TikTok Turned A Local Contractor Into A Lead Machine with Dylan Mason, Mason Contracting Co

0:00Welcome to Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae with Action Coach Business Growth Partners. Every week, we sit down with business owners, founders, and leaders to uncover the real stories behind building a successful business. The wins, the setbacks, the lessons learned, and the strategies that help them grow. No scripts, no fluff, just honest conversations with entrepreneurs who are in the trenches every single day. Whether you are a business owner yourself, thinking about starting a business, or simply enjoy hearing how successful people think and operate, you are in the right place. Let's jump into today's episode, shall we?

0:58Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae with Action Coach Business Growth Partners, where we work with local business owners to turn big ideas into real scalable growth. Today, I'm excited to be joined by Dylan Mason with Mason Contracting. Dylan, how are you doing today? Good, sir. How are you doing? Hey, I'm doing wonderful, man, and I'm excited to have you on. So let's go ahead and jump right into things. All right. So for those of you who may not know it yet, you know, what is Mason Contracting? We specialize in custom homes here in the Northeast state of North Carolina.

1:31We'll go as far as, you know, hour and a half, two hours from our location. We're based out of Pilot Mountain over here near like the Virginia line. So we build custom homes, we build decks, we'll do renovations, additions, all that good stuff. But custom homes is definitely our niche. And that's where, you know, we're trying to take our business, you know, just do custom homes full time. We started this company four years ago when I went and got my GC license. And right now I think we're on our 13th, 14th home and we have six more coming down the pipeline. So, yeah, we kind of went full throttle on this.

2:04And ever since we haven't looked back. Nice, nice. And who are you personally? Who are you as a person, Dylan Mason? So I've been in construction the majority of my life. I went through high school, all that good stuff. I was always in the kitchen and cabinet making and carpentry, anything where I was using my hands with, you know, woodworking, any type of that type of work. I was always in that class. I took like every semester in high school. Always made an A in that class. Probably the only A's I made were in carpentry. And ever since, I've always wanted to do some work with my hands. I'm not the type that could sit behind a desk all day.

2:39I, you know, ever since owning this business, I've had to kind of put the hammer down a little bit to focus more on the accounting side, the managing side, all that good stuff to make sure everything stays organized and it gets done in a timely manner. But yeah, I was finished high school. I was building bridges for a family business. I was there for about two years and then I decided to move down to South Florida. I was also a mixed martial artist and I was trying to make a career out of that. So I moved down there to join one of the best gyms in the world. I was part of American Top Team, and I was there for four years, almost five years.

3:12Ended up coming back home, met my wife down there. She was my girlfriend at the time, but I was like, hey, I'm from this small town up here in North Carolina. You want to move up and try to start a life together? And we did, and I came back to work for the family business. I was there for about seven years building bridges, and then I took the leap of faith and started my business. And ever since, we've never learned back. Like we've been married for what, six years now? Got two kids, got another one on the way. And yeah, a bunch of houses going. And like I said, not led back since we started this business.

3:48We truly love what we do every single day. I would get excited for Mondays because I get to, you know, go back to work and I get to go see all my projects and see, you know, who needs this, who needs that. And I just, I'm kind of like addicted to this. I love it. no that's awesome that's awesome especially since it's your it's your baby it's your business right so exactly that is your you so your wife works with you alongside with you or she does my social media she does all my marketing other than that i have a bookkeeper that takes care of my books for me you know starting out starting this business i was fully you know 100 on our own we were doing everything from start to finish from the accounting to the managing all that stuff and then as we've gotten bigger, we've also started to branch out a little bit and give this person this job, this person the other job, all that stuff.

4:38Also, before I started this business, I was in the Marine Corps Reserves. So that helped me with a lot of my discipline. Getting up early, keeping everything organized, the military definitely helped out with that aspect of things. And I'll continue doing that till the day I die. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. I got to go back to that MMA part. So, man, we were pretty close to seeing you on Saturday nights fighting in the ring. No, I never made it that big. More local events. I made it to a few bigger shows, but not the UFC. I didn't make it to that level. I ended up stopping just because our first child was born.

5:16And I was like, you know what? There's no money in this unless you're Conor McGregor up there and you're making millions of dollars. But there's really not that much money into it. Most of these fighters you see on the UFC cards and Bellator cards, most of them work another job. because the pay is just not there. It was fun though. I learned a lot. I had some good friends that still compete, still talk to them, great coaches that were great mentors to me. And I use a lot of the things that they taught me, you know, in my everyday life. So it was a great, humble experience. I'm definitely not the type of person to go out there and street fight.

5:50I've never been in one. I just, I like to, I found something I liked and I was, I had a wrestling background and, you know, I like to compete. I love competition. So that, that was something I just fell in love with and I took off with it for 10, 11 years. And then I kind of just stopped one day and now we're here building houses. Yeah. Yeah. Now what part of Florida were you, were you in? South Florida, like West Palm beach area. West Palm beach. Okay. Yeah. Bounced around to a few towns down there, a few apartments, a few houses had two buddies that I moved down there with. We kind of all dropped out of college and we were going to take our last year before we, you know, went back to school for our senior year.

6:28They were like, let's go to Florida and just live for a little bit and then figure it out. We didn't know what we were doing. 20-year-olds, 21, 22-year-olds. I feel like no one knows what they're going to do for the rest of their life at 21, 22. I especially didn't. I just knew about fighting and having fun and working construction and all that good stuff. Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. The reason why I asked is because I actually grew up in Tampa, Florida. So I know Florida pretty well. Yeah, yeah. I moved up to North Carolina, what, back in 2019 and myself. So I've got no intention of ever moving back.

7:01That's the case. That's the truth. Too hot, too expensive. Exactly. Yep. You said it hit it right on the head. The six months, summer, six, seven months, depending on the year, eight months, sometimes, some years. No, thanks.

7:13Dylan Mason:That was brutal. I'm good on that. Yeah. My parents actually, but they still live down there and they were sending me pictures a week. They're burning up down there. They're like, it's already 95 plus every day. I'm like, yep. See, that's why I don't, I don't miss it, man. And we've been nice up here. It's been nice in the 60s lately, low 70s. I love it. I'll take it. I love it. Today's a great day. Yeah. It's beautiful, beautiful outside. So, yeah, I don't miss it at all. But, you know, I respect Florida, but I don't miss it. I like visiting, but I don't want to live there again. Exactly. Yep.

7:43Yeah. Yeah. Now, in regards to your business, what would you say was the most stressful moment you've had as a business owner? Like, you know, how am I going to get through this type of moment, would you say? the most stressful the most stressful part was definitely starting the business taking taking that leap of faith taking that sacrifice you know i had a i believe i had a 16 month old and a four month old when i quit my job i didn't have much money everything was getting expensive and that was the scariest moment i literally quit my job december 31st i gave like a two or three week notice so january 1st i went out on my own and i started framing a house with my grader and his son, we framed him entire house and we did all the baseboards and we just did everything from start to finish.

8:28And, you know, I wasn't like, I didn't know, I didn't have a degree in a degree in accounting or managing money or business or any of that. I just kind of taught myself, read some books, listened to podcasts like this one. And, you know, I still do that to this day. I still, I still feel like I'm always going to be a student in this trade because I don't know everything just like anyone else in their trade. Like they, they don't know everything. They can always learn from somebody. So, you know, talking to other GCs, talking to other buddies that are in construction, talking to my framers, making these relationships, just teaching myself.

9:02That's how I got to this point and learning from everybody else. But definitely the hardest part was going from zero to one. I feel like that's the hardest part of any business. And then from two to a hundred, you know, it's kind of just streamlined from there. Yeah. So yeah, definitely starting the business, taking that risk, especially with two kids that I got to eat with not much money in my bank account, just trying to figure it out. And I feel like the point I'm at now, if I wanted to go make money, I can make money. There's plenty of money out there. I mean, you just got to have a hard work ethic, be a little bit smart.

9:38It would be a little bit of common sense, and I feel like you could go a long way. Yeah, yeah. And there's neighborhoods going up every week, so you're always going to have plenty to do. Yep. Now, have you ever thought about quitting? Quitting the business I'm in now? Yeah, quitting the business and maybe going back to your 9 to 5? Absolutely not. No, you couldn't. You could offer me$100 million and I would not do it. I promise. I would not do it. The money wasn't there for that business, for the type of work that it was. And it's just, I truly, like I said, I like waking up on Monday and going to work.

10:12I enjoy what I do. You know, they say you'll never work a day in your life if you love what you're doing. And that's a fact. I really do truly love what I do. I like helping out, you know, my framers, they need an extra hand or whoever the sub business working that day, if they need an extra hand, I'll happily do it. My job is more to schedule, make sure things are getting done in a timely manner, dealing with the homeowners, going back and forth about decisions. Like I love every single part of it. Like I don't mind the stress. I like the stress, eat it for breakfast, you know, waking up early, driving to jobs.

10:44You know, I try to get home every night at a certain time because I do have a family and I like to spend time with my family and, you know, do things on the weekends. But like, I truly am happy with what I do. And I don't think I could ever do something different. Yeah, yeah, I get it. Now, you know, what's something about you personally, or, you know, maybe in your personality or your personal life that had to change in order for your business to grow? Oh, a good one. Get more comfortable with public speaking or just not speaking in general, just like having those awkward conversations, like if someone goes over budget or just trying to sell a customer or a client on something, you know, kind of like, I guess that, like the negotiation side of it, just being face to face communicating, you know, in college, I think I made a D in public speaking.

11:34I was a horrible public speaker. My wife makes these TikToks of us. And when we first started, I was super uncomfortable. I'd stutter. I didn't know what to say. I couldn't memorize anything, but the more houses I've built, the more I've been And in front of people, in front of clients, customers, I've gotten a lot more comfortable with that. So that was definitely one of my hardest things was being able to talk to the customer, be knowledgeable about a certain subject or a specific item. But now, you know, we're at this stage three, four years later, and I feel very confident. You know, talking to the homeowner, getting through it, educating them and what this process is, why we're doing this this way, that good stuff.

12:10Dylan Mason:Okay. Okay. I love that. Now, and this next question is hypothetical. But let's say if someone shadowed you for a full day or let's say even a full week, what would you say would surprise them the most about how you operate your business? Would you say? It's a good question. I like to think I'm very organized when it comes to my business. Now, when I'm at home, I might like misplace my keys and my wife will say I'm very unorganized. But when it comes to my business, I'm super organized. if I get charged on a card for whatever this house, this particular house, I immediately go to my laptop, to my computer, wherever I'm at, and I plug it in into my Excel to make sure that everything is accounted for.

12:55All the numbers are adding up. I'm super organized when it comes to that and when it comes to using other people's money to build their house. So I think a lot of people would be shocked by that maybe. I have the bookkeeper, but she reconciles my books at the end of every month, I do it on a daily basis. I've probably done it 20 times a day because I got to call my rep. I got to buy this. I got to buy that for this house or that house. And I've reconciled my money very quickly. Okay. Okay. No, I like that answer. Now let's get into the numbers a little bit without getting too specific, since you've been in business for a little bit.

13:27I know you did say that you left, right? December 31st, January 1st, you were really trying to make this thing work. What would you say was the time when you started, where was the turning point? How many months was it was the turning point where things started to scale and you started to become profitable and started to grow, would you say? Probably after the first year. So the first year in business, I would say I was just getting by, able to put food on the table, pay our mortgage, all that good stuff, just like necessities of life. And then after that, I was able to really dial in profit and then your taxes, insurance, owner's expenses, all that stuff.

14:08I was starting to categorize things a little bit better and a little bit more organized, I guess you'd say. And so then I was like, okay, now this is starting to work. I was not charging enough for this. I need to charge a little bit more because I lost money on this job, made a little bit on this one. And it was kind of like just taking whatever work I could get. I was taking anything, decks, remodels, fixing a door handle, whatever it was, I was, you know, I was taking care of it and trying my best. And now we've gotten to the point where we can be a little bit pickier. If you get it, like, like with the houses that we take, you know, I'm not, I'm not like a Schumacher builder or a Sedgwick home builder where they build 10 ,000 homes a year.

14:51I don't give so much about quantity. I care about quality. I'd rather build five houses a year than, you know, 20 houses a year, but keep that quality within it because I can only manage so much as an individual. And I don't want to lose that. I don't want customers getting upset with me about someone not being at their job because I try my best to have someone at the job every single day because there's no excuse that if the sheetrock's going in on a house, there's no reason why siding can't be going on as well because they're not, they're not the same company. They're, they're working on completely different sides, completely different sides of the house.

15:24Uh, one's inside, one's outside. So yeah, just keeping the quality and not so much quantity is one of my biggest things. Okay. Okay. Now, what would you say actually moves the needle most in your business right now? Would it be, you know, kind of your leads, your conversions, your pricing or something else entirely? What moves the needle most right now for your business? Believe it or not, it's TikTok. TikTok. Okay. Marketing. Yeah. My wife has done an exceptional job on our social media. I'll send her like she'll text me every once in a while like can you send me a video of this I'm like well I'm really busy if I remember I will but then after I do eventually send her the videos she really does turn it into something great and right now we have let's see we have six projects going on about to start two more so and I believe seven out of eight of those are from TikTok wow that's that's where they found us yeah that's awesome that's awesome yeah I try to tell people all the time that you know tiktok is is the wave it's it's where to go i mean it's it's the future everybody's on it all the time and everybody's on their phone everybody's scrolling so it's like man get on tiktok and start average you'd be surprised how many entrepreneurs don't get on tiktok i don't have a tiktok at all yeah they don't i'm telling you they need to because i yeah i'm not a big tiktoker like i don't really get on it i just don't have time i don't really get on social media that much i don't post much on my personal profile but our business page does really well from social media.

16:57Even if it's just like, she gives a lot of good tips out there. She'll ask me a question. She'll relay it to the public on TikTok about what to do, what not to do to your home build. Even if you're not going with us, I mean, I've had people in different states reach out to us, like Texas, Georgia, Indiana. I've had people everywhere. Yeah. You just never know who's going to see it. Yeah. Yeah, of course. And they appreciate it. Some people, you know, there's people out there that make fun of you saying it's wrong. I'm like, well, you're entitled to your own opinion. You can say what you want. It's up to you.

17:24Like, I don't really, it doesn't bother me i can you know keep going yeah yeah now what would you say is one thing you are doing today or your business is doing today that's giving you kind of an unfair advantage over your competitors that's good honestly you kind of just answered that a little bit but anything else you think the contractors around my area the a lot of them are older so they're not like on the social media aspect i feel like we're one of the younger ones and we make a lot of noise in this area, which people can take that how they want, but I believe social media is a huge part of it.

17:59My generation, we're always on our phone, right? Always. Older generation, not so much. They'd rather just throw it in the trash and not use it. They'll do the pen and paper thing, but you have to adapt with the times. It's kind of like AI. AI is coming out. You need to adapt with it. Otherwise, it's going to take your business from you. So you always need to evolve with time. That's what I feel like that we need to do and every business truly needs to do it. Otherwise, it's not going to be a business much longer. Yeah. No, I agree. I agree. I probably use AI probably. No, actually not probably.

18:29I use it every single day to do my job. So. Yeah. I use it too. I use it too. Like if someone brings me this plot of land and they want me to tour it and I'm like, oh, send me your house plan and I could throw it up on the, throw it up on the land. Like, here you go. This is what it's going to look like. Not exact, but it's going to be close to it or like a takeoff. If I need to know how much block I need for this crawl space or something, it's usually pretty close to, it's close to accurate. I'd double check it, you know, obviously, or order a little bit more, like 20 % more, but it's still, it's, it's pretty close.

18:58And it saves me a ton of time. And as everyone knows, time is money. Yep. Yeah, no, agreed, agreed. Now I know you said you, you don't have any actual employees, but you subcontract out. So what would be the fastest way, you know, I guess a subcontractor could lose their job working for you, working on a job for you? So a lot of people have lost that job. I'm not their boss. They have their own company. They just work. I don't even want to say they work for me. They work with me. My subcontractors have turned into friends and family, truly. I've been through a bunch of them, and the biggest thing was not showing up when they say they're going to show up because I have it scheduled.

19:36I have it organized for this guy's going to follow you, next guy's going to follow that guy. And if one person messes up, that just ruins my whole timeline, right? So I've had to let a few go just because of the timeliness. Not once or twice, like maybe like three or four times it happens. And I'm like, dude, this is getting a little annoying. It's starting to mess with my schedule. The homeowner's asking me, where's this guy? Where's that guy? And I'm like, he's a no-show. I don't know. He won't answer his phone. So that's the number one thing. That's my biggest thing is not showing up when you say you're going to show up.

20:08Yeah. No. And the biggest thing is the ghosting. You know what I mean? Not answering the phone, not answering the text. You know, we're on the phone all the time. Everybody's on their phone. So, you know, you see my call, you know, you see my missed call, you know, you see my missed text, you know, you saw it. Just answer. I mean, you don't even have to pick up the phone. You could just say, hey, I don't want to do it or I can't make it. Whatever. My wife's sick. OK, well, just I mean, it's, you know, the whole ghosting thing is so strange. Oh, of course. Yeah. If the subcontractor doesn't answer their phone, I understand that they're they're busy.

20:37I'm always busy. Like I got to call you back too. And I'll shoot a text. I call you right back. Or I'll leave that text message unread. Like I'm a big, big fan of that. Same thing with emails. I respond to emails or me or my wife respond to emails very quickly. I hate seeing that little red bubble with like a two next to it. That's why we reconcile our books very quickly daily. And then the emails were also, we also take pride in, you know, responding to text emails, phone calls almost immediately. Definitely emails within 24 hours, we will respond. Yeah, I love that. I love that. Now, have you ever had to make a tough call?

21:13Like, you know, maybe saying, you know, okay, you're in the middle of a job and, you know, maybe something came up and you can't do the whole thing or maybe just declining a job altogether. I mean, you know, have you had to do something like that that ended up being the right move long term? not not really i've i've denied work definitely for you know maybe the numbers just didn't work out for the because i charge a certain rate right maybe that's the reason why i didn't accept a job or i was too busy and i pushed them out and they just found someone else but no honestly no okay okay yeah no problem no problem all right so we're gonna head what's doing to what's called the quick fire round.

21:53So how this works is I'm going to give you one word and I just want you to tell me the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear your each word in regards to running your business and then give me kind of, you know, two or three sentences after to kind of give me the reason why you chose that. That makes sense. Okay. All right. First word is success. Discipline. Definitely got to have discipline when running a business and you want to be successful, you know, just staying on time, doing what you say you're going to do, have the discipline to show up when you say you're going to show up or respond when you're going to respond.

22:27Failure. Oh, I don't know. Sorry, that's not quick. Failure. Unorganized. Being unorganized, that'll fail you real quick. If you didn't reconcile a$10 ,000 charge, you put it on someone else's charge or however that works with money, you got to be organized with money, especially when you're playing with other people's money or spending other people's money. agreed agreed burnout too much i feel like we have too much going on just too much i know that's not one word sorry but just too much work like i said if you're doing quantity over quality you know i feel like you can get burnout pretty quick that's why we kind of you know we have people booked out for fall beginning in 2027 which is a good thing i'm not complaining at all but i mean someone else Someone else could take them all at once, but they'd probably get burned out.

23:21They'd probably not be as organized. And I just feel like that's how you burn out quick. Scaling. I didn't have a word that came up. Scaling. I don't know. Shit. A lot of people like to use tough because it's tough to scale. It's tough to know when to do it and when to stop and stuff like that. yeah i guess tough i mean scaling is tough like i said going from zero to one feels like it's almost impossible but then once you get past that once you get past that hump and you start to get everything organized you start to get everything reconciled you start to see growth and you start to you know take what you can handle and you kind of get an idea of like how this works and how to schedule these crews and yeah.

24:11Hiring. Nah, I don't, I don't, I just don't want employees. So the way, the way I do it, the way I think is to build this house, right. I could probably go out and build a house. I've done one, right. I did the framing, the baseboard stuff. I didn't do the electrical or plumbing cause I'm not licensed to do that. so hire a professional but you know i could hire guys teach them how to build a house or with a construction background that good stuff and we could do a good job but i feel like i need to find every trade that is perfect at their craft right they always said the quote i don't fear the man that's practiced a thousand kicks one time i fear the man that's practiced one kick a thousand times Same thing with construction and everyone's individual trade.

25:01Like my trim guy, he is phenomenal at his job. He takes his time. He does it right. He sands all his corners, and it's phenomenal trim work. Same thing with the plumber, the electrician, the grader. They are all fantastic at their job because they do it every single day. They know a lot more than I do about it because I'm not in a skid steer every day or I'm not pulling wire and hooking up outlets all day. or running plumbing or whatever. So I feel like you need to find the best trade or the best guys at what they're the best at doing, if that makes sense. And I feel like as a GC, I'm great at organizing.