“LBM Talks” hosts top professionals from different sectors of the lumber and building material industry to share their expertise, with a heavy emphasis on practical, tactical strategies to help you serve your markets and grow your business.
Dave Ables is the Owner and President of Tri-County Lumber Company, located in Clearwater, MN. Dave has nearly 30 years of experience in the trucking industry, 10 in hardware stores, and he is a consistent user of LinkedIn.
Dave believes LinkedIn is a tool that can expand and improve his business through his network of connections. In this episode, Dave shares how he got his start on LinkedIn; its use for recruiting; building relationships with vendors; reaching new customers; and more.
We hope this episode will inspire you to leverage the power of this professional, social media platform. Enjoy.
Connect with Dave: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveables/
Send all podcast inquires to sally@lbmjournal.com.
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Watch this conversation and more great content from LBM journal via our YouTube channel here.
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Prefer to read about it instead? Take a peek at the transcript below:
(Editor’s note: Transcript is AI-generated and may include some errors.)
Sally Traxler-Lacey 00:00
This episode of LBM talks social media is sponsored by PWT. At PWT, you get more than an engineered wood supplier. You get a true partner who’s ready to support your success. Coast to coast. That’s something they’re willing to shake on.
Sally Traxler-Lacey 00:34
Hello, Dave Ables. How are you?
Dave Ables 00:45
I am doing well. And thank you very much for having me, and I look forward to talking today.
Sally Traxler-Lacey 00:49
Oh my gosh, me too, Dave. Let’s just start out with you introducing yourself to our audience.
Dave Ables 00:56
Okay. My name is Dave Ables, you know, I’m a long time veteran of business. I’ve been in transportation majority of my career. And then I started buying hardware stores back in 2013 and now we have a true value store in Minnesota, here in Big Lake, Minnesota that my wife runs, and then I have Tri County lumber here that I run. They’re really all called three sons. So it’s like it’s three sons hardware and three sons lumber company. But we’re doing business as Tri County lumber, and that’s the business that we acquired in 2024 of January, and then my sons. So there’s three of them, obviously, because it’s all three sons, they all work in the business. So my oldest son, David, who’s 24 is a manager at our big lake true value store. My son Sam is one of our sales folks here at Tri County lumber. And my son Nicholas just started because he just graduated high school, and he is now working on the yard and operations and helping us with some of the showroom stuff. So it’s kind of a family affair.
Sally Traxler-Lacey 01:55
Yeah, that sounds very endearing. Um, when you and I were talking before we hit record, it’s like you just kind of get this feeling, um, when a unit like that is just kind of all moving towards the same goal in your business. So that’s awesome.
Dave Ables 02:15
Yeah, I think it’s really cool. And one thing that’s been really good for me is, you know, my kids are enrolled. And I kind of told you before we got on why. I mean, so as a corporate executive, we had six corporate moves through a 28 year career. So quite frankly, they wanted to ground themselves. And I think, you know, they saw trucking was a great thing. I mean, I built the money to be able to buy the businesses from trucking. But ultimately, they didn’t like that lifestyle of two years of school, four years at school, one year that school. So they kind of thought, You know what, Dad, we like what you’re doing now. Let’s be a part of it. Let’s create this empire here in Minnesota, so that as they have children, and they’re 18 to 23 that they don’t have to move all over the country like we did in the past. So I think that’s maybe why they’re more enrolled then then they would be otherwise. But it’s also a great business. You know, hardware and LBM is it’s fun. And for me, it’s really trucking too, because every single thing that goes out of Tri County lumber, not every single thing, but 95 97% goes out on a truck. So we do it. So really, it was a great fit for me, based on my background of running trucks. And I mean, I hauled for every window manufacturer, you know, everybody in the over the 28 years, so we were already familiar with those things. And I think that’s something that we’ve really brought to the table here is now we’ve got GPS and all the trucks, we can send delivery notifications, pictures of the deliveries and all those things, and they didn’t have that prior to and I think it’s probably just getting into the LBM world, whereas in trucking, we started doing that stuff 10 years ago, right? We started doing electronic logs about that same time, so it’s something that I was able to bring to the table. We’ve really we have ECI spruce as our software, but we’ve taken it to the next level and done the enhancements to be able to do the things that our customers and contractors want, and that’s notifications and pictures of where the goods are located at, et cetera, et cetera.
Sally Traxler-Lacey 04:14
Yeah, that sounds like that knowledge has really brought a lot to your business. And you said empire in Minnesota, it’s kind of what it sounds like with, what is it? Three locations?
Dave Ables 04:23
just two here. There’s so the big lake and then clear water. But, I mean, we’re in expansion mode. Tomorrow, we’re going up and look at another acquisition. You know, I’m young, so I, although I retired from trucking, I’m 56 and I don’t feel any different than I did when I was 30. Yeah. So and having the children, we want to grow and we want to grow from where we’re at today, which is on i 94 right outside of Clearwater. We want to grow north, right so our target market is that the the northern end of the Minnesota, the lakes areas
Sally Traxler-Lacey 04:51
totally. And I well, I don’t know if you know this, but I’m also, I also live in Minnesota. I live in Maple Grove, and. And I saw on a LinkedIn post, one of your posts, somebody commented and said, We’re located at the farm right across from Lake Maria. And so that’s where your location is, because me and my husband go hike at Lake Maria State Park all the time. I’ll have to check it out like the next time I’m in that area. Right? Awesome. Well, Dave, so the reason that I reached out to you was because you are, in my opinion, big on LinkedIn. Most of your posts I see, get just a lot of engagement, lots of comments. And I think that was actually my first encounter with your name ever was on LinkedIn commenting on an LBM journal post. So I’m curious when you started being active on LinkedIn, and kind of what that evolution has been like over the years, months, whatever.
Dave Ables 05:56
Okay, so I kind of mentioned to you I cheated a little bit, because in trucking it’s huge, right? So I started back, let’s call it 2015, and you know, there’s trucking everywhere. So there’s a lot of people, a lot of people that would follow you. And I said, I probably have, I don’t know, eight or 9000 followers, and it really originated from that. And we had a lot of podcasts and things that we did in trucking too. So every aspect of the business has a different group of people that talk about it, so I started to build my network that way, and it’s been great. I mean, to be honest with you, part of the way that I became who I did, I started out as a truck driver in 1995 and by the time I retired, I was a CEO of an $800 million company. And I did that because I’m a smart guy, but I also understood how to surround myself with even smarter people, and LinkedIn is a means to an end in that regard. So with the people that I knew and the people that I got to know through LinkedIn, I could get an answer to any question almost instantaneously, right? And not every one person, no matter what company you run, knows everything, but I have a network of folks that know everything, right? There’s somebody in that network that knows everything, so I always had that ability to be able to get that and the same thing is applied in the LBM world. And I mentioned we bought our first hardware store back in 2013 so it’s not new to us. My wife runs the hardware end of the business, and so we started to build that following back as early as 2015 too, when I got into it, because I would do trucking posts and I would do hardware posts and things about the store. And then I created, you know, there’d be people even during this true value do it best thing, I really probably gained 1000 different people that I got to know or followers during that period, because I talked a lot about it. I was a member of the true value Co Op originally, and then we became a retailer when that went defunct, and it became owned by a con. And then we later joined do it best when I bought Tri County lumber. So we had, you know, I had sides of both, or information from both sides. And again, that created more of a network. Someone would see a post, and they go to a direct message after that, and they take things offline, and I learn, and they learn like, I mean, the reality of it is it’s an educational tool. And then every once in a while, you know, I we drag race, every once in a while, I’ll put a post about a weekend race or something. I know it’s a business site, but still, I think some people, sometimes those will get more likes than a business post will, you know? I mean, you just got to be careful with what you do and how often you do it. But that network that I’ve amassed really has helped me become who I am, and I stress to all my employees and all of our team members here at Tri County and even at the hardware store, to get on LinkedIn. My youngest son, Sam, who’s now in in sales here, he recently jumped on LinkedIn. I think it’s just a great network to get to know people. And again, you don’t have to be the most intelligent guy in the room. You’ll find that person out there and they’re most people are willing to help you. Hardware is really good, like that, and so is trucking. We’ll help each other with anything. I mean, I have a little competitive market around here, but to be quite frank, there’s enough business to go around for all of us anyway, so there’s not, like, a bunch of hidden secrets we don’t want anybody to know. I mean, what we do is we pick up and we deliver and we broker freight, right? Essentially, we sell commodities, we sell lumber, building materials, special order products, and we deliver them in a timely manner, undamaged. And so it’s been a good thing for me, for my family, and I enjoy it
Sally Traxler-Lacey 09:20
totally. So it’s been a tool for you to surround yourself with smart people in our industry, that you can use each other, in a sense, through your connection, to help each other grow. I noticed in a lot of your posts, well, for one, I think they’re great. I love how you just lay everything out there, and kind of at the end, or you really like to also just kind of boast on Tri County and your other location, and say, these are all the awesome things we’re doing. And at the end, you kind of talk specifically, maybe to your customers, right? You have you noticed any of your customer basebeing on that platform?
Dave Ables 10:03
yeah, quite frankly, they are. And then it’s always a way to gage engage new customers, right? So if you go out there, we’re big in deck so we are a Timber Tech dealer. We’re probably one of the biggest in the central Minnesota. We stock it. So every day I see deck builders posting deck things out there. So I go in and I like their comment, or I like their deck, or make a comment about it, and then I don’t want to ever be overbearing, but I might drop a little a tagline like or send them a direct message and say, hey, you know, we’re a Timber Tech stocking dealer. Most lumber yards don’t stock. We stock, right? And they may have their home lumber yard, and they may love that, and I’m not trying to take them from their home yard, but they’ll be that day where they can’t get the material, and I want them to know we have it, and then that gives us an opportunity to show who we are. When they come here, we give them a facility tour. They get to meet people, and it’s just been a good thing. So, and I’m not trying to be overbearing, we’re there to help them, right? So the day you need me, I’m here up until that point, have at it where you’re at and enjoy it, right? But it’s been good. We get new business out of it all the time. And, you know, I think that it really I learned that in trucking, too. And in trucking, everybody ships everything. So if I could put a post out there about what we did, or we just won an award for carrier of the year, pretty soon, somebody else is going, or they had a service failure that day, and they’re going, well, there’s that guy, Dave. He said, they’re the carrier of the year. Maybe they’ll do a good job for me. The same in lumber, right? We deliver on time. We do it. We do a really good job. We have all these things in stock. They’ll be that day where that person who’s perfectly happy where he is needs something and remembers those guys got it at Tri County lumber, and they kind of like what we’re doing. We take people off the street. I recently we started a program of training to get into sales. And you come in, you spend five months on the yard, then you go into an estimating program where you spent or seven months on the yard, then you go into five months of training, doing estimating and takeoffs, and then starting to do some inside sales. And by the end of your first year, you’re making a really good living. By the end of your second year, you’re a six figure guy or gal, and that’s beautiful man. I’m gonna tell you right now, of 28 years in trucking to get to six figures took me a lot longer than two years than what you can do in this industry. So it’s a great industry for people to join. And I think talking about it and putting together these programs is really good, and I’ve tried to hire senior sales people too that come from somebody else, but there’s always a lot of baggage with that, right? I’m not saying they’re not a good person, but they try to bring a contractor from another company, and their pricing model might be different. Or there’s always catches if I bring people off the street, and we teach them the Tri County way, and then we teach them how to seek out new opportunities. And of course, we always stage them with some existing opportunities. It’s just really a good thing. And I think they get street cred. They start out like I started out as a truck driver, many, many years later became a CEO. I had the respective drivers, and then Trucking driver turnover is huge. Well, I had a lower driver turnover no matter where I was at because those truck drivers respected me and I was able to talk to people at all levels, whether it be the boardroom or in a cab of a tractor. That same logic applies here. So if I’ve got a contractor that’s looking for a salesperson, and that sales person spent a year or so on the yard, they’ve built loads, they understand what the product is, we’re going to take a component of this training and even send them out with some of our contractors so they see practical application of okay, this is soffit, this is where it goes on the house. This is faci, this is where it goes on the house. These are the different things. I don’t want to have order takers. I want to be part of a project management team for you as a contractor. And the other thing we do here is we do homeowners. Some pro yards don’t do homeowners. We love homeowners. There’s a lot of homeowners out there that build their own houses and build their own garages and build their own decks, and they need someone like us that has that expertise. We’ve got a drafting department. We’ve got all these different things that we can do for them, and we kind of enjoy doing it. I love it when I see a family out here in the showroom looking at product, and I get to go out and talk to them. I don’t sell, right? But my I go out and I talk to them and show them things and talk about products, and then when it’s time, I’ll turn them over to a salesperson, and it’s fun, like I love what I do.
Sally Traxler-Lacey 14:13
just hearing you even talk right there. I mean, that would be a business that I would go buy from, because you, you are so passionate. I love that. And also, just to kind of jump back to something, I saw some posts about recruiting. Was there any value of LinkedIn in terms of, like, your recruiting processes?
Dave Ables 14:35
Yeah, that’s it, the big thing, part of that. So that’s the next level. There’s, I’m trying to attract customers trying to attack, you know, information, and then talent, right? So when talent sees what we’re doing, they typically want to be a part of it, right? So, and that was the same way in trucking. I mean, we I would have all kinds of cool posts. What we did, I did ride alongs with drivers, and we would post that that would help us get drivers. It would help us get. Of talent. And in this business, I’m gonna tell you right now, I don’t have to hire a recruiter to hire anybody. I can put some posts out on LinkedIn, and I’ll have people that want a job in no time at all. And it’s always worked well that way. And I don’t know if you’ve ever used a headhunter, but you’re gonna pay 20 to 30% of first year wage for an unknown entity, and that’s not really a great investment in some instances. So I think it’s good, and it does work from a recruitment standpoint, more so at the sales jobs than the operations jobs. But recently, in the last few years, there’s a lot of drivers and operators that are on LinkedIn. It used to be more of a an office type thing, right? It was the people in the back side of the business, and now it’s not, I mean, so I think it’s done really well for us, and that’s a big reason I use it is to create that following. There’ll be a day where we do need somebody, or we’re going to continue to expand through acquisition and growth here at this campus. There’ll be a day where I can’t get enough trainees, and I need some senior people, and those people will know what we’re doing
Sally Traxler-Lacey 15:59
exactly. It is so wild to think about how large of a network is behind, like a platform like this, the fact that you can get your information in front of so many valuable people like totally. What a big tool. So I also notice in your posts, you tag anybody who’s on LinkedIn that you’re talking about, which is amazing, you know, like, do it best, lumbermens. I know that you work with those two. Yeah, any, any people you’re talking about which, you know, dings them and says, Oh, Dave tagged me in a post. What has kind of been the response or value that you’ve seen in like connecting with your partners on a platform like LinkedIn?
Dave Ables 16:47
network expansion, right. So if I tag Timber Tech, or if I tag diamond coat, somebody from that company is going to grab that at some point, they’re either going to repost it or they’re going to talk about it. So that’s how you expand your network, is by creating these tabs. And quite frankly, we’re proud of the products we have. So we tag in the customers. We’re proud to do it best. We’re proud of true value. We love the decking. We love all the products we sell. So when we put them in, then the sales guy that works for it grabs it, he reposts it. Then somebody from the manufacturing end grabs it, reposts it. Or they’ll send me direct messages, and, you know? I mean, it works well. I mean, I’ve got we do things with each one of our vendors that probably other yards don’t do from incentive standpoints. A lot of that originated through, hey, we see what you’re doing and we like it. What if we gave you this tool, or what if we gave you a deal on this? Could you figure out a way to market that and do well with it? I mean, so that’s why I do it, is to pull more people in. I mean, so at the end of the day, you know, my whatever, eight or 9000 network is becoming hundreds of, hundreds of 1000s of people that are looking at these posts just because of that, right? So, I mean, just like you in the LBM journal, if I’m looking at different things from magazines, whether it be yours or not, tag in the magazine, and pretty soon somebody from there like it or repost it and you know, and it’s good,
Sally Traxler-Lacey 18:08
totally. Yeah. So just bringing in more of those smart people that you mentioned, and then you get new ideas, you’re just connecting with them more and just collaborating more, and you’re very consistent. I also notice, and I was just talking with a previous podcast guest, and we were talking about consistency, and that is how you grow followers, because people know that you’re going to continue to put out content and like, want to be there for it, which is I’m sure why people follow you. And I’m kind of curious, like, what is that process like for you? Do you just sit down once a week and type out a post, or is it more like when something happens at your locations you just want to go and share about it?
Dave Ables 18:55
Yeah, we got a lot of good things that go on, and we have weekly meetings and weekly training sessions, so I usually put something up about that, and that’s partially to give my vendor props too. So yesterday, the thermitry people were in. They did a training. Lumbermans came in, we had lunch, we grilled out. I haven’t posted it yet, so I’ve just unique preview will post today. But those kind of things, and again, it’s just to get more people involved, and I think that it helps our business. I know it helps them too. Lumbermans wants to grow and sell to other yards if they know that we’re very satisfied with them. And I’m not trying to keep them for just me, right? They’re a huge company. I want them to sell to others too. So I think it really works well for all of us. When we do those things in terms of the number of posts, or how I figure out what to post, I peruse LinkedIn a lot as well. So when I see relevant topics that tie into something we’re doing, that might be a light switch for me that turns on, okay, well, we’re doing that. I should post about that. You know, if I don’t really like have it in big corporate world, I had a social media team, and then they would give me these posts in advance, like that we would do for the company, never for. Me. I’m me, and, like, I was having a discussion last week with a sales consultant, and he uses AI. He’s really cool, and I love the guy, and I’m like, I can’t use AI on this stuff because I talk a certain way, I write a certain way. I use abbreviations and different things when most people wouldn’t. But then, you know, that’s me. You’ll know if somebody else typed a post out and said it was from Dave Abels, you should almost instantaneously. No, no, no, no, he didn’t do that, right? So I think that that that is something that helps people follow me. I’m pretty candid. I’ll tell you what I really think, and I’ll you know, and I don’t ever want to hurt anybody either. I’m not mean. I don’t go out and post bad things about people, but I’m gonna tell it like it is, and I think that’s always been a value add.
Sally Traxler-Lacey 20:46
Yeah, you were talking about a lot of things, like you’re sharing so much value, at least I feel like when I’m going through your post, because I’m sure you’re giving inspiration to other yards or people in the business you were talking about tariffs, and that’s like, that just starts conversation on how we can all kind of get through this together. So you’re definitely a valuable follow
Dave Ables 21:12
the tariffs one, that was one that I was, like, skeptical, and sometimes like, especially more so in trucking, now I own the business, right? So I mean, if I harmony, I hire myself, right? But I mean, so sometimes you have to keep your opinions to yourself, especially in the area of politics. And tariffs become political whether they are or aren’t. But I think it’s a big issue for us, and, you know, I hope in the end, we win. I’m an American, and I love America, so I want us all to do better. But I do know that we started getting product increases right away, and I wanted to post that. And the spreadsheet that I put on there was from one vendor, and it was just, I don’t remember, it was 15 or 20 different increases that we got. And I heard it again last night on the news, and they’re talking about, you know, when those prices go up, they don’t ever really go back down. So even if we negotiate the greatest trade deal in the world right now, some of that that’s already came up ain’t going back, right? I mean, it’s just like COVID, COVID happened and then COVID was over. And when COVID was over, some things dropped a little bit or somewhat normalized, but there was a new normal. So what used to be a buck and went to two bucks, landed back at a buck 50. It never got back to $1 so those are the things that I think people need to understand. And we and our vendors try to protect them, and we negotiate. Well, that’s part of why we stock versus buying same day or brokering material from people, is because we’re able to buy at a lower rate, and we buy it in volume, but the tariffs and I think the last week, it’s gotten a little better, maybe, and we’re making some good progress, but be known those prices that already went up ain’t going back to a zero base. So you got to be careful when you talk about that, because there’s some really big people that want to make that political. There ain’t no politics in that. For me, the price was a Bucha two, and now it’s going to land back at a buck 50. That’s not political. That’s fact life. And I don’t, and I want, you know, people that come to a yard like us a design center, they’re building their dream home, right? I mean, they sit down with our team, we design this home, we do all these things, and it’s like there’s they’re really living out a dream. And I don’t want that dream to be a nightmare. And all of a sudden, in the middle of the project, like in COVID, it went up 25% and now what we thought we could afford, we can’t, and we can’t do this sliding doors, and, you know, so I hope it all normalizes and we’re all ready for it. There’s some really, really good lumber yards in central Minnesota and really good hardware stores. And I think it’s, it’s really a place for people to thrive
Sally Traxler-Lacey 23:43
and like considering your tariff post, and maybe there are others out there too, but it generated a lot of comments, a lot of discussion, and that’s just a place where people can kind of come together, share experiences, share ideas again, on how to kind of get through it. And I I’m just thinking like, I wonder if you know, social media with a big value of just people on the internet now being authenticity and like, building that trust in the companies that they’re buying from or working with. Like, if this could also be an opportunity for distributors and manufacturers, like, Hey, this is happening. I mean, if they could kind of also kind of extend that transparency and be like, This is what is happening to us with this whole tariff situation, and this is how we wanna are trying to help you. I haven’t really seen any posts like that.
Dave Ables 24:37
Well, I think there was things behind the scenes, even on the post I had, I got with a multiple of our vendors after that, and we wanted to figure out a way that we could protect people, right? So here’s what they were, and this is what it’s going to be. These are the increases that are out there. What we’re going to try to do is minimize those for you and keep things consistent. And so ironically, two of our major distributors and. And I got together and tried to figure out a way that we wouldn’t have to give those full increases out a misnomer. And I hear it all the time when it depends on whether you watch red news or blue news, right? The stories are completely different. But at the end of the day, the prices that go up on things are subjective to what comes in. So if I had to pay 5% more, do I pass 5% on to you, the end consumer. Can I afford to take a percent or two on my own? Well, it’s tough, especially a small businessman. A hardware store doesn’t do a ton of revenue. They’re doing a million. Some of them don’t even do a million dollars in revenue a year. For them to be able to take these cuts on their own, it could put some of them out of business. You hear a lot about small businesses suffering, and we’re a little bigger than that, but at the same time, we want the end consumer to be able to plan that project and know that you can build that home, right? I don’t want you to think if you started in April, by the time July comes and something’s changed, you’re going to regret that you ever did this project. So when we got together with the vendors, we said, Okay, I’m going to make a couple numbers up. Let’s say this came out at a four. Dave, you’re going to take a point. I’m going to take a point. This guy’s going to take a point. So we’re only going to pass on two of the four, one of the Wow. So then it wasn’t as painful if I tried to take three points on myself. That’s a burden on the company. I’ve got 22 families that rely on this company, that work here every day that I can’t put the company in harm’s way. But then when we get together with some of our bigger vendors, and they say, You know what, we want to protect the end consumer, let’s all grab a chunk of this and increase and we’re going to eat it. Well, then I’m only taking a point. They’re taking a point, and the next guy’s taking a point. We didn’t really feel much pain. We took care of our contractor, we took care of our homeowner, and we’re all happy, and so that’s really what that that post did for me. It sparked activity with my vendors, and we had discussions offline of you know, what we need to protect our consumers?
Sally Traxler-Lacey 26:52
That is so beautiful. Just having everybody working together and you being able to share what you’re doing, I’m sure, build so much trust in that work with you. kind of moving in a little bit of a different direction. I’m curious about, if your guys’s company, social media pages, where those are at? and, yeah, or is it mainly just your presence on LinkedIn, where you’re able to connect with people.
Dave Ables 27:25
So we have to do a better job in that area, and that’s probably the next step. So right now, most things I do through me, personally or my account. We do have a Tri County lumber page, but we don’t do a really good job of keeping up posts on it. Whenever I do a post, I tag it to there. So it’s kind of the same thing, but like on Facebook and things like that. I don’t do Facebook personally, but we have a page for Tri County lumber, and we need to do better, so we’ve talked about it internally. The thing about our business is there’s 22 people working here today, and I guarantee everyone’s working, working, working right now, and we don’t have that focus that we need. We almost need a social media coordinator to be able to focus on those things. Because we have a lot of great deck builders, we have a lot of great home builders. We’d like to be able to post things for them to help with their businesses. And I think there’s a great avenue to be able to do that, whether through LinkedIn or through Facebook or Instagram. And we, I would say, I’m getting an F there, right? We’re not doing as well as we should, and that’s an area that we want to improve on going forward, in fact, like on our draftsmen and things, we partner with a couple different technical schools. And I just talked to Blake, who’s our designer, who I got from one of the technical schools, and I said, you know, like, Who can I talk to there that has a social media you have a social media program at that school. Let’s get with them. Let’s get somebody in here, even if it’s just an internship. We did those in trucking all the time, like we’re much bigger companies, but I’d have 2030, interns every year, and that was how we would pick the cream of the crop and keep them with us for years to come. And I think that’s a great thing to do, but social media, for any business, it could be utilized a lot better than we utilize it here, and I think that’s somewhere we’re going to go in the future, but right now, I think it does well with me, and I post them over to that but we really almost need me to be a little bit separate. I can do some of my posts over there, but then we would have a separate, you know, Facebook look and Instagram look and a LinkedIn look that were more consistently active.
Sally Traxler-Lacey 29:27
Totally, just don’t really have someone right now who can put in that time and effort. Totally, yeah, for businesses like, I’ll be on businesses and stuff. I have just seen Facebook be such a valuable platform for, like, the business themselves, yeah, in terms of just community wise.
Dave Ables 29:51
wise, yeah. I mean, like, yeah, we need to embrace the community. And so we’re building a new addition here, and we’re adding hardware into the Tri County lumber so we have the true value. Over in big lake, but we’ll we’re putting on a 20,000 square foot center here, and it will have power equipment, it will have rental and it will have a full scale hardware. And we’re going to continue to expand like today. You can go out, I have two big homes built inside here, and you can get windows, doors, millwork, all those things. We’re taking it a step further with flooring, with trim, with cabinetry that’ll all be in the new building. But really, we want that for the community too. So there’s the component of my contractors that have somebody they’re going to build a house for, they’re going to come in and look at this. But we want the community to embrace that too, so they don’t have to drive all the way to Rogers or someplace else Elk River to go to a Home Depot or a Lowe’s. We want them to be able to do that here and the community, it’s interesting to me, because they hear bits and pieces about things we’re going to do, and they come in and they say, you know, we heard you’re gonna put a hardware store. And that’s great, because we lost our hardware store, whatever, 10 years ago, and and we think it’d be really cool. And blah, blah, blah, well, if we were utilizing our social media platform properly, on the Facebook side, they would be able to know. We could have put the designs up there. We could have told them what it’s going to be about. We could have told them why we’re doing it, and then get them enrolled in that. And those are things that you really mentioned that are strong for me. Is that community engagement just little things that we do like, you know, Dakota County, lumber. I really aspire to be much like them in terms of their social media. They do really well with that. If they have a community event, community event, let’s post it. Let’s volunteer. We do the same things they do. We just don’t post it and promote it well, right? So that is that next level, and I want to be more like that, and I think it’s good for the community. I mean, we give back, we donate, like LBM, there’s mistakes. Sometimes we’ll miss order a window, or we do something wrong. Well, we donate those things, we don’t sell them to people, but we should probably post things like that. And you know, when the truck comes from restore and we’re giving them $50,000 worth of windows, doors, millwork and wood that we should be talking about those things, and we don’t, you know, and so, but we do them right? We just don’t get the credit for it in terms of and I’m not looking for credit. Otherwise I’d try to sell it right, to make money. I’m looking for that interaction that’s a good company. They do those things. That doesn’t mean they’re necessarily going to buy from me. That just means that that we’re a good company, and we do those things.
Sally Traxler-Lacey 32:16
Mm, hmm, yeah, you’ve got it 100% right in terms of just sharing, that’s what it’s for, is for sharing information, right? Getting, getting that information to people. And Dakota County lumber has someone, I think she’s full time, who does their social medias. She’s awesome. So, right? You know, once you, once you get someone that’s…
Dave Ables 32:35
our next level, to have that person that can handle that, because we all, I mean, like, so I do them on night or on the weekend or because during the day, we’re all busy, right? So and I, when I brought my son, Nicholas, on, who’s a recent high school grad, and, you know, today, kids know more about tech than anybody, I thought, well, we’ll have Nicholas start doing those things. He’s really good on Instagram and all those different posts. But then, like, today, he’s already on his third delivery for today, so, like he doesn’t get an opportunity to do that, because we get so busy. So when you’re to the point or a size of a company where you can have that right media coordinator, I think there’s a value add to it, to your business
Sally Traxler-Lacey 33:11
totally. Well, I just have a couple more questions for you, Dave. We have touched on so much, but kind of before I ask you for just a piece of advice for our community. I just wanted to ask, like, we talked about a lot, so if you can squeeze anything else in here that’s great, just kind of through your journey on LinkedIn and all that, what have you learned about just the power of social media and how you use it?
Dave Ables 33:40
Well, I kind of touched on it, but I think it’s just amassing that right network. And you know, again, no individual, no matter who you are, knows everything, but I’ve now created a network that allows me to have access to that intel from other industry leaders. And that’s key. I mean, you could go out, sure and use chat GPT right now and probably get any kind of answer you want. But I’m getting those same answers from people who actually did it for 20 years themselves, tried it, failed, stubbed their toe, got back up, and I think that’s really it. If you can be on social media and do the right things, get a network of folks that you can learn from. Again, at 56 years old, I’m still a student. I learn every single day, and I like this morning, I spent out time out on the yard. We’re looking at how we’re loading these loads, and are we doing things right? It’s an education. I bring a couple other guys out. We’re looking at, should we do this? Should we do that? I mean, all those things come and I, ironically, I could post a picture of that truck on LinkedIn that just left with a load of lumber. Some guy or gal that’s a trucker is going to send me a direct message and go, You know what? You should have put a four strap on right here. You should have done that, or you should have done this, or put this on top of that. And so it helps us become better. And that’s what I really think there. You know, too many times people focus. On the negative, and maybe I just been lucky, but I rarely ever get any negative feedback on anything I post. It’s not super controversial. It’s just it’s good, real stuff, and it helps me become who I am, and helps my business become who we are. Is just by networking with other people. And you know, my guys something that we do here now that they didn’t with prior ownership, my sales manager, my sales folks, I send them to do it best training school. We send them to different seminars for BLD Connect for all different kinds of things I want them to learn. We go to shows now and trade seminars all across the country. I think I saw you in California last year, right? I mean, we do all these things to learn, and that was great. That’s still one of my best trips ever, because canal lumber is what I’m going to be someday in Minnesota, right? I mean, that lumber yard set the standard for the way we behave at our yard and the way our yard looks. And had I never been there and seen it, then we would have not gotten better, and so that trip made my company better. Joey, one of our guys, our sales manager, was also noted as a 40. Under 40 was why we originally went, and it turned into much more than just that, right? I learned during that trip I also met multiple other owners of lumber yards that I now network with throughout the country. I mean, if I have a question on like, what should I do for a comp plan for a salesperson, I can get feedback from lumber yard owners all over the United States that tell me, here’s what we do, here’s what we do, and then I can blend my own program. That’s what social media can do for you. It can extend your network and your knowledge base and make you the smartest guy in the room, even though you’re not.
Sally Traxler-Lacey 36:40
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I need to do a better job also of posting on LinkedIn. I’m actually kind of it’s running through my head about how I want to talk about this and just the podcast, more in general, on LinkedIn, and also build my network so that I can get more awesome people like you on here and just continue this sharing of information. Yeah, so just the last question, you just touched on the total value of using LinkedIn to build your network. Can you leave our audience with one piece of advice, maybe for executives, or just the LBM industry, who’s on LinkedIn on how, how they can do this?
Dave Ables 37:23
I think authenticity comes to mind, right? So we’re in a world where what you say could be used against you, right? But at the same time, don’t say something you don’t believe in, just because you think that that’s what the status quo wants to hear. And that, as I mentioned earlier, when we were talking, has helped me I talk about what I talk about, because that’s what I believe, right? And that’s what we believe. The core beliefs of my company and our, my wife’s company, is who we are. And so if you’re going to go out there and you’re going to do something, do it who you are. I mean, don’t go out there. And well, I think somebody wants to hear this, so I’ll, I’ll make up a story, and it’ll be along those lines. I mean, you know, there’s days where we don’t do things right here, and I’ll post that too. Like, you know, we had a load rejected today because of x, and here’s what we did differently. I mean, talk about the reality of things, and don’t always paint the greatest picture in the world. I mean, you know, I try to be positive, because we do do a lot of positive things here, but just hold true to yourself and and I think that’s the key, is authenticity. Your business is most likely a good business. Perhaps could be better. All businesses could be better. And when you need advice, put it out there. Man, say, you know, we did this today. We received something, sent it right back out, got a complaint, something was wrong, put it out there, and somebody’s going to come back to you and say, you know, when that happens to us, here’s what we do, and you’re going to learn from it. And I think that’s really great, and it’s just an extension of an education. And right now, there’s so much discussion about education in this world we live in. And should you go to college? Should you not go to college? What college should you go to? Should you do this? Should you do that? And some of that you can control right there on your own right, just by being authentic and talking about what you believe in. And at the end of the day, if people don’t believe in what you believe in, they’ll they won’t follow you, and they won’t bother you.
Sally Traxler-Lacey 39:18
You know, yes, I think that you know, as I’ve read through your posts, well, that is just a fantastic piece of advice, and I think that that’s really what is so attractive about some of your content, is, yeah, just the authenticity, and I think it shows that you’re doing such a good job with it, the fact that you don’t have any negativity, because it means you’re focusing on the right things. You’re not out there, you know, sharing politics, you’re out here, you’re sharing your opinions about how you can be better, and all that kind of stuff. And that is so attractive, and that also opens up the doors to more engagement, because when you share your opinion, other people want to chime in also.
Dave Ables 40:00
Right, truly. And all the years I’ve been doing this, probably that tariff was the only time I ever got one negative comment, and it happened to be from an individual that I’ve known for 20 years and worked with, you know, like in 2008 and he just came back, and he’s like, I can’t believe you feel this way. And, you know, blah, blah. And I was like, wow, that’s the first time ever, and it was amazing. It was from him, but we took it offline, and I told him, you know, here’s why I’m talking about these things, because they are important. He was trying to make it political. It’s not political to me, man. I mean, yeah, you know, I could care less. I’m all about America. It doesn’t matter whether you’re red, green, blue or yellow. I mean, let’s just do good for the economy. And when the economy thrives, businesses thrive and and we all do well, Mm,
Sally Traxler-Lacey 40:45
hmm, yeah, that’s a fantastic piece of advice. So Dave is on LinkedIn for everybody. If you want to go connect with him, it’s just Dave Ables, go follow, connect. And yeah, Dave, I just really appreciate you coming on. This was a very insightful conversation.
Dave Ables 41:02
Well, thank you. And if anybody ever needs anything, don’t hesitate to reach out or direct message me, and I’d give you any advice. I’m not an expert, but I’ve done fairly well for myself, and I’ve also made huge mistakes. So if you think something’s like you might might be going down the wrong path, I could probably help you there too, because I probably went down that path.
