Experts of Experience - #12 Riley Thomas: How Does Tech Transform The Real Estate Experience?

Starting point is 00:00:00 I have a standard and you've got to hold to that standard and some people won't make it on that same team, right? That standard won't be upheld. That is okay. Anybody who's ever worked with a bank, they realize that it's historically very challenging to bring in new systems and software. Banks are meant to be kind of slow adopters of new technology because they're supposed to protect your money. There's zero translation loss in human voice and even human video, like we're talking today. Whereas when you try and describe what that customer wants, when you don't have it recorded, there's dilution for what that product owner is going to hear. And I think that's really critical because the biology in all of us, it's stories are

Starting point is 00:00:40 what we remember and stories are how we feel. And so if they can feel the story from the client, it's more of a real story. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lauren Wood. And today I'm speaking with Riley Thomas, SVP of Markets at Built Technologies, one of the leading providers of construction and real estate finance technology in the U.S. In his five plus years at Built Technologies, Riley has worked to grow and expand Built's reach and offerings. So today we're going

Starting point is 00:01:12 to get into how they have risen to the top and how Riley and his team are working to increase efficiency, collaboration, and business agility for the construction industry. Riley, thank you so much for joining us. Lauren, thanks for having me. Super excited to be here. So tell us a little bit, just to give everyone an overview of the work that you do at Built Technologies. Tell us a little bit about the work that you and your team do. Yeah, for sure. Well, it all starts with the team. And what we do here at Built is we essentially improve the flow of capital into the construction and real estate industries. So if you think about just looking around and all the things that are built around you or the buildings in New York or the local subdivision

Starting point is 00:01:53 that you may live, it requires money to do that. And what we help do and facilitate is the flow of money into those projects. And so we do it through software and we connect everybody who works on the project in one single place so that they can operate off of... We come from Nashville, so we do it through software and we connect everybody who works on the project in one single place so that they can operate off of. We come from Nashville, so we like to steal the phrase the same sheet of music. I love that. And tell me a little bit about who your key customers are. Yeah, so Built started actually selling to banks. And so the reason why is because lenders, banks in particular, are the lifeblood of the construction industry. Almost 70% of the real estate market that tends to go towards construction is funded via banks. Since then, we've started to diversify our client structure a little bit. And now we actually sell to developers who build and own and manage buildings, and then also to contractors who work in those projects.

Starting point is 00:02:50 And so we're kind of, if you will, connecting the puzzle pieces so that they can work off that same sheet of music. How would you say that Built Technologies is really setting themselves apart in terms of customer experience? Yeah, well, first, if anybody who's ever worked with a bank, they realize that it's historically very challenging to bring in new systems and software. Banks are meant to be kind of slow adopters of new technology because they're supposed to protect your money. But in doing so, what we've done is we're trying to modernize the bank, bring them

Starting point is 00:03:23 on board and do that. So our clients are typically risk adverse and sometimes slow to make decisions. But when they do, we can kind of accelerate their growth. I can relate to this a lot. So I worked at Compass, the real estate tech platform for about five years. I was an early employee there. And real estate is a super antiquated industry. And it's really cool to see new players coming in to really help to streamline a lot of the very challenging technical problems that just come up in real estate and make it easier for people to do what we need to do. So I'd love to hear a little bit about how you've kind of approached this antiquated industry and work to modernize it. Yeah, I think if you look at like, well, there's real estate, and then there's construction and construction is even more antiquated than real estate. So I think there was a McKinsey study done years ago that construction is like the second most least digitized industry

Starting point is 00:04:25 and only second to agriculture, so farming. And so if you look at real estate, I think the reason they've been able to stay in the Stone Age, I'm going to use that as the term, is simply because it was acceptable. And that's just kind of the way it was. If an analyst had been trained in a firm or a bank to do it this way forever, they just passed that along. And over time, what was really kind of a catalyst in the last couple of years, we had some early traction pre-COVID. But when COVID hit, these real estate folks who had worked out of an office every single day, woke up one day and said, oh, I can't go to the office. And I think that was a little bit of a shocker because the whole firm had to change and act a little differently. And you had these young analysts who were like, why can't we use the cloud? Why can't we use software?

Starting point is 00:05:13 Why can't we use these things? So, you know, you got to be better to be lucky than good. And I do think COVID was a benefit to Bill and waking people up on what's needed. How have you gone about driving adoption? Because there's one thing to create the solution. It's another to have those folks who are maybe still in the Stone Age or used to the Stone Age to actually think about something different. That's tough. And it's a battle every day. What I would say is you, if you want to eat an elephant, you do it one bite at a time. And what we've really tried to do is focus on the innovators within a company or a firm, the kind of the up and comers who are going to be maybe the next managing director or bank executive and allow them to see our tool as a tool to both improve

Starting point is 00:06:03 their team's experience, but also the client experience. And by getting them to see our tool as a tool to both improve their team's experience, but also the client experience. And by getting them to kind of be our bird dogs or those who go first, we can change the way people work. And, you know, it's really hard to change, especially somebody who's been doing something for 30, 40 years. But when they start to see the benefit to the client, and they care a lot about their clients, both banks and non banks really care about their clients. That's when you start to see maybe the old dog learn a new trick or two. They still love Excel, though. And I don't think that's going to go away in my lifetime. But we'll try. Yeah, well, we'll see what AI does about that. I mean, on the topic, how have you

Starting point is 00:06:42 guys been incorporating AI into your technology? Yeah, so that's a really good question. We actually had a hack week like a month and a half ago, and I started to see some of the cool things that we were thinking about. But I'll just give you a simple example. We basically ingest a lot of construction inspection photos. So think if you walked out to a job site, you took a picture of that kind of the job site or the concrete or the foundation. Well, a banker typically has to look through that library of kind of what I would call photos and then say, oh, this is a this is a foundation photo. I need to tie it to a foundation line item.

Starting point is 00:07:18 So we started to use some machine learning to recognize what was in the photos and then link it to the budget line item so that banker doesn't have to do that anymore. I think there's going to be so many use cases where you can use machine learning, which eventually becomes artificial intelligence, to really drive efficiencies. And that was just a fun one that I really liked. 100%. I mean, there's so much opportunity to be driving those efficiencies. And I can only imagine how much time it takes to go through all those photos and tie them to line items manually. I'm curious to know, you know, as you've been

Starting point is 00:07:56 building this business and the different service offerings, how do you kind of tap into what it is that the customer is wanting and then apply it to what it is that you're actually building? I'd love to just learn a little bit about what your process is there, as well as maybe some examples of customer insights that have driven product developments. Loaded question. Let me maybe start where most important though, It starts in the sales process and it starts really early in the sales process of realizing that not every client is a fit for your solution. And you really want to be hyper-focused on the clients that are going to understand, drive, and of course, be willing to change and adopt your solution. So a lot of times

Starting point is 00:08:41 we will go through what I call a gap analysis, where we'll look at the current state and then we'll compare it to a future state. And what we do in that gap analysis is we understand the way they work today. And then when we bring them on board to build, we can slowly start to change that. And what I mean by that is we will ask people to do things that are uncomfortable. We'll say, hey, you've been doing this for 10 years this way. We're going to ask you to change it. But what we're going to do is because we measured your baseline when we were in the sales process, we're going to compare it against the new paradigm. And then we're going to show you the value. And I think that value realization is so important because you can take that and you can move that up the chain to the executives and

Starting point is 00:09:23 say, this is why you made this decision. And yes, there is some reluctance from your team and your staff to change, but let me remind you again why you made it. And that's been really effective for us, for sure. And then it gives you something to kind of continuously come back to as you continue on that relationship. I mean, it's something I work in customer success predominantly. And I always say to my clients, it starts with the sales process. It starts with that information that you're gathering in the beginning to understand what is their true core needs and how do we consistently bring that back into the fold for them and remind them of why they're here, especially when you're doing

Starting point is 00:10:05 something that is really shifting behavior in the long run. Couldn't agree more. Yep. And I think also, I always say it's a match and lead principle. We have to match them where they're at, and then we can lead them to a change. But if we're coming in with arrogance or an ego, it's never effective. It starts with humbleness. It starts with understanding. Then you earn a lot of trust that way. And then once you have that information, you have your gap analysis, how are you then kind of incorporating that into the organization, into built technologies to say, here's what our customers are dealing with. How can we consistently make that better? Yeah, absolutely. So we work under the principle that there is no such thing as custom software development within built. It's basically market pervasive needs drive our product

Starting point is 00:10:57 development lifecycle. So what we really try is find similar themes across our cohort of clients, and then that's what we built. And then we can go back and say, hey, we've heard this from 50 clients and this is very important for these reasons. And we have a customer advisory board and we say, do you feel that we got it right? And there may be a tweak or a change here and there. But ultimately what we're trying to do is get a really good product roadmap. And then once we have that product roadmap, that usually will align to value creation. And so it's not just a feature here. It's like, what business outcome did we actually drive? And then that's the story that we're going

Starting point is 00:11:35 to tell the executive teams. And then that's also the story we're going to tell the user team. But there are the cases when we do need to change just a feature and it may not drive a story. And that's where that market pervasiveness comes in. Because if all our users are saying the same thing, guess what? We're going to prioritize that and we're going to be happy to do it. What do you use to actually track that? Just to double click on that piece, because I think it can be really complicated to take all of your different user insights or requests and then actually say, there is a business need here for us to invest in this? 100%. I think that's a solution where AI is going to be amazing. It's just not there yet. But just think about that. If you could record and retain all your customer calls and then synthesize those into business outcomes to drive roadmap. Wow. That's, that's going to be incredible. So what I think we use is we definitely, um, use call intelligence systems. So we record all our calls and then we transcribe those calls.

Starting point is 00:12:35 And then we also will use JIRA on the backend for all of our kind of like what I would call development programs. And then in between, it's not necessarily the system, but the process, right? So we have a tool that we built that essentially links all of the JIRA tickets to actual business outcomes. Cause it's not enough to say, I'm going to go work on this feature. No, that's, that doesn't work for me. I need to know that you're going to work on a solution that drives X for my client. And then that goes into our PI planning process where we go in and sometimes it's a really tough meeting because it's like one on one off where we say, hey, if you want to put that feature on, we only have so much capacity.

Starting point is 00:13:16 Which one do you want to pull off? And when you have those kind of choices, sometimes it's surprising the features that are on get left on and not pulled off. And so I think a combination of people, process and technology is required, but I can't wait for a better solution there because I'm confident somebody's going to figure that out. Yeah, for sure. It's definitely a sticking point for, I mean, any organization I've ever worked in or for, how do we take the pre and post sale team insights and then actually like collaborate with the technology arm of the business, the product team to really see eye to eye and get aligned on what we should be prioritizing when? Yeah. And I kind of say,

Starting point is 00:14:01 I'm not going to generalize because I know your audience is going to have a lot of product managers, but they're kind of like an artist when they have their vision of what to paint on the canvas, really hard to change them. And so what I've always said is I've went in doubt, bring data. So we've got to bring a lot of customer stories, or I got to get them on an airplane and in a meeting so that they hear it firsthand. And that's, I'm a huge fan of getting your product leaders in client boardrooms or client conference rooms because it's amazing when they hear

Starting point is 00:14:30 the customer frustration or pain, they empathize with that. And a great product leader has a lot of empathy. Yeah. When you're using Salesforce to tackle your company's most important goals, failure is simply not an option. That's why their most highly skilled advisors, Salesforce CTOs, are available to help you succeed with

Starting point is 00:14:53 expert guidance and implementation support at every step of the way. Learn more about Salesforce CTOs at sfdc.co slash professional services. I could not agree with you more. And I think that what I really want to underscore in what you're saying is it's not only the data. The data is very helpful. And being data driven is, you know, the basics here, right? It's to say, okay, well, what is the data telling us? But when we can actually tell the stories and those real human stories and connect at a human level with our customer, then we can really understand what the problem is and how we're going to innovatively solve it. And I think that's actually something that AI is helping us with. Now that we can record calls and we have these transcripts, we can say like,

Starting point is 00:15:43 oh, here's a customer talking about that thing that we were just speaking about in our product roadmap meeting the other day. I can copy and paste this and send it over to the product manager and I don't need to remember and try to write it down or whatever. I can actually just take it and send it quickly and easily. And I really encourage everyone to be sharing those stories with their product team. It helps so much. And you think about it, there's zero translation loss in human voice

Starting point is 00:16:13 and even human video, like we're talking today. Whereas when you try and describe what that customer wants, when you don't have it recorded, there's dilution for what that product owner is gonna hear. And I think that's really critical because you're right. I mean, the biology in all of us, it's stories are what we remember and stories are how we feel. And so if they can feel the story from the client, it's more of a real story. And I think that's critical to building the best products. Totally. It also removes bias as well. Like I think sometimes I've definitely had to improve the relationship between my customer success team or my client facing team and the

Starting point is 00:16:53 product team because my team might get a little bit on the product team's nerves sometimes because they keep going and saying like, we need this thing. It's urgent. Someone's on the phone yelling at me. We have to solve this problem. And if you can actually just show this is exactly what they said and how they said it, I'm taking myself out of it as the messenger. I'm just showing you the facts. It can be more powerful that way. So I noticed on your website that your company vision is to become one of the most important and trusted partners in the built world, which I absolutely love. It's also a you're playing a big game. So I'd love to understand how are you going about bringing that vision to life, especially when it comes to being a trusted partner? Because trust is something that is not so easy to cultivate.

Starting point is 00:17:44 Yeah, I think I'll steal a line from Stephen Covey. Like trust is like a piggy bank. You put in a token at a time, but if it falls on the floor, it shatters in an instant, right? Just like your reputation can get lost in an instant. So I think coming at it from, you know, you can use the golden rule or the silver rule. Don't do unto others as you don't want unto you is being very candid, telling your clients and your prospects where there are gaps in your system. It's amazing the power of the word no. No, we don't do that.

Starting point is 00:18:18 I find so many junior salespeople are so afraid of saying the word no, where I actually love to say no in front of a client because I'm being candid. And that to me is a powerful unlock. I also believe wholeheartedly that just generally being empathetic and being an active listener drastically builds trust much faster. I'll take my team members, for example. I think when I was early on in management, I was kind of like, oh, I know how to do this. I had a vision and I was just on the highway and nobody was going to knock me off. As I've kind of progressed in my years and had my battle scars and learnings, I just realized, just sit down and listen. And it's amazing how much trust you unlock by simply shutting up. It's a beautiful thing. Totally. I love that you bring up Stephen Covey

Starting point is 00:19:06 too, because he wrote The Speed of Trust, right? I think his son wrote The Speed of Trust. His son wrote The Speed of Trust. Yeah. Seven Habits of High Effective. Yeah. And The Speed of Trust is, I mean, it was written a long time ago. I actually recently, probably about a year ago, read it. And there's a lot of really good nuggets of information in there just around how trust is really one cost effective because you move faster. If you have trust, then you can move forward. You have to ask less questions. You can, you know, build a partnership that's really mutually beneficial and do so quicker and cheaper, which I think is such a good point. And you also bring up a really good point around saying no.

Starting point is 00:19:54 There's another trust book that I really love called The Thin Book of Trust. It's like I highly suggest it to anyone who is a leader, a client facing person, a human. Honestly, it's kind of just like essential skills. And there's four pillars of trust that's written about in this book, sincerity, reliability, competence, and care. And on the competence piece, when we say, I am not competent in doing that, that is not within our scope of work, or we're not great at this thing, it builds a lot of trust. Because people say, okay, you're willing to tell me the truth. So now when you tell me something else, I'm going to trust that more. And it's just such an important factor. So I'm glad that you bring that up. Yeah, I think the world revolves around trust. And if we break that, then a lot of things fall

Starting point is 00:20:54 apart. And I think if you build really good companies, all great companies have a single thing in common, and it's a lot of trust. Speaking of that, I'd love to talk a little bit about customer retention. Because, I mean, it's a big thing, I think, especially in this economic market. But retention is such a massively important thing in any business. And I'd love to understand how you've been approaching customer retention at Built. For sure. And we actually have a very high customer retention at Built. I think if I look back and run the numbers, it's like 97%. Now, some of that is a... Wow. That is huge. A byproduct of the market we're in. So I will disclaimer that. What I will say is usually the

Starting point is 00:21:38 harder your sales cycle, the longer your sales cycle, the less likely that a client would kind of pull away from you. So I'll disclaimer that away a bit, especially selling to banks. What I would say is we are, I've always wanted to be in durable businesses. And this is a very durable business because you would think that as interest rates went through the roof, that our business would go down and actually has gone up because what happens is now those loans are more risky. And so the bank actually wants a system around that risk. So even though there's less loans, there's more risks. So where we have been fortunate is kind of the position of the business. And what I would say is one, once you become a built client, it's quite a process to get a bank

Starting point is 00:22:23 to kind of buy into the platform and come on board and through their procurement and vendor management. But two, as the economy has changed, we have benefited a lot because now rather than selling, hey, growth, efficiencies, do more loans, it was like, oh, you now can see your portfolio. So when the regulator comes in and says, hey, how much exposure do you have to this asset class in northern Illinois that we know there's been five delinquencies or bankruptcies? We can answer within seconds. So we really have benefited. Now, I do know others. I've got a lot of friends at different companies who don't have as sticky of a product.

Starting point is 00:22:59 And right now, it's really prove the ROI, prove the ROI, improve the ROI. And so if you don't have a pivot, it's hard. And that's usually where some of these SaaS kind of services have been cut. I know for the longest time when money was free, it was just buy every SaaS tool out there. And even at Built, we've taken a look back and said, what do we really need? What's critical to our infrastructure? And we are fortunate that

Starting point is 00:23:25 we're critical to the bank's infrastructure. For sure. So I mean, one, the type of business that you're operating has a huge contribution to your customer retention, but I'm sure there's other things that you're doing as well that is contributing to that. And so I'd love to understand within your control and your team's control, what are some of the things that you contributing to that. And so I'd love to understand, you know, within your control and your team's control, what are some of the things that you do to really ensure that you are still showing that ROI and people aren't just feeling frustrated that they're stuck with you? Are you ready to navigate your AI future with confidence? Salesforce Professional Services partners with you to design a well-architected platform built with out-of-the-box capabilities that allow you to scale with speed and flexibility.

Starting point is 00:24:12 To learn more, visit sfdc.co slash sf proservices. Yeah, so the first thing is we believe in home field advantage. If we can get our clients to make an annual trip to come out, come to Nashville and see the people and see the process and see the company, it's game, set, match. They will love, one, we put up a really good experience, a tailored experience, and everybody loves to come to Nashville. But two, they get to meet the CSMs. They get to meet the leadership. They get to see into some of the roadmap that we normally wouldn't release. So that's, we really like home field advantage for our existing clients. That's not always possible with everybody. So then we go more to a digital strategy, which is education and energy, right? So trying to get them energetic about what's coming down the pipeline,

Starting point is 00:25:06 always showing them that we're listening. So like sending kind of a paraphrase email from our CSMs is so critical and built into the culture, which is, we heard you. We may not be able to have the answer immediately, but we will come back to you. And then just working with a really quick tempo. I think that's so important in today's environment. It doesn't have to be Friday. It could be Tuesday, right? Why can't we shorten the time in which we respond as much as possible? And I think that's just kind of built into who we are at Built. And we benefited, one, from great product, great positioning, but then just great people who want to work really hard for our clients. It is so, so important the speed at which you respond to your customers. I say this to everyone I work with. I've done so many studies on customer

Starting point is 00:25:52 retention and customer satisfaction. And what it ultimately comes down to is people just want to be responded to quickly. They don't want to wait on things. They really, really value getting those faster responses, even if it is, I don't know the answer, I'm going to get back to you. But it's acknowledgement. And, you know, time is the only resource that we can't get more of. So let's really respect our clients' time. So I think it's, yeah, it's just incredibly valuable. And I want to underscore that one because it's a biggie. I have a personal story about this one where I realized how important that was as I actually opened a European office for a prior company.

Starting point is 00:26:32 And I would have to wait for my own internal teams to wake up and respond. Yeah. And when you're sitting there for hours on a day for a very simple question, maybe it's a password lockout, the amount of frustration you feel. And then when you bring that into your external clients, let alone internal or folks who you're working with, you just got to get the tempo. If you get the tempo right, it's amazing how much better the relationship will be. 100%. I actually, I think about this a lot, the parallels between our employee experience and our customer experience.

Starting point is 00:27:06 And I think you highlight something that's super relevant is that you as an employee were frustrated at having to wait for a response. And I find that when that's happening internally, it kind of transfers externally as well. It's like, oh, well, our standard is that we don't really get back to each other for a week. So are we going to get back to our customers faster? Like, probably not. I'm not that inspired to do that if no one else is getting back to me. So, you know, and I think it's something that is really important. So I'd love to talk a little bit about employee experience and how you as a leader really what is your employee experience philosophy? Let's start there. Yeah. So I've been asked this question, what is some really good advice I received? And I'll go back to my dad. My dad said to me, ask what you can do to help. And so I was kind of just ingrained

Starting point is 00:28:03 in us. And I'm the oldest of eight kids. So all of us knew we got to wake up and ask, what can we do to help? And I think that's the same type of leader I want to be, is that true servant leader that comes out. What can I do to help? You're struggling. How can I help you? But we need to do it quickly.

Starting point is 00:28:20 You've got to have a standard and you've got to hold to that standard. And some people won't make it on that same team, right? That standard won't be upheld. That is okay. But what I think is most important is you dig in and sometimes you have to get into the details and then back out of the details really quick as a leader. Otherwise you're always in the details, but I do think you got to go down and help. And when you do that, empathy, trust, engagement, all skyrocket. Yeah, for sure. I don't know if you're a Brene Brown fan. I'm a big Brene Brown fan. And on her podcast once, because I've listened to every episode that she's ever recorded, she has an analogy that I use a lot where she talks about how leaders need to be able to go from the balcony to the dance floor and walk that staircase of being up top, seeing what's happening, setting the course of how the party is going to go. You know, being like, all right, we need more champagne or where are the hors d'oeuvres, whatever. down on the dance floor and actually talk to everyone who's in that day-to-day experience,

Starting point is 00:29:26 you know, or in that dance floor experience to say like, what do you need? What's going on? Maybe stepping in and actually like helping to make sure that champagne's getting served because you know, the team strapped or whatever, but then also walking back up the stairs and being back on the balcony. And it's such an important balance to find as a leader. For sure. And we have like a signage on top of spots in the office. And one of them I really like is owners do the dishes, right? And so even for us, like it is,

Starting point is 00:29:59 I don't care whether I sat in a golden throne or, you know, I'm the janitor at the business. We all work the same and no work is above any of us. I don't care whether I sat in a golden throne or, you know, I'm the janitor at the business. We all work the same and no work is above any of us. And if you create that culture from the beginning, it's very hard to change it. If it's morphed or modified over time, it really takes a lot of work. But if you start a company that way, it's going to be so much easier for you. I think that's a really important message to anyone who's starting a company or who's in the early stages of starting a company that you really, you can set the pace in those

Starting point is 00:30:31 early days for how the team is really going to operate and engage with each other. And don't forget the early days though, because sometimes it's like you train for a marathon and then you take six months off. It's so easy to rest on your laurels after you've had a little success, a series A, a series B, you can be like, oh, I don't need to do that anymore. Oh, that's where it sets in. And the atrophy comes, you can't, you can't allow that. It is a constant investment in making sure you can help. Totally. And it gets harder as time goes on, too. The more people that you have. I know I've definitely been a part of cultures where I was like, I'm riding or dying with this organization. I am so committed because they feel so committed to me and I love my colleagues and this is great. And then getting to a stage of growth where it kind of starts to fall apart and now we're 5,000 people and it's like, you know, it's difficult. What are some of the things that you do to really nurture the engagement on your team? It all starts with a purpose. I think, you know, Simon Sinek wrote

Starting point is 00:31:40 a book about it starts with why. I actually it was rockefeller who coined it even better starts with the purpose and if you every meeting has a purpose every interaction has a purpose um and those purposes are well thought out and thoughtful and it's amazing what that does it gives direction it's confidence it gives clarity and it's confidence, it gives clarity. And I think, you know, confidence creates clarity, clarity, it creates conviction. And you have all those, wow, the organization can run really well. There's nothing worse than being confused about why you're doing something or what you're really supposed to do. Sometimes that takes intentionality to get rid of the confusion, because it's really easy for me sitting back one day to be like, oh, I need X, Y, Z in Salesforce. I need this here. It's harder for me to say, how do I get the teams beneath me to believe that,

Starting point is 00:32:35 to love that, to want to drive and work hard even on a weekend if I need them to, to do that. That is more work versus just dictating, hey, go do this. For sure. How do you do that? What's your personal approach to that? Yeah. So I have four or five questions that I ask myself on a daily basis before any big meeting. I have an all-hands meeting coming up with my revenue team today. Why would I want to join this? Why would this be impactful for me? What should I take away from this? And I tried going back to that first principle I said, which is match and lead. I try and put myself into the junior AE who's four months into the ramping

Starting point is 00:33:16 stage at Build. And if I can answer those questions with conviction, then I know the meeting is going to drive a lot more value. But if it's constantly in my frame of mind versus theirs, I think you get a diminishing law of returns. I just don't think meetings are as valuable or as impactful. And it's a waste of time for everybody. That is such, such helpful advice. I think taking time to reflect, like as I've grown as a leader, I've realized where I make mistakes is when I don't take that pause to really think about like what it is I'm trying to say, how it's going to impact the people around me.

Starting point is 00:33:52 Like really getting that like high level view of, OK, how does this then impact other things? And then coming down and like being with my team. But I think like taking the time to think is so incredibly important and we don't do it enough. And it's one of those things like maybe it's not even just general thinking, but you look at like meditation or a long walk in the park. Like if you don't make that space for yourself as a leader to really process however you want to process, then I think you're doing yourself a disservice. I get really frustrated when my calendar, when I look like a dentist, meaning every 15 minutes I have a new patient that doesn't work well for me. My team knows this. I'm like, I've got to have a break to just process because otherwise I'd become sloppy. And when I become

Starting point is 00:34:40 sloppy, it hurts other people. And so I think it goes back to intentionality, be intentional about what you're doing. And if you need that as a leader to break out some of that intentionality in the form of a reset, then put it on the calendar. It's okay. Yeah. It's literally in the best interest of your team and your customers for you to take that time. For sure. Like you are doing them a disservice by accepting every single meeting that goes on your calendar and not giving yourself that time and space. I say this to the leaders I work with all the time because I think, I don't know, especially right now, I feel like

Starting point is 00:35:15 there's a lot of people who are stressed. There's a lot of pressure on growth metrics and we have smaller teams than we used to. And just every decision is feeling heavier. And I'm seeing a lot of people around me, a lot of my clients like hitting that early or maybe they're fully in it, like that burnout phase. And you have to take the time for yourself and that space to like recalibrate so that you're not messy, so that you're able to speak with intentionality. Everything that you're saying is, yeah, just so incredibly true. And I think it's also just general positivity. Now, I struggle with this, too, because I have kind of a science oriented brain.

Starting point is 00:36:00 So it's like, oh, I can think of all the reasons why we can't do it versus all the reasons why we could do it. And then just that to me is my reset time of being like, I mean, how hard can it be? Like, that's my big question these days. I'm like, OK, well, team's down 20 percent. We got a bigger number than last year. How hard can it be? But that simple flip really helps me. I'm like, we'll figure it out. And I think that is like one of those things

Starting point is 00:36:25 where you've got to get in that positive frame of mind because, you know, history, you know, basically the brave and the bold are what history favors. So that's kind of hard to do. It's easier said than done. Let's put it that way. For sure. We need to set that example for our team though. Also, especially when things are hard, it's like positivity is the only thing that's going to get us out of this. If it's like doom and gloom, if we're like working really hard on something and we're just like stuck on how hard it is, it's going to be a much longer and difficult road than if we are looking on the bright side of things. And it's really, you know, for the leaders to set that example. I do think there's a balance though, because if you go super positive without being realistic, you kind of stretch it. And you've got to almost I like to work in the hyper realistic stage with a dose of positivity, because I know I've got to meet my team with that if it's a way we're working a weekend, or we've got a big challenge ahead of us. I'm going to say, yeah, this is probably going to

Starting point is 00:37:29 suck. Let's fix it, but let's fix it together. Right. And that I think just helps drive what everybody needs. Yeah. We still need to acknowledge reality. A hundred percent. So a couple last questions for you and And just looking ahead of where built technology is going, how do you see the next five plus years really playing out? What are you guys working towards? For sure. Well, you saw it in the tagline, we want to change the way the world gets built. And we're only in the U.S. so far. So we have a lot of room to grow there. So what we see as the future is we truly believe, and I'll just kind of call this out there, that there's a vast undersupply of housing in the United States.

Starting point is 00:38:21 And the reason why there's an undersupply of housing is because of financial crises. If you look at 2007 and 2008, we kind of blew ourselves up and we stopped building homes. And so, but things kept growing. People kept having children. And guess what? In 2020, when COVID arrived, we kind of paused a little bit on building and construction. Well, that impacts everybody. That impacts the unhoused. That impacts the 29-year-old who's just going to make a family and can't afford a home and is going to be renting for the next seven years. And I honestly believe that built is in a unique position to actually impact that. And there's very few, I want to say, companies that could do it. We are right there. We can inject the flow of capital into construction to allow more homes to be built and potentially leave our mark on the world, which I think is really cool. That's super inspiring. And it is true. We definitely have a problem on our hands when it comes to homes and having the opportunities for people to have those homes. So yeah, I'm glad that you bring it up and I'm so glad that you guys are working on this.

Starting point is 00:39:25 It's a very admirable goal. I'm excited to see it play out. Yeah. Well, thank you. It's super exciting. Well, one last question for you. And this is something that I ask all of my guests. What is one piece of advice that you think every customer experience leader should know?

Starting point is 00:39:41 I think I'm going to make it really simple. Know your customer more than you know yourself. If you do that, you won't fail because you'll be able to position your system, even with its gaps and its nuances, and you'll be able to link it to what they need to do. A lot of the times, even on the sales side, I'll ask a sales rep who's in training. I want you to think through how a CFO is going to respond. What KPIs are they attracted to? And just knowing how they think. So you've heard me say this a lot throughout the day, like matching a person where they're at and then leading them to the next piece. I think knowing your customer, and it's easy to say,

Starting point is 00:40:21 it's hard to do. And a lot of people will do it at the front end of a relationship and they'll get lazy and then they'll forget about it. But it's that constant investment. It's just builds relationships and it has since the beginning of time. Yeah. That's such wise advice. Thank you so much for sharing. Well, Riley, it's been awesome to have you on the show. I've learned so much about one, what built is what built technologies is building in the construction and real estate space. A lot about leadership, a lot about supporting our customers and really, truly understanding them. So thank you so much for sharing all of this information, um, to our listeners. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. I cut you off. I was going to say, thank you for having me on. That's that's, uh, it's been awesome. Awesome. I cut you off. I was going to say thank you for having me on. It's been awesome.

Starting point is 00:41:07 Awesome. Thank you so much. Well, to our listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe or like us wherever you listen to your podcast. And also, if you have anything or anyone that you would really like us to speak to, I just wanted to call this out that you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. My name is Lauren Wood. Please send me a DM and tell me what you would like to hear more about on this show and we'll work it into our schedule. So thank you so much, everyone.

Starting point is 00:41:32 And I hope you have a beautiful day. This episode is brought to you by Salesforce Success Plans. With the right success plan, every company can get more value from their Salesforce investment. To learn more, visit sfdc.co slash sf success plans. you you you you are a business leader with vision. You've seen the future as an AI enterprise thriving with Salesforce AI and data. And it is bright.

Starting point is 00:43:37 Getting there? It's a little fuzzier. Don't worry. Salesforce CTOs are here to work side-by-side with your team and turn your AI and data vision into a reality. We're talking expert guidance and implementation support from the best of the best. To learn more, visit sfdc.co slash professional services.

Your Ad Here

Experts of Experience - #12 Riley Thomas: How Does Tech Transform The Real Estate Experience?

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.