The Remodeler Digital Playbook Podcast

The Entrepreneur’s Playbook: Tom Bunn on Balancing Business and Family in Construction

• Rathna Ramakrishnan • Season 1 • Episode 15

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In this episode of the Remodeler Digital Playbook podcast, host Rathna Ramakrishnan speaks with Tom Bunn of Bunn & Sons Custom Builders, who shares his journey from a geophysics background to building custom homes. Tom discusses the evolution of his business, the importance of understanding client needs, and the unique processes that set his company apart. He also reflects on the significance of mentorship, the balance between family and business, and the importance of staying current with industry trends. 

Listen to this episode to hear Tom Bunn's outlook on the role of technology in project management and the significance of marketing strategies in building trust with clients.

📌 KEY MOMENTS:

- 11:54: Navigating the Remodeling Landscape: Ideal Clients and Unique Processes
- 24:09: Marketing Strategies: Building Trust and Generating Leads
- 30:11: The Role of AI in Construction
- 39:52: Implementing Best Practices in Business
- 48:41: Staying Current with Industry Trends

🌟 What You'll Learn:
- ACTIONABLE TIPS to use technology to optimize project management.
- INSIGHTS into navigating economic changes and the future of the industry.

🔨 Essential listening for remodeling contractors seeking to advance their digital marketing strategies.

🎧 Tune in now to transform your approach to digital marketing!

Ready to see real results from fellow General Contractors?

→ Step 1: Join our FREE Digital Dominance Club for Remodeling Contractors

→ Step 2: Follow us on Instagram

→ Step 3: Schedule a 1:1 call with Rathna now!

Let's rock your remodeling journey! 🛠️💰

Rathna Ramakrishnan (00:04.475)
Welcome to the Remodeler Digital Playbook podcast. super excited to have Tom Bunn from Bunn and Sons Builders. He has dedicated his life to building custom homes to transform people's lives. He's been in business for over 20 years and I'm really excited to have Tom on the podcast today. Welcome, Tom.

Tom Bunn (00:27.928)
thank you. I have to correct a little bit of that though. I'm not sure where the 20 year number came from, but we're in our ninth year of operation right now.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (00:36.487)
Well, when I Google you, that's what Google says and that's where we're deriving our data from. So thanks for the correction. is it... Well, if I understand you have a background in geophysics.

Tom Bunn (00:45.308)
Google's given me more credit than I deserve.

Tom Bunn (00:55.141)
Yeah, in a previous career, right, that's what I went to school for and I used to work in the consulting field, mostly related to gas and oil sort of projects, cleanup, remediation stuff in that realm of things. And then in 2016, we decided that that's not what I wanted to do with the rest of my life and changed directions and started, at first it was Bun & Sons Handyman Services. so,

We started very humbly. It was me in the truck with the tools out doing the work and everything. And my wife was launching the website and running QuickBooks, kind of a typical genesis of a small family-owned construction business. then it evolved from there to where we are today.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (01:39.845)
Nice, so what made you go from geophysics to home renovation and remodeling and home building? It's like such a huge transition. Did you grow up in the trades? What attracted you to this?

Tom Bunn (01:48.124)
Yeah.

Tom Bunn (01:52.957)
Yeah, I had enough of a background in trades to be dangerous, I would say. My father was something of a contractor. He never built a big business out of it, but he did that to make his living for a period of time as I was growing up. then I also, so I would help him with stuff here and there. Grew up on a farm as well, so a hammer and a saw in my hand was, it was a comfortable thing. And then through college and afterwards worked,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (01:56.827)
You

Rathna Ramakrishnan (02:12.645)
you

Tom Bunn (02:21.447)
I would work odd jobs, construction, year in there, know, everything from site work to, to some, you know, some like carpentry things like that, you know, but, yeah, what really drove me to make the change was I, I wanted to put a fork in my eye when I would come home from work every day at the, at the consulting agency. And I just thought, I don't think I could do this for 20 years. And so, my wife and I talked about that and prayed about it and decided that we were going to do something different with our lives. and,

And off we went.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (02:52.985)
Very cool. You were in the Marine Corps as well.

Tom Bunn (02:57.727)
I was, yeah, after high school I enlisted in the Marine Corps, so from 2000 to 2005 was a little bit of broken service in there. So yeah, that was an exciting time to be a Marine.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (03:09.627)
Do you feel like you take any of your learnings or your skills from being a Marine to your business today?

Tom Bunn (03:19.635)
Yeah, I mean, not the carpentry, obviously, or the business, know, reviewing a P &L wasn't something that we reviewed in bootcamp. But yeah, I mean, I think definitely relationship building and then also just working hard, you know, being able to take a punch, I guess maybe that's a good one to be in business.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (03:27.419)
you

Rathna Ramakrishnan (03:41.996)
Very true. I just love the name of your brand, Bun and Sons. Is it because you're building a legacy brand or where does that name come from?

Tom Bunn (03:52.839)
Yeah, good question. I get this a lot. So when we had to pick a name for the company, you know, when you file an LLC with the state, right, you got to call it something. the name came from, it's sort of a generational ode, you know, because my father, because of what he did, you know, I was, you know, I'm his son. He used to work in that field. I also have, I have three sons now, five kids total, three of them are boys.

And so it also rhymed, had a catchy sound to it. So yeah, so was Bun and Son's handyman services. And then we evolved that to Bun and Son's home renovations. And we're currently, that has morphed again this past year into Bun and Son's custom builders.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (04:22.311)
I love it, yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (04:36.227)
I think it's such a classic story of every remodeling contractor's dreams to go from a handyman to a renovation to a custom build. When you look at your growth, what do you think propelled that? At what points in time did you say, and I'm done doing these handyman roles, I'm going to do renovation, and you say, I'm done doing renovation. Do you do design and build today, or you contract with designers and then you oversee the construction part of it?

Tom Bunn (05:04.159)
Yeah, we've kind of done a little bit another clarification. We are are still

at this point, would say 100 % remodels and additions. So in terms of new construction, comes in the form of additions for us. I am more actively exploring the opportunity for us to find that right first client and project for us to execute a ground out build on a single family home. Because I think we've got the capability to do that at this point. That's the machine, the model that we've built on the remodel side. It applies itself very well to custom builds as well.

but I don't know if I could point to a singular point in time where we decided that we weren't gonna do particular types of jobs. I would say the biggest decision came when, so maybe about, I think it was about three years into our operation, we did make a very deliberate,

an intentional decision to create a business and not just a job for myself.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (06:11.899)
All right.

Tom Bunn (06:13.501)
So I would say that if there was a singular event or something that was sort of a catalyst for everything else to happen, that was a big step there, obviously. And then from there, hiring W2 employees and leasing office space and all that kind of stuff starts to come with that territory when you're not the, you and your wife aren't gonna do everything anymore. And then after we made that decision, I would say things evolved fairly organically,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (06:36.566)
Right.

Tom Bunn (06:43.417)
word that I would use, know, so as we became more aware of the true cost of operating a business, well then that affected our pricing structures and then that kind of drove the value proposition for our clients, you know, like we, people aren't going to hire our company to do a powder room remodel.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (07:01.999)
Mm.

Tom Bunn (07:02.015)
as a standalone project probably, we'd be happy to do that for someone, but it would cost an exorbitant amount of money for us to put our model into action, to put our machine into action on a job like that. So I would say, I don't know, does that answer your question, Rath? It happened, we saw the reality of things and then reacted with pricing structure changes or company structure or.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (07:19.065)
Yeah, it does, absolutely.

Tom Bunn (07:29.328)
whatever assets we needed to come in and meet the need of whatever the reality was that we're facing as we evolve the company over time.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (07:35.577)
Right, so putting the right people in the right spot to build the business instead of just having a job for your wife and you. Very cool.

Tom Bunn (07:43.857)
Exactly. And I think I heard this a few weeks ago and I've just totally made it my own. I can't remember where I heard it. If I would, I'd give them credit. But I heard this, someone say that culture will eat process for lunch.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (07:59.993)
Yes.

Tom Bunn (08:01.081)
And I have found that to be true. It's not that we don't have process and systems. Those are important for building and scaling a business and for people to understand what their job is. But if you don't have the right people around you, especially in a small organization like ours, it's going to go real sideways real quick.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (08:19.707)
Right. So do you do primarily interior remodels, additions, and kitchen and bathroom?

Tom Bunn (08:29.053)
Yeah, I would say that our service offering right now kind of runs the gamut between on the small side, it would be a kitchen plus most of a main level kind of a remodel. So most people probably consider a main level kind of a remodel on up to a project that would involve adding on new space to the house and remodeling some sort of significant portion of the inside, know, and anything in between there.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (08:51.653)
So you mentioned that if somebody just wanted a little powder room, they would not be a best fit. So who is your ideal client and what makes your design build process unique that it caters to a certain kind of homeowner?

Tom Bunn (09:06.003)
Yeah, that's a really great question. I would say that our ideal client is someone who is looking to make a significant investment in the home that they currently occupy because they probably want to stay there long term. Our model doesn't apply well. We're not a flipper. People don't call us if they want to do a remodel before they sell in two months or something.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (09:31.375)
Mm-mm-mm.

Tom Bunn (09:33.447)
So folks that have a specific desire to turn the home into what they want it to be for the next 10, 15, 20, maybe forever years, right? And they know it's gonna be a job that's way too big and complex for them to try to consider GCing it themselves or just hiring trades or DIYing it, right? And those folks are also, I would say this is the big one, is people who are looking for a high level of certainty.

of outcome, right? Because then to sort of segue that into answer the other part of your question, what makes us unique? I don't know that we're not completely unique in what we offer, but I do believe that we are putting more emphasis on pre-construction project development than a lot of builders in the same space.

Part of the reason for that is because we do fixed price contracting. And if you're do fixed price contracting, you better do your homework upfront and understand what that client wants and what potential problems you're gonna run into. There's usually a couple of change orders on our project. mean, things always do come up, but by and large, they're minimal compared to what the larger contract is, right? But yeah, we spend...

We extract a painful amount of detail from the architects, designers, clients, whoever, you know, before we go put that in writing and turn it into a contract because, you know, if we don't dot the I's and cross the T's and drill down to a very granular level, confusion abounds and things go sideways, you know, and nobody likes that.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (11:14.457)
Right? Well, as a homeowner who's been through remodels, I can appreciate that.

to have the pre-project process firm down and then you know exactly where the budget is going to land. So I think that's a complete value add, especially when you're doing a bunch of remodeling to the house. There's just so many, so many variables. So I like that strategy. Do you use a tech stack today to help you do the tasks that you need to get done? you use Build a Trend or, of course, everybody uses Google email and...

Tom Bunn (11:31.804)
Yes.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (11:45.433)
What other tools do you like and use frequently?

Tom Bunn (11:50.461)
Yeah, we definitely do. Did you use, was it tech stack? Is that the term you used? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if I've ever heard anyone call it that, but yeah, it makes sense. That's definitely, So we, our project management platform that we're on right now is actually a job tread. We were co-construct users for five or six years. We were with them from, for most of our operation.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (11:54.669)
Yeah, a stack of like technology that you use, yeah.

Tom Bunn (12:14.947)
most of our history, as most people probably know Builder Trend acquired Co-Construct a few years ago and so Co-Construct is kind of dying on the vine as a software product at this point, it's not being updated and it's good. I like Co-Construct a lot. I didn't want to move to be honest. Yeah, without getting into too much detail, our first attempt was to migrate to Builder Trend, but I just...

Rathna Ramakrishnan (12:23.727)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (12:28.751)
Yeah, right. It's tough to move the software, I know.

Tom Bunn (12:42.239)
I didn't like it. I didn't like the platform for a variety of reasons. And my team and I gave it a good hard try, but we just weren't going to make it work. was not going to fit our needs. And so then we looked at JobTread, which was a much better fit for us than we felt. so yeah, we used JobTread heavily. That's kind of the...

Rathna Ramakrishnan (12:52.507)
you

Tom Bunn (13:00.99)
If I could run everything through a single platform, I definitely would. But unfortunately, that one solution doesn't exist yet in terms of running the entire business. We use that. We're doing our accounting and money management in and out through QuickBooks Online, like a lot of other, most businesses are working with QuickBooks. We have been using Smartsheets for its Gantt capability, specifically for the Gantt chart capability that it has. But that may change now that

JobTrain has a pretty good Gantt chart. We may be able to leverage that instead of, yeah. And then there's, gosh, what else? Yeah, mean, we have, we use Google Drive for our, kind of our in-house management.

There's another platform that we like, it's called Way We Do, which is kind of a process and systemization documentation platform, which is pretty helpful. It's kind of like the library, the Bible of how Button Suns operates, you And so that's nice to have that. And probably a couple others. I go down the entire list of software subscriptions that we have.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (13:59.101)
all your standard operating procedures and nice.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (14:07.353)
Yeah. So do you, yeah, so you're, when a lead comes into your world and wants to do business with you, are they going into job dread? And then you have a series of actions that happens from the lead, you know, raising their hand and saying, hey, I want to do business with Aban and sons. And then who gets on the phone? How does it become an estimate? And then, you know, finally becomes revenue in the bank for you.

Tom Bunn (14:31.686)
Yeah, I'm not currently leveraging JobTread or any other specific platform as a CRM specifically at this point. That's really still just done through my, I'm still the sales guy and running the marketing, kind of that front end client facing at that point in the relationship. And so I'm doing that through, I've got a spreadsheet essentially.

and a process. yeah, client contacts us. I get back to them as quickly as possible, whether they contact us by phone or web contact or the two primary means that we get most of our leads. And then I reach out to them and schedule a discovery call is the first step. With Calendly, I use Calendly a lot. Yeah, that's one that's been helpful for me, especially since we don't have an office manager anymore. So that's a really, really powerful scheduling tool, helps a lot.

schedule a discovery call, kind of find that 100,000 foot fit, you know, and if we're good, then I'll go out for a consult on site, you know, spend maybe 90 minutes with a client, you know, learn a little bit more about them and their project. And then the rubber really starts to meet the road with project development, with our...

the client will execute a project development agreement with us, you know, before they execute that with us and pay that deposit and really allow us to put the resources in that they're going to need to develop the project. It's hard for us to do too much on the front end with estimating or, you know, I do have an intermediate step between

consult and signing and execution of PDA that I kind of call a high level project budgetary guidance that I can produce for people. And we're essentially using job tread at this point, know, sort of like from our cost catalog, we'll kind of take, I'll make my honest to God best effort. It's a scientific wild ass guess, right?

Rathna Ramakrishnan (16:37.787)
Yes, so many variables, yeah. I don't know how you do it.

Tom Bunn (16:42.846)
It's really, that step is to kind of get people a little more clarity or fidelity on what their project might look like. We've also got project studies that I'll show people, previous projects that we've built that have kind of a synopsis of the scope of work and what that other client paid and when we did that and stuff to kind of help them put a, it's really, developing pricing and getting to a contract is such an iterative process that it's hard to.

I wish I had a flow chart back here that was like, yeah, step one, two, and three, right? And at a high level, that's true. You know, we sort of have.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (17:10.011)
Step ones.

Tom Bunn (17:16.258)
There's discovery and initial consultation, then there's project development, which kind of goes part and parcel with if you're an architect or a designer, they kind of tend to call it design development. That's when you're really getting into the nitty gritty of developing the project. And then there's contracting and building and then a warranty phase. So if you wanted to say, we sort of break it down into four simple steps here at Pond & Sons, that only take several months and tens of thousands of dollars to complete.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (17:27.194)
Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (17:43.631)
Right, well this is changing people's spaces and where they live. So your projects typically run between four to six weeks or much longer depending on the scale of the project.

Tom Bunn (17:56.605)
Usually quite a bit longer. mean, so pre-con, it's really kind of all over the board. We can get a project if it's not too big and onerous through pre-con and ready to contract and start construction on in like eight to 16 weeks, you know, kind of depending on, know, now that's if the client and all the stakeholders are making decisions and giving us information and we're kind of moving through and not getting any, you know, extended lead times on, know.

the structural engineer getting back to us or whatever, know, that kind of stuff. And then for most of our projects, the build schedules run from between four and eight months. You know, it just kind of, again, it depends on the size and the complexity of the project, but at this point...

Rathna Ramakrishnan (18:33.242)
I see.

Tom Bunn (18:40.001)
Almost any project we execute is going to have the same trades and the schedule is kind of generically look sort of the same. It's just a matter of whether the plumber is going to take two days for the rough in or 10 days for the rough in, right? know, kind of depending on the scope of work. But yeah, that's kind of what our typical project schedules look like. So we're doing five to seven larger scale projects in a 12 month period is kind of our, that's what our production level kind of looks like.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (19:08.507)
I see, and are you already booked out into the future? Like are you booked out into Q1 of 2025 or?

Tom Bunn (19:14.881)
Yeah, a little bit. mean, it's hard to say for sure. We're never as booked out as far as I want to be, I'd love to have a 10-year pipeline film. That'd be ideal, but yeah. But yes, that kind of varies throughout the year or year, two year as to how far out we are. But I've found personally that it's...

Rathna Ramakrishnan (19:19.907)
Right. Why not? Yeah.

Tom Bunn (19:41.021)
If the lead time is, unless the client specifically wants to execute the project a year and a half from now or something, once people make this decision that they want to get going and they want to do the project, if we're not able to get them into the build schedule within four to six months, they tend to want to start looking elsewhere and to try to see if they can get it done sooner, which is understandable.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (19:47.653)
Mm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (20:06.159)
Yeah, yeah. What are you doing for marketing today? Do you invest in marketing and online marketing or pretty much you're considering your project scope sizes are larger? Are you just a referral based business?

Tom Bunn (20:21.611)
We, yes. So we have all that going on. We have all those irons in the fire. We definitely get referrals, is great. Those referrals come to you with a trust level in that relationship that's usually a bit higher than someone just coming off the street or from Google. But then I would say by and large, it's always been and continues to be.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (20:39.845)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Bunn (20:48.826)
When we have people fill out that little box on the web context says, did you hear about us? Most people are finding us via Google search.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (20:56.507)
But you're not running any PPC ads or Google ads.

Tom Bunn (21:00.383)
So we're not doing any PPC right now. We've dabbled with that a little bit in the past, but honestly, I don't know, it didn't seem like we got as much traction. We are engaged with, so I subcontract website and SEO management to a digital marketing firm.

I have someone who manages our socials, posting and responding on there. And then I have another company that does content, like video content, video production, right, for that.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (21:39.018)
and afters and stuff like that.

Tom Bunn (21:40.929)
Before and afters, walkthroughs, client testimonials, employee interviews. I mean, it takes a variety of forms, but yeah, just the sort of video stuff that helps people from on the outside world get to know who we are as a company and hopefully spark enough interest for them to fill out that contact form and say, I want to learn more about what it's like to work with you.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (21:58.405)
Right, and then in terms of the actual review collection after you finish a project and you have a happy client, do you have a process in place where you solicit the review and say, hey, homeowner, how was it? Would you be kind enough to leave us a review or you just let it happen organically?

Tom Bunn (22:12.214)
Yeah.

I, if some clients, I would say this is kind of, a few clients have been, like they,

for whatever reason they understand how important that is or they're just kind of naturally inclined to do it and they'll leave us a review before I have a chance to even really ask them about it, which is always nice. But most of the time, it's me, when we finish a project up, I go back without the PM, without the superintendent, without any trades, it's all clean after final cleanup, final move-in is complete. It's me going back to that client and sort of...

Closing the loop on on that entire that that relationships kind of come full circle and we're done with the project and at that point I usually will will solicit them for review Most of which are happy to say yeah, that's great You know send me the link and then I usually have to follow up with them anywhere between two and ten times To get them to actually like write the review But yeah, we yeah, but we try to it's it's it's one of my top priorities is to make sure that we have

Rathna Ramakrishnan (23:07.259)
get a little busy,

Tom Bunn (23:16.431)
a steady flow of positive reviews hitting our Google Business page.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (23:20.219)
Absolutely, you definitely need that social proof today. Our brains are just wired to read other people's opinions before we open up our wallets. Do you have a process in place to check in with homeowners on like the anniversary of the remodel being completed and so forth?

Tom Bunn (23:33.729)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do. We have, so I think right now our warranty is one year kind of bumper to bumper, for lack of a better term, and then two years on.

any materials that we sourced. And then of course there's all manufacturers warranties are in there. But during that period, we have specific check-ins and there's reminders in our calendars for us or the project staff to... Actually, I'm actually gonna automate through MailChimp.

that they, at like six weeks, six months, and 12 months, we reach out after the project to check in and say, hey, how are things going? there anything that's, know, can we be of any help? Just to check in to see how things are happening.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (24:22.448)
MailChimp is good, but it's pretty archaic. So you don't use any text marketing today?

Tom Bunn (24:29.025)
I'm not currently but it's something that I'm that I'm starting to learn more about and and and potentially getting into that that

Rathna Ramakrishnan (24:38.661)
Well, there's the CRMs today that are integrated with Twilio, and Twilio is the company that Uber and Lyft use. So when you call an Uber, it says there's a white Toyota Corolla coming, cross the street, meet the driver, like the step-by-step instruction text messaging that you get is capable for you to do today, saying, hey, homeowner, project advisor is arriving in one hour, excited to meet you.

Tom Bunn (24:57.494)
Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (25:04.365)
Estimate sent, how is it? Did you like it? Do you have questions? So it's totally possible to do that. And there's CRMs that are integrated with Trilio, which makes it really fun in the remodeling industry. Because remodeling is a very personal business. You're in people's homes. So I think text marketing is huge. And we're all kind of wired to having that instant gratification of having the phones in our hands and getting that messaging into our lives.

Tom Bunn (25:11.455)
Yeah.

Tom Bunn (25:28.203)
Yes.

Yeah, it's amazing the difference that I've seen between a person's kind of willingness or...

sort I'm looking for. An email is still pretty easy to deal with, mean, that's also on our phone. But if you really want to get someone quick, it's like, they're like, don't email me, text me. Well, it's just a different app. And you can get more and better information in an email text. just people want that.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (25:47.309)
Mm-hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (25:50.927)
Text them.

Tom Bunn (26:01.781)
Follow-up is key and also giving people palatable information in a step-by-step process that makes it easier for them to say yes, right? To say, okay, I think you have the solution to my problem. And it's just a, yeah, it's an ever-evolving problem to figure out and try to find tune for sure.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (26:09.925)
Yes.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (26:21.381)
So there was a point in time in the United States when any marketer could subscribe to a text marketing service and that's when we were bombarded with text messages. I don't know if you remember, just random stuff like a restaurant and somebody texting you. And then there was an entire class action lawsuit and now the phone carriers require that the marketer that goes and sets up a text marketing system for a brand needs to have what is called A2P10DLC, which stands for Application to Person 10-digit Long Code Verification.

Tom Bunn (26:34.794)
Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (26:51.685)
So if you wanted to engage in text marketing today, you need to go buy a pool of numbers, have the numbers registered to your LLC, validate that there is a human behind the brand, then you're eligible to text market because it was getting out of control and all the consumers were complaining. So it's become pretty complex now to get that text marketing set up and going. But once you do, like you say, there's instant gratification. People like it, and it's an integral part of digital marketing today.

Tom Bunn (27:08.618)
Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (27:21.291)
In any case, so switching gears, when you look at all the projects you've done.

Tom Bunn (27:23.659)
Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (27:25.987)
Do you have a favorite either by virtue of its size or project value or the complexity of the project or perhaps you had the same homeowner do multiple projects with you that it became a favorite or any fun story that comes to mind when you think about your projects? Or maybe it was a, you know, crazy story from your handyman days. Share with me something fun. I'm sure.

Tom Bunn (27:48.001)
gosh, I try to forget most of those days.

Tom Bunn (27:55.231)
But that was a stepping stone to where we are today, so I can't be too hard on those memories. But I think as far as the favorite, the projects, we as a team, as a company, we really enjoy.

Yeah, those moderate to larger size remodels, right? I mean, it's what we're built for. So what we're doing is what we like, which is good, right? We're generally not doing projects that are just like, what are we doing on this? It's suicidal, right? First of all, in a business, if you're trying to do projects outside of your sweet spot, it's not good, you So.

We did a project last year for some folks who, I'm in Broomfield, Colorado, which is kind of between Denver and Boulder, right? So we're on the front range and the Denver metro area is our market. And we did a project last year for some folks who had grown up in the kind of the...

Boulder area decades ago and moved away and had been gone in Tennessee other parts of the country and had recently like they came back to a family farm that was still intact like in the middle of a lot of like a lot has been built up around here we'll say that right and this these folks were were really interested in in restoring a family legacy you know like they wanted to come back and you know start

Rathna Ramakrishnan (29:10.682)
Wow.

Tom Bunn (29:27.807)
the farm back again and the house that was on the property was it was in rough shape and so we we renovated this old farmhouse last year for these folks and I mean just totally tore the guts out of it and updated all the MEP systems and you know insulated it and new windows and doors and things like that you know along with the entire interior remodel so it was really you know it was a significant upgrade and that was to see the transformation on that was was pretty wild that was a pretty cool project for sure.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (29:56.205)
very cool. And so the family lives there now.

Tom Bunn (29:59.627)
Yeah, yeah, they're out there. He's probably cutting hay today or something.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (30:04.953)
How fun, large property with a brand new construction, so fantastic. Very cool.

Tom Bunn (30:11.105)
Yeah, well, we renovated the house. wasn't a new house, it was a big upgrade.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (30:14.519)
Right. Well, if you do the windows and all of it, then it just feels new, right? Once you touch the facade of the building, then cool, very cool story. Do you use any AI today in your business? Do you rely on chat GPT or there's so many tools out there?

Tom Bunn (30:24.512)
Yeah.

Tom Bunn (30:35.339)
Yeah, I don't directly. I'm sure that some of the folks that are probably our marketing team and some of the other folks that I'm outsourcing some of that stuff to are probably leveraging AI to some extent. I personally haven't found

a good use for something like chat GPT, other than to write funny stuff. Like one time I asked chat GPT to tell me, write a 250 word paragraph about the benefits of using Bun and Sons for a remodel, like in the voice of Abraham Lincoln or something. So like it'll do all these funny things, But no, I don't think we're, I'm not leveraging AI in any significant way.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (31:04.911)
Daddukes.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (31:15.851)
it's so fun. It's so fun, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (31:27.589)
but you think your teams are so cool. Yeah, it is fun to use, especially when you use the voice of somebody, right? Like I've tried, have it right like Jerry Seinfeld and like some of the comedians and it just makes it fun. Like, yeah, I know what you mean. It's, yeah, just whatever creativity you can apply to it, it's gonna give you those results, right? It's all based on those prompts and.

Tom Bunn (31:40.299)
Yeah.

Yeah

Rathna Ramakrishnan (31:53.967)
You know, there's a lot of young contractors that listen to this podcast. If you were to give them some advice as to how to go from, you know, a handyman to a full blown construction company, you know, what are the things that you should focus on to get to this point where you're at within? It's a really short amount of time in business. If you think about it under a decade to get to where you are to say, I don't want a job. I am a business owner. I'm going to have a team. I'm going to have employees and I'm going to deliver high quality

and have happy clients is not trivial and it's not for the faint of heart to have that hope and dream. So if there are other younger contractors aspiring to do what you've done to follow your path, what do you think are maybe two to three key things? Was it a book you read, a mentor you had? What is it that kind of pushed you to where you are today and where you're doing well?

Tom Bunn (32:30.535)
No.

Tom Bunn (32:48.233)
Yeah, that's such a good question.

Tom Bunn (32:54.315)
So I think the very first thing that I would emphasize to folks like you described would be to remember, do not forget that if it were easy, everybody would be doing it. So don't forget that. It feels hard because it's hard. It's not easy. There's not, and I think the other.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (33:16.187)
you

Tom Bunn (33:22.409)
sort of like the second part of that or the the dovetailed piece of it is that it's very easy to, you have to have goals, right? You have to set some kind of a goal and say, want to accomplish X by whatever date, you know, like, or what sort of a timeframe, right? That's a good thing to do. But I would also caution against,

the idea or the mentality that you're ever going to arrive at the point at which everything is done and everything is just operating the way you want it to and now I can just sit back and just kind of go to the beach or whatever. I'm not saying I don't take vacation. I take more vacation now than I ever did because I have a team around me and I'm not the only guy who can answer questions, right? But yeah, I'd caution against that.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (34:04.027)
For sure.

Tom Bunn (34:15.111)
that idea that you're going to arrive. It's a constantly evolving, it's very dynamic, right? The whole thing around you. A book that I read that really helped change my perspective on being a business owner and entrepreneur is there's a book by a guy named Michael Garber called The E-Myth. Are you familiar with that one?

Rathna Ramakrishnan (34:34.551)
Absolutely. Very familiar with it. Yeah.

Tom Bunn (34:38.625)
And there's actually a version, I haven't read it, but I think that's been adapted into for different industries. And I think there's one that's for contractors or construction industry, But yeah, that book, The E-Myth, that really helped realign my mindset.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (34:42.959)
Yep.

Tom Bunn (34:59.635)
And to start to realize that there are different, like you have to step out of the wage earner mentality and into the entrepreneur mentality if you're going to be successful and do this. You have to look at things differently and make decisions differently. And that book was really helpful in fleshing that out for me and helping me understand that, you know, the deference and the direction that I needed to go if I wanted to be serious about building a business.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (35:23.003)
Very true, that was the first book I read as well when I decided to become an entrepreneur. And it really opens up your eyes and you're like, okay, if I really want to build a brand that I can sell or that leave a legacy or make meaningful revenue instead of just being a hobby or a job, then you need those processes, you need those systems, you need those people that can be your right hand and help you. So yeah, I'm a fan of that book. And I think there's a version called E-Myth Revisited,

Tom Bunn (35:28.164)
really?

Tom Bunn (35:52.949)
Yes.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (35:52.957)
But since you mentioned it, I'm probably going to go look on Amazon. It's pretty easy for them to take that methodology and apply it to every vertical of businesses. So that would be cool if they took it and they customized it to the remodeling industry, right? Do you wish, go ahead.

Tom Bunn (36:07.521)
Yeah, yeah. There was, I was just gonna say the other thing that really helped us immensely is maybe for, I don't know, was shortly after I made the decision that we were gonna run a business and not have a job for me. I actually, I engaged with a consulting group specifically built around

Rathna Ramakrishnan (36:13.828)
you

Rathna Ramakrishnan (36:24.964)
I love that.

Tom Bunn (36:37.586)
smaller residential contractors like myself, right? So to be able to get, yeah, I'd love to give them a shout out. I'm not currently working with them, but they are, it was hugely impactful on my business.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (36:41.445)
Who are they? Are you able to name them?

Tom Bunn (36:54.96)
A lot of the time it just gave me a validation that I wasn't crazy and I needed to keep going. But it's a group called Contractor Convergence and they're out of Sandpoint, Idaho. And those guys were just an awesome group of guys and there's the coaches themselves who have a a lot of good applicable experience. Guys who have been there and done that and got the t-shirt.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (37:00.09)
you

Tom Bunn (37:23.366)
And then their client base, the other folks that in that group, they're all over the country from East Coast to West Coast and talking to other builders in the same situations down in the trenches, dealing with a pissed off client or some frustration around pricing or whatever the case was. These guys were all living the same life and that was really, that helped me a lot. It was worth the investment that I put into that during the.

years for sure.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (37:54.231)
long of an engagement was it and how much of your time did it take?

Tom Bunn (38:00.314)
I worked with them for...

three or four years, probably closer to maybe four, maybe a little over four years. And their program kind of changed throughout that time, right? But it was essentially, I think what they were doing and I think what they are still doing is something about like two calls per week, one of them being a...

Rathna Ramakrishnan (38:23.803)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Bunn (38:28.194)
teaching informational kind of pushing new ideas out or you know and then the other one was more of a freeform open mic bring what you're working on kind of you know group think tank kind of a kind of a format

And those would last anywhere between one and three hours, right? I mean, depending on, you if people wanted to stay and talk more, we could do that. But I met so many guys through that group that are all over the country and I still talk to all of them, or most of them, you know, I'll ping them about something like, hey, how are you dealing with whatever, you know, like, so.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (39:01.435)
So at some point you just feel ready to wean yourself off that group and then just grow up and kind of go do your stuff.

Tom Bunn (39:09.865)
Yeah, we transitioned from that to EOS, which I don't know if you're familiar with EOS. Yeah. Yeah, which we're currently, we're implementing that, you know. I think what I've come to understand and know and just sort of realize about any of that, it's...

Rathna Ramakrishnan (39:14.965)
Yes, yes, the entrepreneurial operating system.

Tom Bunn (39:30.609)
All we're trying to do is identify and implement best practice, right? And you can do that through EOS. You can do it through a specialized coaching group. can do it yourself. You can make your own thing up, right? You don't need a coach or a pre-built system to plug into. What I found though was that those, while they are...

significant investments, right? I mean, you're talking tens of thousands of dollars per year, right, for those kind of things. They really flatten out the learning curve for folks who are, especially in the business sense. You may be a, mean, to be honest, I'm a terrible carpenter compared to like, most of the guys out there swinging a hammer. I couldn't hold a candle to them.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (39:54.295)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Right, right.

Tom Bunn (40:20.149)
But there's a lot of guys who kind of come into this industry who are very good at that. they play a trade and then they turn it into a business and they, and me, like nobody is born with the knowledge of how to implement best practice and run a business, right? And so just.

paying for someone else's knowledge to flatten your learning curve is something that I would say is never a terrible investment.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (40:44.899)
Yeah, it's absolutely worth it. So do you follow EOS to the T? Do you have an integrator and do you have your rocks and your minutes and your...

Tom Bunn (40:56.179)
Yeah. So we actually did a little bit of self implementation. We kind of did DIY implementation for a couple of months with things like the meeting pulse, you know, just kind of bringing some of that structure in. And then about six months ago, like we've, yeah, we are working currently with an integrator to help us to do that.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (41:05.925)
Mm-hmm.

Tom Bunn (41:18.222)
And I don't know, like we'll see if I go the full measure with EOS. I mean, it's good, you know, it's not a bad system by any means. think what EOS has helped us to do versus the other coaching program that we're doing, like sort of if we're gonna like put differences between it is...

EOS created of, was a ready-made vehicle that allowed me to bring other people in the company onto the leadership team and get them, like really start plugging them in at a higher level than what I was kind of, I was having difficulty doing that on my own. Like how am I gonna, like how am I gonna get my operations manager to be like, he sits, he's part of the leadership team, right? And you have to.

You got to trust people that obviously you bring them into those leadership positions. But anyway, US has been a good vehicle for that. Kind of a ready-made track and a system. You want to bring somebody up to that level, here's how you can do that.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (42:19.733)
Nice, And is your wife still in the business? Does she work in the business?

Tom Bunn (42:26.317)
She is still a little bit. It's funny you asked that question. So through some of the work we've been doing at the EOS, we came to the conclusion that she must exit the business. It is.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (42:48.605)
Be mommy to those five amazing kids.

Tom Bunn (42:51.566)
Yeah, we homeschool too. should say she homeschools. Yeah, so she, yes I know, right? She's got a lot going on, you know, and essentially she's always backstopped the administrative side of the business. You we've had office managers, we've built processes for project managers and everybody else to like...

Rathna Ramakrishnan (42:54.867)
Wow! I bow to her.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (43:11.065)
you

Tom Bunn (43:15.691)
We have a bookkeeper. We have all these resources, but she's ultimately been the one who backstops all that. And until we remove that backstop completely, we're always going to lean on her as a crutch. And we can't do that to her and the business, right? It hamstrings the business and it hamstrings her in her other duties. so not to mention, it's kind of hard to be, I won't lie, know, like it introduces difficulty into the marriage if you're married to your business partner, right?

Rathna Ramakrishnan (43:24.449)
Right.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (43:40.825)
I guess marriage is hard enough, yep.

Tom Bunn (43:45.985)
Yeah, well we would see, you we'd find like, you know, on Tuesday morning instead of like saying goodbye or enjoying another 10 minutes on the front porch with the kids before I go off, you know, like we're working through some kind of a problem in the company, you know. It's just like, man, this thing is, it just, it'll creep into every crevice of your life if you don't sort of put some boundaries on it, you know.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (44:05.648)
Do you wish for your children to become part of your brand as they grow up? Are you trying to build a legacy brand? you wish for your boys or even your daughters could be in construction?

Tom Bunn (44:17.894)
Yeah, I mean, that would be great. think the numbers don't lie, like the statistics are pretty abysmal for transferring a business from first generation to second generation. It haven't survived, unfortunately. Yeah, so it's an idea that we're open to. mean, my oldest is nine years old right now, right? So we're kind of, we're not really...

Rathna Ramakrishnan (44:31.599)
I don't want to do what my daddy did. Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (44:40.079)
Right.

Tom Bunn (44:42.701)
in the process of building any kind of transition plan at this point. But yeah, that would be great if they show an interest and they want to do it. Absolutely. I would love to see it live on. I think that for the time being, where I'm at right now and probably projecting a few years into the future, I am more concerned with building a lifestyle business for myself and my key employees where we have...

We have good clients and good work-life balance and I get more time back. I want to spend time with my kids and take them to the mountains and go camping and not deal with all the minutia of project management or whatever else is going on. So yeah, that's kind of my goal right now, but I could see that certainly evolving into more of a legacy generational transition as well at some point.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (45:39.611)
Well, we should sink in another 15 to 20 years and see where the kids are at and where their heads are at.

Tom Bunn (45:46.035)
I laugh at some point my daughters are going to give me a hard time once they get old enough to realize what that name is, know. So I might have to, we might have to spin off a business unit, a different business unit or something. They're going to get mad at me.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (45:58.075)
You are the CEO of Bun and Sons, so come on over little girl, right? Give them the most important role and then they can manage the brothers so then they'll be fine. Other than camping?

Tom Bunn (46:11.0)
But to be fair though, when I did name the business, I didn't have any daughters, so it wasn't a slight against them. just didn't know if I'd have daughters.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (46:18.088)
But I think it's such a cute name. I just love it. Yeah, it's so fun and so personal. Like I like the sound of it and the ring of it. So you said you like to go camping with the kids. When you're not working, what else do you like to do for fun?

Tom Bunn (46:33.49)
Yeah, I like to hunt. I'm an archery hunter. I like to go. I I just, I love being in the mountains. My family likes being in the mountains. We, yeah, we travel. We got a travel trailer maybe three or four years ago. And so...

We do, and it's nothing extravagant, we go every year, we kind of take one big trip where we take two or three or four weeks off and go travel around, you know, to Out West or back East or whatever, you know, go do some things like that. So I think that, yeah, there's that. And then there's just never any shortage of, you know, I get home and there's five, well, our youngest is only about a month old, right? So he's not, he's not,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (47:05.955)
Nice.

Tom Bunn (47:17.961)
He's not greeting me at the door, but I get greeted at the door every night and I'm gonna go on a bike ride or go to the park or look at this thing I did today. So it's sort of like, there's never any shortage of things to do once I get home with the kids. It's awesome.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (47:31.001)
Yeah, cherish it. Yeah, I have two teenage boys, 16 and 14, and life gets super busy once they get into high school and their heads are in their own study and friends and that phase that you're in is gonna feel crazy busy, but it's just like super special. Just soak everything in and enjoy it. How do you?

Tom Bunn (47:39.027)
Yeah.

Tom Bunn (47:49.896)
Days are long and the years are short, right? That's what they...

Rathna Ramakrishnan (47:51.309)
Right, and then once they, my 16 year old started driving and now I feel like your brain bandwidth, you worry about them, you're like, should I track him, should I trust him, should I just let him go with the car, like all of these. So here you are, like, you taking them for a bike ride, you're tired and then here you're by yourself alone, but your brain can't stop thinking about them, so.

Tom Bunn (48:01.917)
Yeah.

Tom Bunn (48:09.978)
Yeah, like, what are they at? are they doing right here?

Rathna Ramakrishnan (48:11.609)
Yeah, parenting is complex. So how do you stay current with the industry trends? Do you go to conferences? Do you have like favorite resources that you rely on? Are you a member of like the National Association of Remodellers or the Kitchen and Bathroom show?

Tom Bunn (48:26.514)
Yeah, I am an active member in the Denver chapter of NKBA as well as the HBA. Specifically in the HBA, I really like the Council of the Custom Builder and Remodeler Council, the CBRC.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (48:31.173)
Yes.

Tom Bunn (48:41.655)
Nari actually doesn't have a chapter in Denver or Colorado and so I don't have access to that. I would have to be a remote member which I don't see a lot of value in that for me right yet. yeah, I try to go to those. As far as keeping up with trends, guess I have never been and I don't think I ever will be super big on trends in maybe like aesthetic or style. I'm just kind of personally more of a classic, know, perennial.

kind of a guy myself. But in terms of market conditions and the realities of operating a business under the conditions, I like to be aware of those trends. The style, the aesthetic of what we're building can change, but to me, those aren't the most important things that I'm concerned with anyway. That's what the designers are for.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (49:26.469)
Yes.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (49:38.565)
Yeah,

touchless faucets and the awnings that retract at the click of a button, like the technology is just at play with remodeling. So you survived the pandemic and here you are, your business has made it through the, I think remodeling did really well during the pandemic because it was a boom and people were sitting in their homes and looking at their spaces and so did you ride the wave during the pandemic and looking ahead, what do you think is going to happen in the next five years? What are you predicting either for yourself or for the

industry do you think there's going to be an upswing?

Tom Bunn (50:14.484)
Yeah. I wish, I don't know, my crystal ball is a little buttery here. don't, it's, don't know, but.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (50:21.263)
I'm sure you have a gut feeling. Share with me what you're feeling in there.

Tom Bunn (50:26.89)
Well, we definitely grew through the pandemic timeframes. it was, I think that we, I don't know that our business was necessarily driven by the pandemic, I mean, but there is an effect when the Fed drops interest rates to zero to keep the economy stimulated and money is just kind of flowing more freely generally in the economy. I think that definitely helped us. People were kind of, that changes.

homeowners outlooks on what is expensive, what is affordable, right? It's all kind of this relative thing, so we grew. Last year, we did like 2.2 or 2.3 million in top line.

Yeah, which was good. was our biggest, know, it's like we were steadily moving up every year. was an increase up to that point. This year, I think we're probably gonna like, we'll maybe hit, I mean, unless something changes drastically, but before, as we're going into 4Q and something comes in real quick for build, I think we'll actually probably, like, we'll probably land somewhere around 1.7 this year. So for us, that might be the difference of one project, right? That's one, four or $500,000 project. So I don't know if it's necessarily,

if things have slowed down terribly, but at the same time, it has felt the past eight months or so have been just different in terms of, in my personal experience of leads coming in and the conversations I've been having with potential clients, the of the fever pitch and the fire that was really going on a year or two, three ago has seemed to be tampered. And I think that's...

My personal opinion, kind of just looking around and surveying the landscape is I think one big reason is folks have...

Tom Bunn (52:21.204)
Everybody's been talking about inflation, but after two or three years of steady inflation, everybody is looking around and saying, gosh, man, my water bill, my fuel bill, my mortgage, my insurance, the cost of living, everything is up across the board. And it's going to take, I think, a little while for people to adjust to the new normal, if we want to call it that. We went through an inflationary period, and there's nothing we can do about that now.

Tom Bunn (52:50.403)
I just think that personally it's going to take some time for people to get used to that and where they're not dropping the phone out of their hand when you tell them a kitchen remodel is going to cost $250,000 to $300,000. Sorry, if I pay taxes and follow all the rules, this is what it looks like. And then, don't know, projecting out to answer your question in the next three to five years, think...

Rathna Ramakrishnan (53:00.591)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Great.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (53:07.075)
Right.

Tom Bunn (53:16.79)
I think the outlook's good. Residential construction is not going to go away. It's not like we're in a super volatile tech industry where someone might just make one decision where a platform dies and along with it an entire industry. People need places to live and older homes are going to continue to need repair and renovation. There's always going to be a market for it. It's just a matter of...

Rathna Ramakrishnan (53:31.355)
You're right.

Tom Bunn (53:46.612)
finding out how, know, fine tuning the system for us to connect and get in front of those people who are our ideal clients, you know, who want to do things the way that we do it and, you know, kind of, you know, narrowing that down. But, yeah, there's still a big shortage of housing here in Denver, you know. Sometimes I think, maybe being a new builder, but that's, I don't know. I'll leave that to Taylor Morrison and Lenore, right?

Rathna Ramakrishnan (54:07.099)
It's a different ball game.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (54:11.6)
That's a different ball game, right? The new home builds in. Cool. Well, things are going to be on the upswing, hopefully going into 2025. And I think inflation is something that's a byproduct of a pandemic. When you exit a pandemic, around the fifth year is when things are supposed to turn around and hopefully go on the upswing. So wishing for a wonderful new year for all of us in terms of business and growth.

Tom Bunn (54:14.452)
Yeah.

Tom Bunn (54:35.607)
Yeah. Well, it definitely made a difference. I was at an HBA event a few weeks ago the day after that the Fed had dropped rates half a point. And it was noted, right? People in the room were like, hey, this is good. was the first rate drop in what, four or five years, I think. And so things like that will start to get the fire going again, I think.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (54:44.123)
.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (55:01.613)
Absolutely. Well, this was a delight to hang out with you and thank you for taking the time to share your story and your story is so special in terms of, you know, going from a handyman to a contractor to implementing EOS and building a team and looking at, you know, moving your partner, your spouse out of your business so you can have, you know, the quality of life. It's such a fascinating story. So thank you again for your time.

Tom Bunn (55:29.012)
Yeah, thank you for reaching out and I hope that if anybody else watches this that it's helpful to them. don't think I'm anything special to be honest. think it's just you hang in there and try to keep doing the right things day after day. It's hard but this is, think good things happen to good people generally if you try to do the right things. So yeah, I appreciate you having me on the podcast and it's been fun. So if you ever need anything in the future.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (55:48.361)
Very true. Cool.

Tom Bunn (55:57.738)
reach out to me and let me know and if I can do anything for you I'd be happy to try to do it.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (56:02.661)
Thank you, Tom. It was delight.