Chip Johnson
CEO

I suppose it all started with me trying to figure out how to find a career that I really enjoyed. 

It was ‘97 and I was working for a technical consulting firm as a recruiter that supplied network engineers to companies needing help with local area networks. I became good friends with one of the engineers who knew of a large roll-out that was going out for bid. He had the inside track to the management team and knew if he could put together a team, he could get the deal. 

If you remember Y2K, you know that there was mass paranoia that, when the calendar turned over to January 1, 2000, the computers were all going to crash because the BIOS wasn’t designed to go past 1999. I had virtually no experience setting up computer networks, but I told him I was in. 

When he got the deal, I quit my job and we started a partnership the next day. I became a computer tech in training. 

And I loved every minute of it. I built my own computers, had a Unix, Novelle, Windows NT network in my apartment and I read every book I could get my hands on about how to engineer networks and build servers. Within the year, I was a certified Microsoft systems engineer (I was so proud of that) and I started selling pre-Y2K solutions.

It was a great time to be in tech because we were selling computer hardware (back when you could make money on hardware) and also providing the installation and support. Like anyone who starts making real money, I did all the things irresponsible, single guys do like buy cars and motorcycles. 

As luck would have it... 

One of my customers needed a website. Their website provider had left them and they needed a new site in a hurry. When they asked me if I could build them a website, of course, I said, “yes”. 

I wasn’t concerned that I hadn’t built a site before, I just figured I’d go buy a book and wing it. And that’s the nice thing about tech—once you lose your fear of the unknown, things start to seem easy. And for me, web design just fit. I also have an art background, so I was able to apply a creative energy into design that was much more rewarding than the binary world of networking. 

That first website took me a weekend to build (thanks to Macromedia Dreamweaver and Fireworks). That customer told one of his friends who also needed a website and, within a week or two, I was in the business of building websites. 

It was 2001 and the Web was still relatively new. The sites I developed were of the digital billboard variety—mostly static content with some .swf files thrown in to spice things up. For the next four years, I built websites for everything and everyone. I built e-commerce sites selling cowboy boots, office furniture, and multimedia CDroms. 

Then one day, I got a call from Bryan Cecil of Cecil Ray Homes. He needed some help building a website. Bryan and I grew up together in Olathe, KS. We went to the same high school, college, lived together after college, and were in each other’s weddings. 

That first builder website I developed for Cecil Ray Homes put into motion everything that is Builder Designs today. It also showed me the importance of word-of-mouth marketing. 

It’s not what you know 

Fast forward to 2008 and I was doing a pretty good job of growing my customer base. I was still mostly building sites in the Kansas City area when a friend introduced me to Mike Lyon. At that time, Mike was just getting his consulting business going but he was starting to spread out across the country and help builders with online sales training.

Mike and I had a unique chemistry that clicked and we started helping each other almost immediately. Mike had the builder contacts and put me in touch with those that needed websites. Mike introduced me to Myers Barnes and then Dave Clements (CEO of Lasso). We all had a synergy that just worked. In a lot of ways, those were the golden years, because it was all so clean and simple. Our businesses complemented each other perfectly. We all prospered and grew our client base. To this day, I owe a lot of the early success we had to the circle of influence those three provided.

For Builder Designs, 2009 was a big year. I landed the project of developing the website for the 2008 home builder of the year, Grand Homes in Dallas. Having a high profile Texas builder really put BD on the map and opened the door to other big, national builders. Side note: Grand Homes still has the original site, we designed in 2009, live today.

10 years after

The Builder Designs team has developed and hosts 400+ home builder websites. We’re driving 22 million unique visitors per year. What have we learned? And what’s next? 

Technology. 

One word that covers a lot of ground, but in my opinion, technology is going to disrupt the industry. It might be in the form of e-commerce, or it may come from Amazon or Zillow, but one thing you can count on is that technology will change the way we think about and market our businesses (actually, the way consumers think about and interact with our businesses is the correct view). 

And that’s the point of this blog series. I’m of the opinion that you have an interest in tech. I saw this first-hand at the recent HomeBuilder Tech conference in Nashville where we presented ideas on technology for builders. 

The feedback from the attendees is that they want more. So, I’m going to continue that dialog and present to you ideas that are technical in nature, but not so technical you’ll need a programmer to help you understand the content. We’ll cover new and emerging technologies and we’ll look at case studies of what works and what doesn’t. We’ll cover WPO—website performance optimization—and why that’s become the #1 metric to user experience. Buy it now, link building, speed metrics, and conversion optimization tips are just a few of what’s to come. 

If you have questions you’d like to discuss, don’t hesitate to ask. 

Chip