As President of the Oklahoma State Home Builders Association, Phil Rhees also serves as co-chair of the 2015 Oklahoma Building Summit & Expo, August 26-27, along with Kurt Dinnes. Rhees recently sat down to answer questions about the upcoming session and how it will benefit OSHBA members. The following is the third in a series of three excerpts from that conversation:
Question; Do you try to use the Building Summit to update your membership on new technologies that are emerging?
A: Definitely. The big focus right now in the state of Oklahoma, primarily, is energy efficiency. There are changes happening all the time in that particular area. We have a couple of speakers who are going to come in and specifically talk about different areas of energy efficiency throughout the homes we are building. We expect it probably to be the most well attended educational event that we offer.
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Phil Rhees
Q: What will Chuck Shinn bring to your membership as a keynote speaker?
A: Chuck is known for being a consultant for builders in the area of profitability. He's going to bring a couple of sessions that talk specifically about the things that keep builders from being as profitable as they can be. And also he's going to show us a lot of different ways from his point of view that we can increase our profitability going forward.
Q: What kind of bottom-line advice will Chuck should bring to your membership?
A: I expect he will bring advice on how we can make more money. But I also expect him to bring in advice on how we can cut a lot of our expenses, certainly, and to touch on our subject from last year on how we addressed the lean process on how to cut down a lot of waste, and how basically that would increase our bottom line. So, I think last year's speaker and this year's speaker are going to be approaching the same idea from two different ends.
Q: What does your closing speaker Ted Jones and economist bring to your membership?
A: You would expect an economist to come in and speak a lot of economist's language and maybe possibly put everybody to sleep. Ted won't do that. Ted is very humorous and brings a lot of humor into his economic projections. He's going to be focusing on the state of Oklahoma and our local municipalities and some of the economic drivers and economic indicators we should be looking for in the next year.
Q: What do you hope your members or participants in the show will take away from that they can use in their business?
A: We try to keep all of our education fresh and renewed every year. We do have a few speakers who come in that are really popular that update us every year to current changes in codes or different thinking in terms of energy efficiency. This year we have different speakers coming in, and we also have HOUZZ, which is a large marketing organization, that will come in and talk about how to better market online and how to better support your organization.
Watch a video interview with Phil Rhees
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