The Future Of Post Frame Starts Here - #1

🇺🇸 America Builds Better #1 — Future Of Post Frame Starts Here

🎙️ EPISODE SUMMARY

In the first official episode of America Builds Better, Jared Ledford sits down with Dan VanOrden, CEO and Co-Founder of IdeaRoom, to talk about the future of the post-frame industry.

They break down how 3D design tools are transforming the way builders generate leads, sell projects, and scale their businesses. From lessons learned at NFBA to real-world application of IdeaRoom and SmartBuild, this episode sets the foundation for what’s next in construction.

If you’re a builder, contractor, or business owner looking to grow, this episode delivers practical insight you can use right now.

🎯 KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Why post-frame is positioned for major growth in the coming years
• How 3D configurators increase customer engagement and conversion
• The power of integrating IdeaRoom with SmartBuild
• Why most builders are behind on websites and lead generation
• How mobile-first design is changing the sales process

👤 ABOUT THE GUEST

Dan VanOrden is the CEO and Co-Founder of IdeaRoom, a leading 3D design and configurator platform serving the shed, steel building, and post-frame industries. He has played a key role in helping modernize how builders connect with customers online by turning design into an interactive sales experience.

🔗 CONNECT WITH THE GUEST

Website: https://idearoom.com

🎧 LISTEN / FOLLOW AMERICA BUILDS BETTER

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@americabuildsbetter
 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6rlzLCXGxvNvozwha26aAq
 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/america-builds-better/id1849738908

🤝 PARTNERS

IdeaRoom – Title Sponsor
https://idearoom.com

DEFYNED SEO
https://defynedseo.com

Shield Wall Media
https://shieldwallmedia.com

📢 CALL TO ACTION

Subscribe to America Builds Better for weekly conversations with the builders, innovators, and leaders shaping the construction industry.

👉 Learn more: https://americabuildsbetter.com
 📩 Contact: jared@americabuildsbetter.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm Dan Van Orden, founder of Idea Room, and we're proud to be the official sponsors of the America Builds Better Podcast. Enjoy the episode, guys.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Hey guys, what's up? This is Aaron. Well, well, well. We find ourselves back kind of in the same spot that we were in before. So, welcome to America Builds Better. I'm Jared. You guys recognize me from the Steel Kings podcast. We are back with a new platform, a new podcast, and it all starts right here. So I want to start off this episode with a big thank you to the guys over at Shed Geek, Shannon and the team over there. Um, what a year it was, right? We uh we did a little bit of podcasting, we did a little bit of networking, we hung out and we uh made some good friends along the way. And I can tell you I learned a lot. So I would not be here without him. So giving him the props at the front of this episode is kind of the way I rock, and I want to give those to Shannon. So thank you very much for the time. Um, in the meantime, we are here. America Builds Better is live, and we are going to be coming at you with similar content to what we had with the Steel Kings, but with a little bit different vibe. Um, we're working with Idea Room, we're working with Shieldwall Media, and uh in the meantime, if you guys do not have subscriptions to the trade magazines like Rural Builder, um frame building news, all of the above, check out the team over at Shieldwall Media, Shieldwall Media.com. You can sign up for trade publications that are free of charge. Okay, if you're in the industry and you need more information and you want it in a print format, which I know a lot of people really like magazines still to this day, um, you can get free subscriptions with the team over at Shieldwall Media. We also are going to get prepped and ready for the Builder Show in York, Pennsylvania. June the 10th and the 11th, myself, the Idea Room team, the friends over at Smart Build and Graber, we will all be in the house in York, and we are really looking forward to that. So, in the meantime, I think we are just going to jump right into it. I am working closely with my buddy Dan over at Idea Room, and this idea kind of came together kind of over the last six months or so as we were kind of finishing up the Still Kings podcast and getting ready to kind of figure out what the next lay of the land was. We wanted to figure out just how we took the next step, whether we continued to create content through podcast form or went to more of a digital media type of setup. Um, I think at this point, we've kind of decided all of the above. Um, we're obviously working with some of the biggest partners in the industry. You guys know Idea room, you guys know Smart Build. Um, for all of you that are that are watching along, we're gonna be giving you up-to-date information on that integration. So if you are currently using Smart Build and you are in need of a better lead gen operation, that's where I come in. That's where Dan comes in. We want to help you generate those leads and we want to help you get them in real time. So I am going to go ahead and bring in, I guess we're calling him a co-host now. I'm not really sure. So Dan, Dan can give us that update. But but Dan, brother, what's going on, man? Welcome to Builds Better. Yeah, how are you doing, man?

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Thank you very much. As always, jazz to be on the show. Very excited about the new branding and the new direction. And honestly, it'd be an honor. I mean, sure, you can call me a co-host. I won't be on all the time, but we'll be back a lot. So yeah, really happy about it.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

Yeah, it was kind of our brainstorming, right? I mean, this kind of came together. We were just hanging out and getting to know each other a little bit better over the last, you know, six, eight months, something like that. And we were working on a deal for the Steel Kings. And when the Steel Kings kind of sunseted, uh, I'll use that as a phrasing here. We just decided that we were gonna go in a different direction. We really see the value in giving this information directly to people in the post frame and pole barn space. Not that steel buildings aren't important, not that we won't talk about sheds every once in a while, but I think if you really need shed content, you want to check out the team over at Shed Geek. Um, we're gonna throw in some steel building stuff every once in a while. But man, I'll tell you, you know, we just got back from NFBA, and I think NFBA was a real eye-opener for me personally, um, just because of the uh brand awareness with myself as much as it was the Steel Kings or anything else. And I think that people in the industry are just looking for the information, they're really seeking it out right now.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Yeah, they are. Um, it was a really great show for us. It was very exciting. And Jared, honestly, like you know so many people. It was wild just kind of walking around, talking to folks, getting to know more people. Um, it felt like you know, we had a lot of brand recognition and people were excited to see us there. And then just kind of that pod of uh idea room and smart build, and then you were over there with Defined SEO, and we were rolling out the America Builds Better Branding. Um yeah, we'd kind of been working on that for months. So to see it kind of culminate and come together was uh really exciting. And yeah, I love the reception. So I am kind of curious just in kind of the conversations you had, how were people reacting to kind of bringing the podcast, the new branding, the direction? Um, I agree with you. Like I think the you know, the market and everyone is hungry for new content, new education, exciting direction. But um, yeah, what were you hearing from people?

SPEAKER_02 6:07

I think that people are excited that we're gonna be more on target for what they're looking for. I think the biggest, the biggest misconception, you know, when we came up with the Steel Kings concept 18 months ago or whatever, you know, Eric and I were working really closely together and doing a lot of steel building stuff, and that was fine. But as we transitioned into post-frame, it became necessary for us to kind of divert that direction towards post-frame and pole barn and away from the Steel King branding. Um, when I interacted with people at the show, they were just excited to see me. And I think that, you know, from a from an overarch, it was kind of overwhelming, honestly. Um, because we had talked so much about honestly, I mean, we had talked so much about the idea and smart build integration leading up to we did the NFBA series, and uh there was just a lot of already like pent up excitement. It's like people came to the show ready to see us and talk about it. Um, we spent a lot of time over at Define doing demos for Idea Room and Smart Build, right? I mean, that was pretty much you know, you'd send people over, I'd send people over, we were walking people back and forth. And the one thing that I just I can't stress enough is that if you haven't seen it, ask us. Um, reach out to myself, Dan, the team at IdeaRim, the team at Define. We are happy to help you kind of navigate the next steps for your integration process. Because what I figured out, what I got from a lot of people is that there's a lot of people on Smart Build that have no idea I re Idea room even exists. That that's the thing, they have no clue. And there's so many cool things that are in this industry that they have no clue of, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:47

Yeah, I mean, this was one of the reasons I kept driving people your direction was that they could see everything tied together in a really nice demonstration. And I it I mean, it was a great show from like an attendance perspective. We had a constant flow of people coming to the booth and they were all looking for ways to grow their business. And um, you know, what I kept telling them is Jared knows how to do this really well, whether it's how to set up your website and get all of the indexable pages you need to kind of get SEO and attention, or how to run your ads the best to capture attention and where to send it. And, you know, it it lands. I mean, we're pretty good at explaining what we do, but it just lands better from someone who's actually sold buildings and can even show them on your website how you do it. Uh so from that perspective, like, yeah, it was great. And um, yeah, I'm I'm curious in terms of just like what you were hearing from people as you were demonstrating, what were maybe the the biggest things that they learned of the pain points they're having in their business in terms of trying to grow? Like, what was most impactful, I guess, from what you showed them from, you know, kind of the feedback you heard.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

I think everyone really wants a 3D designer. I think we're past the initial market, you know, understanding of what a 3D designer can do for your business. I think now it's the race for implementation, right? And I think that there's a lot of options out there, and specifically in the post frame space, there are several out there. I just don't think that there's any that are going to communicate with a customer from a forward-facing, more of a Legion type of perspective into bill of materials, which is what we have with Ide Room and Smart Build. Um, I think there's a lot of people out there that just don't know and they want something that they've seen somewhere else. Um, I can tell you one thing, brother. You're your your guys' Facebook, your guys' Facebook uh advertisement, man. That thing just sits, that thing sits in my reels, man. I uh I was sitting the other night and I was I was man, I was just having one of these evenings where I was like, man, I just want to I don't do it very often, but I like just was scrolling, just swipe, you know, I do the swipe up method because I make fun of people that do it, but like at nighttime when I'm winding down, I'll swipe through some reels. And like I was on this really funny video and I'm like three minutes into it, and up pops uh up pops the Burroughs idea room advertisement, and I'm like, man, just when I can't get away from work for five minutes, but I can tell you that's that feedback. There was two feedbacks, right? There was people that wanted it and people that were were starting to use it that were really happy with it. I didn't have anybody come up to me. This was the first time in a long time that I had no one come up to me and say, Well, I'm having issues with X, Y, and Z. I I think that's where that's where this is uh a really fun time to be alive and be doing this if you're really into it, which I know that both of us are. We're both very motivated about this particular offering because it's that impactful for the business. You believe in the design tool because you helped create it. I believe in the lead gen possibilities because I'm using it. I am a high-level user and I believe in it whole heart.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Yeah, I mean, what's really nice about kind of being still a little bit early in terms of adoption in the industry. I mean, it really is starting to take off, but it's still early in terms of the mass adoption in the market, is it is a lot of people still discovering it and getting very excited about it. Um, and then we've kind of built it this time. I mean, we've mentioned this before, where it's much more self-service. A lot of the data integration between smart build and idea room just pulls the data across. So there's just not as much effort either in implementation or ongoing maintenance. And then we've kind of got those tools just built into the software itself so people can maintain themselves. Uh, so from that perspective, like it is a very nice, seamless package. And then, yeah, I mean, like you've already talked about in terms of the direction for the podcast, um, Postframe is just a very exciting space to be. And it kind of feels like we're hitting that moment where, you know, there's going to be more adoption, more people going to market online, and everyone's kind of really hungry for all of those uh marketing and selling principles and ways to do this really well. And so they just soak it up really quickly. Um, everybody's just hungry to learn, basically, and see the results.

SPEAKER_02 12:26

I I think we're I think we're in this really weird position where the future is completely at our disposal. We can we can cast the vision for the next wave of what's going on in post frame is in regards to lead generation and sales, because you and I have watched the steel building industry just explode over the last, you know, decade, 12 years, something like that, where online dealers have really penetrated that market and really helped scale metal buildings into a really what would be a fairly competitive offering to post frame. And I think that that's where postframe can grow here, is there are opportunities with teams out there that are ready to sell, who know how to sell buildings, who know how to use idea room, and are ready to sell postframe. And I think that that's really where this scales at a large rate. Um right now, I would say most postframe companies are regional, slightly regional. Um, there's not a lot of national online sales going on in the post frame space. And I I think that's where there's a huge opportunity here, Dan. These large, these large conglomerate type of businesses that are ready to sell a large amount of buildings. This is the right tool to kind of help scale that. You can give this to a sales team and really watch it take off.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Yeah, that's true. We've had a lot of uh folks that have used Iderum to sell uh sheds and metal buildings come to us and ask for who for whom we can sell post frame buildings, and up until now there just hasn't been as many options because that's right, yeah, it's not quite the way they go to market in terms of national coverage or having dealers that maybe sell across the country and sell for multiple suppliers. Um, but yeah, it is kind of a moment in time where this is why competition can even be good. Yeah, uh, is it kind of drives a little bit of attention towards like, yeah, there's a lot of people hunting online to buy buildings, and post frame is a great fit for their needs.

SPEAKER_03 14:29

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Uh, and there's a lot of folks that have learned how to do this as dealers who would be great as a marketing and sales organization for uh some of these postframe companies.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

Um these national suppliers that service, you know, 14, 15, 16, 20, you know, large, you know, large territories of volume, they're working with contractors and local people to get building kits sourced and things. These suppliers want to be able to supply in their entire coverage area at a large rate. And I think that this gives them the opportunity to work with people who aren't necessarily boots on the ground, aren't necessarily putting these buildings up. I think there's a huge opportunity for online dealers to really get into this space for the first time. I I think I love being at this table right now because I wish I was at the table with Steel Buildings when all of this kind of the proliferation of it kind of went nuts. And really on the back of, I mean, I've said this before on podcasts, I've said it on the Steel Kings and on Shed Geek too. We owe our business at Dayton Barnes to our relationship with Idea Room. If you're selling metal buildings or sheds online and you're not using Idea Room, you are less than your competition. That's the truth. There are other great 3D configurators out there. I'm not taking anything away from anybody else. I'm just telling you that my relationship with Idea Room has curated a business that's that's done over the course of the last six years, probably close to 80 million in gross sales, and just really has dominated our space for a long time. I mean, we're going into a seventh year here at Dayton Barnes and are really just enjoying the ride. And now starting Five Rivers Pole Barnes last year and just seeing the success that we've had with partners like Graber, um, partners like Idea Room and Smart Build, um, it's a wide blue ocean for the future. And I think if you're sitting there and you're listening to this, or you meet us at a trade show, or you happen upon idearoom.com or Dayton Barnes or Five Rivers, I think what we want to make sure that we let you know is that we are like kind of an open book. I don't mind telling you what works. You know, I've even told people before, you know, if you're gonna work with somebody in the steel space, make sure you call American Steel, right? You know, we want to make sure that we're propping up our partners, and I'm not I'm not one to run away from letting you know what works for me. You know, it's not a matter of, and I'm gonna say it for the first time. This is the official first time I'm gonna say it on this podcast. Rising tide raises all ships. I believe that wholeheart. Dan knows that. Everybody that works with me knows that I am I'm an open book, and sometimes it bites me. Dan Dan's Dan's nursed me through a couple of rough evenings over the last few months, right? You know, but at the same time, I still believe it. I believe that if we work together, we we community. That's what America builds better is all about to kind of segue America builds better is about America builds better post frame, America builds better steel buildings, sheds, community, relationships, technology, all of it. We're gonna talk about a little bit of everything on this podcast, and we're gonna get kind of down in the down in the pit every once in a while, and we're gonna tell you exactly how it is because that's how I want it to be delivered. And Dan's the same way. That's why I like working with him so much, because we can tell you exactly what's going on and exactly what works for us, and we don't mind sharing that information. I mean, is that the way you see it?

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Yeah, absolutely. Um, we see a lot of what is very effective in the market, and we love sharing it because ultimately, yes, the rising tide raises all boats. We've seen that in every industry that we've kind of entered. Um, and being able to kind of reach and tap the market and talk to customers in a better and more effective way. Um, and yeah, we want to kind of get into the details and share things on different episodes about, you know, specific marketing practices, specific sales practices, uh, keep kind of feeding information about both what we've released and what we have coming up in the future. Um, and yeah, bring what we've learned to kind of help the post-frame market in terms of uh, you know, just growing overall. We really want to help grow the industry. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:50

That's right. So yeah, we're working really closely with the companies that are really kind of laying the groundwork for the future of this industry, not just in post-frame, not just in steel, not just in sheds. We want to work with anybody who sees fit to take a technology product like idea room and implement it into their business and hopefully scale. That's that's what you know that that's the one thing I will tell you, Dan, that I got a lot of feedback from. We looked at a lot of websites that that NFBA.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

Yeah, what did you see?

SPEAKER_02 19:23

Uh not a lot, man. Not a lot. I can tell you.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

What's wild is we actually talked to people again that have no website, though in a lot of cases they may be active on Facebook with a Facebook page, right? Just kind of a different way to do it. Or um, in a few cases, I actually got asked about um having an offline version of Idearom because they didn't even have internet, yeah, which again just speaks to the size of the market and there's still folks out in rural areas, it's all word of mouth. Um, but they're still looking for ways to give people, you know, a better experience. Uh but yeah, I'm I'm curious, like in a few cases, like were you able to give them some, you know, kind of immediate feedback and input about how to improve their website? 100%.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

Yeah, I think the biggest thing, so there's a couple things, right? You're not going to be competitive if you have less than 50 pages on your website. The days of having a really clean website with not a lot of pages, those days are pretty much over with. I think right now it's all about content creation. How many pages can you get? How many pages drive customers to a lead form? How many pages drive customers to something like a successful tool like Idea Room? Um, you know, we run, we run branded ads specifically to the build tool. At this point, we have bypassed, we have bypassed our our need to drive customers to a home page, we drive them directly to the build link. And that way when they go to you know, build.fiveoverspaulbarns.com or build.daytonbarns.com, they are immediately inserted into our sales funnel. They are immediately introduced to what we want them to interact with. And when you use something like Ide room that has you, you all have curated so well the the mobile friendly interaction, and your ability to customize is so beyond measure that if you do notice something that's out of whack, it can be fixed pretty quickly, right? And that's what you and I have talked about a lot is like how customers interact with something. Because again, I use the scrolling feature at the beginning of the episode. If you scroll and all of a sudden you stop, your forward momentum, your trajectory is stopped. You are likely to stop the process in which you're doing and go back to watching cat videos.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Oh, yeah, you're talking about the infinite scroll on booze. I'm telling you, man, the infinite scroll instead of tapping around, you just keep scrolling. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 21:51

So the biggest thing, the biggest thing and the biggest compliment that I have to give, and I have to call it out again, and people see it in real time and they can't believe it. The UI, so the user interface, we're going to talk tech for a minute. The UI of idea room on a mobile format, as you guys call it, boost. Um, that particular format allows you to see the building, turn it 360, make changes to the building without covering it up, and also always hit submit for quote or whatever the action cue is at the bottom. And that is so far and away different than what the competition's doing. And then the hooks that you have on the back side of it to be able to implement it. I mean, again, it would be one thing if it was just a 3D design tool that looked really good on your mobile device. What we're talking about is taking that 3D device, so or the 3D build. And I just imagine, you know, I'm a I'm a guy sitting in my bed at 10:30 at night and I'm scrolling on Facebook and oh, I see an advertisement for a poll barn. You know, I've been looking for a pole barn. Okay, boom, and I'm in the threat, oh man, I can build this thing. Okay, cool. Boom, submit for quote. The next morning, my rep gets that lead, calls that guy, works on the process. Maybe we sell the building that day, maybe we sell it a few days later, whatever. But we push that to bill of materials without really much fuss. What I'm telling customers right now is it's like 90 to 95 percent surety on the building itself. Is there always some nuances between software? Of course there is. Okay. But if you're sitting there and you're like, well, I'm working on smart build, think about how long it takes to curate a building from start to finish. If you could get 85, 90, 95% of that building built for you by the customer, would that make your process work faster? I can just go ahead and tell you the answer is yes. I'm seeing it in real time. I mean, it's literally changed our business at Five Rivers Pull Barnes. We were struggling. We were struggling. I mean, I'm not gonna lie to you, we were struggling to curate leads. We couldn't figure it out. I mean, getting people to fill out a form is one thing. Okay, getting people to give you their contact information is one thing. But if you can place that building inside your customer's aura, like once they see that building, they're like, oh yeah, that's the red and black building that I've been dreaming of for 20 years, right here on my screen. And oh, I've got oh, the email. Man, I've got perspective views, I've got a floor plan. I'm seeing this thing come come to me before my eyes. They are that much more likely to buy. I don't care what anybody says. It's not like me and Dan are sitting here with test groups either. It's not like I can produce data, I can just tell you from six years of using the idea and product in steel buildings and now about a year or more using it in post-frame, it makes a significant increase in the customer's desire to buy.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Yeah, you've you've got to entice them to give you their contact information. That's right. The form is kind of dead and boring at this point. Like you've got to engage them and give them a reason uh that they want to talk to you. And that's what that 3D experience does. In fact, it was kind of based on demand that we eventually put in that you must put in your contact information up front, and some people configure their site that way.

unknown 25:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

But generally speaking, yes, we do have analytics and we look at this all the time. We kind of obsess about things that can impact your conversion rate and how much people do submit to contact you and talk with you. Uh, you want to give them the experience first, at least for a bit, to kind of play around with that building design and really kind of fall in love with it. Um, the other thing I was going to jump in and say, Jared, is yeah, you could wait until the next morning. Uh, but we're doing this same approach with mobile, and we've already released that kind of mobile optimized version of the sales dashboard and sales view. And we've done some nice fresh updates to the lead details page. So we've talked with salespeople who will actually interact with folks uh at night sitting on the couch, and a lead comes in and they want to attack it right then. And the reality is that level of uh follow-up, um, it's a little obsessive, but the truth is if you get back to people immediately, uh that's the most effective way to do it. And there's a variety of tactics for doing that that could be automated and otherwise, so you don't necessarily have to work at night or all night. But you know, some of the best salespeople do that. Um, so yeah, we're we're tying together both that mobile friendly front end to the mobile optimized friendly back end, and we've got a lot more common with like um deal management and really ultimately we're gonna call it the ultimate sales tool, at least in terms of uh what we're trying to build here. Um, so yeah, that that mobile optimization is both really powerful for the customer, but also for the salesperson that can work at any time, anyplace, on the go, that kind of a thing. So 100%.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

And that's come so far. You know, what I really have appreciated is that you've taken the feedback that you've gotten from high-level users like myself and implemented it in real time, and then given additional tools on top of a tool that's already really, really good. Let me say this really quick before we jump into you know, tying this episode up. If you are in need of information outside of the podcast format, check out shieldwallmedia.com. They feature rural builder, frame building news, plane builder, metal roofing magazine, roofing elements, all the different trade publications are at your fingertips. And the best part about it is it's free to sign up. Check out ShieldWallMedia.com. Get more information on all of the publications, get all the information for the Builder Show in York. Myself and Dan, the teams, idea room, smart build, graver, shieldwall will all be there. And uh it's a big time. You were saying, Dan, that you feel like you feel like people need educated. What do you feel like is the number one objection to overcome when it comes to like a 3D configurator or taking the next step with a website design? What do you hear is the number one objection?

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Well, I'd have to ponder for a second on objection. What I find is kind of the things that you were showing people are the things in their way from getting the results they want. I think you were blowing people's minds in terms of how many indexable pages you want on your website. Yeah. Right? Different categories, location specific. You need that in order to drive the traffic. And it you know, I mean, honestly, when we're signing up postframe companies, there probably is kind of similar to what we saw in previous markets. We don't have a website and we need to get it up and running, or we're doing a refresh of the website and we need to get that up and running. And so from our perspective, it's really like um, yeah, you could wait, but the reality is if you design the experience around the 3D configurator, it's going to be so much more powerful because you need all of those indexable pages with 3D configurator links kind of designed in there as a part of the experience. And then even for your ads, like you're talking about, I mean, we've seen it in the analytics, some of the folks that drive the most amount of traffic to Idea Room and get the best results. It's the same thing. We have a lot of referring domains because they're coming in from Facebook ads, Google ads, and other things like that.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

Um, I do want to kind of mention because you brought it up, uh, we love to hear the input and feedback. And we did actually get very specific feedback that we responded to, I think, pretty quickly at the show, related to like that show totals out of Smart Build where you can pull and see the price. You gave us some of that too, which was, oh, I don't want it to go immediately. I want the price to come in, my salesperson to work with it, update the job, and then send it to the customer. We now have a way that you can basically pick which one of the buttons, whether it's save or it's quote, or it's just a salesperson controlled button, you can send the price when you want and not necessarily on every call to action. Uh, and then the other one we've put in place is an API-based way to actually trigger that push of the Smart Build job from idea room over to Smart Build. So we're really listening closely to that feedback as folks use the show totals, the create job in Smart Build, how you want that designed into your process. And we're still kind of iterating and updating that based on real-time feedback. So hopefully that's one of the things we'll keep talking about and we'll hear from listeners on the podcast so we can just keep improving everything.

SPEAKER_02 30:36

Yeah, we definitely got to get normal on because I think one of the things that really blows people's minds is like, let me just walk you through a quick synopsis. Customer sends in the quote. We start to work the quote on our side by a sales rep. Sales rep has access to um what the customer has submitted, including a baseline price for smart build. If you have like a project lead or a project coordinator or manager or whatever that's in charge of your smart build, you can have that person go into the build in real time because the idea room is going to automatically send over to Smart Build. It's there right away. So what I do here in this office is I curate that building for my sales, for my sales rep or whatever. I'm going through the build, and you know, okay, I need to add for this specific location, I need to add different knee bracing, or I need to add a different header on this wall, or I need to make sure that a door has specific hardware attached to it. I can do all of that. And in the meantime, my sales rep is in the background talking to the customer, curating all the relevant information, setting up a site visit, getting everything that we need to do to take the next steps. And what I can do is I can push the pricing back to my sales rep through Idea Room. I don't have to communicate in any other way, shape, or form. I can refresh it. And then the most the most up-to-date pricing from Smart Build appears in Salesview inside Idea Room. It is so nice because I can make changes on my side, and then my sales reps never have to see my smart build. Like if that's one of the things that you're worried about is man, we have really specific parameters on our smart build. We don't want people in there, we don't want people messing around with it. Great. Keep it on lockdown. Have one or two people on it. That makes complete sense to me. And you can have, you know, five, 10 sales reps underneath of you that are working leads for you, and then you can curate the building. And again, that 90 to 95% is about right. I mean, I I nothing is ever perfect. Okay. Not even when you do an idea room build on a steel building, is everything perfect? But I can tell you what you have to understand it, and I had this conversation with an with an employee and a partner of mine. They're like, Well, this isn't working the way that we want it to. And I said, What's not working about it? And he said, Well, the building's not exactly the way it needs to be when we sell it. And I said, Well, we wouldn't have the lead without it. Didn't you sell the building? Well, yeah, we sold the building. Well, what else matters? How would that customer have come to us without it? That's what I mean. That was my argument. What would Karen Smith, let's just use that as a name, would she have come in had we not had idea room? My argument is no.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

Okay, it depends on what part of the process you're in, right? Are you in the lead conversion process? Are they just playing with ideas, getting inspired? Are you further down where you're, you know, selling and closing and kind of buttoning up the details? And this is really where it's like it's it's fantastic to dig into and understand your process because there's so many ways to set it up.

SPEAKER_03 33:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

Um, and sometimes it hurts us, but we are a bit of a Swiss Army knife in terms of how much you can customize things, especially in your workflow and process. So I love learning more because yeah, we want to augment that and improve it. And anytime we hear like, oh, it's not fitting quite right, perfect. Tell me how, because there may be a way to do that now, or we can enhance and improve things. Um, so yeah, that's always it's always nice to do that.

SPEAKER_02 34:03

And that's the thing, we're only going to get better with that feedback. I I cannot tell you, like, Dan knows, I know. My process isn't perfect. There's things about it I can fix right now. There's things about Idea Room that Dan and his team can fix. Nothing's ever just finished.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

Well, I think Jared, you were the first one to tell us, like, oh, I love the totals, but I need to send it in a second step, not immediately. And it was like, oh, perfect. I told Norma, talk to Jared. We got to capture that understanding so we can like have it configured.

SPEAKER_02 34:35

And that came from my partner Adam. You know, Adam was one of the ones who was very vocal, right? And I got to give him a shout out. He is very vocal and he's critical. And I like that about Adam. He gives me real-time feedback and I try to address it in real time. But what I can tell you specifically is that you have to overcome the objection at all angles. It can't just be, well, this doesn't work, let's get rid of it. Well, why? Why does that always have to be everybody's first answer to everything? It doesn't work, so let's get rid of it. And it's like, that's not the way the world works. Do you realize how things get better? It's with feedback and it's with determination and it's with a dedicated, a dedicated avenue for uh a repair. Like, it's all there, all the data is there. We can make it do kind of whatever we want it to do, but we need feedback. You know, that was the biggest thing about our connection, Dan, is like you can kind of make Idea Room do like so many cool things that you haven't even thought about before. And you need someone with a sales background who uses the tool at a high level to say what works best in this application. You're seeking it out. That's what I like about working with you is like all these other people that are doing 3D designs and doing they're trying, um, where they miss is they don't have a high enough user base to get the feedback that they need, and the users they're using only know how to use their stuff. They have no idea what they want, they have no idea what their processes are. That's why I feel like the relationship that we have currently, working between defined and idea room, is one of shared experience for everybody. It's a shared benefit for everybody because I can show you how to make idea room produce leads for you. That's a fact. We've done that across multiple different brands, we've done it across different categories, um, different businesses. Um, we're doing it actively right now with new clients every day. And I can tell you, if you're if you're listening to this, you don't want to be left behind. And this isn't a sales pitch. Listen, Dan be the first one to tell you there's other 3D design tools out there that work just fine, but they're not idea room. That's just my opinion. I've said that before, and I'll say it again. I Dan doesn't have to say it. I'll say it for him.

SPEAKER_00 36:55

Well, and if you talk to our salespeople, they'll unpack what you're doing and what your problems are and what your goals are because you want to fit the tool to what people want to accomplish. That's right. Um, it's an educative, consultative selling process. Um, and yeah, we're not always the best tool to meet your goal. It depends on what it is. Um we are very focused on customer experience above all and enabling that marketing and selling process. And yeah, I mean, we've got a lot of customers and we learn a ton from them. So we see a lot of things, uh, and everybody kind of benefits from the improvements. But on the partnership side, yeah, Jared, that's really powerful. I mean, you are a customer, you've been a customer, you're also now a partner, podcast, defined SEO, all of the above. Um, but those partnerships all make us better because we get more feedback. I mean, like working with Smart Building has been amazing. Those guys are great, and you know, we're entering, uh, I mean, we've been in post frame for a while, but there's so much to learn because those guys have already gone so deep and they started in the post frame industry in terms of building their software. That's right. Um, and then other folks uh at the show, like um Joe Ignace with uh Velocity 360. We haven't formalized a partnership, but we're talking with him, and he's really, you know, very effective at marketing as well, or you know, focusing on the CRM side of things. All of these partnerships and conversations help improve each other because we can learn a lot from each other. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:18

Yeah. And I think that if we can start to show people what SOPs look like, I think there are so many people in this industry who haven't applied really any formality to their business. People just start it and start running. Hey, I'm gonna start getting material, I'm gonna start putting buildings up. And what you don't understand is that you can go from selling seven or eight buildings a year and that's great, it feeds your family, but what would it look like if you sold 15 or 20? And those are the kind of customers that we're going after right now, kind of in in lockstepping and speed. Is do you want to scale your business at whatever level you want to? We can try to help you map the road to walk. Because right now, if you just started a business, started buying supplies at your local lumber yard, and you know, you're trying to figure out a way to get it there, you're trying to figure out a way to put it up. Um, there are a lot of ways that you can curate contacts, and that's like working with the right, you're talking about the right partners. We're obviously really excited about our relationship with Graber. You know, Graeber Post Buildings has been absolutely next level to the success of Five Rivers Pole Barns, um, bringing them inside of the idea room infrastructure and having them work directly with Smart Build. What a relationship that's been. And I know there's a lot of people out there who are who have been Grayber customers for years, who are successful. And I can tell you, there's not much better out there, right? You know, as far as working with somebody who services a large area, has great return on how quickly they get the product there. They care about their customers, they may they care about their contractors, they care about the end product, and that's something that's really been exciting for me. Is I'm really looking forward to see how how much we can move that forward to where this is just a one-to-one. It's 90% today, it could be 98% six months from now, where we literally hit one button in idea room, and it is literally the exact build and smart build down to this the last screw. And just because we're growing doesn't mean it's not ready for production. Because I can tell you, I'm a high-end user, I'm using it every day, and it works. It absolutely works to drive traffic if you do it the right way. And we're here to give you that info. Dan, we are at the time, brother. Isn't that crazy? Already episode number one's in the bag, and we're gonna give you more. So America builds better.com. We're on YouTube, we're gonna be on Spotify, we're gonna be on Apple Podcast, all of the above. We're gonna start curating episodes. Uh, I've got a couple shot now, but this is the one that we're officially gonna launch as the number one episode. And I can tell you, Dan, do you got anything for us as we finish up for this week?

SPEAKER_00 41:07

Well, uh it's fantastic to be on the podcast. I'm glad you called me a co-host. It's gonna make me come back even more frequently. Um, yeah, we've got a lot of exciting things coming, and I think we're gonna bring Norma back because she's kind of deep on the smart build integration. I'm I'd like to get my guy Rex on because he's kind of our biggest expert in post-frame and building implementations. And then I kind of mentioned earlier, we're building the ultimate sales tool. We only have more capabilities coming out for deal management and other things like that. Um, digital signatures, payments. We're kind of going deep and just kind of you know, wrap up that sales process. And then something I didn't mention earlier, there's a new analyze tab in there. We have a ton of data. There's a new update, especially for big suppliers that have a large dealer network. There's a lot of new insights you can gain there. Um, and we'll just bring more things uh on the next show. So stay tuned, can't share it all, but really excited to be here and uh love working with you, Jared. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 42:07

I appreciate it, man. Yeah, the the advice I'll give you for this week, if you are indeed an idea room user, is ask the right questions. What I can tell you is the more that I work alongside Idea Room on larger projects and just getting involved with current customers of mine and theirs and working towards building a better relationship, not only for my customers, but for Idea Room's customers, ask the right questions. And if you if you have an idea of what that uh question might be, ask it anyways. Like it, I guess I said that a little bit weird. Like what I would say is if you're thinking it, ask it out loud. That's what I'm getting at. Don't sit on something because the work I actually just had this happen. I had a question come up last week with Idea Room, and I actually worked with the other Dan at Idea Room, and it's something that can't be done yet. And that doesn't mean it can't be done ever. Now it's in the now it's in there, now it's in their feed. Now it's in their feed to get implemented at some point. It might take them a week, it might take them a year. It just depends on where the importance level is. For me, it's not that important. It's a weird ask, it's a specific thing tied to we want the customers to be able to see the price in their emails, but we don't want the customer to be able to see that until they've given us the information necessary to provide the quote in the first place. We don't want a customer to just come to our website, see the price, and then dip on us.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

Well, like we all want we're bringing in a lot of configurability about how that works in terms of uh pulling up.

SPEAKER_02 43:34

That's one thing that that's one thing that's come up a lot, Dan, over the last couple of months, man, is how customers get the information through email or through the build tool. And I know that you and I have been working closely. That was one of the tiebacks to the smart build pricing. So again, if you've got something, bring it to the table. If you're working with Idea Room currently, we want your feedback. If you're working with smart build currently, give us your feedback. Let us know what you need. I am Jared at AmericaBuilds Better.com and contact the team at Idea Room. They are happy to help you. I promise you.

SPEAKER_00 44:08

So Jared, I have one more thing I forgot to say, which is I know we now have a place to go and sign up for SMS text updates from new capabilities being released. So you get it as quickly and early as possible. And I know our email inbox are always very full. So I'll make sure you've got that link so you can post it up on the website. But that's going to be the best way to get the real-time input on like what's coming out. Uh new in Idea Room. And we're doing releases every two to four weeks. So uh and yeah, that show totals one. Yeah, that's coming.

SPEAKER_02 44:38

So I love it. I will finish up this week with one more call out to Shieldwall. If you're looking for information, go to ShieldwallMedia.com. We are looking forward to the Postframe Rural Plane Builder Show in York, Pennsylvania, June the 10th and the 11th. Come hang out with us. Make it a few-day trip for your family. York is beautiful. It is a fun place to be, and I can tell you we're gonna have a great time. Finishing up this week, we will be back at you next week with another episode of America Builds Better. It sounds so good to say that, Dan. I can tell you, brother. It sounds so good to do that. And we will be at you as much as we can through social media and different things. But in the meantime, get out in your communities and do something good for somebody else. It'll make you feel better right now in the world we're living in. Do something good for somebody else. I promise you it'll make you feel better. We will get back at you next week with another episode of America Builds Better. Later on, guys.

SPEAKER_04 45:40

Thank you for checking out America Builds Better. If that episode fired you like, make sure you hit the drop.