Josh Nowlin - Burrow’s Blueprint for Success - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Burrow’s Complete Post-Frame Solutions Director of Sales and Marketing, Josh Nowlin. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Intro: Hello and welcome to MetalCast from MetalCoffeeShop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth and we are here to talk about what's happening in the metal building industry and  that includes post frame, metal roofing, metal siding, everything you need to create amazing buildings using metal. I am so excited today to be here with Josh Nowlin of Burrow's Supply. Josh is part of the NFBA, we met at the auction for the National Frame Builders Association and I'm just really excited about that. 

In fact, Josh, welcome. 

Josh Nowlin: Hi Heidi, how are you? 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I am so good. You purchased this podcast at the auction, which we love to donate and be a part of the association. So I am going to start out this MetalCast with thank you. 

Josh Nowlin: No, absolutely. You're welcome. And it was an honor to support the NFBA Foundation and at the same time receive some time to sit down and do a MetalCast with you and something I've been wanting to do for a long time. So I'm very excited to do this with you today. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, thank you. I am too. This is really exciting. I love your company, love what you're doing on the board. So let's kind of start there. Let's start with the National Frame Builders Association. If you could just tell us a little bit about that association and your role as vice president on the board. 

Josh Nowlin: Yeah, I mean several years ago I started as serving on the local regional chapter, the Heartland Chapter of the NFBA and  that was my foot in the door, so to speak and serve there on the regional chapter on the board for several years and was given the opportunity to join the board of directors on a national level a few years ago. And it is work, it is serving, it's an unpaid board position, but it's rewarding in a lot of ways to be able to support the industry, be a voice for the industry, listen to the people in the industry and try to make a difference. That's what the association is there for. It is a nonprofit organization that's here to support and grow the post frame industry. So I'm excited to be a part of it, I really am. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You know what? It's a great... I'm just so impressed with the association overall. We were able to sit in on the awards. I mean we were just at the show a couple months ago and it's an impressive show, it's an impressive association in everything we do. And then now you just in the last couple of years have started the foundation and so that is also just brand new and you're raising funds through auctions and different events. You're seeing some huge success with that. 

Josh Nowlin: Yeah, it has been successful so far. It's like anything you start up, it can take a little time. But the foundation is a good way for the association and the industry to give back. And initially here what we're looking to do is just award students the opportunity to have a little extra money towards their education as long as it's in the post frame industry or can be related to the post frame industry. So yeah, it's pretty exciting. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, it is. I got a beautiful cribbage board there in the auction. It was awesome. So let's talk just a little bit about post frame. Post frame traditionally has been on wood and it also has been more agriculture. Commercial post frame is kind of changing. It is such a beautiful combination of wood and metal and now going into barndominiums, residential. Can you talk to us just a little bit about, you've been so involved about the history of post frame and where we are today with the industry? 

Josh Nowlin: I mean, post frame has been around a long, long time, but it has evolved like everything. It is a unique way to frame a structure out of lumber using wood, not steel or some of the other methods to have a big open free span building and an affordable one as well. And as you get into talking about residential, I believe, in my opinion, a unique reason to choose post frame over steel frame or other methods is you're framing the building with wood so it's easy to attach your drywall to and your insulation. So houses, custom home builds forever have predominantly been framed with wood. So when you frame a post frame barn build with wood, it's just ready for finish out. 

So if you think about doing an all steel structure, which is fine, it's a choice, but you have that all steel skeleton, the shell, but you still have to come in and add a bunch of lumber just to prepare to be ready to take the drywall and different things of that nature. So why not just frame it in wood, which is that's what we do with post frame. Barndominiums are a huge, huge sector of our industry, still growing. And for those who want to embrace it, there's a real opportunity there, that's for sure. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's what I'm seeing too. And it's amazing, I know a lot of post frame use metal roofing, beautiful metal roofs that we see there, a lot of them are now even starting to look at metal siding and some combinations of the metal with the wood. 

I have to tell you, Josh, that's one of the things I love. I love the combination. I love the architectural look of the wood with the metal and working together. So it's very cool. Burrow's offers all these kinds of packages and really helps builders put post frame together with all these different types of things. Tell us a little bit about your company 

Josh Nowlin: To add to what you just said about steel and the combination of wood and steel and all of those things. How about steel that looks like wood? Because I know at Burrow's we offer several different options. It looks like cedar, it looks like weathered oak, it looks like old barnwood, but it's steel. It has all the benefits of steel, but from 10, 15 feet away you would think that's old barnwood. Nope, that's steel. And with the barndominiums, like any house, it's highly recommended to go with, if you're going to go metal roofing, go with a hidden fastener pattern standing seam. You can do that with barndominiums too. And we would recommend going ahead and putting the sheathing on the outside, the OSB or zip sheathing and then the steel on top of that. 

So you're still getting all the benefits of a custom build, but gaining the free span and some of the unique features of barndominium, like the steel exterior, people are very interested in the different types of steel patterns and things. And architecturally, you're right, it's all beautiful. It's all beautiful. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love the expansive insides, I just love that. But I grew up on a ranch, Josh, so I'm kind of used to those big barns. And I think the fact that we're bringing that architecture and post frame into residential it makes sense. And you're right, economically for a lot of this next generation who's coming up trying to figure out how to get their own houses, how to figure out things, it can help with that. 

Josh Nowlin: Your children can really be born in a barn, right? 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, exactly. I was, it felt like. 

Josh Nowlin: Oh yes, for real, right? 

So, yeah. I mean, Burrow's, we are a complete post frame solutions provider. It's a fancy way of saying complete post frame buildings. But we do offer other solutions as well and we'll talk about that. But our business, our focus is the post frame builder, small to mid-sized companies who they just have trouble finding enough help, finding enough time in the day to run their business because many of those folks, they're getting strung every which direction. They've got a quote to do, but they've got to get out and work with their crew on site and then they answer the phone and then the husband or wife calls and says, I need you to go pick up the kids. And all the while they're trying to run a business and that's hard to do. 

That's where we come in because we're like, okay, well we can help you with all of that. We provide those solutions to help a small builder, mid-sized builder be able to grow their business without the overhead in a lot of cases. So that's a unique offering that we have that not every supplier offers. And so that's one of the things that I really like to promote about Burrow's. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And the fact that you are really helping them to put together the complete package, the complete solution and that includes from products, but also design, estimating, the whole nine yards. Give us some of the feedback, how builders have really incorporated your services into their business to help them grow and to kind of go to that next level? 

Josh Nowlin: It's like we can come in, we can get to know you, get to know your business, how you like to build, how you like to stage your deliveries, things of that nature. We come with a lot of experience too on our staff. It's like we're the cheapest consultants a guy could ever hire, I'm telling you. We come with a lot of experience and we can help guide you through business, through your way. If you have issues, we can talk about them even if they're not related to the building materials themselves. Just the best way to schedule my crews so that I'm the most efficient, how to provide a professional contract for our client to sign. Just anything and everything post frame business, that's what we do. 

We get clients all the time to come to us and they say, we don't have enough time. We need to hire help. We don't know where to start. Well, you're made the right call because what we can do, we can come in, we can help provide you with a software solution to help you provide accurate pricing to your customers. So that a lot of people spend a lot of time trying to... Well either, A, spending a lot of time trying to come up with a good number to quote their customer or B, they're not spending enough time. They may just say, well, we always just sell it for X amount of square foot and we've built enough of these we kind of know what the pricing is. Well, you do in a stable market, but we're not living in a stable market. So it's quite risky to run your business that way. 

So we offer a pricing solution, a software that they can use to price buildings and that's a huge thing. And then once they go under contract with their client, that one stop shop, so to speak, use, send the order to us or we take the order from our software and then we process the order internally, we ship it to the job site on one truck, unload it, stage it for you. All you have to do is show up with your crew and build it. You only have to write one check to Burrow's, send the check in, hand it to the driver, whatever. Because if you're buying your trusses from this place and your lumber over there and you're getting your steel from over here, it's a lot of coordination. Coordination means manpower. And it's a lot of deliveries to a job site from different vendors. Do they unload? Do they not unload? Do you have to have a forklift there to unload? And then you've got to pay all your bills, you've got to deal with all these invoices. With Burrow's, it's one invoice, it's one delivery. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's awesome. 

Josh Nowlin: Yeah, we try to make it really simple. And how we choose to grow our business is through supporting our clients and helping them grow theirs and  that's how we go to market. And it's good, it's been very successful and we're still growing and still offering new services and solutions to our clients all the time. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Forgive me if this is an uneducated question, but when you talk about you're delivering everything, is that going to also include all the interiors as in HVAC and drywall and all of that too? 

Josh Nowlin: That is not a service we offer at this time. When we are talking complete, primarily the shell, exterior, complete exterior, doors, windows if desired roof. We can get the client dried in, so to speak. We do have some clients that order their interior studs from us and things because we do have the lumber, we are coming out. But yeah, no. For turnkey, custom home, you're talking a lot of things, electrical components, HVAC, drywall, cabinetry, that's a little bit of another beast. But we can help... Our customer predominantly is the post frame builder and  we can help post frame builder do their job quickly, easily and  efficiently. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That makes sense. And that's why I was thinking in my mind, that makes total sense. And that's one of the things that I keep hearing people talking about with post frame building of how quick it is. That you can be dried in and then you can have other people working inside, but you basically can have a house or a commercial property or whatever it is, up very quickly, dried in, ready to go. And that's a real benefit for the owners and for the consumers. 

Josh Nowlin: Yeah, I agree with that. And I think when you're talking residential living... My opinion is probably, it's kind of tricky a little bit when you mix custom homes and post frame or metal buildings or whatever, because typically what a barndominium is, it's a post frame building that's finished out like a custom home. And it's really hard when you mix the two, which we are, that's what a barndominium is, because post frame builders are really good at building post frame buildings. They're really good at that. They're efficient at it. They built programs around it. 

But what they, typically, I can't say everybody, I'm not speaking for the whole world, so don't beat me up in the comments here, but custom home builders are really good at finishing out and taking the homeowner by the hand and sitting down and going through the paint colors and the cabinet options and the flooring. That's not what post frame builders typically are. So we just stick with providing the best solutions that we can for the post frame builder. 

That's great. 

Josh Nowlin: And we highly recommend they work with a general contractor for the finish out of a barndominium or let the homeowner hire their own general contractor. And you guys, everybody just stick to what they're good at, right? 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right, right, right. Well and  because post frame traditionally was very agriculture, commercial, large, I was going to say commercial buildings. And so it's just because it's so cool. It's really gone into different directions too. You hear about post frame on hotels now and on a lot of different structures that were not really in the past. 

Josh Nowlin: Last weekend I was in a new neighborhood Chipotle down the road and  I had been in there for the first time and I was looking up and I'm like, wow, this is framed with wood. The wood trusses are exposed right above my head. I'm like, we could have built this. All right. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: There you go. 

Josh Nowlin: Yeah, I mean, post frame can be used for just about any application, commercial, agricultural, residential, equestrian and  part of our solutions, we stock a lot of major components. So whether you want to put posts in the ground or whether you want to put posts in the ground with protection, we've got post protectors, Perma-Columns, all of those. If you're fastening the concrete, we've got the Sturdi-Wall brackets by Perma-Column. If you're building the horse barn, we've with Classic Equine, so we can provide you with stall solutions. And so no matter what you're doing, if it's post frame related, we can help. And we stock a lot of those items and those that we don't, we have those relationships and ordering processes in place to quickly and efficiently order for our clients. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's cool. What a great relationship. And let's talk just a little bit about some of the new technology that you are also helping. It's not just product, it's also technology, including your SmartBuild, which you have all been working with your contractors and really helping them to win jobs through this. Talk a little bit about that, the technology solutions that you're offering. 

Josh Nowlin: There are a lot of solutions out there on the market. I mean, as an industry guy have to say that because it's true, there are a lot of good solutions out there and  I don't know that there's a right or wrong one. I'm not selling software, but we have chosen to partner up with SmartBuild, a very good, innovative company. They offer a real nice 3D rendering, very easy learn and  very easy to be able to produce a good quote for your client. 

With our inventory backing that system, it's real easy that once you do sell the project to get everything dialed in, refresh it and order it and we can pull the order right out of there and it's ready to enter in our system and go straight to manufacturing. So it is a really, really good software and a lot of people out there are using it. Even new clients we stumble across, they're already using it. So the learning curve is not large at that point. But no, it's a great software and we've definitely tried to take advantage of that and use it to our advantage with helping our customers do their jobs. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And to have that integration where they can get it all built and everything and then get that information to you for the ordering, we've come a long way. Remember it wasn't that long ago that people were faxing in their orders? 

Josh Nowlin: Oh, I know. I know. And that's what I was talking about. There's still plenty of post frame guys out there doing that where they're not faxing necessarily, but hand material listing things and going to the lumber yard and loading up the trailer. I mean, you don't have to do all that anymore. With our program, we can help someone grow just by saying, yes, we'll do business with Burrow's. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Love it. 

Josh Nowlin: Yeah, no, it's a great thing. It really is. It's a good program we've put together here. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And that includes training, right? 

Josh Nowlin: Mm-hmm. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You're going to help them. And I loved what you said earlier on this MetalCast, it's not just training on installation, which I'm sure there's plenty of that working with your manufacturers and different folks, but it's also on your business. Training to help you grow your business. 

Josh Nowlin: Best practices with your customer, marketing, how to market your business, how to get more leads, how to create a program around quality and longevity. Those are things that we have a lot of people on our staff that have been in the industry a long time, work from major corporations and  we understand what it takes to run a really good post frame business and we're not afraid to share that information with our customers and ultimately help them grow their businesses what we feel is the right way, the best way for the whole industry. We've got to continue to raise up post frame. There are people out there that still don't worry about engineering. They just think, oh, this is how I've always done it, da, da, da. May not be using the proper header sizes and bracing and things of that nature on their structures and  we don't want that. We want people that do it right. And if we start doing business with somebody that we don't think is doing it right, we'll educate them on how to do it right. And ultimately that'll raise the whole industry up. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. I love that. And for a lot of the contractors who are listening to this, they're already working on metal roofing, metal siding, they have a sheet metal shop, but really when I look at this, this is such a great way to differentiate your business in a couple different ways. One is get into post frame. If you're not already doing post frame, get into post frame and work with someone like Burrow's to really learn how to do it because there's just so much demand. 

But the other thing too that I want to talk about is some of the subcontractors who are out there, whether they be roofing contractors, maybe HVAC or siding, also really focusing in on getting to know the post frame builders and seeing what they can do to work together. 

Josh Nowlin: Yeah, absolutely. There's plenty of opportunity out there for everyone and  it is just amazing to see year after year how many post frame buildings are being sold and built. It's really eye and it's really a good thing, it's a testament to the industry and putting good projects up that last a long time and get the job done. And as it relates to subcontractors, I've yet to meet a post frame builder yet that didn't work with multiple subcontractors, whether it be concrete, site preparation, gutters, overhead doors and  the list goes on and on. So yeah, definitely any opportunity we have to tie some of those subcontractors to builders, we do that. And again, it's like how can we help each other grow and do great things? 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Exactly. And then helping the industry overall and giving these beautiful buildings out to the consumers to really bringing such beautiful architecture and performance into the market. 

Josh, thank you so much. I have to tell you, this has been... I'm so happy you bid on this at the auction... 

Josh Nowlin: Is it already? Oh, wow. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: ... together. We are getting close. I know, doesn't it go fast? I know. 

Josh Nowlin: You said it would, I didn't believe you. You said it would. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We try to make it easy. 

Josh Nowlin: I'm like, are we even through the list yet? Okay. No. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We're pretty close. But I do want to let everyone know that we have a full directory on MetalCoffeeShop for Burrow's. So you can find all the information there, how to get in touch with them, how to get started, how to just build that relationship and  then also get a hold of Josh and become part of the National Frame Builders Association. No matter whether you're currently a builder or whether you're looking to get into the industry, he's your guy and can help you just learn tons on here. Josh, thank you. 

Josh Nowlin: Yeah. [inaudible 00:25:37] always looking to grow membership of the National Frame Builders Association, NFBA.org, check us out. And if nothing else, a good way to get involved with that is the big expo where we met last year or this year, next year in February, we're in Oklahoma City. At least go to that, check out the vendors, see what the industry's all about and  then decide if you want to become a member or not. So thank you for plugging that. And I've got a question for you- 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It's cool. Yes. 

Josh Nowlin: ... before we part ways. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes, I love it. 

Josh Nowlin: So at Burrow's, we recently started, I have a co-host and Scott Cragg, he's an employee of mine and  we recently started Post Frame 360. So we've got our own podcast that we've started and  I think we've got two or three on the air now. We've recorded many that we've been banking up and some time we would love to have you on our show. Is that possible? 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I am honored, yes. I can't wait. I would love it. Let's do it. That will be so much fun. And we'll also get all the podcasts that you've already recorded upon your directory on MetalCoffeeShop so people can listen to what you already have out there. And Josh, I'm in. 

Josh Nowlin: Very good. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Just tell me when. 

Josh Nowlin: Awesome. Awesome. Looking forward to it, Heidi, thank you so much for your time today and your contribution to the NFBA Foundation. We appreciate it. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you. And I just want to echo Josh's words about the show, the NFBA Show. I loved it. I learned so much. There's so much opportunity and just great people, just great people to get to know. So check it out next year and please, please check out their directory and get all the information so that you can get involved both with the NFBA has a directory on MetalCoffeeShop and  of course Burrow's. 

So Josh, thank you. Thank you so much. 

Josh Nowlin: Thanks, Heidi. Take care now. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thanks, you too. And I'll be on your show soon. I can't wait. This will be great. 

Josh Nowlin: I know. I can't wait. Thank you. 

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We'll be promoting that out on MetalCoffeeShop for sure. 

Josh Nowlin: Yay. 

Outro: Thank you. Thank you all for listening to this. Please check out all of our podcasts under the read, listen and  watch navigation, be sure to subscribe and set those notifications so you don't miss a single MetalCast. And remember, we're also on YouTube, so check it out. We'll be seeing you next time on MetalCast.