of people have trouble. Like last year I invested a ton of into my company where I could have kept all my profit, but I've dumped money back into my company to get better systems, get better staffs, you know, hire an EA to take over everything I do, which you probably were in touch with their in my email because I don't own my email, right? So you know, I did all that to make sure that my company could thrive. And now I'm ready for what's coming. So I was able to invest in my company, implement mega systems. It cost me a lot of money. But what's coming next year? It's insane, but I know I'll be able to handle it.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah. on on systems, Felipe, can let's just speed run a few systems. I I'm talking early on systems. We talked about the calendar. Let's speed run some systems. Let's not get like too crazy, because I know you have some tricks up your sleeve, but
Felipe: Mm-hmm.
Eric Mollerup: what what are some what are some good like initial things to put in place, some initial things to delegate, maybe some AI, that's a whole other conversation. But what are some things that you'd kind of lay out for builders?
Felipe: Well, I mean, what what level are you at? That's the main question.
Eric Mollerup: Let's look at the builder who is established, right? Let's say they're b sub between five to ten million a year, but they're still actively involved in just about everything, and everything runs through them.
Felipe: The first thing I would say is look at your systems and your major systems are SOPs. Okay. So I need him to take everything out of his brain, like most people do, and delegating to writing it down into systems and processes, into SOP. So I would get him to write down all the SOPs, use the AI, use your staff, you know, use some actually we have some SOP people that you can hire to help you with it so that you don't have to do it all. and I would say write all your systems down. And then when you got them all down, we're gonna get a software that's gonna help you track your staff, making sure that they follow the SOP. So we put it into software, and then after that, you train your people, even though they've been with you maybe for five, ten years and they know their job. Now that you define the scope of work for each individual, they train on it and then you make sure that you start implementing it. Okay. And what that's gonna do is gonna show you now. How good your staff is. It's going to show you if you had a people problem or a system problem. So I'll give you an example. If an invoice got missed, you know, and we didn't pay it for within the 30 days. You go look and you go, okay, was this the admin that didn't pay the invoice? Or was that included in my systems, in my SOPs? If it didn't say that you must pay an invoice within 30 days, then it's not a people problem, it's a system problem. So you immediately go and change that invoice. SOP. Now if the other way around the admin is not listening and they miss the invoice, then you got to have it talk with her and either train her a little more. Or if they keep, you know, making mistakes, you got to do something about it.
Eric Mollerup: Absolutely. That's that's again, as I said earlier, very simple but very actionable and something that can be done today. It should be done yesterday, right? It's
Felipe: Yeah. And man, with AI and you know, and if I was if I was those builders, I would implement AI all day long. So I told my staff about a year ago, maybe a little more than a year ago, I said, guys, we're gonna be ninety percent AI. So I'll give you an example. Monday mornings we have our staff meeting. And I always demand that every Monday we go over budgets with, you know, my entire staff. And if you own a job site, you have to tell me how your budget on that job site's doing. We'll look at the overages. And things that are under and over, right? They hated doing that because they had to spend a couple hours looking at the budget, making sure they understand what's over, what's on there, what's happening, you know. And now with AI, they just tell AI they have a project in there. It's like, okay, well, go into drop dread, let me know what's happening, give me a report. They're ready for the meeting. Right. So here's something that I've done with I know we're gonna get into AI, but AI has leveraged my staff like crazy. So in construction, You should usually have one employee every five hundred thousand, right? This year we've done just over twelve million dollars. Okay. I only have nine staff.
Eric Mollerup: Total staff. Well.
Felipe: Total. I'm talking admins, EAs, not even on site staff, right? We have project managers, we have foremen, but we only have nine staff. So with that little bit of of staff, by making sure that they're always thinking about AI, I can get so much done.
Eric Mollerup: What w what did you do initially to get them, you know, the wheels turning in their head with AI? were they already AI savvy when you brought them in or did you have to
Felipe: I mean a year ago as you know, AI was just kinda starting. I mean it was more than that, more than a year ago. But you know, yeah, I came out a couple of years ago where ChatGPT came out and and and you know, you start to think about it, look at it. A year later we're like, We should really look into this. And I said, Hey, from now on, we're gonna be ninety percent AI. Anything you do, AI, AI, AI. And you know, we would have meetings every Monday and I would say, Did you get this done? And they would go, No, not yet. Why not? It takes you two minutes. No, no, that would take me two days. No, remember? Ninety percent AI. You can do that report immediately with AI.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah. Yeah, I think
Felipe: Right?
Eric Mollerup: it's incredible what it can do these days and I the ninety percent, why what's the last ten percent? yeah.
Felipe: Well, the manual stuff, right? So the meetings that you gotta do, talk to your clients, you know, pick up the phone, talk to suppliers, you know, but all the reporting, and it depends what position you're in. If you're admin, like I'll give you an example, like admin, all the stuff is gonna it's going in pretty automatic right now. I'm building out an entire estimating system out of AI where I just put the plans in and literally build up my estimate with pricing, you know. I it's gonna be incredible where pricing used to take me four to six weeks. Now it's gonna take me like a week or two max.
Eric Mollerup: And and that goes back to your whole point earlier about the time, right? It's it's the time and w instead of X amount of time you've shrunken it down by fifty percent, you know, eighty percent, ninety percent, and that's time that you can go take and put it into other revenue generating activities like you put it, right?
Felipe: Yeah, look, w I I mean you don't run big projects, but I don't think you do anyways, but if you do, you know, forgive me. But I have big projects that have email threads that are a year long. Right? So I can go to AI, connect it to my Gmail and say, Hey, can you can you find this and you know and tell me what this said and create a report so I can send to my client? Pulls it all out of my email, I don't have to review it in two minutes, and then I send it to my client. If not, I would be going through my emails for half an hour to an hour, digging out the information if I need to, you know, create a report, if that makes sense.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah. Yeah. The what what what did you do to become a bit more familiar with AI? Because a year ago I'm sure you knew very d much less than you do today. D was it all self taught? Did you hire a mentor for AI? Was there another builder coach that you reached out to? How'd you kind of get started?
Felipe: Well, Dan Martel is the AI master, right? Like he's all about AI, right? So I am learning from they don't they don't really sit there and teach you, but through his courses that I'm taking, you learn a bit more about AI to a point where now my staff doesn't even call me. I have Felipe AI. They all have it in their pocket. Instead of calling me, they ask questions to the AI, right?
Eric Mollerup: Philippe AI, so what for those who don't know, what is Philippe AI?
Felipe: Flip AI is a construction chat that you have where it has everything that I've ever done, how I do it, what my marketing stuff is, and it advises you on how to deal with things on site, how to do your marketing, how to build your systems, you know, how to do everything in your construction company. You can download it and my website on the VersaMethod.com and you'll have literally a coach in your pocket. So you don't even have to be in a meeting or in a c in a course. You could be Working on your own, ask the question, it implements things for you, you get it done, right?
Eric Mollerup: Wow. Yeah, so so does it function like a just like an L L like you're talking to it and it'll answer you back and reference your brain basically?
Felipe: It'll even talk to you in my voice. Right? So,
Eric Mollerup: Wow. Crazy.
Felipe: and it it's not, I mean, people I say, hey, this is this is like chat, I can do this in Chat GPT, or I could do this on on on Claude. I said, Well, yeah, you can, but it's you it's not gonna tell you what I do and how I do it. I have a proven method that works and it's all lives in in this little chat, right? So you ask anything you want. And it'll push you too. It'll get back to you. Hey, how did you do on that project that you were trying to do? Did you close that job? Like it'll talk back to you without you don't have to ask. It'll actually bug you as well.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, and Felipe what I what I think is I I'll be honest, I don't know a whole lot of coaches that are specifically for builders, but I do know that a lot of coaches slowly step away from what they started doing and they just coach. They just they just make all their money from coaching and they're selling a course or a product. You are actually doing the thing. Like you're still running Versa. You're not just selling coaching on how to, you know, build systems around building without doing it yourself. You're actively doing it day in and day out.
Felipe: Yeah. I'm sure you heard it
Eric Mollerup: it
Felipe: online. Why you know, like i it this is and this is no slag to teachers, but when you go to a school and you learn, you know, your your business teacher is teaching you a business and then you ask her if she's ever run a business and she never has.
Eric Mollerup: Mm-hmm.
Felipe: And if she did and did well at it, she wouldn't be teaching. Right? So
Eric Mollerup: Exactly.
Felipe: that's that's the same thing where there's so many coaches out there that you can create a coaching course online with AI. Right? And you're selling it and you know nothing about it, AI knows more than you. And you're selling it online. But you have to be proven. So if I could give anyone any advice is if you're gonna take coaching, ask your coach, Are you actually doing this and what is your success rate in doing the thing that you're teaching me? And if they say no, well there's your first sign that you shouldn't get coached by that person.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, agreed. Agreed. Absolutely. Yeah, Felipe, before we share wanna talk about fixed price. I think you have a lot to share on that. Before we
Felipe: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Eric Mollerup: do that, I wanna come back to the content and social media real quick. What are some good forms of content that either you teach in the Versa method or you just put out there yourself? I'm sure there's overlap, but what are what are some good types of content you see working well for builders? Is it pictures, is it videos, is it organic UGC style content, the whole bit. What what's working right now?
Felipe: Yeah, so so th there's different different layers to the funnel, right? So there is like the top of funnel content, which is maybe memes and funny stuff that gets you views. you know, there's middle of funnel where you educate, and there's bottom of funnel where you close a client. and the views get smaller as you get to the bottom of the funnel. But as you know, social media keeps changing all the time and there's new things you gotta try, new new trends that are happening. But what I say to my guys is And I'm seeing it on my videos. I got videos that have like 14,000 views. Sorry, 14 million views. But when you look at your follower count re relative to the views is very low. And I got videos that have 20,000 views and they have like an insane 3,000 followers on it, right? So what is that telling you? That that it's not about views, is about what you teach. And if you're teaching people and showing them value, they will follow you. If you're showing them funny or memes, which we like to do them because I have a sense of humor and I don't care if it gets views or not, because you have to show a little personality as well to your audience, those don't get you followers. You gotta focus not on the amount of views, but on the amount of followers and how much value are you giving to those people. So, how do you get that to happen? Number one, start researching online. Instagram is not just a posting tool, it's a research tool. So if you research your niche, Then you get to see who's got the most views in their algorithm, right? Or sorry, in their post. So we teach the four by four method, which means any post that has four times the amount of views than their followers. So for example, if you have 100,000 followers and the real has 400,000 views, that's validated, which means the algorithm likes it, right? And the num number two for so it's four by four is within four months. So if you find a video within four months that has double the amount of views on their followers, that's a very validated video. And you should really pay attention to it and literally mimic that, but in your own words. I'm not saying steal it and say exactly what they say, but you understand the format, how they did it, what was the hook, what was the middle ground, and what was the end result. And then you start to mimic that, but with your own content, right? And that's what's gonna get you going on social media. That said, people buy from people they trust and like. So I would strongly suggest that you start posting more organic content, talking a little more, you know. And I don't know if you know, but yapping is a thing. I'm not that good at it. I mean, I'm yapping at you right now, but when a camera's in front of me, I'm I'm not I'm not the greatest at it yet, but we're working on it. And and those things create followers. People want to see. natural the fancy pictures and the mega jobs, those are those are kind of gone. There's so many fancy things that you you see now that nothing really sticks anymore. I've seen that. yeah, it's another fancy car. wow, it's another fancy house. You know, it's another walkthrough video of real estate. People just want to know more about you. They want to hear what you have to say, what's your opinion in your niche. And if you talk to people that way, they're gonna start to follow you. Even though your following is small, you could have 10 thousand followers, but it's such a strong following that you'll do very well.
Eric Mollerup: I could not agree more with everything you just said. And I think that now, authenticity, like you said, more than ever, not so much the flashy and having a ten thousand dollar videographer. If you wanna do that, go ahead. But it it's not n mandatory. and especially on the yeah.
Felipe: Nope. Now I I would say if you go on your social media, you do need a videographer and an editor. I have them because if not, you're doing a twenty-five dollar or thirty or forty dollar an hour job if you're worth five hundred, right? Record it, sure, on your phone, maybe and have a camera or or have them do it and then walk away. I don't know what's coming out next video, just so you know. I just film. They guys go and edit everything, they put it together, they schedule it. And I I I look at the account, that one came out. Okay, cool.
Eric Mollerup: Hm. Yeah. So you're basically removed apart from the filming process. Yeah.
Felipe: A hundred percent. So that people go, How do you do so many videos? Like how do you get this done? Like we do two to three a day, right? I said I I don't. I set aside Tuesdays for four hours and we just film like crazy. We can we can do in in in one day, we can do about fifteen to twenty videos.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah. And that there's no
Felipe: Right.
Eric Mollerup: better way of t of doing it, right? You b you block it all into one s slot, make it easy for yourself, knock it all out,
Felipe: A hundred percent.
Eric Mollerup: and you have content for the next two, three weeks, right? Yeah.
Felipe: Hundred percent. we we do in two days we do thirty videos. So in two sessions or four hours. So call it one day, we do thirty videos and you're done. Right. And then the more content
Eric Mollerup: Yeah. I love it. Yeah.
Felipe: you build up, the more that you have that you don't even have to be on the video or you make them of you just talking showing background stuff that you're talking about, right?
Eric Mollerup: Exactly, yeah. We had a Felipe, we had a guest on here a couple weeks ago named Jason. We talked about the topic of authenticity and why you need to show up in content. If you have a family who just moved to town and they don't know anybody, they don't know any builders, they know nothing. There's one builder who might be the best in the city, but he's nowhere to be found. There's the other builder
Felipe: Mm-hmm.
Eric Mollerup: who unfortunately might not build as great homes, but he's all over social media. Naturally he's going to get the attention of that family. And that's the unfortunate reality, I think, is that the ones who show up win. Now that that's not to say you y you your your reputation is important, of course, that all matters, but
Felipe: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Eric Mollerup: it's also how are you attracting eyeballs? And these days it's through yeah.
Felipe: So yeah, that y you could not be any more right about that. And that falls into people buy from people they trust and like. And I'm gonna give you a couple couple tips on that. I don't know if you know, but you don't see Versailles Holmes on s on social media anymore.
Eric Mollerup: I I noticed when I messaged you.
Felipe: Right, it's Felipe, right? Because
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, yeah.
Felipe: people don't trust brands anymore, they trust people. Right. So what happens with that? If you don't show up in social media, they can't get to know you. They won't like you or trust you if they don't know who you are. So you're right when you say, like, I'm a great builder, I think. You know, I'm sure there's better and and there's worse, but I'm not gonna get the job because I'm better. I'm gonna get the job because the person trusted me and they believe in what I'm doing and they felt comfortable. Right? But how do they get to know you in one meeting? They don't. They they're gonna research you. So when they research you you better be out there doing the thing, right? Or else you're gonna lose the job, even though you're the top builder out there that can build the nicest home.
Eric Mollerup: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Felipe, let's shift gears a little bit. Fixed price. give me the one or two sentence rundown of your opinion on fixed price custom home building.
Felipe: I'll give you the opposite. I believe that cost plus is not a contract. It's a receipt. Let that sink in.
Eric Mollerup: I'm letting it. I'm letting it.
Felipe: Right.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah.
Felipe: So fixed price for my people, they don't want to be dealing like like when when you put a client that's involved in your financials, I I'll say this to every builder, how long did it take you as the builder to figure out what a good budget is, you know, what the good people are that are supposed to be building this house and you know what the numbers your company needs to make sure that it thrives. You know, some guys still five, ten years later haven't figured it out, right? So why would you open your financials to your client and a cost plus and let them choose what to do with that? A lot of these cost plus guys, the client go, whoa, you know, 500 grand for that millwork package? Let's let's get three more quotes. Okay, well if you get three more quotes, how do I deliver consistency of quality when I hand you over the job? So number one, it protects my quality, fixed price. I get the guys who I want to do the job so that I can give consistent quality every single time. Cost plus builders have inconsistency throughout their builds because they allow the client to manage the price, which it pushes them to change the trades that they use. And if you consistently change the trades that you use, you're gonna consistently get different results. So that's one major thing nobody thinks about. They're just appeasing the client. And when you allow a client to start looking at your budget and then moving around your your your trades that you know that are gonna do a good job, now you're allowed your client to manage your job. Who got hired to manage the job?
Eric Mollerup: That's right. Yeah.
Felipe: Right? And then some of these builders are doing cost plus and and then telling the client, yeah, we're transparent. We'll give you every invoice and you can pay it yourself so that you see what you're paying. Well, clients, let me tell you, they just fooled you into hiring you as an admin because they don't have back end to make sure that they keep track of your own project. And you're paying invoices you know nothing about.
Eric Mollerup: That that way of framing is one that I actually haven't heard before and it's probably the best version of it that I've heard is just flipping it on the other side, right? Like you've done.
Felipe: That's a damn good reel.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, it is. It is. We're gonna use that, Felipe. We're gonna use that. were you guys always under w were you always of this philosophy when you started the business? Or did you evolve yeah.
Felipe: I've always done fixed price until COVID hit. you know, we we did a c a couple costs plus, we did three or four. I don't like them. Hate them. I'll tell you what, there's so much more to fixed price. So to do a fixed price, you have to be very, very organized and you have to be able to put your client through a very well oiled pre-construction process, which means you're gonna finish your architectural, you're gonna finish your engineering. You're going to finish your interior design. And until that's done, I can't price it. Once I price it and you sign off on it, then we move forward. But what typically happens, the client's like, gets their architectural incomplete drawings, no engineering, no interior design, and they go, price this stuff. can't price that. I'm gonna give you a fake number right now. Because you don't have three quarters of what I need. I don't know what this is gonna cost you, right? But guys, do it anyways. I'll price it for you and they lowball it. Now they've engaged the client. Right? Now what happens is the client gets their permits, they're not done into your design. And they go, start, we're excited to start our home. Just start excavating. We'll figure it out as we go. So now the number you started with becomes a crazy number at the end. And then you can easily blame it on the client. Hey, well, I didn't have interior design. Your designer picked this. You guys picked that. You know, I didn't know this because you told me to start and blah, blah, blah. This is just what it is, and it is a cost plus. So whatever it costs me to do this, you're just gonna pay me that plus what it cost. Plus my fees. Dude, I'm telling you, it is the
Eric Mollerup: Ha ha ha.
Felipe: most like, let me ask you a question. If I was building a house for you and you hired me as a professional, I'm the one that knows how to build a house. So I should know what it costs to build a house and what my end outcome will be because I am a professional. So why would I pass the buck on to you that if the price is the price and then you just pay me a fee and you gotta take the risk, you're not even a builder. How are you taking the risk of what this is going to cost as a cost plus if you're not a builder? You don't even know how to build. You don't know what things cost. You don't know, you know, what plumber to put in i in this project that's gonna suit the project the best. So you have no idea. So why are you taking the risk?
Eric Mollerup: I there's no logical reason. maybe there is out there, I can't think of one right now.
Felipe: They call it transparency, but it is the most untransparent thing ever. I'm telling you right now, transparency is this. This is what we're gonna build. I'm gonna walk you through the whole thing. This is what we're gonna charge you for it, and this is how long it's gonna take, and this is when you're moving in. That is the most transparent thing that you can say to a client. Okay, not like I'm transparent, here's all the numbers, I'm not sure what it's gonna cost, but you just gotta pay me my fee. And if you delay the project, it's gonna delay the schedule, it won't be on me.
Eric Mollerup: Hmm. Yeah. A hundred percent. Do you do you
Felipe: Right? So
Eric Mollerup: h how do you bake that into your initial you know, at the start of your sales process? Do you lay this all out in the client right from the get go? Yeah. Yeah.
Felipe: All of it. The key to a fixed price is is to get the right clients, right? That actually want a fixed price. And just so you know, over fifty percent of clients want reassurance on their price. Number one. Okay. The way to do that is your marketing. You're talking to me about fixed price, why? 'Cause you know I'm the fixed price guy. How did you know that? My marketing, right? Okay, so if I and
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, but it's everywhere. Yeah. Yeah.
Felipe: it's everywhere. So if I'm a fixed price guy and you're a client and you want a fixed price, you're gonna come to me. So the minute you come to me, you're already well educated by what I said online that this is what I do. So then you find me because you like the fixed price. And then I walk to the client through the process, say, hey, we have to finish all these things to make sure we get the right price. And this is how we're going to do it. At the end, I'm going to price the job. For now, I'm going to tell you past projects of this type have costs in between A and B. You know, I'll say this project will be between 500 and 550 a square foot if we stick to this square size and this quality of project. And they're all fine. And they and then they go. I say it's $100,000 down to start. And they give me a deposit and it's non-refundable. And then I put them through the process. Right? And that doesn't pay for architectural or any of that. That's just a deposit to hold a spot in my schedule because they cost money. If you walk away at the end, I have an empty spot that I could have put another client on there, right? So that's how I take them through the process. And then once you're done and you give them a price, it's happy building. I can schedule a fixed schedule because I know exactly what I'm doing. And the client is not worried about invoices and overages and why is this this much? And you know, what is this fee all about? And what is that all about? And why do you have a toilet here? Like, can you not go pee somewhere else? You know? so takes the worry off of the client. Imagine you building a house where you just happily walk into your project all the time and watch the guys build it. And that's not gonna be in the cost plus.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, they're not they're not managing their own exac they're not managing their own project like you said earlier, right? They're paying you to
Felipe: Hundred percent man.
Eric Mollerup: do that as the builder.
Felipe: Now, let me ask you, and don't say this because of me, would you pick a fixed price or a cost plus after all that?
Eric Mollerup: The way you described it, I wouldn't even think of cost plus. me knowing myself, I am a type of person who'd want you handle everything, you do what you're
Felipe: Mm-hmm.
Eric Mollerup: best at. I don't want to be managing my own project. So
Felipe: Mm-hmm.
Eric Mollerup: I'd say Felipe, even before this conversation, I'm more to the fixed price side. If I was building a house for myself, for my family. Yeah. Now the you yeah.
Felipe: That's right, yeah. Yeah. I mean it's it's the way to go. This this is how you shop all the time. You go buy a car, you don't you don't go and say, Hey, Mercedes, can you tell me what the the mechanic got paid to put the engine in? I wanna know because you know I need to know what you're making on this car. You don't ever shop like that. You don't walk into a home depot and say, Hey, I want to buy that lawnmower, but I really need to know what your cost on that was. If they knew
Eric Mollerup: That's right.
Felipe: they wouldn't buy it. Because it's easily double, right? But what you're
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, exactly.
Felipe: selling is value. Is that lawnmower really good? Hey, I don't have to worry about putting gas in it, you know? It's battery operated, it's a good brand. I'll I'll pay that $3,000 for that lawnmower, right? You always have to change your your your your thinking. We're also price driven that you have to buy value, not price. And you have to make sure the client understands that. With us, you're buying value, not the price. And our price at the end of the day is always, if not lower, it's gonna be the same because most guys, like in a cost plus, they'll drag a job. And actually it's not the guys solely, it's the client will drag a job by not making decisions. And time is money and a cost plus. The longer that job lasts, the more money you're paying. But you don't see it. You think they're just building a house for you.
Eric Mollerup: The opportunity cost.
Felipe: I'm telling you, clients don't get it. If they they drag a build for two, three years with the builder there and they go, my God, he told me it was gonna be two million, and it ended up to be three. Well, it's not really well, it is the builder's fault because didn't put the client through the right process, but it's not really the builder's fault if the client decided to just start excavating and delaying things and changing their mind and doing this without a good design process, right?
Eric Mollerup: Exactly. Felipe, the this sounds great. Is there a type of builder where they should not be looking at fixed price where maybe there's a lot of things they need to figure out first? Tell me what those are.
Felipe: 100%. That's a great question. and the reason why I say that is because if the builder isn't organized, you're not gonna make a fixed price happen. Right? A lot of builders build, not work on their business. So if you don't have a good process, if you don't understand how to do a fixed price, how to make sure you get the right numbers that are fair to the client, right? Then you're not gonna do well on a fixed price. This is why a lot of builders will say, well, fixed price is padded. They say that because they're very inexperienced, that they don't know that it's not padded. They don't have the right system. So in their brain, it's like, I don't know how much this is going to be, so I'm just going to pad it. Of course you're saying that because you don't know how to build a fixed price. As a matter of fact, how we do it, we do the cost of construction to the T. We use tools that measure everything exactly precise. And nothing gets missed, nothing gets over-ordered or over quoted. Then we put a two percent error margin. Only two percent. So that ha there is some things that are gonna happen, a couple of things you're gonna miss, right? So that two percent error margin gets added, then you do your overhead on your profit and you're done. It's as simple as that. And if you understood how to do it, what tools to use, you'd be like, I get it. But right now, all those guys that don't know how to do a fixed price and do a cost plus, they'll go, they they pad the shit out of it so they don't lose. No, no. That's your mentality 'cause you don't know what the hell you're doing. Right?
Eric Mollerup: Yeah. Yeah, it's it's not something you just go and do just like that, right? I think you need to y yeah.
Felipe: You have to know what you're doing and it's experience. That's all it is, man. Years of experience understanding the process, understanding past history of what you've done. So if you've done it enough times, you know exactly what you need for each job, right? If you're a beginning
Eric Mollerup: That's right.
Felipe: builder, you're not gonna know how many man hours you need for this, how long should your foreman be there, how many months for a toilet, because if you put in, hey, this house should be done in a year. So I'll I'll do twelve months of toilet rental and then you're there two years 'cause the client pushed you, you know, now you gotta pay for another year of toiletry, right?
Eric Mollerup: Absolutely. I like that example, yeah.
Felipe: So how do you get the client not to change their like how how do you get your client not to change their mind on timing or how to not push that job? Pre construction. Make sure that everything is done at that time and the change orders will be very minimal. Right?
Eric Mollerup: Absolutely. Absolutely. Felipe, this has been a excellent, excellent conversation. Really appreciate, you know, your time here. Where can where can builders I mean apart from the the big sign behind you, where can builders find
Felipe: Yeah.
Eric Mollerup: you online of course? What's j what's the best place?
Felipe: best best two places would be Instagram, Philippe dot frag F R E I G. on Instagram or any other social media and also if you're interested in the coaching, you can go to Versamethod.com and you'll find everything there.
Eric Mollerup: Perfect. Felipe, thank you again.
Felipe: Yeah then.
Eric Mollerup: Thanks for being on.
Felipe: Awesome, Eric. I appreciate you having me on here. Take
Eric Mollerup: Absolutely. Thanks Felipe.
Felipe: care.
Eric Mollerup: All right, welcome back to the Builder Backstage podcast, everyone. I have a very, very special guest here today, Felipe, owner of Versa Homes. Felipe, I'm I'm thrilled, I'm excited. How are you doing today?
Felipe: Good man. How you doing?
Eric Mollerup: I'm good, I'm good. I I've been meaning to get you on here for a while, so the fact that we're talking I I think it's gonna be an interesting one for sure.
Felipe: Well let's get to it. You don't mind if I have a coffee while I'm at it, right? Perfect. This this is my black water.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, absolutely. Felipe. Yeah. I don't mind. I have my water bottle right here. Go ahead. There we go. There we I've had two already today, so I'm yeah. Yeah.
Felipe: That was awesome. Right on, man.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah. Felipe, you you have one of the largest followings in the call it custom home building space. by following I mean, you know, you have both clients that follow you, you also have home builders that follow you. how did you build up such a large following? I mean, kinda start from the beginning. How did that start?
Felipe: I don't know if I have the largest, maybe maybe in Vancouver, BC, but but you know, I just doubled down on a book that I read I'm gonna say about four and a half years ago by I think it's Sheridan, which is called my brain's not working right now. They Ask You Answer. Okay, and they ask you answer. It's kind of about how you should market yourself you know in Google and how you should do blogs and but there was one section that caught my eye which was the videographer. Like four and a half years ago he said, and keep in mind I read it four and a half years ago, but he wrote the book three years before that and he said that videography was gonna be the next thing and it's going to delete head of marketing. So head of marketing was going to be now videographers, right? And content creators. And he nailed it in the head. So I kind of read it, jumped on it three years ago, hired a videographer, and just started documenting and trying things and and, you know, kinda trying to see what I should be doing with his videos and it was very cringe at the beginning. Sometimes still cringe, you just keep trying new things, right? But you just gotta go for it, you know.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah. Yeah, f and the cringe part, Felipe, I'm still cringe in my videos, so I but yeah, you gotta
Felipe: Ha ha ha.
Eric Mollerup: take that first step, right? Make something happen one way or another.
Felipe: Everyone is and and it and it really doesn't matter, right? It it it what matters is that you're moving forward. yeah, I always say it's kind of like, you know, I was a guitar player and when I started playing guitar, my my left hand felt cringe, like you're like, how do you do this, right? And then you just start playing like crazy, right? So when you s you're a baby, you keep falling and when you start to walk. But eventually you're you're sprinting, right? So you just gotta do it. Keep doing it. Don't worry about what people think and just focus. Put your blinders on. Look forward, right?
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, wha when you started with the content, was it meant to be more geared to and then we'll get into that, but to Versa homes and how do we, you know, put more content out for Versa was it more meant for other builders?
Felipe: Yeah, so so what was happening was this first it was all Versa. So three and a half years ago I you know, I was doing my thing and I started to do videos about my job sites and what we do and our process and and it started to really work and I had a lot of builders reach out and they're like, Hey man, can you pick can I pick your brain? You know, take you out for coffee. I'm like Ugh you know, and I I I would go and do it, have lunch, you know, give some advice, leave and you just never hear from them again and see how they're doing, right? So it happened quite often until one day I said, You know what? I sh I should just start coaching. You know? I reached out to my coach. I've always had a coach. I've had mentors and coaches for the last ten years. and I reached out to him, I said, How do I do this? And and it was Dan Martell, and he goes, I think you should do it. So about a year ago, I was on a plane with him. We were in his private jet flying from city to city, New York to Florida. We actually saw Tony Robbins and stuff, and he said, You know what? I'm gonna teach you the framework and I got the framework. He told me exactly what to do and I applied every single thing exactly as he told me. You know, you don't wanna not listen to your coach. You do exactly as he says and and it worked out great. You know, today we have about fifty six guys in the group.
Eric Mollerup: That's in the Versa met I see behind you, that's the Versa method group, right? Got it, okay, okay, got it.
Felipe: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So there's Versa Homes and then there's the Versa method, which I teach exactly what I do in Versa Homes to new builders, right? Not new builders
Eric Mollerup: I see.
Felipe: actually. There's s a lot of builders that have been around for a while but haven't been able to figure it out. And we help them figure it out, you know. and we've we're having huge success with it. The guys that are showing up and writing things down are focused are tripling their revenue, you know, which is pretty cool to see.
Eric Mollerup: Amazing. Yeah. G give me a breakdown. So I'll I've I've checked out the you know, the the the coaching group. Of course I'm not a member, I'm not a builder, but
Felipe: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Eric Mollerup: is it like what's the main focus behind it? 'Cause you said tripling, revenue, things like that. What's the main philosophy?
Felipe: Yeah. Yeah. So so so here's the thing. I actually teach business, right? I paint it with coaching for builders and trades because that's what I do. so I'm niching myself to that. But actually my coaching group, I have website guys, I have automation agencies, I have different people, I have a marketing company as well in there because they understand that what I'm teaching is actually business. and it applies to anybody, even though I'm painting it with, you know, construction. Every business runs the same and what I teach, it it's my my four method, which is marketing, sales, systems, and mindset. S S right? and I teach that because it's very simple. You need marketing to grow a company. Once your marketing is working, if it works well for you, you're gonna have to learn how to sell or else everything you did in marketing is gonna go out the window. Because if you lose the sale but the marketing was working, the marketing now goes out the window. Now, same thing for marketing and sales. If you don't get those two right, you don't get the job. And if you don't get the jobs, you can't implement systems. And if you do get the job and you have bad systems, all your marketing efforts, your sales efforts gets ruined by running that that job site, you know, in a bad way. Because your systems were bad. Now, if you did all three right, marketing, sales, systems, you're gonna be busy. And if you're busy, We want you to have the right mindset of a leader to make sure that you understand how to run a company and not be in the company telling people what to do all the time. Right. So those four metrics is all you need to grow your company. and of course, in each one, there's a lot of lessons that we teach, you know, in marketing, how to run your social media, you know, how to market yourself on your website, how to make sure that you are actually targeting the right avatars. This is a huge thing. Builders go, anyone that wants to build a house, you know. I'm here. That that's a messy marketing scheme, right? So you gotta be really niched down to like for example, for us, we are marketing for executives and entrepreneurs. That's it. Nobody else. Right? That's
Eric Mollerup: Executives and entrepreneurs, okay. Yeah.
Felipe: it. That's the only the only people we build for, right? And why? Because we have systems and they appreciate systems, they appreciate how a business is well put together, they don't have to worry about anything. We take through the design process. We we do the thing for them. They're not really involved. They don't wanna be dealing with numbers and they don't wanna be dealing with spreadsheets and budgets and all this kind of stuff. That's why we created, you know, the fixed price method for us, right? Which works really well for those people.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, and and I I wanna get into the fixed price method because that's a huge topic and we have
Felipe: Mm-hmm.
Eric Mollerup: I've spoken to builders who swear by it and then I've spoken to some who are like, absolutely not, I'm never touching that, right? So we'll get into that. I wanna ask you,
Felipe: For sure.
Eric Mollerup: Felipe, your point on picking a specific demographic or niche and sticking with it, I think is important and saying that,
Felipe: Very
Eric Mollerup: hey, we will build your house, we'll remodel your house, we'll do a home edition. We'll fix your fence. That is not really from what I've seen the way to grow. So tell me how
Felipe: Not at all.
Eric Mollerup: do you find that you have to break that mindset sometimes in some builders who come on board with you? Or is it like a very obvious fact already?
Felipe: Hundred percent. That's that's that's part of changing their habits, right? Because as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, you just want some cash flow coming in. So you'll take anything that comes your way to make sure that you're making money and to make sure that your company's running. You know, and that's okay to do at the beginning, just to kind of build up that cash flow. But eventually you have to really detail who you're after because imagine okay. Who would get a job? You said fencing. Who would get the job? A contractor that does everything or a specific fencing person that's really marketing fencing out there. The fencing person wouldn't have their marketing really dialed in. So Google would like them better. It's all about fencing, you know. when you're online talking about your business, it's just about fencing. You know, and then you have the contractor's like, well, I can build you a fence, but I also build houses. And and their marketing is so all over the map that Google won't find you, even it won't resonate with people on Instagram or or on your social media that you're at because you're just all over the map. People always want to hire the specific person for the specific job, the professional, right? So if I want a good fence, I'm gonna hire a fencing guy, right? Sure, you can anyone can build you a fence, but when it comes to marketing, how do people find you? Right? You have to be very niche.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, exactly. I also find it interesting what you said about the how typically I don't know if it's a hundred percent of the time, but typically higher net worth you know, clients who have money, they
Felipe: Mm-hmm.
Eric Mollerup: want you to just handle things for them. Would you agree? Where they don't want to be just nitpicking every little thing. They would rather have you handle the full process, one team, one roof. Would you agree with that?
Felipe: I I not only agree with it, I live by it. So I'll give you a perfect example. When I built my first house, you know, I didn't build it, my people did. I didn't want anything to do with it, right? I'm talking about my personal home, not my customer's home. right now we're building out an office. I hired a contractor in the commercial space to build out my office. Although I can build it myself, I have the team, but I don't want my focus to shift away from my business. I don't want anything to do with it because I'm busy. I'm a busy entrepreneur. So I said, hey man. Bartek, you got this, you know, call me when it's done. Here's your money, right? And that's how people with the value of their time think. Right. If you think that you want to save pennies, if I was to do my office right now, I could save probably about 200 grand, you know. But the amount of money that I could drop out of my back pocket that I'm not seeing because I didn't go to my client's job site. I didn't attend this meeting that could have got me another job. I didn't go to the design meeting, right? I would be dropping clients, I'd be dropping any kind of opportunity that I have because I'm too busy building my own office, right? So when you start to understand your value, you know, then you're gonna pivot and think like, you know, a wealthy person. And that's what wealthy people hire people that will just take care of things for them, right?
Eric Mollerup: Absolutely. And on the topic of Dan Martell, the buy back your time book, I think goes over this precisely. And
Felipe: How do we say?
Eric Mollerup: in in that time, like with your office, sure two hundred grand, you could use that time to go and sign another client for many times more than two hundred grand, right? Yeah.
Felipe: Hundred percent. Yeah. If my focus was in my office, I would not be getting new new leads. My my goal is always to be a leader in my company and to only deal with the revenue generating items, right? And building out my office is not really revenue generating. It's actually gonna lose me money. But people that don't think that way think, Of course it's generating me money. You're gonna save two hundred grand. No, if you don't do your job the way you're supposed to, you're gonna lose millions of dollars.
Eric Mollerup: So how do you you're telling me this and we both understand that. How do you take a builder who's done very well for themselves but they're still actively involved in just about everything when it comes to even marketing, social media, sales,
Felipe: Mm-hmm.
Eric Mollerup: operation systems? How do you what's the starting process? Like where do you begin? Because there's a million things that they can
Felipe: Well, the the first thing I say is let's review your calendar, okay? I want you so I I put him through an exercise and I say, Listen, I want you to put everything you do for the next two weeks in your calendar. Right? If you wrote an invoice, I want you to put wrote an invoice, did invoicing. You know, if you if you answer phone calls, I want to s I want to know that you answer phone calls. If you had a client meeting, I want to know that you did a client meeting. And I say to them, I want you to market red if you don't like doing that, and I want you to mark it green if you love doing that. And then we're gonna audit it. So then I go through the calendar and I say, Hey, Eric, you were doing invoicing for two hours. And he goes, Yeah. Are you not a high-end builder? Like you you do ten million a year? Yeah. Yeah, I do. Okay. So let's break it down. What's your profit? They'll say a million dollars, right? A year. Okay, great. Break it down by two thousand. They break it down by two thousand, that's five hundred bucks an hour. Would you hire somebody To process invoices for $500 an hour? I'd go, I never thought of it that way. Well, you're paying somebody $500 an hour right now to process those invoices. So how about we pay somebody $25 to $30 and you hire them so that that takes it all away? And now you have more time to do revenue generating things like go meet your clients, go look for new relationships, go talk to architects, designers, right? And also have time to Build your systems so that your company runs without you.
Eric Mollerup: I love it, yeah. Yeah, it's it's simple but at the same time I think that it's not really done. It's so obvious, it's so in your face, but it's not really done, I wouldn't say that often.
Felipe: Well, it it's the mentality that if I pay somebody it's gonna cost me money. And I argue that if you pay somebody, it's going to make you money. That's the shift, right? And that's where a lot
Eric Mollerup: Absolutely.
Felipe: of people have trouble. Like last year I invested a ton of into my company where I could have kept all my profit, but I've dumped money back into my company to get better systems, get better staffs, you know, hire an EA to take over everything I do, which you probably were in touch with their in my email because I don't own my email, right? So you know, I did all that to make sure that my company could thrive. And now I'm ready for what's coming. So I was able to invest in my company, implement mega systems. It cost me a lot of money. But what's coming next year? It's insane, but I know I'll be able to handle it.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah. on on systems, Felipe, can let's just speed run a few systems. I I'm talking early on systems. We talked about the calendar. Let's speed run some systems. Let's not get like too crazy, because I know you have some tricks up your sleeve, but
Felipe: Mm-hmm.
Eric Mollerup: what what are some what are some good like initial things to put in place, some initial things to delegate, maybe some AI, that's a whole other conversation. But what are some things that you'd kind of lay out for builders?
Felipe: Well, I mean, what what level are you at? That's the main question.
Eric Mollerup: Let's look at the builder who is established, right? Let's say they're b sub between five to ten million a year, but they're still actively involved in just about everything, and everything runs through them.
Felipe: The first thing I would say is look at your systems and your major systems are SOPs. Okay. So I need him to take everything out of his brain, like most people do, and delegating to writing it down into systems and processes, into SOP. So I would get him to write down all the SOPs, use the AI, use your staff, you know, use some actually we have some SOP people that you can hire to help you with it so that you don't have to do it all. and I would say write all your systems down. And then when you got them all down, we're gonna get a software that's gonna help you track your staff, making sure that they follow the SOP. So we put it into software, and then after that, you train your people, even though they've been with you maybe for five, ten years and they know their job. Now that you define the scope of work for each individual, they train on it and then you make sure that you start implementing it. Okay. And what that's gonna do is gonna show you now. How good your staff is. It's going to show you if you had a people problem or a system problem. So I'll give you an example. If an invoice got missed, you know, and we didn't pay it for within the 30 days. You go look and you go, okay, was this the admin that didn't pay the invoice? Or was that included in my systems, in my SOPs? If it didn't say that you must pay an invoice within 30 days, then it's not a people problem, it's a system problem. So you immediately go and change that invoice. SOP. Now if the other way around the admin is not listening and they miss the invoice, then you got to have it talk with her and either train her a little more. Or if they keep, you know, making mistakes, you got to do something about it.
Eric Mollerup: Absolutely. That's that's again, as I said earlier, very simple but very actionable and something that can be done today. It should be done yesterday, right? It's
Felipe: Yeah. And man, with AI and you know, and if I was if I was those builders, I would implement AI all day long. So I told my staff about a year ago, maybe a little more than a year ago, I said, guys, we're gonna be ninety percent AI. So I'll give you an example. Monday mornings we have our staff meeting. And I always demand that every Monday we go over budgets with, you know, my entire staff. And if you own a job site, you have to tell me how your budget on that job site's doing. We'll look at the overages. And things that are under and over, right? They hated doing that because they had to spend a couple hours looking at the budget, making sure they understand what's over, what's on there, what's happening, you know. And now with AI, they just tell AI they have a project in there. It's like, okay, well, go into drop dread, let me know what's happening, give me a report. They're ready for the meeting. Right. So here's something that I've done with I know we're gonna get into AI, but AI has leveraged my staff like crazy. So in construction, You should usually have one employee every five hundred thousand, right? This year we've done just over twelve million dollars. Okay. I only have nine staff.
Eric Mollerup: Total staff. Well.
Felipe: Total. I'm talking admins, EAs, not even on site staff, right? We have project managers, we have foremen, but we only have nine staff. So with that little bit of of staff, by making sure that they're always thinking about AI, I can get so much done.
Eric Mollerup: What w what did you do initially to get them, you know, the wheels turning in their head with AI? were they already AI savvy when you brought them in or did you have to
Felipe: I mean a year ago as you know, AI was just kinda starting. I mean it was more than that, more than a year ago. But you know, yeah, I came out a couple of years ago where ChatGPT came out and and and you know, you start to think about it, look at it. A year later we're like, We should really look into this. And I said, Hey, from now on, we're gonna be ninety percent AI. Anything you do, AI, AI, AI. And you know, we would have meetings every Monday and I would say, Did you get this done? And they would go, No, not yet. Why not? It takes you two minutes. No, no, that would take me two days. No, remember? Ninety percent AI. You can do that report immediately with AI.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah. Yeah, I think
Felipe: Right?
Eric Mollerup: it's incredible what it can do these days and I the ninety percent, why what's the last ten percent? yeah.
Felipe: Well, the manual stuff, right? So the meetings that you gotta do, talk to your clients, you know, pick up the phone, talk to suppliers, you know, but all the reporting, and it depends what position you're in. If you're admin, like I'll give you an example, like admin, all the stuff is gonna it's going in pretty automatic right now. I'm building out an entire estimating system out of AI where I just put the plans in and literally build up my estimate with pricing, you know. I it's gonna be incredible where pricing used to take me four to six weeks. Now it's gonna take me like a week or two max.
Eric Mollerup: And and that goes back to your whole point earlier about the time, right? It's it's the time and w instead of X amount of time you've shrunken it down by fifty percent, you know, eighty percent, ninety percent, and that's time that you can go take and put it into other revenue generating activities like you put it, right?
Felipe: Yeah, look, w I I mean you don't run big projects, but I don't think you do anyways, but if you do, you know, forgive me. But I have big projects that have email threads that are a year long. Right? So I can go to AI, connect it to my Gmail and say, Hey, can you can you find this and you know and tell me what this said and create a report so I can send to my client? Pulls it all out of my email, I don't have to review it in two minutes, and then I send it to my client. If not, I would be going through my emails for half an hour to an hour, digging out the information if I need to, you know, create a report, if that makes sense.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah. Yeah. The what what what did you do to become a bit more familiar with AI? Because a year ago I'm sure you knew very d much less than you do today. D was it all self taught? Did you hire a mentor for AI? Was there another builder coach that you reached out to? How'd you kind of get started?
Felipe: Well, Dan Martel is the AI master, right? Like he's all about AI, right? So I am learning from they don't they don't really sit there and teach you, but through his courses that I'm taking, you learn a bit more about AI to a point where now my staff doesn't even call me. I have Felipe AI. They all have it in their pocket. Instead of calling me, they ask questions to the AI, right?
Eric Mollerup: Philippe AI, so what for those who don't know, what is Philippe AI?
Felipe: Flip AI is a construction chat that you have where it has everything that I've ever done, how I do it, what my marketing stuff is, and it advises you on how to deal with things on site, how to do your marketing, how to build your systems, you know, how to do everything in your construction company. You can download it and my website on the VersaMethod.com and you'll have literally a coach in your pocket. So you don't even have to be in a meeting or in a c in a course. You could be Working on your own, ask the question, it implements things for you, you get it done, right?
Eric Mollerup: Wow. Yeah, so so does it function like a just like an L L like you're talking to it and it'll answer you back and reference your brain basically?
Felipe: It'll even talk to you in my voice. Right? So,
Eric Mollerup: Wow. Crazy.
Felipe: and it it's not, I mean, people I say, hey, this is this is like chat, I can do this in Chat GPT, or I could do this on on on Claude. I said, Well, yeah, you can, but it's you it's not gonna tell you what I do and how I do it. I have a proven method that works and it's all lives in in this little chat, right? So you ask anything you want. And it'll push you too. It'll get back to you. Hey, how did you do on that project that you were trying to do? Did you close that job? Like it'll talk back to you without you don't have to ask. It'll actually bug you as well.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, and Felipe what I what I think is I I'll be honest, I don't know a whole lot of coaches that are specifically for builders, but I do know that a lot of coaches slowly step away from what they started doing and they just coach. They just they just make all their money from coaching and they're selling a course or a product. You are actually doing the thing. Like you're still running Versa. You're not just selling coaching on how to, you know, build systems around building without doing it yourself. You're actively doing it day in and day out.
Felipe: Yeah. I'm sure you heard it
Eric Mollerup: it
Felipe: online. Why you know, like i it this is and this is no slag to teachers, but when you go to a school and you learn, you know, your your business teacher is teaching you a business and then you ask her if she's ever run a business and she never has.
Eric Mollerup: Mm-hmm.
Felipe: And if she did and did well at it, she wouldn't be teaching. Right? So
Eric Mollerup: Exactly.
Felipe: that's that's the same thing where there's so many coaches out there that you can create a coaching course online with AI. Right? And you're selling it and you know nothing about it, AI knows more than you. And you're selling it online. But you have to be proven. So if I could give anyone any advice is if you're gonna take coaching, ask your coach, Are you actually doing this and what is your success rate in doing the thing that you're teaching me? And if they say no, well there's your first sign that you shouldn't get coached by that person.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, agreed. Agreed. Absolutely. Yeah, Felipe, before we share wanna talk about fixed price. I think you have a lot to share on that. Before we
Felipe: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Eric Mollerup: do that, I wanna come back to the content and social media real quick. What are some good forms of content that either you teach in the Versa method or you just put out there yourself? I'm sure there's overlap, but what are what are some good types of content you see working well for builders? Is it pictures, is it videos, is it organic UGC style content, the whole bit. What what's working right now?
Felipe: Yeah, so so th there's different different layers to the funnel, right? So there is like the top of funnel content, which is maybe memes and funny stuff that gets you views. you know, there's middle of funnel where you educate, and there's bottom of funnel where you close a client. and the views get smaller as you get to the bottom of the funnel. But as you know, social media keeps changing all the time and there's new things you gotta try, new new trends that are happening. But what I say to my guys is And I'm seeing it on my videos. I got videos that have like 14,000 views. Sorry, 14 million views. But when you look at your follower count re relative to the views is very low. And I got videos that have 20,000 views and they have like an insane 3,000 followers on it, right? So what is that telling you? That that it's not about views, is about what you teach. And if you're teaching people and showing them value, they will follow you. If you're showing them funny or memes, which we like to do them because I have a sense of humor and I don't care if it gets views or not, because you have to show a little personality as well to your audience, those don't get you followers. You gotta focus not on the amount of views, but on the amount of followers and how much value are you giving to those people. So, how do you get that to happen? Number one, start researching online. Instagram is not just a posting tool, it's a research tool. So if you research your niche, Then you get to see who's got the most views in their algorithm, right? Or sorry, in their post. So we teach the four by four method, which means any post that has four times the amount of views than their followers. So for example, if you have 100,000 followers and the real has 400,000 views, that's validated, which means the algorithm likes it, right? And the num number two for so it's four by four is within four months. So if you find a video within four months that has double the amount of views on their followers, that's a very validated video. And you should really pay attention to it and literally mimic that, but in your own words. I'm not saying steal it and say exactly what they say, but you understand the format, how they did it, what was the hook, what was the middle ground, and what was the end result. And then you start to mimic that, but with your own content, right? And that's what's gonna get you going on social media. That said, people buy from people they trust and like. So I would strongly suggest that you start posting more organic content, talking a little more, you know. And I don't know if you know, but yapping is a thing. I'm not that good at it. I mean, I'm yapping at you right now, but when a camera's in front of me, I'm I'm not I'm not the greatest at it yet, but we're working on it. And and those things create followers. People want to see. natural the fancy pictures and the mega jobs, those are those are kind of gone. There's so many fancy things that you you see now that nothing really sticks anymore. I've seen that. yeah, it's another fancy car. wow, it's another fancy house. You know, it's another walkthrough video of real estate. People just want to know more about you. They want to hear what you have to say, what's your opinion in your niche. And if you talk to people that way, they're gonna start to follow you. Even though your following is small, you could have 10 thousand followers, but it's such a strong following that you'll do very well.
Eric Mollerup: I could not agree more with everything you just said. And I think that now, authenticity, like you said, more than ever, not so much the flashy and having a ten thousand dollar videographer. If you wanna do that, go ahead. But it it's not n mandatory. and especially on the yeah.
Felipe: Nope. Now I I would say if you go on your social media, you do need a videographer and an editor. I have them because if not, you're doing a twenty-five dollar or thirty or forty dollar an hour job if you're worth five hundred, right? Record it, sure, on your phone, maybe and have a camera or or have them do it and then walk away. I don't know what's coming out next video, just so you know. I just film. They guys go and edit everything, they put it together, they schedule it. And I I I look at the account, that one came out. Okay, cool.
Eric Mollerup: Hm. Yeah. So you're basically removed apart from the filming process. Yeah.
Felipe: A hundred percent. So that people go, How do you do so many videos? Like how do you get this done? Like we do two to three a day, right? I said I I don't. I set aside Tuesdays for four hours and we just film like crazy. We can we can do in in in one day, we can do about fifteen to twenty videos.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah. And that there's no
Felipe: Right.
Eric Mollerup: better way of t of doing it, right? You b you block it all into one s slot, make it easy for yourself, knock it all out,
Felipe: A hundred percent.
Eric Mollerup: and you have content for the next two, three weeks, right? Yeah.
Felipe: Hundred percent. we we do in two days we do thirty videos. So in two sessions or four hours. So call it one day, we do thirty videos and you're done. Right. And then the more content
Eric Mollerup: Yeah. I love it. Yeah.
Felipe: you build up, the more that you have that you don't even have to be on the video or you make them of you just talking showing background stuff that you're talking about, right?
Eric Mollerup: Exactly, yeah. We had a Felipe, we had a guest on here a couple weeks ago named Jason. We talked about the topic of authenticity and why you need to show up in content. If you have a family who just moved to town and they don't know anybody, they don't know any builders, they know nothing. There's one builder who might be the best in the city, but he's nowhere to be found. There's the other builder
Felipe: Mm-hmm.
Eric Mollerup: who unfortunately might not build as great homes, but he's all over social media. Naturally he's going to get the attention of that family. And that's the unfortunate reality, I think, is that the ones who show up win. Now that that's not to say you y you your your reputation is important, of course, that all matters, but
Felipe: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Eric Mollerup: it's also how are you attracting eyeballs? And these days it's through yeah.
Felipe: So yeah, that y you could not be any more right about that. And that falls into people buy from people they trust and like. And I'm gonna give you a couple couple tips on that. I don't know if you know, but you don't see Versailles Holmes on s on social media anymore.
Eric Mollerup: I I noticed when I messaged you.
Felipe: Right, it's Felipe, right? Because
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, yeah.
Felipe: people don't trust brands anymore, they trust people. Right. So what happens with that? If you don't show up in social media, they can't get to know you. They won't like you or trust you if they don't know who you are. So you're right when you say, like, I'm a great builder, I think. You know, I'm sure there's better and and there's worse, but I'm not gonna get the job because I'm better. I'm gonna get the job because the person trusted me and they believe in what I'm doing and they felt comfortable. Right? But how do they get to know you in one meeting? They don't. They they're gonna research you. So when they research you you better be out there doing the thing, right? Or else you're gonna lose the job, even though you're the top builder out there that can build the nicest home.
Eric Mollerup: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Felipe, let's shift gears a little bit. Fixed price. give me the one or two sentence rundown of your opinion on fixed price custom home building.
Felipe: I'll give you the opposite. I believe that cost plus is not a contract. It's a receipt. Let that sink in.
Eric Mollerup: I'm letting it. I'm letting it.
Felipe: Right.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah.
Felipe: So fixed price for my people, they don't want to be dealing like like when when you put a client that's involved in your financials, I I'll say this to every builder, how long did it take you as the builder to figure out what a good budget is, you know, what the good people are that are supposed to be building this house and you know what the numbers your company needs to make sure that it thrives. You know, some guys still five, ten years later haven't figured it out, right? So why would you open your financials to your client and a cost plus and let them choose what to do with that? A lot of these cost plus guys, the client go, whoa, you know, 500 grand for that millwork package? Let's let's get three more quotes. Okay, well if you get three more quotes, how do I deliver consistency of quality when I hand you over the job? So number one, it protects my quality, fixed price. I get the guys who I want to do the job so that I can give consistent quality every single time. Cost plus builders have inconsistency throughout their builds because they allow the client to manage the price, which it pushes them to change the trades that they use. And if you consistently change the trades that you use, you're gonna consistently get different results. So that's one major thing nobody thinks about. They're just appeasing the client. And when you allow a client to start looking at your budget and then moving around your your your trades that you know that are gonna do a good job, now you're allowed your client to manage your job. Who got hired to manage the job?
Eric Mollerup: That's right. Yeah.
Felipe: Right? And then some of these builders are doing cost plus and and then telling the client, yeah, we're transparent. We'll give you every invoice and you can pay it yourself so that you see what you're paying. Well, clients, let me tell you, they just fooled you into hiring you as an admin because they don't have back end to make sure that they keep track of your own project. And you're paying invoices you know nothing about.
Eric Mollerup: That that way of framing is one that I actually haven't heard before and it's probably the best version of it that I've heard is just flipping it on the other side, right? Like you've done.
Felipe: That's a damn good reel.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, it is. It is. We're gonna use that, Felipe. We're gonna use that. were you guys always under w were you always of this philosophy when you started the business? Or did you evolve yeah.
Felipe: I've always done fixed price until COVID hit. you know, we we did a c a couple costs plus, we did three or four. I don't like them. Hate them. I'll tell you what, there's so much more to fixed price. So to do a fixed price, you have to be very, very organized and you have to be able to put your client through a very well oiled pre-construction process, which means you're gonna finish your architectural, you're gonna finish your engineering. You're going to finish your interior design. And until that's done, I can't price it. Once I price it and you sign off on it, then we move forward. But what typically happens, the client's like, gets their architectural incomplete drawings, no engineering, no interior design, and they go, price this stuff. can't price that. I'm gonna give you a fake number right now. Because you don't have three quarters of what I need. I don't know what this is gonna cost you, right? But guys, do it anyways. I'll price it for you and they lowball it. Now they've engaged the client. Right? Now what happens is the client gets their permits, they're not done into your design. And they go, start, we're excited to start our home. Just start excavating. We'll figure it out as we go. So now the number you started with becomes a crazy number at the end. And then you can easily blame it on the client. Hey, well, I didn't have interior design. Your designer picked this. You guys picked that. You know, I didn't know this because you told me to start and blah, blah, blah. This is just what it is, and it is a cost plus. So whatever it costs me to do this, you're just gonna pay me that plus what it cost. Plus my fees. Dude, I'm telling you, it is the
Eric Mollerup: Ha ha ha.
Felipe: most like, let me ask you a question. If I was building a house for you and you hired me as a professional, I'm the one that knows how to build a house. So I should know what it costs to build a house and what my end outcome will be because I am a professional. So why would I pass the buck on to you that if the price is the price and then you just pay me a fee and you gotta take the risk, you're not even a builder. How are you taking the risk of what this is going to cost as a cost plus if you're not a builder? You don't even know how to build. You don't know what things cost. You don't know, you know, what plumber to put in i in this project that's gonna suit the project the best. So you have no idea. So why are you taking the risk?
Eric Mollerup: I there's no logical reason. maybe there is out there, I can't think of one right now.
Felipe: They call it transparency, but it is the most untransparent thing ever. I'm telling you right now, transparency is this. This is what we're gonna build. I'm gonna walk you through the whole thing. This is what we're gonna charge you for it, and this is how long it's gonna take, and this is when you're moving in. That is the most transparent thing that you can say to a client. Okay, not like I'm transparent, here's all the numbers, I'm not sure what it's gonna cost, but you just gotta pay me my fee. And if you delay the project, it's gonna delay the schedule, it won't be on me.
Eric Mollerup: Hmm. Yeah. A hundred percent. Do you do you
Felipe: Right? So
Eric Mollerup: h how do you bake that into your initial you know, at the start of your sales process? Do you lay this all out in the client right from the get go? Yeah. Yeah.
Felipe: All of it. The key to a fixed price is is to get the right clients, right? That actually want a fixed price. And just so you know, over fifty percent of clients want reassurance on their price. Number one. Okay. The way to do that is your marketing. You're talking to me about fixed price, why? 'Cause you know I'm the fixed price guy. How did you know that? My marketing, right? Okay, so if I and
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, but it's everywhere. Yeah. Yeah.
Felipe: it's everywhere. So if I'm a fixed price guy and you're a client and you want a fixed price, you're gonna come to me. So the minute you come to me, you're already well educated by what I said online that this is what I do. So then you find me because you like the fixed price. And then I walk to the client through the process, say, hey, we have to finish all these things to make sure we get the right price. And this is how we're going to do it. At the end, I'm going to price the job. For now, I'm going to tell you past projects of this type have costs in between A and B. You know, I'll say this project will be between 500 and 550 a square foot if we stick to this square size and this quality of project. And they're all fine. And they and then they go. I say it's $100,000 down to start. And they give me a deposit and it's non-refundable. And then I put them through the process. Right? And that doesn't pay for architectural or any of that. That's just a deposit to hold a spot in my schedule because they cost money. If you walk away at the end, I have an empty spot that I could have put another client on there, right? So that's how I take them through the process. And then once you're done and you give them a price, it's happy building. I can schedule a fixed schedule because I know exactly what I'm doing. And the client is not worried about invoices and overages and why is this this much? And you know, what is this fee all about? And what is that all about? And why do you have a toilet here? Like, can you not go pee somewhere else? You know? so takes the worry off of the client. Imagine you building a house where you just happily walk into your project all the time and watch the guys build it. And that's not gonna be in the cost plus.
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, they're not they're not managing their own exac they're not managing their own project like you said earlier, right? They're paying you to
Felipe: Hundred percent man.
Eric Mollerup: do that as the builder.
Felipe: Now, let me ask you, and don't say this because of me, would you pick a fixed price or a cost plus after all that?
Eric Mollerup: The way you described it, I wouldn't even think of cost plus. me knowing myself, I am a type of person who'd want you handle everything, you do what you're
Felipe: Mm-hmm.
Eric Mollerup: best at. I don't want to be managing my own project. So
Felipe: Mm-hmm.
Eric Mollerup: I'd say Felipe, even before this conversation, I'm more to the fixed price side. If I was building a house for myself, for my family. Yeah. Now the you yeah.
Felipe: That's right, yeah. Yeah. I mean it's it's the way to go. This this is how you shop all the time. You go buy a car, you don't you don't go and say, Hey, Mercedes, can you tell me what the the mechanic got paid to put the engine in? I wanna know because you know I need to know what you're making on this car. You don't ever shop like that. You don't walk into a home depot and say, Hey, I want to buy that lawnmower, but I really need to know what your cost on that was. If they knew
Eric Mollerup: That's right.
Felipe: they wouldn't buy it. Because it's easily double, right? But what you're
Eric Mollerup: Yeah, exactly.
Felipe: selling is value. Is that lawnmower really good? Hey, I don't have to worry about putting gas in it, you know? It's battery operated, it's a good brand. I'll I'll pay that $3,000 for that lawnmower, right? You always have to change your your your your thinking. We're also price driven that you have to buy value, not price. And you have to make sure the client understands that. With us, you're buying value, not the price. And our price at the end of the day is always, if not lower, it's gonna be the same because most guys, like in a cost plus, they'll drag a job. And actually it's not the guys solely, it's the client will drag a job by not making decisions. And time is money and a cost plus. The longer that job lasts, the more money you're paying. But you don't see it. You think they're just building a house for you.
Eric Mollerup: The opportunity cost.
Felipe: I'm telling you, clients don't get it. If they they drag a build for two, three years with the builder there and they go, my God, he told me it was gonna be two million, and it ended up to be three. Well, it's not really well, it is the builder's fault because didn't put the client through the right process, but it's not really the builder's fault if the client decided to just start excavating and delaying things and changing their mind and doing this without a good design process, right?
Eric Mollerup: Exactly. Felipe, the this sounds great. Is there a type of builder where they should not be looking at fixed price where maybe there's a lot of things they need to figure out first? Tell me what those are.
Felipe: 100%. That's a great question. and the reason why I say that is because if the builder isn't organized, you're not gonna make a fixed price happen. Right? A lot of builders build, not work on their business. So if you don't have a good process, if you don't understand how to do a fixed price, how to make sure you get the right numbers that are fair to the client, right? Then you're not gonna do well on a fixed price. This is why a lot of builders will say, well, fixed price is padded. They say that because they're very inexperienced, that they don't know that it's not padded. They don't have the right system. So in their brain, it's like, I don't know how much this is going to be, so I'm just going to pad it. Of course you're saying that because you don't know how to build a fixed price. As a matter of fact, how we do it, we do the cost of construction to the T. We use tools that measure everything exactly precise. And nothing gets missed, nothing gets over-ordered or over quoted. Then we put a two percent error margin. Only two percent. So that ha there is some things that are gonna happen, a couple of things you're gonna miss, right? So that two percent error margin gets added, then you do your overhead on your profit and you're done. It's as simple as that. And if you understood how to do it, what tools to use, you'd be like, I get it. But right now, all those guys that don't know how to do a fixed price and do a cost plus, they'll go, they they pad the shit out of it so they don't lose. No, no. That's your mentality 'cause you don't know what the hell you're doing. Right?
Eric Mollerup: Yeah. Yeah, it's it's not something you just go and do just like that, right? I think you need to y yeah.
Felipe: You have to know what you're doing and it's experience. That's all it is, man. Years of experience understanding the process, understanding past history of what you've done. So if you've done it enough times, you know exactly what you need for each job, right? If you're a beginning
Eric Mollerup: That's right.
Felipe: builder, you're not gonna know how many man hours you need for this, how long should your foreman be there, how many months for a toilet, because if you put in, hey, this house should be done in a year. So I'll I'll do twelve months of toilet rental and then you're there two years 'cause the client pushed you, you know, now you gotta pay for another year of toiletry, right?
Eric Mollerup: Absolutely. I like that example, yeah.
Felipe: So how do you get the client not to change their like how how do you get your client not to change their mind on timing or how to not push that job? Pre construction. Make sure that everything is done at that time and the change orders will be very minimal. Right?
Eric Mollerup: Absolutely. Absolutely. Felipe, this has been a excellent, excellent conversation. Really appreciate, you know, your time here. Where can where can builders I mean apart from the the big sign behind you, where can builders find
Felipe: Yeah.
Eric Mollerup: you online of course? What's j what's the best place?
Felipe: best best two places would be Instagram, Philippe dot frag F R E I G. on Instagram or any other social media and also if you're interested in the coaching, you can go to Versamethod.com and you'll find everything there.
Eric Mollerup: Perfect. Felipe, thank you again.
Felipe: Yeah then.
Eric Mollerup: Thanks for being on.
Felipe: Awesome, Eric. I appreciate you having me on here. Take
Eric Mollerup: Absolutely. Thanks Felipe.
Felipe: care.
