🔨There's more to DIY and home improvements that meets the eye!In today's podcast, we're joined by Tim Seims, Director of Building Products Intelligence for John Burns Real Estate Consulting.  🎧 Don't miss out on his industry insights and more. Listen to our podcast today!“Having seen the demand on the consumer side for the health and wellness and that kind of not just smart home technology and wearables but actual real tie to building materials and health and wellness and building science, and the demand on the single-family builder/operator/developer side and the competitiveness to have an ESG strategy that answers that demand. I think that those two are dovetailing. And right in the middle, I think is building automation and building system technology. So I could see a world where I couldn't see a year ago in these conversations. That the money and the smart big money coming into single family build-for-rent, that is going to drive innovation in those products just because they have a completely different outlook on it than for-sale product. I run our lumber and building material surveys so we represent about -- but depending on the month, between 750 and 950 independent lumberyard locations across the United States. So we asked them questions about their inventory and sales and categories and stuff like that.We asked them about how they would rank the 4 Ls: lumber, labor, lots and logistics, in terms of what they are experiencing in their businesses and what they hear their builders experiences so those 2. But by far, labor was the highest. But when you look at the graph, you think, ‘In this one question, lumber was the highest.’ But the big problem in lumber isn't the actual wood, it's all the labor inputs along the way.So there aren't enough loggers. And then there aren't enough -- the mills would love to run 3 shifts but they're running 2 a lot of them, and it's because of absenteeism and already there was a kind of a dearth of unskilled -- even unskilled labor for those roles and even harder with skilled leads in the lumber, in the woods and then also the millwrights.The inputs of labor to a lot of raw materials are actually the problem. It's not necessarily the raw material.”

“The homeowner certainly has the right to ask questions.I was in that role a few years ago when we built our dream house. I didn't necessarily know as much as your general contractor, but I knew what I wanted. You have to understand who your customer is, and ultimately love or hate it, the fans, the bottom line is they're paying our salaries. You have to embrace them and engage with them. Obviously true, maybe not so much in this market when you know you can get business all over the place.  When times do get a little tighter, it's those guys that do business the right way and treat people the right way that are going to ultimately succeed when maybe some other business owners are dying on the vine when it's not as glorious as the economy is right now.”

“We don't have enough contractors. They're in this situation where many of them don't really have to aggressively go after business because there's so much business out there. They need to keep their sales and marketing skills sharp.If you want to be good at something, you need to keep practicing it.You talk to golfers, and they'll regularly practice to stay in shape. All of a sudden, if business is so good, I can stop selling for a year. It would be like somebody not playing golf for a year, and then wondering why they aren't that good the next time they play. They need to hone and keep those skills sharp.Facing shortages of materials, longer lead times, increasing prices can end a shortage of labor.”

3 Ways To Leverage Social Media To Connect With Your CustomersDanika Leeks, a successful business owner in the furniture industry recently shared with us 3 ways she leverages social media to connect with her customers.1. Post Often: “I do probably between 5 and 7 posts a week.”2. Interact Personally: The posts that get the most interaction, get the most saves, get the most forwards are the ones that have a personal interaction. Talking about a product personally or interacting with the customer.People have realized that connection matters now more than ever.We crave being connected to people and seeing people.3. Curated Posts: “I always want to sell, but I don't want it to be one sided, where I'm just always, here's my stuff, here's my stuff.”“I do a combination of posts that incorporate, obviously, some of my products but also curated posts that have nothing to do with buying furniture but are still in our industry and of interest to our clients.”

“There's a saying, I like to sit on my soapbox with it. It is "commercial will follow rooftops." Imagine wherever you're living, whoever's listening, imagine where you're living. McDonald's doesn't come there and then housing follows it. Housing is there and then the data tells all these organizations and companies to go where they are.Now all of a sudden you have this robust economy that is driven off of housing. So to enable more housing to enable better density for our builders is the symbiotic relationship between housing jobs and the economy.”

“People are shifting their activities. It's a matter of being a bit more deliberate and saying “What activities you're actually doing in that space”.So you said you wanted a den. Can you tell me, what does that really mean? Who's going to be in there? How long are they going to be in there? Are they going to be doing this together? Are they gonna be doing this separately? You said you don't want a formal dining room, but where exactly do you intend to host?It's all these sorts of things. As we pay attention to our research, we always think people, process/activities, place. Who are they? What are they trying to do? Then what does the space need to be? All of us need to be paying a lot more attention to that because as the activities change, we can't just assume that these rooms or these spaces are supposed to function exactly as they did even a year and a half ago.”