What does it take to create a “family” workplace culture in a 300+ employee company?
At Eastwood Homes, a family-owned regional builder in the Southeast, this culture is a reality…
In this episode, Tara Whiteley, the digital marketing team leader for Eastwood Homes, shares what makes this culture special—and gives an inside look at her marketing process.
Tara will also discuss:
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The skills that make leaders flourish
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Why community relations is the “second bottom line”
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The importance of patience
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And more
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Tara Whiteley: Build a team so strong that you won’t know who the manager is. And I really think that’s what we do. You know, we, we just all work together so well and anyone specific to the marketing department, anyone can reach out to any of us at any time. And we can help. We can kind of give that answer give that direction.
Voiceover: You’re listening to the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast with professional speaker, coach and consultant Nicole Greer.
Nicole Greer: Welcome everybody to the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. My name is Nicole Greer, and they call me the vibrant coach and I’m on a mission to build a vibrant culture. And I have a very special guest with me today. I would like to welcome to the show Tara Whiteley. Let me tell you a little bit about her. She is the Digital Marketing Team Leader at Eastwood Homes. She has a passion for technology and communication. She holds a master’s degree in web design and online communication from the University of Florida.
And she is part of a company called Eastwood Homes. It is the family-owned regional builder in the southeast, and it’s headquartered right here in Charlotte, North Carolina. They are building in eight major markets and she covers it all. And their motto at Eastwood homes is built with care. And she aims to have built with care shine through everything that they do. And don’t you love shine, because you’ll know that’s my thing. So please welcome to the show, Tara. How are you Tara?
Tara: I’m good. Thank you so much for inviting me to be on. I’m so excited.
Nicole: Oh, that’s good. That’s good. So just a little inside scoop. I had the privilege of working with Tara and a bunch of the people on the team at Eastwood Homes and I had an absolute ball. Two days of fun and frolicking with the Eastwood teams, Eastwood Homes Team. They were so fantastic. You guys have a really great culture. You are teaching me things about culture. How did that whole thing get started? How did y’all become so fabulous?
Tara: Well, that happened probably starting 45 years ago when the company was founded. Long before I was there. But it is a great place to work. And so much of what I’ve learned, I’ve learned there at Eastwood Homes. I’ve been there eight years, I’ve got about 11 years experience in the home building industry, but eight at Eastwood Homes and it has been great. One of the best things that Eastwood does is they invest in their team.
And they do things like the training that we did with you. We regularly have sales mentors training our sales team, and you know, building training, we bring the entire team from eight divisions together. So they just really take the time to help us grow and become even better employees. So it’s a great place to work.
Nicole: I love it. It’s what I would call a learning organization. And learning organizations, everybody’s brain is lit up. And that’s what makes people vibrant is when people are learning and they’re excited to learn. Well, I as you know, Tara and I kind of we chit chatted before things, you know, we had some going back and forth. And so the one of the questions I always ask people is, what is your definition of leadership? I’d like to know what you think.
Tara: So that is so hard.
Nicole: It’s a big fat question, right?
Tara: Yeah, it’s like we could talk the whole time about that probably. I really think one of the main things is you inspire excitement in your team. You want people to love what they do, because that shows through, you know, in everything that we do. As you saw two weeks ago when you worked with our team, we’re all excited about what we do at Eastwood Homes and bringing beautiful homes for people.
I think, you know, there’s a lot more to it than that, as well. So that open line of communication needs to know that you can go to your leadership or vice versa and just talk openly with each other about concerns you may have, or ideas that you have. So it’s one of the things I love to do is bring ideas to the table.
Nicole: You are an idea machine. That’s what I know.
Tara: I love it. So, you know, just be able to inspire that communication back and forth with each other. Build trust between the people on your team, so everybody feels comfortable talking to each other, and definitely have that path for growth and development for your team.
Nicole: Yeah, fantastic. And what was absolutely amazing to me was the fact that you had your CFO at the back of the room. And he was there supposed to be kind of like a fly on the wall but like I mean he would like to speak up and he’d be like wait, I want to add to this conversation you know. So there was always kind of this energy and then lo and behold middle of the day in walks the owner of your company.
And so these two gentlemen take time out of you know their busy corporate C suite day to come by and make sure that you guys are learning. having fun and you know, they go round I saw them go around, say hello to everybody make sure they’re connecting. I just really think that such a telltale sign of such a great culture.
Tara: Yeah, our team is growing and growing. And I think we’re over 300 employees now. But I really feel that Joe and Clark, the father and son owners of Eastwood really know all of us, and take the time to get to know each all of us. So that’s a really cool feeling. And yeah, like you said, with Kevin, the CFO. At the training, we all worked off of the excitement off of each other.
So we had sales and building construction managers, and we had our admins and marketing and we were all together, and finance and just talking and building off of our ideas. And it was a really cool experience. And I think that happens every day at Eastwood, you know, if that communication is open, all directions. So I can just as easily walk into Kevin’s office and ask him a question as we call them Big Joe, or Clark, or you know, any of them. And it’s really cool.
Nicole: Yeah, that’s fantastic. So what I’m hearing is like silos are not a thing.
Tara: No.
Nicole: Yeah. Which is really, really rare.
Tara: Yeah, it feels like a very small company. We are definitely getting bigger, but it feels small, which is awesome. It feels like a family-owned company, and that’s cool.
Nicole: That is cool. Yeah. And I want to give a shout-out to UNC Charlotte, because UNC Charlotte has a wonderful corporate training program. And I have the privilege of participating in that. And I’d like to give a shout-out to Amy Wertham, in particular, for letting me teach that day. But you know, really, I just kind of facilitated conversation because you are the teacher that day, Tara.
You know, I was like, you know, holding the space for you to tell us all the amazing things you do at Eastwood homes. And so would you share just a little bit about some of the great marketing things that you’re doing. Everything from geofencing, to your internet team, and we could go on and on.
Tara: I can talk about this.
Nicole: I know you can. Get your pen and paper ready, everybody.
Tara: So we have a team of four people on our marketing team. Three full-time and one part-time and we stay busy. But we all love what we do. So it’s very cool. Of course, we have our SEO optimization. That is all the keywords on our website, all that intentional work that we do on our website to build up our search engine optimization, so that we show up in people’s search results. We do Google ads. One of the things we talked about in class was one of our best-performing ads company-wide, our competitor keywords or competitor campaigns.
And that is where we target our competitors and just work off of their search capital that is out there. We do social media ads on Facebook and Instagram. We are on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Tik Tok. So we stay busy there, we have over 100,000 followers. If you haven’t followed us yet on Tik Tok, check it out. That’s been my plug. We do a lot of email marketing, we do geofencing.
And that is where we target popular areas around communities where we build. And if you are in one of those areas, say a home improvement store and you are on your phone, you will likely be seen seeing our ad appear on your phone. And then if you’re interested, you click our ad and then you go into one of our model homes that can count as a conversion for us.
So that is what the geofencing does for us. And that is a very effective form of communication. We’re on Zillow, we are on Wayz, we have a ton of professional photography that we do. Just keeps going billboards, blog posts, QR code, signage, OTT ads, those are like the ads that you might get on Hulu. So yeah, we are we’re quite busy.
Nicole: Yes. So tell them again, how many people are on your team? How many do all that?
Tara: Four.
Nicole: Four, which is like Herculean people. Right? And I think what it is, is that again, they have a learning organization is what I’ve just noticed about Eastwood Homes. And so because everybody’s like, well, we just you know, we just figure it out. We you know, we figure out how to do OTT and geofencing and keywords and target our competitors and bah bah bah bah bah.
I mean all the stuff that she just you know listed is because the gals on her team have just put their heads down and like, you know, one, one minute at a time figured out how to put this whole amazing thing together. Now, when you started with them, will you share kind of like the growth in your followership and that kind of thing. I’d love for you to share with people what’s possible when you got a learning organization full of people who figure stuff out.
Tara: So we probably started with about two or 3000 people on our Facebook page. At that time, we hadn’t figured out Google listings, and how to verify those. We were just we were kind of babies in the industry. We were I think we were on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest I think at the time. And we have grown that to over 100,000 followers today. So we’re very active. LinkedIn is one of our fastest growing as well as Instagram. So, but we have definitely, we have over 75,000 followers probably on Facebook. So that’s our biggest channel.
Nicole: That’s fantastic. Yeah. And one thing that you didn’t mention, but it kind of segues beautifully with the tagline for your organization, you know, and let me repeat it, built with care. Okay. And so one of the things that they do at Eastwood, which I think is like phenomenal, is where you guys take the picture of the person’s lot. And then you take a picture every single week of the development of what’s going on.
And then you share with the customer because people are moving to Charlotte, North Carolina from hither and yon. And so they don’t get to drive by and look at how the house is progressing. But you guys do such a wonderful, mind-blowing job. Will you share a little bit about your customer service story in terms of that? And then add on to it anything else you guys are doing, which is, I know you’re doing a lot?
Tara: Yes. So shout out to My Home Story is that is a company that we’ve used for, I think six years. Don’t hold me to that. But My Home Story is a personal blog for each home that we build. And, yeah, we start right at the foundation pour. And we task our sales team, and they do an amazing job with taking pictures every week. And that they post those to my Home Story blog, and it gets updated.
And as soon as we have a home buyer for that home, we can tie them to that blog, we can tie their realtor, so everybody connected can get those weekly updates. And that really keeps people connected to the process. We also do weekly calls with our home buyers, so that you know the status of your home, you know, where everything is at in the timeline. But these photo updates are a big help. And you’re right, we have a lot of people moving to the area.
And I have to share a Facebook, well, we shared it on Facebook, and LinkedIn. But it was a post we did last week. And it was a daughter who could not make the flight from Arizona out to Raleigh to walk the house. They’re going to move in next month. So she asks her asked her dad to bring her stuffed bunny to the house and take pictures of the bunny taking a tour of the house. So we have I think about nine pictures of the bunny in different rooms. Yes.
Nicole: Which makes me think of the thing too, is that like so when Tara and her team are posting to LinkedIn and Facebook and all these places, it’s not just like, you know, here’s another kitchen although hello the kitchens at Eastwood pretty good looking stuff. I mean, you should actually go look at the kitchens. But like their pictures, their pictures of like I recall from our class, there was a picture of a gentleman down on one knee proposing to this gal right on the front, on the day of closing. Did I have my story, right? Is that right?
Tara: You do. Yes. Yeah, we get some really amazing photos. There may be a puppy dog posts coming up this week, so.
Nicole: Oh, that’s right. Tara is a dog person, you dog people pay attention.
Tara: There’s a puppy. One of the realtors in Raleigh visited one of our model homes. And we got pictures of the puppy touring the home. So you can’t get any better than that. A cute little note on that actually, if you see dogs on our website, on the homepage, or in our advertising or in our social media, most likely that is a dog of an Eastwood Homes team member. And we also use our Eastwood home team members in our advertising as well. So I just think that’s a really cool thing that we do.
Nicole: That’s right. So like we’ll have a gentleman who is a supervisor at one of the particular locations and it’s him and his wife that are in the ad, getting the keys, and all this kind of stuff. Yeah. So it’s really fun. And so you guys are a family-owned company. And I think sometimes people are like, whoa, what’s that like? But like, I’m not noticing a whole lot of dysfunction over at the Eastwood Home. Seems like it really is a big, happy family. How do you guys keep it going that way? How do you create a happy family, which, obviously, it’s gonna build a vibrant culture. How do you guys do that? What are some of the things you do?
Tara: Definitely that leadership top down. You know, this weekend, we had a grand opening event at our design center here in Charlotte. We are starting to do build on your lot. So it’s a pretty big.
Nicole: Yeah, you’ve got to talk about that.
Tara: Yes. So this weekend was our grand opening. And the owner Clark, and his whole family was there. His wife and three kids and then two or three of their friends, because they were going out to eat afterwards. And and they were there. And that’s just Eastwood Homes. That is not uncommon, you know, for their families to be in the building or, you know, someone will bring in their kid, you know, without it being that strange.
So we are, it does feel like a family. Big Joe will reach out to somebody, if they had an exceptional month in sales or in construction, or got a notable review from a homeowner. He’ll reach out directly to them. It’s not uncommon for him or Clark to pop in your office and just say, how’s it going? I just want to see how you’re doing. It’s definitely not micromanaging. It feels very authentic. They really do want to know how you and your family are doing.
Yeah, so it’s, it’s a great environment. With that, um, one of the coolest things that we do, this kind of goes along with this theme, it almost feels like a family reunion. But twice a year, we have hot dog day. That might not sound like much, but we have hot dog day, twice a year. And it’s where the upper management cooks for the entire, all the employees.
So in Charlotte, it’s the Charlotte team and the corporate team and we all come together under a big tent. And they cook for us. Hot dogs and chili and whatever else. And it’s just you will hear most of our employees say that is their two favorite days of the year. It’s just a great time to be at Eastwood, so.
Nicole: I don’t know, I think everybody listening don’t judge the hot dog because y’all you know you love it. I mean, you might have your annual hot dog in July. But if you work for Eastwood homes, you get to have three. One on 4th of July and then two on the hot dog days. That’s fantastic. That’s fantastic. Well, there’s a lot of success at Eastwood Homes, it’s growing like crazy.
It started in Charlotte, now it’s in eight major markets up to 300 employees you mentioned. And so you’ve been watching other leaders. You’ve been watching Big Joe, who’s the dad who started it all. His son Clark, we got Kevin, we’ve got you. So what is the secret sauce? Or what is the important skills that all of you all have? What’s reinforced or what do you see inside of Eastwood?
Tara: Definitely that communication. Like I mentioned earlier, we all can talk to each other. There is nothing pretentious at Eastwood Homes. So we are all very much on the same page. We are all a team and the word team gets thrown around a lot by a lot of companies. But I really do believe we see each other as a team and a family. There was a LinkedIn post, and it was somebody saying, if you think you’re a family, you should probably rethink that, you know, at work.
And I really was offended. I’m like, no, we’re a family at Eastwood Homes. But it is that communication that we can go to anybody and ask any questions. There are a lot of mentors on our team. People regularly will reach out to somebody and say, hey, I need some help with this. Or I’m thinking this, what should I do? Everybody’s door is open all the time. The other thing at Eastwood is they empower us.
And again, it goes back to like the training we had two weeks ago. You know, on a department level for our marketing team, we are constantly growing. So we do digital summit trainings every year. Donna and I, Donna my director and I, will regularly sit on the builder townhall calls. That’s something that started during the pandemic to help all of the builders kind of figure out how to adapt to this new world.
But we do that every month. We, like our team just got back from the International Builder Show. So we’re always growing ourselves. We’re always expanding. We have the UNC training that we got together for. So I think that’s huge. And then they also give us autonomy. So especially Donna to me, she lets me stand in my areas of expertise.
Nicole: You’re empowered, I can tell.
Tara: Yes. And, you know, she’s excited for me too. And she always, in a meeting, she’ll let me speak up. And I think that’s a huge leadership trait right there, is you know, giving your team that opportunity, but also giving them the opportunities to grow and to continue learning and to become that one who has the experience. And one of the quotes that’s been in my head lately.
You know, I shared it with Donna and well, she’s, she already knew about it, and I shared it with my mom, because it just, it’s stuck with me lately, is build a team so strong, that you won’t know who the manager is. And I really think that’s what we do. You know, we, we just all work together so well, and anyone specific to the marketing department, anyone can reach out to any of us at anytime. And we can help. We can kind of give that answer and give that direction.
And I think for a leader, you have to kind of let go of your ego, if you’re going to embrace that mentality. You have to let go of, well, I want to be the go-to, I want him to be the one that everybody needs. And that can be hard, but you also shine when your team shines. So I think that’s probably Eastwood Homes in a nutshell, is build a team so strong that you don’t know who the manager is. Because you can really go to any of us, and we could help you.
Nicole: Yeah. And if you’d have been in the room with me, those two days, when we were at the beautiful Dubois Center, where the corporate executive training goes on, you know, the people in that room, I mean, nobody felt intimidated, like they couldn’t contribute. I mean, you know, there were times where I’d be like, okay, we have to move on. But everybody in the room was having such a good time. Well, let me tell you what I think about that, you know.
So it was really truly like, more like a think tank. You know, while I was holding the space, Tara was doing some teaching about marketing and sales, we had the two sales geniuses in there, right? And then, you know, but everybody in the room was just like, I’ve got something to add to that. And here’s a perspective. So I think you’re exactly right. It’s the lack of the ego maniacs, you guys just don’t hire them I don’t think.
Tara: Well that was one thing about the training that we did that I loved was when we broke up into groups and came up with ideas for marketing. And it was just so nice to hear that outside perspective of what we can do. And there were some really good ideas. And so yeah, so I’ve got them written down. And I’m definitely going to use some of them and bring them back to our team. So yeah, good stuff.
Nicole: I don’t want you to miss that. I’m gonna repeat what she just said, just so you don’t miss that. So don’t miss that Tara, who is overseeing all of this marketing stuff. We open it up to the entire group, which she said, we had home office, we had accounting, we had finance, we had builders in the room. And we said, what do you guys think we ought to do with marketing. And then we put them in three groups. And like, everybody had like, 12 things on their list.
And so Tara’s like, oh, my gosh, writing and all this stuff down. So she doubled her workload that day. However, a lot of genius came out of that group. And I think that sometimes leaders and companies miss that. It’s like, you know, the builders, especially like they’re on the front line, talking to the client, to the homeowner every day. And they’ve got serious genius about what’s good and what’s not good in what we’re doing.
Tara: I loved it. And it goes back to no silos like we, we need to talk to each other. For that very reason. I am not out meeting with the homebuyers. So they are, and they know what they would like. So it was great. Definitely. And one more thing where we do that, like, we just brought our sales training company, consulting group to train our builders.
And we just did that last week. Yeah, it was last week. So we brought builders in from eight divisions, and gave them a little bit of the sales training so that they understand how that side works. And it’s just a really interesting experience when you can do that and see each other, see each other’s perspective on things.
Nicole: Yeah. And so if you’re sitting there going, what? They just had the builders take sales training? Like don’t miss this, because what you guys said in the room that day, was so rich, when people drive to the community after you’ve done the geofencing or they’ve seen an ad on Facebook or whatever they come through, and here’s a gentleman. Oh, and by the way, so professional, everybody dressed professionally, looks professional, looks like a million bucks.
So we noticed this guy is in his Eastwood Homes truck with his shirt on or his jacket on or his hat on or whatever. People, you know, pull over and they wanted to talk to that gentleman. Do you know like, what’s going on around here? How many houses and you know, what’s the scuttlebutt and all that kind of good stuff.
And all of your, do people do that or not? Are they trying to get the down low? Because I can think I did that one time. I’ve just saying. I’m confessing. And so so then you know, your builders know what to say and know how to get those people to the right place, and do it in such a professional, systematic way.
Tara: Right. And, you know, I’ve taken that training too, on the marketing side. And it’s really interesting how Eastwood Homes, greets its buyers is we really want to know, the reason you’re moving. We don’t want you well, we will listen to you when you say I want four bedrooms, two and a half baths and an office and this many square feet.
But we want to know the reason why and how you’re going to use that home. And so when you kind of bring everybody into that strategy that no, we really want to know, a deeper story. It changes the way you look at sales. You know, we’re just not if you come in and say, well, we want a four bedroom, two and a half bath with an office and a screened-in back porch.
Oh, we have one perfect, here you go. We’re going to ask the additional questions there to make sure you’re going to really find your best home. So I think it’s just great that everybody’s on that same page.
Nicole: Yeah, I think was the word we used in the room that day, livability? You want to know the livability of the home.
Tara: How are you going to live in that home?
Nicole: Yeah. So fantastic. And, and again, that goes back to the word care. Right? Yeah. So let’s talk about built with care. So we talked about how you guys do this blog post, which is mind-blowing. And by the way, if you go over to the Eastwood Homes website, which is tell us the website.
Tara: Eastwoodhomes.com.
Nicole: Okay, she’s got a blog that has really great info. You might be like, I already built I’ve done or I’m never moving, whatever you’re thinking right now listen to this. But they’ve got decorating, organizing all this stuff. It’s a, the blog is amazing as well. I just want to say it’s full of great stuff.
Tara: /blog.
Nicole: Yes, /blog. Okay. So talk a little bit more about kind of, I think this is really your mission statement, built with care. And again, they did go to major lengths to make sure they know that, you know that they care. So we talked a little bit about your mission?
Tara: I love how this mission came about. So it was probably about five years ago, I should have pinned down that date for you, maybe six years ago. We noticed in our surveys and our surveys from our homebuyers, our surveys from our trade partners, and from our team members, that the word care kept popping up. And that is how built with care came about. Because we kept seeing that and all of these reviews and survey responses that we did.
And so, you know, this stems from our trade partners knowing that if they do work with us, they’re going to get paid quickly. You know, we cut checks on a weekly basis, so you’re not waiting for an entire month. And you know, our team members knowing that Big Joe or Clark is going to give you a call if you have an incredible month.
And not like it has to be the best of the best. But like you have a good month, you’re gonna get a call. And other things like the upper management of our company, drives all of our communities every month, to make sure they’re meeting that standard. And so they are in these homes, they’re in our models, they’re in our inventory homes, they’re in homes that are about to close, and making sure they meet those standards.
So it’s everything that we do. And it’s also down to the team members. You know, we really care about what we do. And again, that’s that leadership like inspiring excitement and each other for what we’re doing.
Nicole: Yeah. Excellence.
Tara: Having that task in front of us is we want people to find their dream home and it’s very exciting. And it spills into so much of what we do with the philanthropy side of things. So our major partner from a philanthropic perspective is Levine Children’s Hospital here at Eastwood Homes and this again, we can talk about it all day. So a portion of every home that we sell is donated here in Charlotte is donated to Levine Children’s, and we hold an annual golf tournaments and we are now regularly raising over $100,000 with every golf tournament.
Overall we raised over a million dollars for Levine Children’s. We were one of the sponsors of the Ryan Seacrest studios at Levine Children’s Hospital. That was one of the first things that we did with them so many years ago. And then we also sponsor the hospitality cart at Levine’s. So if you’ve ever had the experience of having your child at Levine Children’s most, a lot of the time, it is not a planned experience.
And you might show up there without a toothbrush, without toothpaste, no socks, and you’re staying all night, sometimes for a couple days. And so our hospitality cart goes up and down the hallway, with everything from books to read, to that toothbrush, toothpaste, coloring books, everything that you could possibly need during your stay there.
And that is, we’ve brought we’ve actually built a second hospitality cart to bring into the office so that when we do kind of the drive to get actual donations of deodorant and toothpaste and toothbrush, people can put it right in the hospitality cart. And it just connects us to the hospital. The last two years, I believe, we sponsored lights for Levine, Lightup Levine.
And that is right around the holiday time, the people stand outside of the hospital, and the kids and their families are inside the hospital looking out from the windows. And they have lights and we have lights, you know, we do the Eastwood flashlights, and there’s like the sparklers that light up. And we’re all waving them. And there’s music playing. And there’s a whole group of Jeeps there with their lights on and a ton of police cars there with their lights going.
Nicole: Oh my gosh, I love it.
Tara: It is the best experience. Like just if you have a chance next holiday season, next December, go. It is beautiful. So that, those are just some of the things we do. e’ve also volunteered for Toys for Tots, Second Harvest Food Bank, we do food drives, almost every year. We also we have rehabbed some of the outside of elementary school and some inside painting. We’ve also done that for I believe it was a domestic violence survivor home. And so, you know, we definitely like try to show that we care as well outside in our community.
And all of our team loves that. And we all get emotional and choked up. We’ve had several of our team members who have been to Levine Children’s, and who were recipients of the items on the hospitality cart, and who can speak to how much that matters. So those are the some of the ways that we show we care in what we do, so.
Nicole: That’s fantastic. And you know, one of the things when I went back to school and I got my master’s, I heard about this concept of having more than one bottom line. And I was like, what? And so there’s like, you know, you have the bottom line, like, are we making money. And so the truth of the matter is, Eastwood Homes makes beautiful homes and continues to grow. And you can’t do that unless you make money.
So shamelessly we have to make this thing called a profit, but then don’t miss that they have this second bottom line, which is community relations, right. And so I bet you guys get a ton of people who are just like now, who is the sponsor of all this? Eastwood Homes. And so if you’re driving down the road, and you’re looking for a house, you’re gonna pull in, because those are the good guys take care of the kiddos downtown Charlotte, right.
So it’s so fantastic. I love that. All right. So I’m going to say one of the most successful skills of leaders, especially at Eastwood Homes is having no ego. And another one is like, I’m going to use the word generosity.
Tara: I love that. Yeah.
Nicole: Yeah, yeah. All right. So so you know, I’m betting that there are people out there going, whoa, this is a lot. How did they pull all this off? Okay. So my first thing is.
Tara: I ask myself that a lot.
Nicole: Okay. Yeah, I mean, and you know, the thing of it is, though, is if you think about it, I think it’s a lot of intentionality, just like Big Joe and came by that day. He did not have to do that, you know, the guy could have gone out to his farm. He could have gone hunting. He’s a big hunter, he could have gotten done whatever, hung out with his wife.
But he decided to come and see you all, so I’m sure somewhere inside of Eastward, you’ve had some leaders that have flourished and others who have struggled. So what do you think the main difference is? People who are very successful at Eastwood Homes do this and those who don’t make it do that? What would be the difference?
Tara: That’s a great question. I think one of the areas where you can flourish or not as a leader in general, is patience.
Nicole: I love that.
Tara: I think if you don’t take the time to listen to your team, and really hear them, you know, let them speak. And then take the time to also be patient with your response and think about it. But then I also heard, you know, you don’t want to wait too long to respond. You don’t need to be perfect in your response, but put some thought into that.
And so I think patience is important. I have worked back way in early in my career for a manager without patience. And yeah, that was awful. And that was 100% the reason I left and left quickly, was how that came out. The lack of patience, how that came out.
Nicole: Boy did he or she mess up losing Tara Whiteley. Good gravy.
Tara: Oh, gosh, you know, so I think when you do show that patience, and you’re willing to listen, and again, encourage that communication. I think that’s huge. So like, just slow down, because we are definitely not just our industry, but everybody, we have that constant steady, like everybody needs something all the time. Emails are pinging, and everything’s happening. But if you can, once when your employee needs you, if you can stop and listen.
And then also, think about your response before you say it. I think that’s really important. I think that sets that can set leaders really far apart. If you can do that well. I will say that, you know, my director, Donna, that is one thing that she does. She will listen and, and people from all over the company know that they can talk to her when they need it. She’s a mentor for a lot of people. So I think that’s important.
Nicole: Yeah. And, you know, the thing that resonated with me, when we’ve been on a call together to kind of talk about the training that we did, we were on with Amy Wertham, from UNC Charlotte, and the two of them and, and you and I, and, you know, Donna was just like, Tara’s got this, you know, let her talk. She’s in charge. I mean, she was just, you know, that empowering piece. So, I’m sure that, you know, she could have just taken over and, you know, told all these things. But she didn’t. She’s just like, no, I lead Tara. Tara leads her strategy. And so I’ll let her talk about it. And so and I saw that empowering on that call.
Tara: Yeah, I mean, she is where I’ve learned. Like 99% of what I know is from her. So lots of kudos and credit goes to her, for sure.
Nicole: Oh, that’s fantastic. That’s fantastic. All right. Well, if we look down the road a little bit, you know, Eastwood Homes has continued to grow even through COVID. And everything that’s going on. What are you guys seeing kind of out on the horizon? We mentioned it real quickly. But you have this new program, which I think is fantastic. Because, you know, people little known fact, Nicole Greer has a real estate license, and I have to go for CE and all this kind of stuff. And, and whatever.
But you know, like, they’re like, well, they’re a custom builder, and they’re a track builder. You know, there’s this all this language out there. And, so I think that Eastwood does a beautiful job of both, right, like, we build these floor plans, but we make it liveable for you. And now you’re doing this thing where it’s build on your lot, which I think is, again, a sign of like innovation. Right? So will you talk a little bit about how that came about? And why you guys decided to like roll the dice on that one?
Tara: Yeah, so it’s been, I’ve actually learned recently that it was on the mind of Clark for a few years. It didn’t seem very feasible, back seven-ish years ago. And then as the market changed more recently over the pandemic that became something that we wanted to focus on.
There’s been a ton of changes in the market, you know, and one of the big things affecting all builders, not just us, it’s just finding land and you find people especially now that they can work from home, you know, they’re moving farther out. And they maybe they just want space, they want seven acres, they want to be able to see the stars and do that.
So we are able to do that and you know, being at Eastwood for eight years and working on our social media, I’ve had people steadily through the years say can you build that Cypress floorplan with that second story porch on my lot? Can I buy that plan from you? And unfortunately, the answer has always been no so far. And now it’s yes.
So that’s so exciting. It opens up so many opportunities for so many people. You know, if you have family land or you bought this amazing piece of land with a pond you know, years ago with your dream of building. And hopefully you’ve been following our social media for all this time. So now you can pick that plan and build it. And like you said, there’s a lot of different types of builders out there. But we are kind of semi-custom.
So our floor plans have a lot of structural options that you can make. So if you have zero need for a formal dining room, but you work from home, and you want that study with French doors, we can do that on most of our plans. And if you have a dream of sitting out back in a rainstorm in a screened-in porch, we can do that for you. So we have plenty of options to make it feel custom for you. We’re working, we’re close to about 40 floor plans that we’re offering right now for build on your lot within sixy miles of Charlotte.
Yeah, so definitely something that most people like I don’t want to say, without a doubt you’ll find everyone will find something, but I think most people will. And then, you know, we hope to be able to offer this in our other divisions, you know, as we get things rolling. So it’s an incredibly exciting time. It’s exciting for the marketing department we were brought in December. And here we are the end of February.
And in this three months, we have rolled out the website. And we’ve planned events, we’ve held our grand openings, we’ve gotten on Zillow and geofencing, and all the things. One thing about our team is we like a challenge. So we have really embraced it and had a lot of fun with it.
Nicole: Yeah, so I got like three things in my brain, I can’t decide which way to go. But the first thing I’m thinking about is like notice how this is a change, a huge change. Build on your lot, not in our neighborhood that’s, you know, already laid out where all the little houses are going to be, and the sidewalks and the swimming pool and the whatever. And so did you hear what she just said? She said, our team, the marketing team, loves a challenge, bring it on.
And so where, you know, you hear so much about how organizations are change resistant, and people don’t like change. The culture that you’ve put together at Eastwood is like, change, no problem. What is it? We’re on it. You know, there’s like this attitude. But I think that’s also because again, you guys like to learn. So what did you have to learn that’s different from building in this neighborhood you do all by yourselves to on the lot? Like so what learning curves did you guys go through?
Tara: Oh, my gosh, so.
Nicole: Wait, she just fainted, hold on, we gotta get her back up. No just kidding.
Tara: Not my department. So I can’t speak to too many specifics, but a lot of pricing questions and how that works. You know, we will kind of price a home based on the community it’s in and the land costs and you know, any municipality requirements. But as you’re building it for this, we’re pricing it for 60 miles around Charlotte. I don’t know how many counties off top my head, I should know that, but I don’t.
Nicole: That’s right. Mecklenburg is it’s own ginormous state unto itself. So anyways, it’s big people.
Tara: All of those counties around. And so I know that for the purchasing and estimating team has been a lot of work. You know, from the marketing side, it’s little nuances. Like we have a Cypress plan that is a cypress, two-car front-load garage, and then we have that’s on a slab and then we have that on a crawl. And then we have that on a basement. And then we have it two car side load, all those options. And then you have a three-car plan, front load or side load, all those options. And for the Cypress, we probably have about 10 plus elevations. So in homebuilding, that is the front.
Nicole: Right, you can have a siding, brick, this, that whatever. Yeah.
Tara: So the nuance there is what do we show on our website? And how do we organize all that data? You know, because we want people to know that you can build a three-car garage.
Nicole: And make it easy.
Tara: And make it easy. Yes. So that was last piece that we were at the events on Saturday, the grand opening, and people are like, oh, I was on your website, but I didn’t see pricing. And it was because the pricing got added Thursday, the event was Saturday. I was like have you been on it since Thursday? And they said no. I said go back. It’s there now, but it just takes time to work through all those little details and figure out how you’re going to present that in a way that is easy and not overwhelming to people.
And that was one of the things we did that we actually did for our regular communities, if you want to call it that, and build on your lot is we do the steps, we break that out for you. And so for build on your lot, we broke it out to five steps in how you build a home. Because it can be very overwhelming, like, I don’t have any dirt. I don’t have the floorplan.
And what do I do about water and sewer like all these questions, but we can help you with all of that. So we, easy is important, and how do you show that? But even, how do you advertise that on Google My Business and your location because we’re everywhere. So where do we show that we are?
You know, because you have to keep in mind that those that they call it a local pack is one of the highest ways to get traffic over to your website from Google. So where does this place live? You know, when it’s a 60-mile radius? And so it’s been a big, big learning curve for all of us, but I think we’re doing well. We’re getting there.
Nicole: Yeah. And so don’t miss that. I mean, you know, they take on learning curves with joy and glee. And I again, I think it’s because this environment of we learn, we do training, that’s what we do. I think because your senior leadership is like talking to people touching people. It’s not like they’re in some ivory tower.
And we’re disconnected from like, the purpose and the feel of those people, right, because they’re around, you know, it’s like they’re not doing this to make our lives hard. They’re doing this to make us successful. Which leads me to the other thing that was in my brain, which was, you know, don’t miss this, everybody.
So Tara’s never done that before, build your own lot. But like she was a figure outer. But you know, and that’s one of the things I think sometimes us leaders miss is that when we ask employees to do something they’ve never done before, we’re asking them to do it for us. But isn’t that a huge win for Tara, the individual to learn how to do all that?
Tara: I think so. I love a good challenge.
Nicole: I mean, this is huge for you. It’s like now you’ve gotten some like experience and like now almost like, you know, you would never say this, but I’ll say it for you. Because like now she’s kind of an authority on how to pull this off. Because you only get to be an authority if you experience it.
Tara: That’s true. That’s true. And you know, really, a lot of times we will have other people to go to and in this, we didn’t. It was, you know, because a lot of builders and maybe a lot is not the right word, but a noticeable number of builders are expanding to build your own lot, but none that I have a direct relationship to to be like, how did you do that? You know?
So we are very much figuring it out. And you know, with the Google location, we have a plan to watch it for three months, see how it’s doing and then we might have to go to plan B. But that’s our plan. So we’re learning as we go.
Nicole: Yeah, and the thing I love about your team is that there’s this beautiful yin and yang between all this creation and innovation and figuring it out stuff. And then y’all are watching the numbers hard. This works, this doesn’t work. Yeah. Oh, did you see her? Did you see her? She said we are. I mean they’re not just over their marketing they are, you guys are scientists and artists.
Tara: Yeah, we have every month we put together our numbers and we use a program called dash this and we put everything up there so we can see our bottom like our marketing bottom line. How much for one piece of traffic that’s what we call somebody coming in our model. How much did it take to get a sale? And we watch that all the time. So yeah.
Nicole: These gals are serious business gals, let me tell you. And then the only other thing I want to say the third thing that was in my brain just a little while ago that I wrote down was not only did you guys get the like the Eastwood Homes branding dialed in, like like you’re so dialed in now, which I think is huge.
Many organizations, their brand is all over the place, but one of the major things you did is like get the brand dialed in and then you had to take it and brand the build your lot. So you may think oh, I got that branding thing done, but it’s a continuous evolution in adding. Talk a little bit about your branding process. How you guys did that, because you did a lovely job.
Tara: So our brand again, I’m going to give props to Donna, the director of marketing. When she came on to Eastwood, that was one of the projects that she really embraced. So we had been moving in the right direction, that we didn’t have it nailed down, like you said. So with her, we got it nailed down.
And we, you know, we’ve been working to make sure everything is in line, through all this time, because that is our experience out there, that is what people see. And if they’re seeing different things, then that is confusing, first of all. And that might cause them to lose faith in us. So it’s been also, I think I keep saying exciting, but a very exciting project to watch that grow and to see everything fall into place.
And, to know, when you like, I can see just a glimmer, and I’m like, oh, there’s, there’s an Eastwood billboard, or there’s this. So we took, you know, we didn’t want to lose the power of our brand, when we develop build on your lot. So we actually just changed kind of a tagline just a little bit. And we call it the roof, the Eastwood Homes roof. So we kept that part and just changed the tagline.
So that it’s still felt very much like our brand, just a separate little division. And that was something when we first started talking about it, there was, you know, we are sitting at a table with, you know, all upper management and the thought leaders and, you know, they’re like, do we want a different color? Do we want this and it was important to the marketing team that we really build off of all that work that we’ve done.
And that visual identification of us out there by the public. You know, when you see our logo, you know, if you’ve been in the market in, especially in Charlotte, you’ll recognize us. And now you should be able to recognize our build-on-the-lot brands as well. So yeah, shout out to Click in Charleston, they are our visual creative team, and they do an amazing job. And I also want to shout out atypic here in Charlotte, they do all of our Google and website work. So Google AdWords and all of that we could not do that. What we do without our partners.
Nicole: That’s fantastic. And so notice, just those are the cousins. Right? Those are the cousins that are in the family. Don’t miss that, everybody. So I love it. I love it. I love it. Oh, my goodness, well, we’re at the top of our hour. I can’t believe it. Time flies when you’re talking about families and care and branding and innovation. You guys are amazing at Eastwood Homes. And I know but there’s people going wait, wait, wait, ask her one more question.
So if you are mentoring a single special listener, say we’ve got, you know, our podcast is user-friendly to anybody inside the organization. So say there’s a marketing guy or gal out there and they’re like, oh, how did Tara learn to do all this? How did she do her career? What tip might she have? What would you share with us is like a final nugget to encourage all of our marketing folks listening?
Tara: So keep growing and never stop developing those skills. And that may be through a conference like digital summits that may be going back to school. So shout out to my alma mater University of Florida. Go Gators. That program gave me so much confidence and so much excitement for what I was doing.
And so if you would have, I had just graduated in 2017, if you would have asked me in 2014 what I thought it was going to be doing I probably wouldn’t have known. But as I approached that program and then got into it, I had the spark ignite inside of me and I love everything I learned there and how I can apply it here.
So just keep growing. Sign up for newsletters, follow those leaders on social media just keep plugging in wherever that is. Highly recommend the digital summit that comes. They were coming to Charlotte they’re coming to Raleigh for sure in the fall. But definitely recommend that. Just plug in anywhere you can. Follow people on LinkedIn and keep learning.
Nicole: And so you’re on LinkedIn aren’t you?
Tara: I am
Nicole: Okay. All right. And so if they just go over there and they look for Tara T A R A Whiteley, W H I T E L EY I want to make sure I got it right. There we go. You’ll find her over there and then of course she is over at eastwoodhomes.com So you can check out that and you can find her over on LinkedIn at T A R A W H I T E L E Y.
It’s been such a pleasure Tara for having you on the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. I just love talking to you. Her and I have this same like little vibrant energy there. Dare I say it like that. But yeah, we feed off of each other. It’s been so good to have you on the show. Thank you so much for your time and energy and your genius.
Tara: Thank you. It’s been great. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Voiceover: Ready to build your vibrant culture? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with her strategies, systems and smarts to increase clarity, accountability, energy and results. Your organization will get lit from within. Email Nicole@nicolegreer.com. And be sure to check out Nicole’s TEDx talk at nicolegreer.com.
Wonderful episode…I liked when Tara talked about being patient for listening…it is awesome to know how Eastwood Homes has created its workplace culture, which impacts in a positive way within the Company, but also in the very good service to clients. Congratulations!