Transcript- How to Build Successful Corporate Relationships, with Paul Springthorpe of Ryan Companies US, Inc.

Voice Over:
Welcome to AEC Marketing for Principals brought to you by Smartegies, where we help design and construction firms navigate sales and leverage marketing to win more projects. Here are your hosts, Katie Cash and Judy Sparks.
Katie Cash:
Hi everyone and welcome to the AEC Marketing for Principals podcast. Katie Cash here joined today by Judy Sparks. You all know her, my partner in strategy. And today we’re joined by our guest Paul Springthorpe, who is the Chief Integration and Operations Officer at Ryan Companies. We are very excited to talk with Paul today, so welcome to the show.
Paul Springthorpe:
Thanks for, thanks for the invitation
Katie Cash:
We are. As I mentioned, we’re pretty excited to have you on the show today. And if you could, for some of our listeners, if you could provide a little snapshot of exactly what you do as the Chief Integration and Operations Officer, and what exactly does Ryan companies do?
Paul Springthorpe:
So well let me take those in reverse order if I can. So yeah, so Ryan is a commercial real estate services company. And what we, what we do is we on behalf of our customers, we provide architecture and engineering design services. We’re also developers. We’re also in the capital markets area as well, and we’re contractors and builders. And then we also are real estate managers for assets that we either have developed or third party assets. And we have been around for 80 some years. We’re privately held, headquartered in Minneapolis and we have, I think, 15 offices nationwide about 1600 people, I think, at the last count. And yeah, that’s, that’s, I think that pretty well describes this. And then in terms of my roll Chief Integration and Operations Officer, there aren’t many people walking around with that title there.
Katie Cash:
I think you might be the first on the show.
Judy Sparks:
It’s a mouthful that’s for sure.
Paul Springthorpe:
It is. So at Ryan, we we used to have a president and COO, and then we did some restructuring and reorganization and hadn’t, back-filled the COO role. And at the same time, we were also, as we were growing and adding services, one of the things that we were really focused on was how do we integrate all of the things that we do, a, because it’s more efficient for us, but, but which is sort of a selfish motive, but more importantly, it just, we wanted to make it easier for our customers to work with us. And so we sort of went down this path of figuring out, well, how do we make it easy for our customers and how do we integrate and bundle all the things that we do. And then how do we also teach and train all of our folks to sort of think that way such that if a customer calls or a client calls, you know, they’re getting that same kind of response or feel, or approach or standards, you know, regardless of whether they’re in Miami or Seattle. So the more we sort of thought about that role, we thought, well, most of the service offerings we provide fall under the operations umbrella. So why not just integrate the integration piece with the operations COO role within the company and just put it under one title. And that’s a role that I took on about 18 months ago or so, something like that.
Judy Sparks:
So Paul, that is so smart. We see so many companies, you know, really finding value in vertically integrating their service offerings, across many different markets. So you’re 18 months in can you speak a little bit about how this has enhanced that customer experience for your customers who might engage you for design and construction, but might also engage you to manage their assets?
Paul Springthorpe:
So I would say 18 months in, I mean, we’re very pleased with the results. I would say that our customers are pleased too. You would think that it would be fairly straightforward to everybody would get this and it would make it easy. But, you know, we live in a world where we have, you know, 15 offices and we have regional variations and people have grown up in the company. And so their experiences and their biases sort of live in, you know, in their own little world. So you sort of have to break some of those paradigms down and explain to them, you know, over time, why we’re doing this, why we’re making this investment, why we want them to think differently. And as I say, I’ll let you know, as, as Ryan has grown, you know, 10, 15 years ago, we would probably be considered a large regional or develop a contractor.
Paul Springthorpe:
And as you sort of, as you sort of grow as a company and you add more offices, what happens often is the customers that you deal with, tend to get larger in scale. And then you start dealing with customers that are truly national. And what we were finding in a lot of the impetus for this is we would have customers that would say to us, you know, we love Ryan companies, but if you’re doing a project for us on the West coast versus the East coast, you know, sometimes it’s like working with two different companies. We like both companies, but you have to make it easier for us to work with you. And, and in, in a day and age where most of our clients their internal resources are diminished. They become much flatter organizations. They don’t have the time and resources to, to manage their partners. They really want partners that come to them and are ready to go, that they’ve done the hard work, and we make it easy for our customers to do business with us. So you know, currently today our largest customer is Amazon and we’ve, I think we’ve done 60 or 70 projects for them over the last three or four years, all over the United States. And you know, the feedback we always get from them is that, you know, you guys make it really, really easy to work with us, that they view us as a true partner. And, and it’s primarily because we’ve set up a team approach and a structure that doesn’t matter what they’re asking us to do on any given day. They, they know that they’re gonna get that Ryan experience. They know that we’re going to hit the dates and we’re going to hit the numbers. And they know that we understand how they operate. And every team that we put on the field for them is going to understand what’s important to them. So they don’t have to educate and teach every time, you know, we put a team on the field and it doesn’t really matter whether it’s Amazon or a John Deere or a state farm, or a Kroger or a Toro or any of the other companies that we work for nationally. We try to bring that same approach time and time again, because ultimately we try to make it easy for the customer. Regardless of which particular services we are providing for them on any project on any given day,
Judy Sparks:
Paul, you’re no stranger to leading large, you know, matrix organizations. I think that you were my boss’s boss’s boss once upon a time and you probably didn’t even know I was on your payroll. How do you keep track of everyone and their preferences and being that employer brand in this ever changing world, that’s question number one. And then after that, I really want to know more in the realm of Amazon and knowing your background, being in logistics, planning, and retail distribution, you know, obviously they have been impacted here this year with the current pandemic and things that have always been true might not be true anymore. So if you could talk about employer brand and talk to me about this supply chain that we’re, we’re living with these days.
Paul Springthorpe:
First of all, let’s talk internally for a second. Most people, when they think about marketing, they always immediately think to websites and external marketing and, and that I’ve always felt that’s half of the battle. You know, because you can design something and you can push it out there and everyone feels good. Yeah, we’ve done that. We’ve checked the box. I actually think that that the internal marketing piece, the companies that get it right the companies that understand the need to do it internally as well, those, I think they have a significant strategic advantage over the balance of the competition. So, you know when we talked a little bit earlier about integration that ties in, I think very closely with internal marketing. So for of our customers we typically will have customer relationship managers or account executives or project executives. And we feel very, very strongly that you’ve got to have that, right. It has to be the right individual with the right personality and the right mix. And it’s a combination of there’s a technical aspect to it. So they have to understand and speak the customers language. That’s a non-negotiable, you will never know as much as your customer, but you have to know the five or 10 or 15 things that are important to them in terms of what’s mission critical and how do they make their money and service their customers. But then you’ve also got to have that interaction or that mix of skills and personality such that they can interact and they can respond not only externally because externally it’s easy to get on the phone and listen to a customer that is making outrageous demands. And you say, yep, we can do that yet. We can do that. And we live in a, we live in a world today where customers routinely, if you evaluate the demand for Dallas today versus say, even five years ago, in terms of schedule and turn around and change management and risk management, it’s night and day, and it’s not going to slow down. So you’re also looking for that individual that can then harness the resources internally. Who can marshall those resources can explain it and to the execution team, exactly. What’s going to be necessary. And to reinforce the reason that we are doing this and why we need to stand on our heads and go way, way, way beyond. And so if you’ve done the internal marketing piece correctly, and you’ve explained to everybody why we think that, you know, we’ve chosen to be a partner for this customer, then actually the internal implementation piece, it becomes easy because you don’t have to keep educating the team over and over and over again, as to what this customer’s requirements are or why we’re doing this, or why we’re going above and beyond. So one of the things that we focus very hard on to our different service lines or sectors is we go through a thorough process to evaluate our customers or our client partners, if you will, because it’s important to know who you are and why you exist and what you’re trying to do and who you’re trying to do it for. But it’s also important to understand what you’re not and who you don’t want to work for. So, you know, we work pretty hard and in a fairly disciplined way to really narrow down and focus on our core customer base. At Ryan, you know, everybody says they negotiate X percent of their work and X percent of their businesses repeat business, that’s table stakes, everybody sets their rates. So you know, Ryan routinely is not out, we’re not in the business of going out and competing with six or eight other general contractors for a requirement or a pursuit or a set of plans and specs. That’s just not how we’re built. So we’re in a, we’re in the customer relationship building business. And I tend to think of it more as farming versus hunting is sort of an analogy that I always try to use with the teams there because it takes time and it takes patience and not all the bets pay off. So you have to be very, very patient. You know, we started back to the Amazon team for a second. We started marketing and calling on Amazon six or seven years ago when the current, you know, expansion and build rate, isn’t what it is today. And you have to be patient and you have to be willing to try to find that initial opportunity, you know, and, and the initial opportunities usually get down are offered not particularly exciting. They tend to be the ones with the most risk and the worst schedules and the hardest locations under the worst circumstances. But I actually think that in doing that, it forges your team, it forges the relationship. And if you can actually pull that off and execute, I think it causes the customer or the client to say, wow, you know, this is a group that gets us, that will do what we needed to do. And most importantly, they trust us and they enjoy being around us and spending time with us professionally. So that’s sort of how we think about it.
Paul Springthorpe:
The second part of your question is interesting. I have a hybrid career spending time in development, design, construction, real estate, and then also spending time in supply chain, distribution logistics. And, you know, I think in part it’s because my family, half of them grew up in the construction world globally and half grew up in distribution, retail distribution. And so I’ve got this sort of weird hybrid. I enjoy both you know, the timing to have that kind of a skillset, you know, honestly, it’s, it’s easy to sort of say, well, what a great skillset to have at this moment in time. But I think as you both know, I’ve been doing this for 30 some years, and there’s been times when you know, when I started in this business, we, you know, we started out in the warehouse and trucking business and over time it became distribution and transportation, and now it’s e-commerce and supply chain. So it’s still all about the movement of goods. But when you look at the various sectors that we’re in out, Ryan you know, our largest one today is industrial. And when I joined Ryan eight years ago, it was to really launch grow and develop the industrial sector, which for us is predominantly distribution eCommerce and food and beverage manufacturing. So that, that group has really, really grown. We’re fortunate today that if you look at the top 20 or so retailers and country, we’re extremely well represented in terms of our customer base. So the ability to be able to understand that business and speak that language without having to outsource a lot of partner, it is invaluable because when you walk into a room, you just to be able to understand the acronym, speak the inside baseball, and what’s important, and more importantly, the challenges they’re facing it gives you that instant credibility. And, you know, it’s not just that I do it. We have lots of other folks within our company that come from industry. So in our, in our senior living sector, for instance, we have people that are come from the senior living operations side and programming in our healthcare sector. We have people that are former hospital administrators or hospital designers, or people come from hospital operations. And so again, we always approach our customers from trying to really understand what what’s important for them at this given time. If you can understand that, then you can forge the relationship and then the problem solving into the, you know, what it is that they’re trying to actually accomplish. It’s not always easy, but if it’s easy to get there, if you’ve created that basis of trust and understanding of what their needs are and so forth. So is that, you know, the Amazon one is a good example.
Paul Springthorpe:
I think a better example for us right now is the work that we’re doing with Kroger. And when Kroger forged their relationship with Ocado, which is a UK based automation, home delivery service, you know, when they forced that relationship two years ago, you had the first phone call that Kroger made was, was to Ryan saying, Hey, we’ve, we’ve got this massive undertaking. And we’d like for you guys to consider partnering with us. And so that’s exactly what we’ve done. And so we’ve been responsible for figuring out how to convert our UK based design, converting it to American, American standards, American design, American delivery models. And so we, we so far been fortunate enough to do the design for, I think, most, if not all of them. And we’re working on the construction of the first three and with respect to locally here with we’re doing the one down in, in forest park right now. But that was one where, you know, Kroger, wasn’t looking for a design architect, they weren’t looking for a design builder, what they were looking for as a partner that could understand what their needs are with partner with them, understood the automation side of our business as well, which we do an, a lot of automation nationally.
Paul Springthorpe:
So that was one where we, you know, we we’re relatively new to Kroger in the relationship at that point, but they just looked around and said, these are the guys that we trust. They understand our business, we will get a teams on every single delivery that we have and the relationships blossomed, and now we’re working on, I think buildings four or five, six, seven, something like that. So that’s another indication of the trust that you have to build with the customer in order for them to put that much of trust in you as a partner particularly around e-commerce because traditional distribution is difficult, but it’s not as risky as e-commerce when something goes wrong in e-commerce, you know, it shows up within 24 hours and something goes wrong in traditional retail distribution. It may be a day or a week or a month, or never before that actually shows up to the customer. So I know that was a very short question that you asked with a very, very, very long answer, but it’s a, it’s a passionate topic for me, as you know,
Katie Cash:
It’s a great, if we could, I’d like to go back to one thing that you, you know, you started mentioning that at Ryan companies, you guys are really into building relationships and being thoughtful and kind of pre-qualifying, if you will, those client organizations that are gonna make a good partner and a good target for you guys to, to build that longterm relationship with. That’s a lot what Judy and I have talked about, you know, both here on the podcast just, and practice is this adoption of what we call, many industries call it’s not our coined term, but account based sales and account based marketing where you’re, you’re not chasing those projects anymore. You’re really identifying and tiering those relationships and going in deep with them, understanding exactly what their world looks like, how you can better service and work together. Are you guys doing like formal account based sales and marketing practices at Ryan? Is that something you’ve you’ve heard of before?
Paul Springthorpe:
Yeah. I mean, we have slightly different terminology, but it’s exactly the same thing. So, you know, various industries, various different terminology for it. And people get confused about it and they try to overcomplicate it, but when you boil it all down to, if, if you start with, this is the universe of clients that this sector of our business, that we would like to, if in five or 10 years, these are the five or 10 or 15 customers that we would like to have as longterm client relationships. You just need to assign the resources, the right resource, you know, you align the right people with the right resources and then you just have to be patient and you just have to chip away at it. Then you have to be consistent. You can’t call up once a year and say, Hey, you know, I I’d like to swing by and see you. It doesn’t work that way. Some customers are high maintenance and some are low maintenance. So during the course of that relationship building, you know, a key customer relationship managers which is a sort of fancy term for it, but they work at understanding what that relationship is. What does this client need? How do they want to interact? Are they high maintenance? Are they low maintenance? So they like to be wined and dined, do they not? Do they like WebEx? Do they like email? Do they like phone calls? Do they like you to know their wives or spouses name or not? So it’s all about learning, not just that particular individual, but it’s also, it’s about paying attention to their business and their earnings and their press releases and their market changes and understanding their place within a particular segment so that you understand the forces that are at play, that they are dealing with.
Paul Springthorpe:
And sometimes, you know, when you get really, really good at it, you know, you can, you get a pulse and you get a sense of what’s going on in the market. And sometimes you can actually present thoughts and ideas to them that they may have been kicking around, but didn’t really want to say out loud, or they may not have even considered that it was a possible option. Our development and our capital markets groups often you know, we can help them with existing assets or new assets. So rather than be rigid or fixed in place where are with assets that they have, sometimes we can work through if they’ve got aging infrastructure. So as an example, and that they’re trying to wean themselves off legacy labor, and they’re trying to migrate more to an automated solution. It’s very, very capital intense.
Paul Springthorpe:
And often companies can’t figure out themselves how to pencil it or how to get a return. So often what are our project teams are able to do? And we have some pretty sophisticated people that are really good at doing this. There’s, they’ll look at the mix and say, well, if you know, if you had a blank sheet of paper, you wouldn’t own seven different old buildings scattered all over town in the worst locations, would you? And they say, well, of course not. And then you say, well, let us think about what an optimized solution would look like, and we’ll figure out how to deal with those assets. So sometimes it’s an asset play. Sometimes it’s a productivity play. Sometimes it’s a solutions play built around technology or automation or systems. Sometimes it’s all of the above. Sometimes it’s a very traditional play. So he really just depends on the circumstances.
Paul Springthorpe:
But again, back to your original point, if there’s one thing that I would say is a secret sauce Ryan and it’s not a particularly well kept secret because other companies do and do it really well is, you have to be in the customer relationship business to be long term successful because when times get tough, you know, those companies, those relationships will help you get through it. And then the next part of that, which is sort of the followup to that is, you know, there’s a, there’s a phrase that’s become sort of popular in the last, I don’t know, 12 to 18 months, at least every consultant that tries to call me uses this word at some point in their voice message They’ll talk to me about how they can improve the amount of sticky business that we have.
Judy Sparks:
That is a marketing term, by the way, sticky. It really is. And now everybody’s used it.
Paul Springthorpe:
So it’s become very in Vogue right now. But, but again, people get hung up on, you know, they’ll send you a 50 slide PowerPoint. So I want you to look at this and I’m like, well, why don’t you just put it on one piece of paper so that, you know, cause if you can’t explain to me in less than a hundred words, chances are really not going to respond to you.
Judy Sparks:
So, Paul, what you do is you reply and you say thanks for the information on your sticky approach, but could you please make your content snackable? So then you’ll be in line with them with this in Vogue terminology that’s going around in marketing circles is I don’t want a 12 page document, give it to me, you know, in a paragraph or bullet points. So that is a snackable content.
Paul Springthorpe:
It is because, I mean, everybody lives in this world where we, you know, we don’t have, I don’t have an hour, you know, I don’t have, I don’t have half a day. I don’t need 70 slides. If we’re committing to spend some time with you, it’s because we’ve done our due diligence and we felt like you have something to impart upon us. So we try to just, just cut to the chase. Tell us how, you know, whether it’s design partners or subcontractors, tell us how you can. First of all, we want people to have done their Intel. They want to know what Ryan’s about. Then they’ve hopefully decided that we’re a good match. And there are some companies that are great match for us that we take all over the country. And then there’s some companies that aren’t and that’s okay. So it’s all about, again, it’s an extension of our client relationships, because if we’re bringing in partners, subcontractors, design partners, again, we want to align ourselves with people that sort of have the same mindset that we do, which is, look, you’re not going to have enough time. There may not be a budget constraint, but we’re never going to have enough time. It’s going to change. When it does change, you have to react extremely quickly because that’s what our customers demands. It’s not what we demand is just the world that we really live in. But what we really mean when we talk about sticky business is, you know, the industrial cycle we’re in right now is incredibly hot. E-Commerce is incredibly hot. I don’t know if it lasted another three years or five years. I’m not a prognosticator it’s around for awhile, but they’ll come a time when it softens.
Paul Springthorpe:
And all those great large fabulous projects go away and you’re stuck doing these smaller renovation type projects, but the sticky business aspect is just don’t think of yourselves as a one trick pony in terms of well we build their buildings or we design their buildings. There’s other things that we do. We manage the real estate assets and we provide maintenance services. So we try to find the more parts and pieces or the more tentacles we can get into an organization, the more services that we can provide that our competitors don’t provide. Again, it’s, it’s a much more attractive business, the same for the fact that we’re large commercial developers. So we bring things to the party that a traditional contractor could offer the services, but they’ve got to go out and partner with a developer, or they gotta go partner with it, an architect or real estate services firm, or they gotta go find a capital market source. So again, what we try to do is we think about what is it necessary for Ryan to do itself, because that makes it easier for the customer to do business with us and makes us a lot more attractive.
Judy Sparks:
You know Paul, so much of what you’ve talked about today whether you realize it or not is just really resonating with me. We have a great, very fortunate to have a great following of C suite executives, primarily in the built environment. And so whether they be developers or architects, contractors, subcontractors at the end of the day, they’re all business owners and something you said earlier in the conversation is something that I find myself repeating with my customers all the time, which is, you know, think less about your customer’s building. Think more about your customer’s business and how do you add value to that business? The other thing that you said that really struck a chord with me was you know, West coast, East coast, and the experience that you’re having with your customers on the East coast needs to feel the same on the West coast. There needs to be a consistent delivery and the internal marketing, or what we call brand living here at Smartegies. That is not something that’s intuitive. That definitely has to be built intentionally and great companies like yours. Spend a lot of time doing that. The biggest mistake we see our customers make is they have a great external message, but they forgot to tell their employees. So obviously there’s this customer experience disconnect that happens. And so in, you know, branding world, we call that heterogeneity, like, how do you duplicate the same experience from project manager to project manager, superintendent to superintendent? How do you enforce that brand living internally to ensure that that customer experience business, that you’re building is one that represents your values? I think, you know, Disney does a great job of that. They’re in the amusement park business and, and so is six flags, but they’re very different customer experiences in my opinion. And I think that one company intentionally makes sure that that customer touch point is consistent from cast member to cast member. The other thing that I really wanted to ask you about because, and, you know, you just said, you’re, I don’t know what words you used, but you said something to the effect that you’re not a fortune teller or an economist, but you are in so many markets, not just industrial, it’s not surprising that markets like industrial are really booming right now. Talk to me about your other markets and how they’re doing right now with the pandemic and changes as we move into a low touch, no touch economy, how are each of your sectors fairing in this climate?
Paul Springthorpe:
What a great question. So you know, industrial will be a record year for us this year. This will be a record year for Ryan and 2021 looks like it will be a backlog into 2021 is, is already approaching our revenue for 2020. So, you know, we find ourselves very fortunate. The seeds for that good fortune, I think were, were planted a long time ago through the decision really organized around product type, but really around client types. So those seats were set aligned, and it was very deliberate that we wanted to be in sectors that match the demographic trends within the country, and also will survive the ups and downs with the real estate and greater economy. So I don’t think that it’s, there’s always an element of luck in business, but I think to a large degree, you can make your own luck.
Paul Springthorpe:
So our senior living business which we operate and execute nationally, we work with about six or seven different operating partnerships and we follow them around the country. So, you know, there are different brands of senior living. So they’ll have multiple communities throughout the country and each one will have a different theme or different structure, a different approach. That business is extremely strong right now. It’s very vibrant. It has been difficult during COVID for some of our operating partners and some of the newer buildings that we are bringing online and they are leasing up. It’s been challenging just because the lease up is tough. When you can’t physically show somebody, the unit that they’re going to rent or purchase, you have to do it all using VDC and virtual tours, and they get, you know, select all their colors and finishes online. But that business is extremely strong. The vast majority of senior living work we do is development. We do do some third party construction once in a while, we’ll be in a location where one of our brand partners will want to be in a specific location and the land is controlled by a developer. And then, you know, we’ll just act as a third party general contractor. And so we’ll still do the design so that the brand characteristics follow through kind of like your analogy with Disney is, you know, each one of their properties or each project that we do for one of our brand partners, they always have that consistent look and standards. And some standards could be extremely high. Some could be in the middle, some could be a little bit more economical. So that part of our business is extremely strong and free to our brand partners. We have relationship managers that won’t come as a surprise.
Paul Springthorpe:
And then the next largest sector that we run and operate is our healthcare business. And to say that it is chaotic right now is obviously a gross understatement. However, having said that a book of business on healthcare is strong and it’s varied. What we’re actually helping a lot of our customers with right now is reconfiguring and repurposing during the initial code outbreak. We did a lot of work around just, you know, how do you create an additional 500 bed positions in something for intake, for COVID patients were sort of out of that sort of phase with COVID right now. So, but what our healthcare partners are starting to look at more and more is the future’s going to be very, very different for them. And so we have a very, very talented team of a combination of people that come from the design construct side of the business, then people that come out of the hospital, healthcare practice thing healthcare practices. And so that sort of blended team again, is able to go into these hospital administrators or group health systems. And just in the space of man, it’s just understand exactly what they’re facing and then propose answers and solutions that maybe they won’t have thought of. And, you know, ultimately we, we, we sort of kind of like to build things eventually, but we never lead with that. We never even really talk with that. People know that, that we do that. What they’re really basing the relationship on is that intellectual upfront piece that we do, but also the relationship and the trust factor. So those groups are doing great. Our multifamily business is strong you know, a little bit of a hiccup just because of chaos in the market. A lot of the debt that was out there for those kinds of products sort of went on hold for like 30, 60 days, a lot of large financial institutions. Cause they tend to worry about, particularly around multifamily is, you know, is occupancy going to go down. If people are unemployed, can they make that rent? So there was sort of a pause moment. I would say, 30, 40, 60 days.
Judy Sparks:
Has that caused the pent up demand now?
Paul Springthorpe:
You know, it’s a combination, of demand, but you also, what you want is you want quality of demand as well. So but we probably, i would imagine, in 2021, we will probably put in place somewhere between four and 600 million multifamily as a developer contractor. So that part of our businesses is strong. We have a retail group which is, in the last few years, has gone, you know, smaller and smaller as, you know, the demand on retail, strip centers, malls, all of those things are sort of, you know, they’re all shrinking and sort of, they’re all trying to repurpose themselves and yeah, it’s a tough business. So it’s a very small part of our business today. We do a fair amount still of mixed-use where there’s retail components, but it tends to be mixed-use mixed with multifamily and so forth versus standalone, but we still do a lot of work for Target stores. We still do a lot of remodels for them nationally. In addition, we also do a lot of their supply chain distribution e-commerce facilities as well. So that’s the vast majority of facility types that we do. We don’t tend to do much in hospitality, which, for which we’re sort of grateful for. And it’s just a, it’s not even a tough business to be in right now. They’re just, there just is no business right now. So between all of the sectors that we really focus hard on you know, business is extremely strong and you know, what’s our number one challenge today is it’s probably the same as most of your other customers and it’s talent. It’s all around talent acquisition and attracting talent and keeping talent.
Katie Cash:
I think you’re right. I think a lot of our listeners are certainly a lot of our clients are finding themselves having a hard time attracting retaining that talent and kind of building that backlog of, you know, of technical professionals because they’re so few coming out with degrees in engineering and architecture these days that are wanting to go into building design and construction. One thing I would like to pick your brain on just if we could for a minute is, you mentioned a couple of statements ago, you know, you guys do a little bit of everything in the commercial real estate space. I’m not sure if there’s a particular service out there that you don’t offer. I’m sure if there’s a need for it, you’ll find a way to bring that to your client. It sounds like you’re very much client focused, but you did mention a little bit about having, you know, design partners or subcontractors that you would bring, you know, in on projects. So you’re not turnkeying a hundred percent of your work sole source internally. Could you talk a little bit about, you know, what you’re looking for in a good partner? You know, that the name of our podcast is really about, you know, AEC Marketing for Principals, how to win business. And I know a lot of our listeners would probably love to know how they could be considered as a partner for Ryan companies.
Paul Springthorpe:
Surely. So, you know, our design group is about 120 people, something like that, primarily architecture, interior design and server. We don’t do structural MEP, or fire protection design. It’s just something that we haven’t done and really don’t plan to do. So that we always have needs nationally for that. And, and the right way to, if you’re an engineering firm and architecture firm, obviously there’s some States where we can’t practice architecture cause we’re also contractors. So in those locations, we do look for good architectural and engineering partners and the, the best avenue to do that or to try to do work with Ryan is to reach out to our AE leadership team. Or if a firm is specifically focused or really has expertise in one particular sector through our website, you can identify the folks that run those sectors and they will be the easiest way to, and the fastest way to, to try to start to build a relationship. It’s important, right from the get, go to say that you know, we do hire firms on a one project basis if there’s something in a location that we know we’re never going to go back to again. But what we’re really looking for more than anything else is we want companies that supplement and align with our values. What’s important to us think about customers the right way. And, but also brings something to the party. Not just, yeah, they can do plans and specs, but we also looking for firms that have intellectual capital as well, that they can think differently; they can challenge and be challenged.
Paul Springthorpe:
So that’s on the design side, it’s really no different on the subcontractor side. The extent of our field forces is about just under 400 people and it’s predominantly in concrete and it’s predominantly in our union markets. So we do a lot of self perform work in, like I say, in our union locations. We also do some carpentry and cabinetry and stuff like that, minor stuff. But for the most part, you know, we subcontract, as do most large general contractors that I, we subcontract the vast majority of our work out. And within each of our sectors they tend to have a group of subcontractors that is critical to that trade. So, or that sector type. So if you’re building industrial there’s four to five, six trades that are just absolutely key. In senior living, it’s different, it’s a lot of wood framing, a lot of windows and doors. So depending on the sector, the trade or the subcontractor is, is very important again because of speed to market and that every customer’s looking for now and that predictable outcome. We don’t want to be in the surprise business, neither do our customers. So what we look for is a stable of subcontractors by discipline or trade that can travel with us. And that may be that they only travel within three States, or they may only travel say in the Midwest or the Southeast, or they may travel nationally for us depending on the trade. And it’s not just performing subcontractors it also suppliers and fabricators as well. So again, what I would say, the, the, the easiest way to become attractive to Ryan is to understand who we are, what we do and who we do it for, and then focus on what you’re really good at and what you would bring to the party. And just like, we try to make it easy for our customers to do business with us. We like our subcontractors to make it easy for us to do business with them. So we have subcontractor and design relationships that go back at least to my knowledge, 30 plus years. And there may be some that go back even longer than that. So when you forge your relationship with Ryan and you do a good job and you have a right attitude and you perform, and the quality is high and your integrity is high then those relationships tend to last. And you will tend to get the phone call versus we will call you and say, Hey, we have this opportunity to let’s get you on the team versus having to say, Hey, can we be one of X bidders on, on some project that you may be working on right now? I don’t know if there’s anything eye-opening in what I just told you, but that’s the secret to success with partnering for us. It’s bring something to the party and make it easy for us to do business with you. And I think you’ll like doing business with Ryan. We, we pay extremely quickly
Katie Cash:
Gotta love that.
Paul Springthorpe:
Most of our customers pay us within less than 10 days. And we pay most of our vendors in less than 22 or 24 days. And so people, you know, people like that, they will go out and they’ll go above and beyond. If they know that we’re going to be the fastest pay or the most prompt pay or the most reliable pay. And they’ve got some customers yelling at them for resources, we know they’re probably going to go to the people that they trust and enjoy working with them. So hopefully that’s, that’s helpful as well to your listeners. I would say that I am probably not the best person to reach out and contact because I just, I really just don’t have the time and the bandwidth. And secondly, I’m just, I’m not really that involved with the sorta the project level day to day business today.
Judy Sparks:
One clarification, Paul, that was all great advice, when you’re acting as a developer, you mentioned a lot about the subcontractors. Do you ever hire GCs to do the development? Like when you’re acting, when your role is simply to be the developer and manage the process, will you hire local general contractors or local architects for those projects?
Paul Springthorpe:
Well, the, the default answer to that is whenever we’re developing properties for ourselves our own account or for our customer, you know, we always like to build, and if we can be the architect of record, we liked that. But having said that we’re probably only the architect of the record on say 30 to 40 to 50% of our projects. So the short answer is on the design side. That’s quite common. We obviously we don’t staff a peak as well. So there are times that like right now, for instance, where we just, you know, we have a full book of business for our design team and we, you know, we are partnering with firms to us to help us with some of the peak you know, on the, on the build side of it. Look, we, you know, we were builders as, before we were developers and we love to build it’s in our DNA. And candidly it makes sense if we’re going at risk for time and money and when the customer relationship, you know, obviously we trust ourselves more to build and to outsource to a general contractor. Having said that, you know, that probably are occasions, I can’t think of any right off the top of my head, but I’m sure there are times when, for very specific reasons, you know, we’ve gone into a market and we hired a general contractor just because you know, we may be limited on resources. We may have a licensing issue. I think we’re licensed in each of the lower 54. I said 58 lower 48 States. So I’m sure there are occasions when it happens. Sometimes if we were going in and doing a conversion remodel, so we got a million feet and we’re going to go in there and we’re going to repurpose it, something like that. And it’s, it’s a lot of hands on tray type work. We may bundle all those services under a general contractor. If it’s ground up green field construction, it will be rare, but I’m sure that we have done it.
Judy Sparks:
That is great information and very insightful, but how you evaluate your resources for every project. Katie, do you want to maybe wrap us up today? I know Paul’s a very busy man and we want to let him get back to his billable work.
Katie Cash:
Sure. I will. You know, Paul from Judy and I both, we want to thank you for being on today’s show. We’ve got great information from you. So thank you for being so forthcoming with that. I have taken notes along the way, so I’m just going to summarize real quick for our listeners out there. And I think the big things that stuck out today from our conversation with Paul is, you know, folks out there stop thinking about your client’s projects and start thinking about your client’s business. That’s the only way to really build that deep investment in that relationship. That’s going to be the bridge to trust in a longterm partnership. The other thing that Paul shared with us is find a way to be a farmer and not a Hunter, and invest the time do the work, dig in. If you will, to build that relationship and get to know your clients and their business, as you move along that relationship partnership. And then when you get the chance to work with somebody, make easy for them to do business with you, find ways to simplify the process, find ways to you know, not overcomplicate things and just make it easy. Both from servicing your client, as well as working together with partner firms, such as Ryan companies. And if you are looking to partner with Ryan companies, first things first, make sure you take a look at their website online, read it, get to know a little bit about their values, where they come from, what they’re looking for, see if your firm’s going to be a good fit and then, you know, do a self evaluation. What is it that your firm does well, or there might be an alignment and then reach out to the various market leaders through the Ryan Companies website. See if there might be an opportunity to explore together. And then also for anybody out there that’s listening that might be in the market for a job in design and construction property development. It sounds like even facility maintenance, Ryan Companies sounds like it’s a great place to work. They are always looking for great and talented individuals, and you can check out their career opportunities again on their website. But Paul, thank you so much for your time, Judy, thank you for the insight as well as always and to all of our listeners out there. We’ll see you next time.
Paul Springthorpe:
Thanks Katie. Thanks Judy. Have a good day.
Voice Over:
You’ve been listening to AEC Marketing for Principals brought to you by Smartegies. If you liked this episode, please let us know by visiting AECmarketingpodcast.com, where you can learn more ways to position your brand and sell to owners.