341 Enhancing the Home Buyer Experience - Doug French Oct 14 2026

Greg Bray: [00:00:00] Hello, everybody, and welcome to today's episode of the Builder Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin with OutHouse.

Greg Bray: And we are excited today to have joining us Doug French. Doug is the CEO at Stylecraft. Welcome, Doug. Thanks for being with us today.

Doug French: Yeah, Greg and Kevin, really appreciate y'all having me on. I'm excited to join the pod.

Greg Bray: Doug, let's just start off, get that quick introduction and just the short background overview about yourself for [00:01:00] people who haven't met you yet.

Doug French: Yeah, my name is Doug French. I'm the president, CEO, and owner of Stylecraft. We are a production builder located in central Texas. We primarily build what we consider B and C markets, but we try to really kind of get great A locations in those B and C markets. So, we're not in the big, huge metros. We build about a thousand homes a year. We'll be right around 1,100 this year in 2026. So, excited about that growth. Yeah, home building's been a fun business.

My father started the company in the early '80s. He had a health scare back in 2013, and I kind of started taking over the day to day around that time. In the last six or seven years ago, I bought him out 100%. And now I'm the sole owner and operator of the company. And it's been a lot of fun growing the team, and I feel like every day there's something different in this industry which keeps you on your toes and keeps me engaged.

Kevin Weitzel: Now, did you get a good deal buying him out?

Doug French: I think I did, Kevin. [00:02:00] Luckily, he gave me the friends and family discount.

Kevin Weitzel: At least you got the friends and family pricing, right?

Doug French: Exactly.

Kevin Weitzel: Alright. Before we get started, let's find out an interesting factoid about you that has nothing to do with work, family, or the home building industry at all.

Doug French: Nothing about work. Okay. So, one thing that is interesting about me that some people know, so I'm not too shy about it, but I'm in recovery. So, I have been drug and alcohol free for 25 years almost. I got sober when I was 18 years old and spent a number of years in recovery. And by the grace of God, here I am. And it's really been a complete 180 as far as my life. Like, it was like old me and then now new me today. And again, God's been very, very faithful through that journey. And I'm just really fortunate that at a very young age, Kevin, I got a second chance at life. And I really, truly believe that. God gave me a second chance and I'm hoping to make the very best of it.

Kevin Weitzel: So, you found that low step at a good young age, which is very beneficial and good.

Doug French: Yeah, no, I would agree. There's so many people that suffer with [00:03:00] addiction for so many years and they finally bottom out and find their footing. And I was just very, very fortunate to really kind of hit that bottom at a young age and not have to suffer myself and then put other people, my loved ones through that for an extended period of time either. So, like I said, I'm very, very fort- fortunate and it's only by the grace of God. But it's been a journey.

Greg Bray: Well, congrats on that, Doug. That's fantastic. Keep it up, I guess, right?

Doug French: Thanks, Greg.

Greg Bray: Well, tell us just a little bit more about Stylecraft. You already mentioned a little bit about where you build, but what type of buyers and more detail on the type of product that you guys are putting out there? Who are you trying to serve and what are you providing for them?

Doug French: Yeah, we focus on the entry level. So, our average price point is about $315,000. We really hit that market hard. We have a little bit of move up buyer. We've introduced some town homes this last year, which has allowed us to even hit a more attainable price point, which has been a fun experiment. And then we are in a couple of military [00:04:00] markets. And so in those military markets, a lot of VA buyers there.

Greg Bray: So, given that you focus on that first-time buyer for a lot of your product, and obviously affordability is a big deal in today's housing market. We hear things about the age of the first-time buyer going up and up, you know, because of the challenges of getting into a home and everything. What is it that the first-time buyer kind of needs to understand or know from that buying process that might be different from someone who's that move up buyer or more luxury buyer?

Doug French: I think a lot of the first-time buyers they need help being educated on just the process. You know, buying a home is complicated. There's an appraisal, there's a survey, there's inspections, there's the mortgage process that you have to go through. There's a lot of really hoops you have to jump through. And if you've not done that before, or if you're not in the industry, some of those things can be very intimidating. And so, really helping that buyer through that process, having [00:05:00] really strong preferred lenders that we work closely with has certainly helped that out, that also our level of service and their level of service is aligned. Those are some of the keys, for me, as far as getting that first-time home buyer into a home and through the closing.

Greg Bray: Are there conversations that you have internally with your marketing department about this education process? Like, what kind of content should we be putting out there to help these buyers not just learn in general, but also learn, "Hey, we should do this with Stylecraft because they're being really helpful in guiding us through that process."

Doug French: We do work very, very closely with our preferred lender, which is Kangaroo Home Lending. So, they will come in and provide a lot of education to our sales staff and really help educate them on the process, the dos and the don'ts. You know, obviously there's some legalities there as well. And so, they will really help educate our sales staff and then they in turn kind of can help [00:06:00] educate our buyers.

It's kind of like for us online sales, like online sales job is to book an appointment. And our sales executive, it's kind of the same thing with the mortgage company. Their job is to help book an appointment and get them pre-qualified because if we can get a home buyer pre-qualified for a loan, you typically can sell a house. If you don't get them pre-qualified for a loan, there's one more huge hurdle that has to be overcome. It's kind of that first step in the home buyer journey.

Now, of course, we have some buyers walk in our door, they're pre-qualified, they have a realtor, they have all the things, they're ready to go. They're very well educated. But we have a lot that don't. They just walk in and they've either driven by one of our neighborhoods or seen us online and they need a lot of education and some handholding there and that's perfectly fine. That's what we're here to do.

Greg Bray: I think that's great that you're pulling in the mortgage company. I know in some of the research that we did talking to buyers, one of the big questions was [00:07:00] we don't understand financing. And I think there's a lot of home builders who don't lean into education around financing very well. Typically when we do a builder website, there's like this one little financing page and it just has a link to the preferred lender and kind of says, "Hey, call this person." And it doesn't really teach much.

I think it's great that you're talking about, "Hey, we need to educate not just the buyer, but our own team so that they're ready to answer those questions and be supportive of that buyer in that process." Do you have kind of a vision of before and after, like we didn't used to do this and now that we do, we see some benefits that come from it? Anything along those lines?

Doug French: Honestly, being at the market segment we are as far as the first-time home buyer, we've always understood how important and how crucial the mortgage operation is. Back in the day, like when I first started, our mortgage company, we had our model home. We sold really about 200 houses a year out of one model home. We had kind of a centralized sales office is what we called it. And right next door was our mortgage operation. [00:08:00] Literally, it was on site. And so, we've always understood and realized how important that pre-qualification is. And so, that's really not something that's changed.

Kevin Weitzel: So, when it was next door, and I'm not trying to make it sound smarmy at all, but you know, when you go into a car dealership and there's all those guys in the suits over the chain smoking waiting for that car to park and they're right over there. When you'd mentioned, "Oh, well, yeah, you know, Susie and Dave, I guess the next step is we probably just need to educate you on how to get financing in place." And then they just kind of pop in the door. Was it crazy like that or was it a little bit less smarmy than that?

Doug French: Yeah, I'm hoping we were a little bit more smooth than the used car salesman, Kevin. That is a great analogy. Yeah, I hope we were much more smoother than that, but I mean, it kinda was that one-stop shop, and that's what we try to do. We try to keep things simple for people to where, you know, we have the relationship with the title company, we have the relationship with a lender.

Now, of course, they always have their own option, but we do try to make it simple for people and end [00:09:00] up forming really strong relationships with companies that are equally customer-focused and customer-aligned, you know, kinda like Stylecraft is. And then also, they're all catering towards that first-time home buyer. So, they're very educated. They understand what a FHA loan is and what a VA loan is, and they understand the mechanics there and how to work with somebody that may not have the best credit score, they need some stuff cleaned up, and that's kinda the world that they live in, and that's our buyer profile. So, it works out really well.

Greg Bray: So, in those relationships, Doug, with the tight partnership, how much are you going to them and saying, "Hey, this is what we need for the customer experience we want, or this is what we need to connect with these buyers we're after," versus them coming to you and saying, "Here's how you guys should be doing it, to make sure the financing is done right?"

Doug French: Yeah, it's really a team effort. I think we are very involved. I own 49% of the mortgage company, and so it is a joint venture, and so we do have some control over that, and so we are involved. We have a couple of board [00:10:00] seats, and so we're involved with the team there that kind of drives that organization forward and provides the customer service. And so on that side of the equation, we are very involved.

As far as, the legal and the type of lending programs and the analytics, they're very strong on that. And so we feel like it's a really good kind of partnership where we're very focused on customer service and making sure that loans are getting closed and that we're doing a good job servicing the client, and they're very focused more on the back office about, you know, analytics and getting people qualified and making sure that they're providing a good service with our input, and then also just the legal side of it as well.

Kevin Weitzel: So, my last question on the mortgage side of things, in the lending side, especially since you have a financial aspect within the company, do you find that it's better to have that handholding process with the client in person, or do you have tools on your [00:11:00] website, or just a mention on your website of, you know, the lending process and how that works? Or do you have a full page dedicated to it and the whole process all as part of the home building site?

Doug French: Yeah, Kevin, that's a really good question. It's something I should clarify, too. So, the relationship that I said earlier, like, where they were next door, that is no longer the case. We do not have a centralized sales office. We now have model homes in all of our communities. We moved away from that a number of years ago, and so now it's almost exclusively done online, or over the phone or over text message.

Now, they certainly can. We have, you know, loan officers in every market that we operate in, and they can come in and see us, but the times that happen is much more fewer than it ever used to be. They used to come in quite often and would come drop off paperwork and talk about things and make sure their files were good. But now it's just become so automated and so digital that everybody can do it online.

Greg Bray: So, Doug, given that you are aiming at that first-time buyer, you're probably working [00:12:00] really hard to keep your pricing in that affordable range or have I'm assuming some really tight targets there of where you want to be. How do you continue to improve your systems and your internal efficiencies without kind of losing the touch with the customer and making it feel like they're just a number in the process as opposed to a person? What are some of the things you guys do there?

Doug French: Yeah, Greg, and that's really one of the things that we lean heavily on to set us apart. And so we go head-to-head with a lot of the big publics, you know, the Lennar Homes and the Century Communities, and DR Horton is our primary competitor, and they do a fabulous job at what they do, but one thing that we really try to focus in on is the customer experience.

Even, like, from our online sales team, how we do the handoff from online sales to our onsite sales team, and then how we hand off from our onsite sales team over to our construction manager, then how we hand off from our construction manager [00:13:00] to our warranty manager who's going to see you through the next year of your home ownership journey. And so, we really focus in on those handoffs and those touchpoints, and we really build our system around that.

I'm sure y'all have walked through a ton of model homes in your day, but I can tell you, most model homes I walk into, I don't do it as much as I used to, but I used to walk a lot of competitors' models, but more often than not, you'd walk in, and the sales executive would not even get out of their chair to come greet you. Kevin, I mean, how many times has that happened?

Kevin Weitzel: If I'm in the room, never, because those people would be terminated instantly.

Doug French: Yeah. Well, but what I'm saying is, how many competitors or people that do not know who you are have you walked into and they don't even get up out of the chair? I mean, it happens, and not infrequently in this industry, which is crazy to me. But It's like, "Okay, hey, here's a key. Go show yourself around. Let me know." There's order-taking, right? And during COVID, I think you'd get away with that. Right [00:14:00] now, you cannot. You have to provide that level of service and step follow-up.

And I'm not saying that everybody's like that, but I've certainly had that customer experience quite a lot. And I'm sure there's been people who've walked in our model homes who've gotten that as well, but that is not our standard, that is not the norm, and that is not our culture either. And so, we have core values that we preach consistently, which is care, serve, and improve.

And so, we are constantly improving our processes, Greg, to kind of your point, but then also that care. If you're not getting out of your chair and going and greeting the customer, you don't care. And if you don't care, you can't work at Stylecraft. That's very black and white for us. And so, we put a lot of emphasis on that. We do a lot of training around that. We put a lot of emphasis on that, and we talk a lot about it.

Greg Bray: So, in addition to your effort to walk and experience it yourself, obviously, you can't talk to every customer every day and make sure that the salesperson got out of their chair. What are some of the things you do, Doug, to measure [00:15:00] customer experience and kind of understand where things are working well and where they might need some additional support?

Doug French: Sure. We are a big proponent of third-party surveys, and so we do third-party surveys. I know they're not perfect. I know that there's some holes in it. I realize, because I'm reminded that, hey, a lot of times the people that respond to that are the people that aren't happy. And that's not true for us, we get a lot of really positive, and so we really do a good job of monitoring that. And so we stay on top of that. What I always say on that is I'm not looking and making a decision based on one survey. What we are looking for is what are the trends.

And so, when we first started with third-party surveys, we used to always do, like the tabletop survey at the closing table. Really all that ever caught was if somebody was really, really, really upset, you catch it there and you could follow back up with them. When we first started with third-party surveys, we realized really quickly that [00:16:00] we had a few problems. One was we were allowing people to move into homes that were not clean, and then we were having remaining items on a punch list that we never did come back and finish. And if you want two things that are pretty easily solvable, but that will really tank your customer satisfaction, it's those two things.

You move into a brand new home and you go run your hand across the countertop, or let's see, you know, you're going in and somehow you look above a cabinet and there's trash on top of the cabinet, or even the front door's not wiped down. It's kind of small things. It seems like, oh, this is so obvious, and anybody would do that. But the reality is when you're a construction manager and you're just going, going, going, those things sometimes aren't so obvious.

I remember my friend bought a house from us, this was 15 years ago. I walk into his garage the next day and we have the PVC blinds that we hung up in the bedrooms, the trash from that, and it wasn't a lot, but it was in his garage. That is completely unacceptable. It was [00:17:00] neat in a pile, but that's unacceptable. Those are the kind of things that, like, as a builder, if you are doing those type of things, they're very easy to correct.

And so, we put some process in place, we corrected getting the home clean, and we put a process in place to where, if there is a leftover, which there never should be, and we track it weekly. We report on it weekly. How many homes last week did we close that had one or more leftovers? Now that we track it that way, we always know. And now that we know, we can have a process in place.

Let's say at the day of closing, we realized, "Oh my goodness, like, we did the punch, we did the walk, what we call homeowner orientation. We did not see there was a scratch on the cabinet door. Now we have to get this cabinet door replaced, and we can get it replaced in the next two weeks. But we're still going to close the house. We're not going to delay the house two weeks for a scratch on a cabinet door. Now, we should've caught it but we're not perfect just like anybody else isn't.

But those type of things have got to be tracked because that construction manager and the area warranty manager who [00:18:00] are doing those things, and that's really what we ended up doing, honestly, Greg, is we got that out of our construction manager's hands, and now that's our area warranty manager's hands, and they are much better at following up and really kind of tracking those type of things. We really redid our entire process in order to provide a better customer experience. And since we've done that, it's night and day. So, it's been really, really good.

Now, during COVID, our customer satisfaction score went down, and I can tell you right now, it's because we were closing houses that we should have not been closing. They had those cabinet doors scratched. We weren't coming back and solving them. And that's just a kind of a nuanced example, but there was things that were not done, that needed to be done before we closed. And when that happens, your customer satisfaction score is never good.

Honestly, there's just always these best practices in blocking and tackling in home building. Yes, AI is super cool, and yes, this new process is really cool, and there's all these cool, fun things you can do, but at the end of the day, there's these [00:19:00] fundamental things, and if you're not doing those, you shouldn't try to go to graduate school if you haven't got the elementary things done.

If you can't hand over the house and it be clean, and if you can't hand over a house and you have a punch list and you're not coming back and finishing that, focus on those before you try to go and get AI all implemented throughout your company or whatnot. There's always those basic fundamental things in home building, and they haven't changed. It was true 30 years ago, it was true 20 years ago, it was true 10 years ago. It's true today.

Kevin Weitzel: Now, Doug, there's no secret that there is profitability that's built into structural options and to design center options. There's also a cost in that too. To be in that competitive first-time buyer price mark, have you gravitated toward or moved toward packages, number one, and/or two, slot building? So, if you're interested in plan three, guess what? We've got a plan three that'll be done in two and a half weeks. It's going to be on this particular lot. Have you gone to that type of model, or are you still allowing for some design changes, [00:20:00] some structural changes, being able to select which lot you want within the community ahead of time?

Doug French: We do a little bit of both. So, we are very spec heavy, and so we're an inventory builder, but we have also realized that we have got to get our to be builts back up. And so right now, we're trying to do about five. Our target is five to be built a week, which is about, you know, 30% of our houses. So, 70% of our houses would start as a spec, and the other, you know, 300 or so a year would start as what we call a to be built or kind of a ground up to where you go and pick your lot, pick your plan, pick all your finishes.

And Kevin, we will provide a little bit of customization, even if the house is like in frame. Now you can't change your cabinets, but you can change some color type selections as well. So, we try to provide as much flexibility as we can while still getting it right and providing a really good experience.

What we will not do is do [00:21:00] things that are outside of that box to where we end up dropping the ball, not having a good process, we look like idiots, we lose money, and the customer's frustrated. That's just a lose, lose, lose. So, we have learned those lessons over the years, and sometimes we still learn them when we try to do too much. And sometimes when you say yes to something you should be saying no to, it just really causes chaos for everybody.

Greg Bray: Doug, I think you hit on something that's pretty interesting from a customer experience standpoint. Sometimes the idea is, "Oh, to make a customer happy, I have to say yes to everything." Whatever they want, right? The customer's always right type of mantra. But what you've just described is there are some times where it's actually much better to say no to the customer because you avoid kind of putting yourself in this one-off unique scenario that your process isn't designed to handle well, which can get you in trouble. Is that something you guys purposely talk about, when to say yes and when to say no to [00:22:00] a customer?

Doug French: 1,000%. We have some really good process built around this, but let me tell a quick story on this. iIt's pretty funny. So, when I first started in the industry, you know, I'm working for dad, and he comes in my office when he says, "Hey, Doug, I just got a call from a realtor. I want you to go check out this house in Creek Meadows with me." So, we jump in the car, drive about 15 minutes to Creek Meadows. And this home, it's been framed. I think it's in MEP rough-in.

And we go upstairs and he's trying to figure out how can we work in a third bathroom in this home upstairs? There's one bathroom up, there's three bedrooms, this buyer and the realtor on behalf of the buyer was calling said, "Hey, can y'all add a bathroom into the house?" So, he said yes to that. He went there, he figured it all out, he drew it up in a little plan. He was so proud and he did a really good job.

And my father was somebody who always wanted to close the sale, and he always wanted to make people [00:23:00] happy. And he was so good at that. And if he'd been the builder and the sales executive, he probably could have pulled that deal off very, very well and everybody would have been happy, no would have known the better. But those type of deals at the time, we didn't have the process to track that. We don't either right now. We will not do that type of thing.

But I think when I look back at that, and it's just an example of sometimes you can try to tell somebody yes. And again, the home was at MEP rough. It would have sold to somebody anyways, but I guarantee what ended up happening there is we lost money on that change. The superintendent, the construction manager of that job was probably super frustrated. We didn't go back and re-permit the bathroom. I probably shouldn't be saying that. I think the statute of limitations is over, hopefully. I guarantee that didn't happen, so if the inspector caught us, he probably would have been very happy. And if we screwed it up bad enough, the customer wouldn't have been very happy either, right? So, it's kind of, again, a lose, lose, lose.

So, what we put into place, Greg, and a lot of builders have this is what we call a change matrix. [00:24:00] After this period in the build, you no longer can change these things. And as the build progresses, you can change less and less and less. And so, like, you know, countertops, I don't know exactly when that is, but there's a certain stage in the build process where you no longer can change your countertop color. And if you really want to have those countertops, Kevin, to your point, then you need to go build a house from scratch.

Now, we also have a process to where if you want to break that, we have a process where you get that approved. And so, we're very process-oriented, but at the same time, a lot of it's because you paint a house, the exterior of a house, the wrong color a few times, you realize really quickly that's $4,000. That was 10 year ago money too. I'm sure it's probably more. It's probably six or 8,000 now. Who knows? But you do that a couple times, it starts to hurt really, really bad, and you realize really quickly that this isn't worth it.

And it's not that we're stupid. It's not that we can't remember to change [00:25:00] a paint color and just call the painter or call your paint supply company and update the purchase order. We can do all those things. We're very, very smart. The reality is we don't have the system to do that because 99 out of 100 times, we're not doing it. It's that one time when you try to make that one customer happy, and I always want to make the customer happy. And if we can, we will. But if we're only doing it one out of 100 times, that's not a good fit for our process.

And so, we have to have the discipline, and discipline is something that I don't think is talked about enough in business, but you have to have the discipline to say no. When you have that discipline, then you can create a great process, you can drive a great value to your customer, and you can build a great business. But without that discipline, if you're constantly going around and skirting process and doing things you shouldn't be doing and saying yes when you should be saying no, eventually you'll be saying no to something you should be saying yes to.

Greg Bray: I think that's a great insight, [00:26:00] Doug. Again, this idea that the customer's not always right and we can't always give them everything they might ask for, especially when they don't understand the implications of what they're asking for.

Doug French: Yeah. And, you know, Greg, one last thing, and then I'll be quiet. Another thing we had to really talk about too was saying no with grace, explaining the no, letting people know we can say yes to this, but the reality is by the end of it, you wouldn't like us very much, and we probably wouldn't either because we don't have that process. So, really helping the sales executive and the team understand the reason for the no, and explaining that to the buyer. We're not just saying no because we're a bunch of curmudgeons and we don't want you to have the right countertop color or because it's an inconvenience to us. No, we're saying no because the chances of us getting this correct and you being happy with the end result is very, very unlikely. We want to protect you and protect ourselves.

Greg Bray: Well, Doug, this has been a great conversation. We [00:27:00] appreciate you spending so much time with us today. Before we finish up, do you have any last thoughts or words of advice you'd like to leave with the audience?

Doug French: You know, Greg, home building is such a fun industry. And one of the reasons that I just fell in love with it so quickly was because there's sales, there's marketing, there's legal, there's finance, there's accounting, there's operations. I'm so passionate about it and it's so fun because every single day it's something new, another muscle you have to work out, another skill you have to pick up on. And I just would encourage people just to really continue to evolve and to learn. I think one of the things that I've done a good job of in my career, and really even when I talk about my recovery, and I think what leads to extraordinary results is when you have the discipline to consistently perform something over the long haul.

And so, my advice to people is not to always jump around. I know people sometimes get anxious about things and they want to [00:28:00] jump around and I understand that. Sometimes I'm the same way. I see this new shiny object or I see a squirrel and I get distracted, but if you can figure out what are those things in your life that if you do on a consistent basis, time and time and time and time again, and then you'll look up in 10 years or 30 days or 60 days or 90 days, your health is that way, your spirituality is that way, business is that way, friendships are that way, family's that way.

So, I just want to encourage people to sit down and be thinking about, "Hey, what are those behaviors that if I consistently perform, they're going to drive that long-term value?" And then when I look up when I'm 60 or 70 or 80 years old, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this has been a life well worth living."

Greg Bray: Well, Doug, again, thank you so much for listening. I know you put out a newsletter and things there. If people want to kinda connect and follow you, what's the best way for them to get on your list?

Doug French: Yeah, Doug French on LinkedIn, and that's the platform I'm the most [00:29:00] active on. And I'm on there on a weekly basis. And so yeah, please look me up there and follow along and have a newsletter also that I put out every other week. And then I did start a YouTube channel, but I'm not super active there. It's official Doug French. It's been kind of a slower go, but I'm also on YouTube.

Greg Bray: Well, thank you for your time today, and thank you everybody for listening to the Builder Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. Thank you.

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