Beyond the blueprint: Why construction is actually a people business

Paul Jamison: Share what you've learned over 20 years as an entrepreneur with our audience? 

Ralpheal Locklear: Yeah. So I'll start out at first kind of telling you the origin story. 44 years of age now. When I first got started with the company, like a lot of us, I think that we start out with a lot of goals and ambitions and hunger.

Ralpheal Locklear: Mine was when I got the news that my daughter was being born and, hold on one second, Brandon. Hey, Brandon. All right, cool. Yeah, the screen went away. 

Paul Jamison: Oh, yeah, I did that. I did that on my end. So my video editor's gonna take clips of what you share and turn it into Instagram reels and Facebook reels and stuff like that.

Paul Jamison: So I'm just making the screen bigger so it looks good for them, but I'm still here. 

Ralpheal Locklear: Okay. Yeah. So when I got started in the business, it was mainly because of knowing I was gonna become a father. Was getting married, didn't want to just have a normal job. I was already at top pay within the chosen field I went into, which was an industrial electrician, got an associate's degree got a job at the place that I wanted to get a job at.

Ralpheal Locklear: Was within top pay within six months and realized I was at a ceiling. And there was this one day when this old guy we called him Pops. He was about 80 or 90 years old, and he had a full back brace, plastic hard shell. We would, he would knock on it, had straps all the way around it, and would literally walk, dragging his feet, into the manufacturing plant.

Ralpheal Locklear: And he looked at me one day and he asked me why was I there? And I didn't have an analyst. I said I'm here to work. He said, yeah, but you've got your whole life ahead of you and you're already leading the second shift. You've only been here six months and I'm pretty sure you're at top pay. There is no more room for growth here.

Ralpheal Locklear: And I asked him in return, I'm like you've been here how many years? And he told me a ridiculous amount of years, I think like 50 years or something like that. And I said why are you still here? He said, I have no other choices. I have no other options. This is all I know. And he said, the thing that stuck with me was he said, I feel like if I do quit and I leave from here, I'm going to die.

Ralpheal Locklear: And that kind of hit me and I'm like wow. That sat with me for a little while and I knew I was becoming a father. I was getting married and my brother, my family was in construction come from a, an area where there's a lot of trades, a lot of blue collars. We framed custom homes in high school.

Ralpheal Locklear: Instead of staying out of trouble, I was on a job site picking up trash tote and lumber, doing whatever it was that my brother told me to do. And there was one day when I saw the GC pulled up and the white pickup truck, as we all pretty much know, we drive up in, he got out for a few minutes and he went to where my brother is at.

Ralpheal Locklear: They spoke a little bit. I saw my brother straighten up, posture up and try to talk proper. And never seen him really do that. So early on, I was probably like maybe 11, 12 at the time. And when the GC left, he got out, from what I can remember, just for a few minutes, looked at the plans, they nodded, pointed a few times, shook hands.

Ralpheal Locklear: He got back in his truck and he left. And I noticed while there too, he left his truck on, 'cause I could see the water dripping underneath his up underneath his truck. And it was extremely hot, and I didn't like the heat. And I asked him, I said who is that guy? He said, that's my boss.

Ralpheal Locklear: I'm like, your boss, I thought you were the boss. He's I am. I'm the framer. We frame the homeless, but I work for him, he's the gc. I'm like, what is the gc? He's the general contractor. And I'm like, wait, let me get this right. This guy pulls up to the job site and a nice pickup truck gets out, leaves the truck running with the air condition on.

Ralpheal Locklear: Gets out, you come to where he's at, you bring him to plans, hand him to plans. He pulls out the plans, looks over and points and tells you some things to do, and then hands you the plan back, and then he gets in his truck and leaves. My brother said, yep. And he is pretty much, he's he rides around to the job site, just gets out and look at 'em and we do all the work.

Ralpheal Locklear: So the seed was planted for me all those years ago, even though I didn't recognize it at the time when I was working as the electrician in the manufacturing plant and pops told me that. I remember thinking back to that time like hey, maybe I'll go talk to my brother and see, because I'd already heard too, you.

Ralpheal Locklear: Take the exam, pass a GC exam, and then you could become a general contractor. I was thinking about studying for my electrical license 'cause I took to the electrical more than any other trade in what I started out for. But I realized there was a ceiling there too. And at the time, I think it was maybe around 40 or 50 K and I didn't want a ceiling.

Ralpheal Locklear: That was the key thing with me. I didn't want to have a ceiling at all. I didn't like that feeling. And it slapped me in the face really quickly. I didn't anticipate that, but I knew whatever I was going to do, I wanted to have almost unlimited upward potential. And so I started talking to my brother and asking him about, that role that his boss fulfilled as a GC and.

Ralpheal Locklear: We we talked and it was like, Hey, you go take the exam. You're smart, you can pass it. You got plenty of book sense is what he told me coming up. He's and I'll frame the homes, and then such and such will do the trim and the boxing and the siding and the the interior trim and the masonry.

Ralpheal Locklear: And I did that. I passed the exam and I flunked the first time. I studied for a while and then got overwhelmed 'cause I didn't really know what I was supposed to be studying for. So I just made a decision to go take the exam and see what happened. Of course, I failed, but I learned a lot. And what I learned is just to take action and figure it out as you go, was one of the first important lessons I ever learned, because soon as I realized I failed, I was excited to fail.

Ralpheal Locklear: 'cause at least I'd made progress. And after I had left from taking the exam, I went out to my vehicle and immediately started writing down everything that I could remember, every question that I could remember. And I knew there was only like 80 some questions in the exam. And I kept a notebook handy, and over the course of that week or the two weeks after the exam, I was steady taking notes on things that I could remember when I remembered them until I got to a point where I had over 120 questions that I had written down, but there was only like 80 questions that I had on exam. So I knew that, okay, wait a minute. I'm making up stuff now. And I literally just decided to just study that and I studied it for another couple of weeks and went back and took the exam and passed it Within 30 minutes, I lucked up and got the same exact exam.

Ralpheal Locklear: It don't happen like that nowadays. I was very blessed and I knew when I got it, I had one of the guys tell me, Hey, that's a golden ticket that you have there and no matter what you don't ever, let your license lapse. Don't ever, don't ever let 'em map, because if you do, you'll have to come back and redo all this again.

Ralpheal Locklear: And so that's like the re the origin story that I've got, how I've got, how I became a general contractor. And from there, I knew at the time I was 22 years of age, I think, and looked extremely young at the time and knew that I was gonna have a hard time getting into the industry and breaking into the industry due to me being young, me being green had license, but.

Ralpheal Locklear: Honestly, I didn't know anything about the construction industry and was relying heavily upon my family at the time to do their scopes of work, but I wanted to learn everything from the ground up. So after getting licensed, I decided that I would learn how to read blueprints. I went to another GC that was one of my first mentors.

Ralpheal Locklear: He'd been in a GC for years, had a barn full of old plans, and I asked if I could, have some of the plans that he is not using. I wanted to learn how to read the plans, and he told me, sure. I went and got maybe four or five sets of plans and I started looking over 'em started studying them, and from there I wanted to learn how to draw the plans.

Ralpheal Locklear: I learned how to read 'em by looking at the plans, reading them. And I did a lot of self-studying and I eventually got my hands on. At the time, I couldn't afford the software a school that that I knew someone that was over a school implemented soft plan was a software that we, that I started learning how to draw the plan.

Ralpheal Locklear: So got my hands on an educational version of the software, read the plan, study of night. I just basically became obsessed when I say that, I don't say that lightly. Yeah, I was obsessed with reading, with everything about. Becoming successful in that lane. I come up as a foster kid didn't have my mom or my dad in my corner.

Ralpheal Locklear: And like a lot of people probably who are in that same situation, we have a different kind of hunger. And mine was to make sure that now that I was becoming a father, that my kids, my family never had to face the struggles that I had to face. And I looked at this as my way of being able to change the path that I was on as a kid and make sure my kids never faced the same things that I faced.

Ralpheal Locklear: And I just made a plan from the very beginning. And that plan was simple. Get the GC license, learn how to read the plans, learn how to draw the plans, go work for a designer to draw plans and make money getting paid while I. Getting paid while I learn, I guess you could say. And so my plan it worked out almost exactly to the t on how I planned it.

Ralpheal Locklear: I worked for that designer for maybe six months to a year. I let him know upfront when I went to his office, told him that I was going to start my own design build business and that I needed to print out a set of plans is the reason why I went to his office. I drew, my first project was a a barn with the living quarters up top and designed it for the couple but didn't think far enough ahead to figure out where I was going to print the plans when I got finished with them.

Ralpheal Locklear: And so when I got finished with them, I started looking for a place to print 'em and I found a local designer. That's how I got introduced to him. And when I went there to print out the set of plans, he asked me where did I learn how to draw, and I told him a story about self teaching myself how to draw.

Ralpheal Locklear: And he was like, are you looking for a job? I said, how much is it paying? He told me, he'll, I'll pay you so much per sheet. And landed my job as my first job as a designer from there and with the agreement that I would work with him and help him put out the work that he has as long as I still can learn.

Ralpheal Locklear: But I told him I'd probably only do it for maybe a year or two until I got my first break. 'cause I was looking to start my own design build business and he laughed and patted me on the shoulder and pulled out the seat and said, hey, here's these three plans. How soon can you get 'em done?

Ralpheal Locklear: And the situation that happened there, that kind of also, and every I've noticed in my journey, everything happens for a reason. And he had an opportunity to recommend me to someone that was looking to build, which was part of our agreement. He's like, when I find someone that's not already got a builder, I'll make sure to recommend you.

Ralpheal Locklear: I saw that didn't happen. And so around the same time I got my big break, a real estate agent who knew me from when I was a little boy, knew my story, approached me with my first design build client, and I agreed to draw the plans for free. Their custom plans is about a 450,000 home at the time.

Ralpheal Locklear: And I only charged 'em 10 grand to get started, and that's how it landed my first deal. And I knew that if I could do that, a lot of people tried to talk me out of it and say, Hey, that's too large of a project for you to start out. I on the first one, maybe you should just do a bathroom remodel or something.

Ralpheal Locklear: But I knew that either I was going to succeed or that I was going to fail really fast. But either way, I wanted to find out, and this was the ideal way to find out also because I knew that if I did this, nobody would be able to tell me that I didn't have what it takes to be a ge, a general contractor, to be a custom home builder, to be a design build company eventually.

Ralpheal Locklear: And we, we took on the job, we knocked it out of the park, and that was the start to building this company that you see today. 

Paul Jamison: So you were 23 years old? 

Ralpheal Locklear: Yes, sir. 

Paul Jamison: And then how, I'm just trying to put myself in this couple how in the world did this couple.

Paul Jamison: I think it was a good idea to, hire a little, a 23-year-old kid. And you said you looked young, were they family or how did you convince them to? The 

Ralpheal Locklear: real estate agent was, she knew me. She knew me from when I was a little boy, but it's like anything else, everybody's got this sign hanging above their head.

Ralpheal Locklear: And I didn't know it at the time, but knowing it now, it was the same thing. What's in it for me? And what was in it for the real estate agent and for the client then was they knew that I was green, but they knew also that I had to at least know how to draw the plans because I was willing to draw them for free and they didn't have to pay for the plan.

Ralpheal Locklear: So they were saving probably $2 per square foot at the time. On the plans and they're, that's maybe eight grand, eight to 10 grand right outta the gate by not having to pay the price for the plans and agreeing to have a licensed gc. 'cause anytime you're doing a loan, you have to have a licensed gc on record to oversee the job.

Ralpheal Locklear: So it checked all the boxes, I guess you could say for them. And they're looking at it. And the risk versus reward leaned heavily on the side of okay, you know this, we're gonna save all this money. He's gonna, but who are your subcontractors? Who's going to do the framing? Who's going to do the masonry, who's going to do the roofing?

Ralpheal Locklear: And once they saw that I was well insulated with the trades, with the crafts of people that had, 20, 30 years of experience on the team I think they saw that, man, we're probably not gonna find this opportunity with anybody else and save 40, 50, 60, $80,000 on our build. And I think that's the reason why they decided to take the chance with me.

Paul Jamison: Got it. So after that initial success what elaborated, the months after that, how did you get your second customer 

Ralpheal Locklear: advertising? While doing that job? I'm always been a creative thinker and I think outside the box, I don't, I've never thought like the traditional minded. Builder or gc?

Ralpheal Locklear: I don't think from the very beginning, again, I was young always been at the forefront of technology and I had this vision of doing this house and putting a big old billboard out front and laminating the plans for the home that showed the front, left, right rear elevation, the bird's eye view of the elevation.

Ralpheal Locklear: Got the owner permission to put that up, out front of their job site, showing the layout, the floor, the layout of the floor plan and put it out by the road. And this neighborhood was getting a lot of traffic. We was the first. Custom home in that brand new neighborhood. So I knew it would get a lot of traffic and that's what led to the second job that I've got.

Ralpheal Locklear: That was a 4,000 square foot home. So I literally went from my first job being something that a lot of people told me that I shouldn't take on because of it being right at a half a million dollar project right outta the gate. And it went to my very next project, which was a 4,500 square foot home, which ended up being, even more money now.

Ralpheal Locklear: They saw my design is what captured their eye. They hadn't seen that with any other builder. And they seen me building that home that I was building and called me up, set up an interview. And at the time, I was meeting people at their homes and so I went and met this particular client in their home.

Ralpheal Locklear: And when I went in to, to meet with them and to show them my estimate, my takeoff, oh, that's another thing. I learned how to do onscreen takeoffs at the time. As well along when I was teaching myself still about designing, still about, estimating I found a software even back then that would allow me to trace the blueprints and figure up quantities and things of that nature.

Ralpheal Locklear: And at the time I had a it was a HP tablet pc, the one that kind of spins around and folds and had to pin on it even back then. So when I walked into the second client's home, he he opened the door and I said, yes, sir, I'm Rafael Locklear. And he's, he let me in. And then when I went inside his home, he was still at the door, open the door, looking out the door.

Ralpheal Locklear: And he is boy, where's your daddy at? He's you too young to be coming here trying to build my house and spend all this money with you. You look like a baby. And his wife helped me out. And I said, Troy, boy, leave that boy alone, and so I started showing him what I had prepared for them, which was a takeoff of their project.

Ralpheal Locklear: And, he had. Dozens of questions, hey, where's my, is? Did you account for my turnaround? My found in the center of my roundabout for my concrete entry. Did you figure all brick? We wanted the the scratch joint for the black mortar. Did you f factor that in?

Ralpheal Locklear: And we literally went through his takeoff for probably about an hour, and I started repeating myself, answering the same questions that he'd already asked me. And me being so youthful, I was getting a little frustrated, I was like, yes, sir. Here's this number, here's that number.

Ralpheal Locklear: And when he asked me one of the questions about the third time, I remember looking, at him a little bit. Perturbed or frustrated, and I circled a number. He said how much is this costing? How much is that costing? And how much are you making off that?

Ralpheal Locklear: And then how much are you making off this? And I remember, because it was a moment where we all just stopped and laughed. And I took the highlighter and I circled my number that I had on it. And I remember what it was. It was 40, $44,000. And I said, you see that number right here? And he's yeah, I said, all that's mine. And he like looked at me with the laughing, and his wife was sitting kind at the, in the kitchen and she said Troy, leave that boy alone and signed the paperwork. And that's how I landed in my second deal, and from there, Troy, he's with me still, to this day he does some of the BD development for me, so we designed his, we built his home back in the day.

Ralpheal Locklear: He raised his family, his kids in it, his mother-in-law. We know we built her own suite onto the home. Got to know him and his family. He was the best man in my wedding. And, been one of my best friends, since then. And I tell this, whenever I tell this story as a kind of, he set me up.

Ralpheal Locklear: For the Okie-doke, because I thought that's the way that I thought that's the way that things would go as far as building that type of relationship. But I found out the hard way. That's rare, to find those types of lasting relationships with clients especially to that extent.

Ralpheal Locklear: But he also taught me and showed me early on why I do what I do and which is the impossible. It's hard to, I tell people one of the most brutal businesses there is custom home design building. And the reason why is because the way we've done business and the system that we follow, we've developed our own process.

Ralpheal Locklear: But you have to cross every T and you have to dot every I and even when you can show and prove that you're right, we video document everything. All of our meetings, just like how we're recording this when we meet clients, everything's recorded on site offsite. We use all kinds of technologies nowadays to do those recordings.

Ralpheal Locklear: However, you can do all that and have all your i's dotted and all your T's crossed, but with custom homes. Because you're dealing with people in their largest investments. Sometimes they don't know what they don't know, and they don't know exactly what the end result's going to look like. And we can do exactly what we say we were going to do on contract, buy the signed plans and get 70, 80% done.

Ralpheal Locklear: And then the owners come in and see the finished product, and it's not what they had in mind or what, it's not what they had envisioned, even though it's what's on the plans and what we've agreed to and what they've picked. And you get that look or that reaction where they're not totally happy. And if you're someone who does this type of business for the sake of, making people's dreams come true.

Ralpheal Locklear: And of course we're in it to make money. However, for someone like me, I get just as much, probably even more of a reward, knowing that we're building someone's legacy for them and knowing that we are doing it at the highest level and that they're happy not just at the beginning, but also in the middle and in the end, hopefully they're even happier with us.

Ralpheal Locklear: When it's all said and done and sometimes no matter what you do, you can't meet that expectation. We're literally in a business to where you can do 99 things almost perfectly. I don't think anything can be done perfect, but you miss the one thing and it's that only one thing that people focuses on, and it can be something that you and I see as so insignificant if we don't ask the right questions.

Ralpheal Locklear: This business has taught me over 21 years. I'm not in the construction business. I thought I was in the construction business and I thought I, that's why. But we're not. We're in the people business, especially when we're doing custom homes, which requires us to get good at listening, communication, persuasion, reading in between the lines.

Ralpheal Locklear: Sometimes I'm wearing the hat of a marriage counselor. Sometimes I'm somewhat psych. I have to be a psychic to try to get an idea of what's going to happen next and being able to predict the next two or three moves ahead and with custom homes. I always tell people too, though, I always tell people that it's the best teacher though.

Ralpheal Locklear: If you want to get a high level skillset across the board, become a custom home designer and builder, and if you're going to succeed and thrive in this industry, you'll have to check all those boxes or you won't survive. 

Paul Jamison: What's been your favorite custom home you built, or favorite project, favorite customer.

Paul Jamison: Is there a success story? You're where you're talking about that satisfaction, you look back and you're like, oh that's the best we got. 

Ralpheal Locklear: It's hard to say which one's the best. I've got some that comes up in mind. Favorite top of mind first? My favorite would probably be,

Ralpheal Locklear: I'd probably say the Crosby project. And I, all of our projects we named, we call 'em by our client's name being their custom homes. And the reason why I would say that's my favorite is not, some people didn't know it would say, oh yeah, of course it's your favorite, is it was the largest custom home that you did.

Ralpheal Locklear: But it wasn't necessarily that. It was the fact that I had preconceived notions on what that experience would probably be like, and it ended up. Not being and it ended up being better than what I thought. I went into this particular project, I like challenges, I like challenging myself, and I like doing what most people say is impossible.

Ralpheal Locklear: When I see the word impossible, I see I'm possible. And so I always embrace a challenge. And this one scared me. It scared me a lot because of the size. At the time it was a, I think around 10 or 11,000 square foot home in today's value, that home, probably at least a $4 million home, I would say. And it was a very unique design.

Ralpheal Locklear: It was weirdly shaped. We had to redesign it, but the biggest thing was this client was a high profile client. It was a local attorney and so that was something like, man, he's an attorney and. And my mindset at the time was thinking that maybe that type of client would be really challenging, really demanding maybe somewhat difficult to work with beyond the fact of the project already had its difficulties.

Ralpheal Locklear: We were building on such a tight lot with such a big home. We had to we had to be extremely precise because if we was off just a little bit, there was no room for error essentially, hardly at all. And it was a very large project. And what I found out during the design and the construction part of this project was that it was my easiest project.

Ralpheal Locklear: I've built and designed custom homes that's 1800 square feet, 1500 square feet. And we did this when that was 11,000 or so square feet with garages and unheated space. And I remember going through the middle of it, I was at so much peace during that build. It was really smooth. We had a process that the client honored before, during, and after they trusted us with our process.

Ralpheal Locklear: And it was just a smooth, simple build. And when I first started, I thought the opposite. And I found that in this industry, typically your larger projects are easier than the smaller projects. At least that's been my experience and the reason why that was the favorite, of course, it was my largest project.

Ralpheal Locklear: It helped reframe what's possible. It helped change the way I viewed what I was doing and helped me not be so reluctant or afraid to go after bigger projects. Because at first I was thinking bigger means more, more more risk, more challenging more difficulties. But for me, I started finding out that often is the opposite when you have a good process.

Ralpheal Locklear: And I had to learn at that point in time who is our ideal clients? Who is not ideal clients? Why? What does that customer avatar look like? And that job started opening up those ideas and those perceptions for me to figure out. 

Paul Jamison: That's awesome. And I agree a hundred percent. So sometimes the bigger the client the bigger the pay, the easier it is.

Paul Jamison: It's absolutely wild. I what you just said, I can relate to the, some of the biggest. Customers I had today was the easiest. And it was a win-win. You mentioned back as a 22, 20 3-year-old kid you understood the importance of advertising, but that was 2004.

Paul Jamison: That was 2005. Now we're in 2025, headed into 2026 where the world of marketing and advertising is completely different. What is landing you, your best customers this day and age? What are you doing for your marketing? That's working, 20 years later? 

Ralpheal Locklear: When we first got started, it's always been video.

Ralpheal Locklear: We were the first to market with that. Even back then, I I was doing videos, documenting kind of our journey. Not as much, not as often, but. That's what's made our business what it is today, locally and like today. We still leverage that, in the form of, even if it's just short content, sometimes long form content, showing people different things behind the scenes of a build educating clients on different processes.

Ralpheal Locklear: But mostly it's always been video content. A lot of people used to see me on the job site. There was a saying at one point in time, somebody said something along the lines of a, all you do is make video content when I see you on the job sites. And, back in the day it was something that was laughed at.

Ralpheal Locklear: It was ridiculed. Our branding is a cartoon mascot, which. That was something first we did also wasn't a thing. And now you see a lot of folks, at least in our local market, with the raps like we have with different cartoons, different things of that nature. So we set the trend in our industry when it came to that.

Ralpheal Locklear: And video has been the thing that's always moved the needle for us. We are able to now not have to necessarily compete on price when people do. Come into our funnel and opt in or raise their hand that they're interested in designing and building. They're already pre-sold on our company. They already know who we are, what we're about.

Ralpheal Locklear: They know my story. They know the story of this company. They know what makes us different, better, and more unique than anyone else. And they also know that we're not the cheapest. They're not coming to us looking for a cheap price. They're coming to us because they want certainty, they want peace of mind.

Ralpheal Locklear: And they want to know that when this contract, when Southeastern is doing the job, they know that it's gonna be done right. We're not perfect. We're gonna make mistakes. Custom homes is at times custom headaches. We are only building this particular project, this particular way on this lot one time. And there's going to be challenges and things that we're not going to get perfect.

Ralpheal Locklear: And I just tell people, if we had the luxury and ability to go out and build that same project two times, then of course we would be able to. Pretty much master it, and especially if we was able to do it three times. But we are never really afforded that luxury because of custom homes. Now we do also do commercial developments, commercial buildings.

Ralpheal Locklear: We do government contracts now, and, but it all started with video content. Even back then we were, we that's what's always worked for us. 

Paul Jamison: Okay. I'm curious about when people call your business. Are you using any softwares or AI or anything to handle 'cause your team's out busy you're working.

Paul Jamison: How are you handling the phone calls? 

Ralpheal Locklear: We're using first and foremost callrail.com, which is an absolute great tool for us. It allows me to put unique tracking numbers on basically anything and everything. Our vehicle wraps has its own unique phone number. Our website has its own unique numbers.

Ralpheal Locklear: We can put unique numbers on any video content we put out. And what that allows us to do is to log in and see what is producing results as far as bringing in calls. And then when the calls come in, it can be routed to any number of people on our team. We have an app. It comes with an app, so we don't have to be stuck by a dedicated landline.

Ralpheal Locklear: We can have our mobile devices and take those calls anywhere. It allows us to sound extremely professional. Even no matter how small that you are, you can create call flows, call greetings. We customize our own with my voice, with background music, and we basically made our own ip, internal phone, track, phone.

Ralpheal Locklear: We made our own internal like. System for handling those calls and it just made us look like a much bigger company starting out than what we actually were. And now we are looking to integrate AI into that when we find the right tool. We've tried out a couple, but we haven't fully settled on which tool that we're going to actually integrate.

Ralpheal Locklear: So now we're still handling those internally with live our live team. But we have tried out some that sound very convincing sound, almost human-like to where it was indistinguishable between what AI sounds like and what a real person would sound like. But it takes a lot of time to program, to upload the right documents, the knowledge base and all of that.

Ralpheal Locklear: But it's shown very promising. We've tried some that did a very good job initially at handling calls, answering questions. However, it was a little bit too much of a lift on the back end to fully integrate. So we're on the look now for a better, more seamless tool that we can integrate without it being such a heavy lift with the programming.

Paul Jamison: You mentioned wrapping the vehicles using CallRail. Are there any other marketing strategies that you think are really setting you apart? 

Ralpheal Locklear: YouTube ads, Facebook ads, all of video ads by the way locally within our market targeting, like 30 or 45 mile radius and we have our list of callers that we can export from, CallRail from people that has called us over the years.

Ralpheal Locklear: You can take that, download it and upload it into places like Facebook and things like that, and create what's called lookalike audiences if you want. Get in front of people who look like your target customers, target people who's already called your office. We've tried Google search ads and all that kind of works as well locally.

Ralpheal Locklear: But we go all in on our social media content with video. We have a lot of people wanting to sell us radio ads. We've tried things like that, but the biggest bang for Buck is, has always been a video for us because people watch that. They connect with you. If you're storing your, what you're recording resonates with them, then they get to know you.

Ralpheal Locklear: And it's, and we're advertising locally, right? So the idea is that they're not ready to build. Now, most people might not be ready to build if they're ever going to build, but when they are, we wanna be top of mind. And the best way to top of mind is creating content that educates them makes 'em laugh.

Ralpheal Locklear: Also is, we try to add some humor in it and just also have fun with it. We're out there doing all this stuff anyway. Why not just pick up a camera record and show people what you're doing and why you're doing it? And I think something that also that works really well is being your true self.

Ralpheal Locklear: You are who you say you are. When they see us on the job site and they see us shining lights down a wall, that before we allow the painters to say that we're done, or the sheet rock guys, we're making sure that we're doing a level four, level five finishing. We're showing people how to do it.

Ralpheal Locklear: I know some builders don't like that a lot. I've had some people call me locally Ralph, what are you guys doing? Like, why are you putting that out there? Because now clients are starting to ask that other builders do that, and that's not the standard, and there's a lot of people that build homes, spec homes, semi custom.

Ralpheal Locklear: There's not very many truly custom home builders. But I show exactly what we do. My goal is I want to educate everybody on what right looks like. And what quality looks like. Most people don't know what that looks like. So we do our very best to try to make them aware of what that is. 

Paul Jamison: And what platforms do you find have the most success?

Paul Jamison: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. What's your priorities with the videos? Where are you Pub publishing them, uploading 

Ralpheal Locklear: them? Yes. Primarily Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, surprisingly I didn't think that TikTok would generate much leads just because of, most people's just there, just endlessly scrolling and, but it's generated leads of people wanting to actually build homes, which was surprising 'cause we tailor our approach.

Ralpheal Locklear: Some videos will post here, but we won't post there depending on, because we got different audiences on different platforms like Facebook. Those people know me especially on my personal profile. I've got. Probably, I think around 5,000 or maybe 10,000 people. But everyone, a lot of those people know, truly know me.

Ralpheal Locklear: And so I'll make, content I'll post. There's totally different than what I'll go post, say like on YouTube. YouTube works great as well. One of the hidden gems that I know works extremely well is YouTube ads. And you can go and create a 15, 32nd video, advertise it on YouTube locally, within a 20 or 30 mile radius.

Ralpheal Locklear: And one of the, one of the things that we do that works very well is I craft it in such a way to where you only pay if they watch longer than, I think it's either three seconds, maybe three or five seconds or something like that. Whatever the the term is. But if they don't watch, if they click skip, you don't pay.

Ralpheal Locklear: So one of the things that helped us out in the very beginning, and this has been like this for a while, you can run your ads and I create mine to where I want them to skip. 'cause most people is not gonna be building, right? 

Ralpheal Locklear: So I will just put my name and my company name in the first three to five seconds.

Ralpheal Locklear: Hey, this is Raphael. I'm with southeast general contracting.com. If you're looking to build a custom home and you're in the Fayetteville area, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They've already skipped. A thousand people watch that 900 and, 95 people skip. But the person is wait a minute.

Ralpheal Locklear: Yeah, I live in Fayetteville. Yeah. I'm looking to design and build a custom home. And they keep listening. There's a tracking phone number that they can call on their phone and boom. And now we go in the call row, we see, wow, this lead came from this video that we advertised on YouTube. Why? And we spent, 500 bucks in the ad spend.

Ralpheal Locklear: And it landed us a half a million dollar custom home design build. You ain't gotta do that, but one or two times and you're like, okay, let's dump some more money in on that. Facebook works the same way to where you can do the same thing where you can advertise and then we do it no matter which platform.

Ralpheal Locklear: We always follow that same kind of trajectory where we wanna be able to track when they do actually engage. TikTok, yeah, we're doing more with TikTok. YouTube for sure. Facebook, if I had to put 'em in order. Facebook, YouTube, and then then TikTok, one of the other things 

Paul Jamison: Go ahead. Go 

Ralpheal Locklear: ahead. I'm sorry. 

Paul Jamison: I was just gonna say, 

Ralpheal Locklear: Instagram is automatically tied to Facebook, so anytime we're pushing something out to Facebook, it automatically goes to Instagram.

Ralpheal Locklear: So we don't, I don't, I don't, yeah. And one of the platforms that we haven't leveraged, but now they're changing and embracing content is linked in. 

Ralpheal Locklear: And so on our government side and on our commercial side, this is something that we're going to. You put way more effort into testing with video content.

Ralpheal Locklear: And I think our strategy will be different for that audience. I think they tend to be more professional, more upright, a little bit, not so relaxed and can't maybe joke as much with some of our content and all that, but we're gonna try it and do the same thing. The great thing that I found out about LinkedIn is you're targeting like Facebook, you can target, crazy targeting, linkedIn you can too as well. One of the things that I've noticed on our government contracting side, we have our capability statement for those who know government contract. And you've got capability statement, which is like your company resume. And then we took it a step further. Again, we're a video centric company.

Ralpheal Locklear: I wanted to figure out how I could differentiate myself in marketing advertising to the government. I go to all these government, seminars and things like that. And there's thousands, tens of thousands of people there. And in one of my first ones, I realized, my goodness, I realized what a challenge it was because you've got a document that you're passing to the government contracting officer, right?

Ralpheal Locklear: And then you see, they take your document and they pay place it in a stack with 500 more or a thousand more. And from there I'm like, okay, wait a minute. We're one in 10,000. How in the world are we going to stand out and be memorable in this type of setting? And I didn't know that, LinkedIn at the time didn't have all these capabilities.

Ralpheal Locklear: So we created this here and this came also when someone told me that it couldn't be done or that it was impossible. Remember I told you before, that word I like is impossible. I see it as impossible. So after leaving that event, I'm like, this sucks. Like we literally have no edge over anyone. And I'm like, videos always work for us.

Ralpheal Locklear: How can I get in front of these people with the video? I can't because I'm networking in person, unless I just show them on my iPhone. So let's try that. Worked, didn't. So I saw this visually. I came up with this idea and then I happen. I happen to actually see. A wedding a wedding card that had a video on it was the first iteration of this.

Ralpheal Locklear: And then I'm like, wait, that's it. Like I can do the same thing for our company, that, that I can hand and I can give this and I can leave this with the government. Then the next problem arise. Wait a minute. Hold on. You can't just give government contracting officers 'cause this could be conceived as a gift.

Ralpheal Locklear: It has to be less than 20 bucks, I think is the number. So I had to go figure out how I can get this below 20 bucks and the re and how we were able to do that. We know how to design. We created the graphics ourself and we did all the heavy lifting. And then we found a manufacturer to create this.

Ralpheal Locklear: And what this does, we give this to contracting officers and it's under 20, we get 'em for under 20 bucks, but it's a video that we leave in their hands. 

Paul Jamison: Wow. Wow. 

Ralpheal Locklear: And so it, this one's probably dead. We didn't charge. It may need to be charged. But you see the screen here. And when you open it we can customize whatever video goes in here.

Ralpheal Locklear: And normally what happens is it's a video customized specifically for the government that says, Hey, I'm Raphael Lockley with Southeastern General Contractors. We're Native American owned eight, a hub zone company. We have between 10 and mid. 10 and $20 million in bonding. Our next codes is blah, blah, blah.

Ralpheal Locklear: We've got XLC pars rating, we've got multiple service contracts out at Fort Bragg. And if you're looking for someone that you can sole source to, feel free to reach out to us and feel free to pass this around to any other contracting officials that you know. And this has always been a showstopper. 

Paul Jamison: Wow.

Ralpheal Locklear: And got people to know who we are instantly because nobody else did that. And we were the first to market with passing that around to government contracting officials. And so again, video in different formats, different, ways that we've just creatively figured out how to use that to sit, to sell and to tell the same story consistently over and over.

Paul Jamison: Good. I really appreciate your time today. This has absolutely flown by. I know we're up against the clock here. Is there anything we're leaving out here that needs addressed? 

Ralpheal Locklear: Brandon, you see anything we else we need to address? Same we our Time's Up. No, not really. You got any other questions?

Ralpheal Locklear: Any,

Paul Jamison: what other 

Ralpheal Locklear: questions would 

Paul Jamison: you 

Ralpheal Locklear: have? 

Paul Jamison: I did have time for one more. I did have one more. If you need to go, we can 

Paul Jamison: End it here. 

Ralpheal Locklear: No, I've got time. I'm at your disposal. Okay. 

Paul Jamison: My other question is, you mentioned earlier that you're not in the construction business, you're in the people business, 

Ralpheal Locklear: right?

Paul Jamison: So you've seen good customers, bad customers, good subcontractors, bad subcontractors. What have you learned over 20 years to sharpen your discernment as you're dealing with people to keep the bad ones away and to be linked up and connected with the good ones and what could you share with someone who's maybe in that first five, 10 years of their business man, I keep getting linked up with the wrong subs, the wrong customers, and I have this sermon, like a butter knife.

Paul Jamison: How do I get sharp? The discernment like a, 20 year veteran like you. 

Ralpheal Locklear: Yeah. So when I started figuring out that I gotta fix this, because you're right, that can ruin, that can. Man, I've lived through that season and it's not fun. What that looked like for me was having six or seven custom home builds at a time with not the ideal types of clients, had the money.

Ralpheal Locklear: But is that really your ideal client? Is it just anybody that's just got the means and the money to hire? 'cause that's, at one point in time, that's what I did. And I took on too many. And, it was very tough to get past. What I did to try to overcome that was I had to get educated, I had to know what I had.

Ralpheal Locklear: Who is my ideal client? Who isn't my ideal client, you gotta put it pen to paper and figure out what that looks like. And if you don't really know you already you kind, all of us know who our ideal clients are or who the people we like working with. Why, what are their characteristics and the people that we don't like working with, why?

Ralpheal Locklear: What are their characteristics? And there's a book that I had that I had listened to. It's an audio book. The name of it I think is toxic Clients. And it was a book telling different stories about painters, about landscapers and stuff like that, and experiences they went through similar kind of talk that we're having now.

Ralpheal Locklear: And it broke down how you can start to identify who is and who isn't, quote unquote, potentially a toxic client or who is the ideal client. And after reading the books and after listening to the audio books and after going back and reviewing some of our past jobs and realizing guess what? It's our fault.

Ralpheal Locklear: Where's our process, who we don't even have it clearly identified who is our ideal clients. And it forced us to start changing our SOPs, our order of operations. And like now we have a system that most of the industry, if you really learn the system we follow, other custom builders is gonna be like, dude, there's no way we can do that.

Ralpheal Locklear: You might can do that. I can't do that. I'm in a build a group with 20 other builders. I understand the builder's perspective and so what does that look like For me, I learned I gotta have a system that produces ideal clients and I got to be okay with not working with 10 clients and only working with maybe two.

Ralpheal Locklear: But then there's, the problem is Ralph, we, then I'm not gonna make any money. I can't cover payroll. And I was faced with that question at one point in time was like, that sounds all good that you only wanna work with ideal clients, but all of us don't have that luxury. We gotta pay the bills.

Ralpheal Locklear: And this is what one of the other builders had mentioned to me. I'm like, I hear us complaining about the same things all the time, and either are we going to fix it or are we just gonna keep dealing with the same problem? Because for me, if I don't fix the problem I'm not gonna continue doing what I'm doing.

Ralpheal Locklear: So I made the decision, I was willing to roll the dice and say either why is I fix it or it don't work, but I'm not gonna work with 10 clients that are not ideal for the sake of just making payroll or whatnot. I would rather only work with two. And so what does our ideal clients look like? For us, when we're looking at custom home building, people have, our ideal clients already have their land purchased and paid for 100% in full before they even find us.

Ralpheal Locklear: And when they do find us and they have their land paid in full, they're typically either going to pay cash and no loans. Or they have at least a hundred to 200 K liquid that they're gonna put towards their loan. Because for us, the custom homes that they're going to build, number one, we'll not appraise for what the bank is going to say that they're worth.

Ralpheal Locklear: 'cause oftentimes they're gonna want to compare and do comps to either spec homes or semi-custom homes. So for our clients, they have to be able to pay the difference of what the shortfall is with appraisal. And a lot of people that takes, that probably takes 90%, 80 to 90% of the people out of the market.

Ralpheal Locklear: 'cause not many people has that ability to pay a hundred, 200 grand or more for the land and then have another a hundred to 200 grand or more to put towards their luxury home or their custom home. But they're out there and outta every 10 to maybe 15 people we talk to, there's normally one or two in that.

Ralpheal Locklear: That group of people, that is our ideal clients. And the thing I've found is that with those type of people, they're willing to pay higher prices for the results that they're after, which essentially means I don't have to do, six homes and make say, $10,000 a piece or $20,000 a piece. I can maybe do two or three and make $200,000 a piece, or a hundred thousand dollars a piece or whatnot.

Ralpheal Locklear: And the clients, they perfectly understand and they know that, and it's a different type of client. So when you're going down this journey of trying to discern who's your ideal client and who's not your ideal client, you need to have those types of conversations and know that yes, it's going to be a struggle and you're not gonna have as many clients, but when it works, you're gonna have leased clients and make more money.

Ralpheal Locklear: And those leased clients will be clients that. It's a blessing. All the way around, because you're helping them. They're helping you. Everybody wins. And your quality of life, increases tremendously. But it is a process that you gotta go through and figure out. 

Paul Jamison: So good. I'm so grateful for all your insights today, Ralph.

Paul Jamison: And Brandon. Thanks for setting all this up. And Simone, I appreciate it. This has been full of knowledge and wisdom. We appreciate you taking time to, to share all this with us. 

Ralpheal Locklear: Thank you. And so I guess Brandon, we're about ready to wrap this up, but before we do, there's always like one question when it's, when it, whenever we're done with this, it's man I would remember to ask that one question.

Ralpheal Locklear: Is there anything else that's lingering that we can knock out before we hop off? 

Paul Jamison: Yeah, it would come to be with cash flow. How do you manage? 'cause you're such a bigger skill than our landscaping industry. Projects are 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30,000, you're talking. 

Paul Jamison: You're talking $4 million, or these massive amounts.

Paul Jamison: So how do you have the margin to keep everything running smoothly and sleep peacefully in the evenings? 

Ralpheal Locklear: So yeah, that's the struggle I how you learn that is, I think the best way to learn it is, you gotta go through it the worst kind of way and figure it out and face that beast that's okay, hey, listen, cashflow is a problem.

Ralpheal Locklear: How are you gonna make payroll? You didn't get the draw that you were supposed to be getting because whatever happened, and now you've got this overhead, this payroll, you, we all live that as entrepreneurs, and at the same time it should force us to figure out how to fix that. For me, when I ran into that situation, it made me realize.

Ralpheal Locklear: That I wasn't charging enough number one on what I was charging clients and that I had to charge more. A lot of my problems come from the unknowns. When you're starting building a custom home, then you, before you even get the footing or the foundation in the ground, you're already $20,000 over your original budget and you haven't even got started.

Ralpheal Locklear: I faced that a few times and I faced having clients to where we didn't have that conversation, and guess what? They didn't have the liquid funds to cover it. The banks wouldn't fund it. So guess who had to pay for that lesson? That cost of tuition. I did, and thankfully, one of the things that's helped me is staying lean as long and as much as you possibly can and putting everything back in the business.

Ralpheal Locklear: Even when you've got the money to go out and buy all this stuff, you shouldn't, you should keep the money, put it, reinvest it back in the business. Focus on delivering the best service. Finding creative ways to stand out. And a lot of times it's just the little things in today's market.

Ralpheal Locklear: It's not hard. It's easier in today's market to stand out, just show up 15 minutes earlier. If you do that alone, you're already ahead of everybody else and answer your phone by the second time it rings. If you're, there's advantages of being small and the advantage is you can outdo the big boys because they think they have the luxury of not doing the basics and being on point with that.

Ralpheal Locklear: And then with the cash flow, what I learned is I started on my business. I started, I had to learn how to sell. I had to learn for whatever it is I needed to convey to my clients. I had to get them to the point to where. They would say to themselves you're right. That does make sense when I'm telling them I have to have at least a 10% buffer onto whatever number that we're going to agree to.

Ralpheal Locklear: And here's the way I do it. If I'm negotiating with you, building your family, their custom home and say, Hey, we're agreeing to, 850,000, we're agree to $1.2 million and that's today's price, like today with the list of features that we want, right? But it's gonna take us at least eight to 10 to 12 months or possibly even more to build.

Ralpheal Locklear: And lemme ask you something, do you know what the rate of inflation is year over year? 

Paul Jamison: 5%? 

Ralpheal Locklear: Yeah. Yeah. 5% every day of the week. So at 5%, if we're building one point, say $2 million, and a year goes by and that increases 5%, what's that amount? 

Paul Jamison: 70,000. 

Ralpheal Locklear: 70,000 or so, right? So now here's the thing. Who's going to take that loss if we don't account for it?

Ralpheal Locklear: And I stay quiet just like I'm doing right now is I'm just straight, like I'm doing I, we'll have to have that conversation. Then I'll say, then it starts to get a little bit uncomfortable and I'll say, Hey, listen, I'm sorry that you know that this isn't probably what you would like for it to be, but we need to have these types of conversation now and I'm hoping you're seeing that I'm doing it in your best interest because we haven't signed a contract.

Ralpheal Locklear: And I want you to know all this stuff upfront before you get committed. 'cause a lot of builders, we'll close deals and we'll handle all this later, and then it becomes a problem. I want you to know the worst case scenario upfront, so that 10% is $70,000 that needs to get added to the cost. Of what I'm proposing because I'm not building for today, right?

Ralpheal Locklear: The price that we are agreeing to is as of today's price, but six months into the build, eight months into the build, prices is steady going to go up. And I need to have the means to cover those increases by anticipating that 5% cost of increase just due to natural inflation. And we're not talking about the tariffs, we're not talking about anything that can happen from here to there.

Ralpheal Locklear: So in real reality. To be successful and to plan for the worst case scenario. And not say that we're going to have the worst case, but at least plan for it. We need 10 to 15 to 20% above what we say we're comfortable for. Now if 1.2 or 1.5 or whatever the number is, if that's the stretch, that's okay. This is where we get to get creative and be smart and solve the problem before we even start.

Ralpheal Locklear: 'cause my designer is in-house. I know how to design. He's been with me since I got started. Guess what? $70,000 is what we just used, right? 

Ralpheal Locklear: Now you're wanting to design a 5,000 square foot home. Maybe you're like a lot of our other clients when they get in and five years down the road you realize they didn't need that much square footage.

Ralpheal Locklear: And I have a lot of clients tell me that you know what? I could have lived with a 4,000 square foot house. Lemme do some math for you real quick and then I'll just pull out the calculator. I'll say a thousand dollars. A thousand square feet times, say $350 per square feet. Boom. And I say, that's that dollar amount.

Ralpheal Locklear: Now if we can go with a 4,000 square foot home and make that work, this is how much money you would be saving. And we can include these contingencies or these budgets. And so that way when we run into that, or if we run into that, it's not a problem because we have already planned for it well in advance.

Ralpheal Locklear: And the idea here is to talk about this upfront. So when we're building, no matter what happens, we can go through it without any of the hiccups where people start and have to stop midway because they didn't fully count the cost. And I hope that you see the value in what I'm doing here because even if you hire me or not you're gonna leave here with a much better understanding of what it really takes to be successful at doing this.

Ralpheal Locklear: And if our numbers are too high, which sometimes they are, at least you can go to another builder who maybe is willing to build at a cheaper price. But now you can see if they're willing to incorporate the things that we've just mentioned. That's the way we handle, that. And then the cash flow is, if they go forward with us, I'll let them know that on certain draws, which is to, and this is totally against the industry norms, and I let them know that I say, you know what I'm about to say, it's not the industry norm.

Ralpheal Locklear: I know the reputation that we have in the construction industry. However, there's always exception to the rules. We've got 20 some years in business, go check out our reviews. You can go talk to clients who did exactly what you're about to do in paying cash up front or paying on front, loading some of the draws, whatever that is.

Ralpheal Locklear: But to handle that cash flow issue if you're getting draws, I let clients know that I structure my draws to where I don't have a cash flow issue. 'cause that's the number one problem that contractors have. But our goal is not to have that. And how we don't have that is by ensuring that we're not putting all of our draws at the back end of a stage.

Ralpheal Locklear: While we've already fronted the cost and then waiting another 10, 20, 30 days to collect. And that gets us in that perpetual cycle of not being able to catch up. I let my clients know that, and I say for me to overcome that I have to structure at least half of my draws to where they're tied to the beginning of a stage and not the end of a stage.

Paul Jamison: Yeah, that's good. And you're in North Carolina? I'm down here in Florida. I know we have some listeners that are in California and all, there's all kind of crazy laws out there, but in North Carolina, that's good. 

Ralpheal Locklear: Yeah. So let's put that disclaimer out there. This is what I do.

Ralpheal Locklear: Don't mean that everybody should do it, but I'm completely transparent with our clients and when they go into it, they're fully bought into what we're doing, how we're doing it. And, we've did deals where it's been 100% cash basis, no banks involved. Sometimes there's banks, sometimes there's draws, sometimes there's escrow.

Ralpheal Locklear: Every deal's different. That's the beautiful thing about, when you're doing custom and you can directly deal with owners, there's no one deal that's ever the same. 

Paul Jamison: That's good. This has been awesome. I really appreciate your expertise and your time and your inspiring story of how far you've come from that, that older gentleman that told you get outta here and Yeah.

Paul Jamison: And you launched your business in 2004 to, to be here today. It's a, it's an inspiring story. Is there any closing remarks you wanna share with a young entrepreneur who's more towards your 2004 stage? 

Ralpheal Locklear: I would just say it's gonna take you a long time. You know it's gonna be hard and just choose your hard, no matter what you're going to do, it's going to be tough.

Ralpheal Locklear: Just the only expect immediate results, you're gonna have to spend your time doing something, even if it's working a normal job. So why not go for your dreams, find out what your baseline is. Everybody has to make a certain amount of money to live and pay their bills. Find out what that is, figure out a way to cover that, and then go for it.

Ralpheal Locklear: And when you go for it, give it everything you got. There's a thing that's called work life balance. That's something that I think we all struggle with too. I, and I still struggle with it. I think anybody who's a really hardcore driven entrepreneur I tell people, a lot of people think that man, you may work too much.

Ralpheal Locklear: You're going to hear that from your family, from your friends. Just know that if you're wired like that, it's not for them. They don't see things. You know what I mean? And it's okay not to be normal, but also too, surround yourself with the right team and make sure you love what you're doing. And one thing that I'll leave with, I have had to come to this understanding, we worked six days, we're supposed to rest one.

Ralpheal Locklear: And sometimes I've tried for many years I'd work and I'd brute for seven days a week, almost 18 to 20 hours a day, and couldn't make no headway and was just running up against brick wall after brick wall. We need that day of rest and clarity and seek wisdom, seek mentors, find people who's already done what you're trying to do and go work for 'em and put yourself in a position to where you can work for 'em for free.

Ralpheal Locklear: And that's a tough order. But I found out, and I've talked to enough people to where when you go talk to really successful people and you ask their story somewhere along their journey it's that they're willing to go do the work, help someone out, work for less money, or even work for free as long as it keeps 'em moving down the path of success.

Paul Jamison: Well said. I'm, I need to work on that. I've gotten in the habit of the seven days. I know it's wrong, so I've been trying to take that day of rest, so that's very timely word for me. I appreciate that. 

Ralpheal Locklear: Yeah and listen, I struggle with it, 'cause, work is worship for me. A lot of people don't understand that.

Ralpheal Locklear: And I, my wife's in the business with me, my daughter's in the business, my nephew's in the business, people that Troy's in the business that, 20 some years. And even with them, they don't get it. And they don't see it. This is a, most days, this is not worked for me. Especially now in the season that I'm in.

Ralpheal Locklear: I, I visualize these days, only time it's work is when things isn't working. When it's working, it's passion, it's joy. 

Ralpheal Locklear: And so how can we count that as work, it is work for me at this point, doing like what I'm doing now, reaching out and sharing and helping inspire, hopefully, and motivate other people to go out and do what it is that God's putting their heart to do.

Ralpheal Locklear: And if you already see the end result before you even get started that's all the proof you need. 'cause if you can't see it. It is a hard, just a, there's a hard chance that it's going to happen if you can't see it, but if you can see it clearly, then that's proof that it's already done. You just have to be willing to do the work throughout the process to get to it.

Paul Jamison: Good. I really appreciate your time and all these insights and motivation. Do you have, is there anything else burning on your heart you wanna share? 

Ralpheal Locklear: No, I think I, we, I think we should, stay connected and do this again. And there is some other stuff that we're gonna be doing that we got in the works with trainings and people that want to learn the build process, the order of operations, the costly lessons learned, and man, if we learn, listen, I've probably got $20 million in losses over the years that I've probably, if I really sat down and counted the cost of mistakes and missed opportunities and not knowing, find somebody, find somebody who's already did that and learn from them.

Ralpheal Locklear: People say that the best way to learn is from experience. I used to say that I don't believe that anymore. I believe the best way to learn is to learn from other people's experience. 

Paul Jamison: I 

Ralpheal Locklear: agree. Find them and go learn from their lessons. And that way you can kinda save yourself a whole lot of heartache because any one of those lessons can take you out depending on what kind of business you're in.

Ralpheal Locklear: So surround yourself with people who are already doing what you're trying to do and model, mimic. Put your own spin on it. Don't try to recreate the wheel all the time. That's one of my blessings and curse. And sometimes when I do get stuck, that's the reason why is I wanna get too creative and just wanna recreate something that's already been created and get stuck.

Paul Jamison: Cool. I really appreciate your time, Brandon. Thank you for all. I don't know if he can hear me, but thank you for Yeah. Getting all this set up and 

Ralpheal Locklear: he's saying Thank you, Brandon, for helping us. Oh yeah. Anytime. Yeah. Cool. Pleasure. Alright, cool. Thank you. And you guys will send us a link to the 

Paul Jamison: video?

Paul Jamison: Yes. I'm gonna send it to the audio. I have an audio engineer, so the audio will come out on Spotify and Apple this week. And I'll send you the, I'll email you the link and then the video will take longer. That might be out in a week, two, three weeks. We got backed up on the video, but when it does come out, I'll send you the link and then we'll have some shorts from the highlight clips of what you said.

Paul Jamison: That will be for like Instagram reels, Facebook reels, and you're more than welcome to use those however you'd like. And 

Ralpheal Locklear: we'll, okay. And how did you one question I did have while you was talking. How did you, how did we get to know one another? Brandon, do you know? Through call re ra. Yep. Okay, cool.

Paul Jamison: Yeah, I asked call re who if they had anybody with a good story or anyone in the trades that. They recommend being on our podcast, and they're like, oh yeah, we have some folks from Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Ralpheal Locklear: Yeah. Okay. Cool. Cool. All right, sounds good. Thank you so much. 

Paul Jamison: Alright, thank you.

Paul Jamison: Nice meeting you. Bye. See?