#132 CCP

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the construction corner podcast. I'm Dillon, I'm your host joined by my blue collar battens, Matt, how's it going? My friend

things are fantastic deal. And I feel like we've taken a trip back in the stone age because we're not doing this live and we're not doing it on video. It may be the first time that since I've been with you, that this has happened. Yeah. It's for those of you who don't know, Matt lost power, so we're doing this still recorded, but just over the phone effectively.

And in the past, I've had to pull out my generator because here in California, our power is not always most reliable, but usually I can get the internet back up and running. So it's an interesting.

Yeah. And our power went out about noon my time today and immediately I ran next door, got the generator fired up. Cause I, I knew we were recording this afternoon and the internet was working just fine for a couple hours. And then I dunno, conveniently about an hour before we were about to go live.

The internet went out also. So now there's nothing over there. So phone it is for today, but we'll make it. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm just getting back into the let's call it the swing of things as I, for the last week have been on a vacation, did the anniversary slash honeymoon trip, since we never got like a real honeymoon since the world was effectively on hiatus for the last year to go and do anything.

So I've been off the grid for the last week.

How was the trip, man? Honestly, I mean like the weather. So we went to lake Tahoe, traveled around lake Tahoe, a few different places, whether there's beautiful, so Tahoe and really most of the west, like it gets fairly warm. And I actually got it into the upper eighties, which is very warm for.

And then at night, it'll drop to where it's 60 degrees. So you need a sweatshirt at night or in the morning. And then, you're in shorts and a t-shirt during the day. So you gotta pack all sorts of clothes to be there. But the weather's perfect. Got my pan slash sunburn going on from the weeks and And learned after our first day at the beach that we needed an umbrella to be in the shade.

Can't quite do the full day at the beach with the no umbrella, no shade. So from then on, it got a little better, but we were for sure sunburned and suntan by by Tuesday.

That's good. You got an extra load of a vitamin D milk. It'll help carry you through now, although you're in California. So I don't feel too bad for you. You still see the sun a lot more than we do here, but glad you had a good time and the weather didn't do anything horrible for you. No, it was a great trip and really, so one of the things that you know before we get into that you had a golf outing this last weekend, and I guess, tell us a little bit about that.

There's some kind of special things about it that we should share with our listeners. Yeah, so the quick backstory is about three and a half, four years ago. We were building an addition onto a local fire station here, say for construction. My wife brought my three boys up some late afternoon evening for just to come see what dad was doing.

And my middle son, his name is Lucas. At the time he was nine. He got a tour of the station from one of the lieutenants and they were taking them through firetrucks and, doing all that whole thing. They pulled out this device it's called ironically the Lucas device. And it's a really cool.

Piece of technology. It's a hands-free CPR machine. I can't do it. Justice explaining it over the phone like this. So if you don't know what it is, check it out. It's called the Lucas device, L U C a. But basically it does a hundred percent perfect hands-free chest compressions for CPR, and it allows firefighters to be way safer.

They can attend to other patients. There. There's a whole huge list of benefits that they're too numerous to list on a quick phone call like this. So anyways we went home that night and my son disappeared. He came upstairs and the basement a little while later. And he had scribbled with marker on a piece of construction paper and a business plan.

And he came up and he said, data, I want to raise, I want to buy these for some fire departments. And my wife and I looked at each other and smiled and thought it was a cute idea and let it simmer well, he kept pushing on it and pushing on it. So we agreed to back him. We said, okay, we'll help you raise money.

No, if you can buy one. Fantastic. The kicker is these things are like 16 grand a piece. So we figured our nine-year-old might raise, a few bucks here and there. He might hit up grandma and grandpa and, get 5,000 bucks out of it. Something like that. Long story short, he ended up putting together this plan and he and my wife went and started pounding pavement, doing old school fundraising, talking to local businesses.

Setting up events. So fast forward now to this last Saturday, and we now have a 5 0 1 C3 non-profit it's called the better family organization. And Lucas for Lucas is the specific charity that this one is working on. So we had our third golf outing raising money to buy these things. These Lucas devices for local fire depart.

They bought prior to the outing, he's bought seven of them to date not to spill the beans too much, but I'm pretty confident they're gonna get another one out of the outing. So anyways, that's the short, long story of it. Golf outing was Saturday. The weather in our case was just a Bismal.

We had more golfers than we've had to date, which was awesome. It started absolute down pouring at about 10 o'clock in the morning. And it went till probably close to two o'clock like there were periods of just blinding rain and it was cold. Luckily, no lightning. So the course pro let us keep going.

And amazingly at the end of the day, when we were, that we do a big raffle. All sorts of prizes and food and that sort of thing. We were only down three teams that started so only three teams left because of the weather. And one of them left early and we knew they had to leave earlier.

That was regardless of weather. So it was a cool event. The weather was horrific, but it's a good cause. Raised a lot of money and left for a good recovery Sunday.

So awesome. And guys, I had never heard of this device until Lucas actually showed me when I was out. And it's pretty amazing, it's hands-free so somebody is in an ambulance, like they can do that without having to stop the ambulance on the way to the hospital, things like that. It's perfect.

You're not going to get tired. It's a robot mechanical to do. Chest compressions to, like recovery rate, look up all the stats on this thing. It's phenomenal. And really a great thing. Great cause great charity.

Yeah. It's the stats on this thing are absolutely amazing. So if you're interested, he's got a Facebook paid at Lucas for Lucas. But the survival rate is 60 plus percent better when they put this thing on page. Versus doing compressions manually. And there's all kinds of moderately creepy stories that I've, I could tell you from a lot of my friends who are first responders, but I'll save those stories when we're in person again, because somethings can get a little weird, but it's a neat device.

So I certainly recommend checking it out if you haven't heard of it.

Awesome. And one of the things that we're going to pivot here a little bit, but. Going to events, right? I had my vacation retreat. You had an event and you end up talking to a lot of people at events and far too often, and at least on the architect engineer side of the table, I find that we rarely go to different events, we're typically chained to the desk. Nobody gets out of the house. For, rarely anything it seems like, but these events, these things that you can go out to, whether it's local charity events, whether it's industry events, all these types of things really create some inspiration and stimulation on what's out there what's possible and new things that are, either being developed or have been around for awhile that we just haven't heard about.

One of the big things that I encourage is for all of you to find events, find things, to go out and seek some inspiration crown that you might not have otherwise really known about or thought possible.

Yeah. And it ties into, I think we were talking last week about just getting out there and yeah. Networking and being part of community again, we all dealt with all the nonsense of 2020, just to be able to get face to face and shake hands. In my case with the outing, it's a lot of work for my family and I, and it's I don't even get to golf in it, but I couldn't even count how many hands I shook that day.

And how many face to face conversations I had with all kinds of people. And just to be able to do that again. It is worth it, certainly we're standing in the rain for a while, but it's worth a lot more than that.

Yeah. And on, on top of that you've got events, you've got meeting people who shake hands. It goes a long way and showing up is a big chunk of this, put it in the time, having the conversation. Doing things that and showing up that people, most people aren't really willing to do. It totally goes a long way.

And one of the other kind of side pieces to this is having retreats, having things that you, as a company, internally do to clarify your goals, your mission, and where you're heading. And I think far too often knees also get created. Just a break, not something that most people go into with a like pure mission and like outcomes that they want to create out of these retreats.

I would agree with you a hundred percent and it's something that I've been thinking about a lot lately. Since the last time we recorded, we did in fact, hire another employee. So we're super excited. Our team is growing. This is so far looking like a fantastic year and next year shaping up to be the same.

So there's a big part of me. That's wanting to now put a little more focus now that I have I will have a little bit more time to work on the business versus in it, this sort of event or retreat or immersion or whatever you want to call it. It has been something that's kicking around in my head trying to find ideas.

And I think what you mean doing is not just your typical, certainly not a golf outing and not even just like the annual Christmas party where, everybody gets a little too tipsy. What I think you're getting at and correct me if I'm wrong, though is an event or a an outing, if you will, where you and your team are strictly there to focus on the vision on.

You as a leader or me as a leader, casting the vision, hearing what our new teammates or old teammates have to say and have to think and getting input across the board and, really reinforcing what it is that we're doing and why we're doing it because so often in, in construction, especially, but probably in most, any industry, there's a lot of folks out there, a lot of companies anyways, They may not have that, that deep of a vision.

They're doing what they're doing to make money. And there's nothing wrong with making money. I love it as much as the next guy, but I like to think that what we're doing at Schaefer and what you're doing it at Cowabunga, there's a bit of a deeper vision there, a bit of a deeper, intrinsic goal that we're looking for.

And I think something like this could be a good opportunity to get your people and really reinforce that they're all on board.

Absolutely. And it's a, spot on, it's getting together, it's having a dedicated day or two that you spend with the company and if you're in a larger company and maybe it's just your leadership team to where you hammer on what'd, you guys want right on the hammer, on the vision hammer on the things that you're looking forward to doing.

Types of projects that you want to pursue, the types that you don't want to pursue, which that's just as important is what you say no to what you're not going to do is, and in some cases, probably more important than the things that you want to pursue and getting clarity on that vision across the whole team.

It could be your entire company. It could be just your leadership. The best in the biggest companies do this, right? They have leadership retreats where, they do spend a day or two either with all their people or as a leadership team. And in some cases for some of the big fortune 500 companies, it's a few thousand people across their leadership team who get together and, they have keynotes, the CEO talks about where they're going as a company, what the vision is, and then other key leaders.

About where they're heading, where they're going to get everybody on the same page. And this is so important that I think most, especially in construction, we don't do this often enough because it's, we're just chasing that next project, that next building the next thing, and not really focusing on what do we actually want to build?

What do we not want to pursue? What's detracting our focus, what is not profitable for us? And when you're able to get clear on that, a lot of things become very simple for your team to say yes or no to

definitely. And you mentioned it a minute ago, we've talked about it in previous episodes, but truly, I stand behind this, that some of the absolute best projects are the ones that you walk away. And getting together with your group, whoever that may be and really structuring out your vision, structuring out your core focus, your target market, your best client, all of that sort of thing.

It allows you to operate in a way that you hopefully don't make as many of those mistakes because. I'm guessing that you've done it on the design side. I can guarantee I've done it on the construction side, but getting involved in a bad relationship, a bad project, it haunts you for way longer than just the duration of the project itself.

And, life's too short. This industry is too fraught with stress and chaos to be getting into that sort of thing. W I've done it. I've talked about it in the show before when I chase work that I really know I shouldn't, and it's really just my ego getting involved or otherwise, but, having these sort of retreats, having these sort of these in-depth meetings of the minds of the people that you want to lead your company, it can help you clarify that vision and get some traction and know which which direction you need to be headed.

It just helps you make decisions.

And as important as those meetings are, one of the things that will be just as important as all the work that you put in to show up that meeting, right? Knowing your financials, your numbers, where you want to be, what you want to say to your people. We want your people to come out with what are the three things that you want them to know by the end of the week?

Right? Parts of often we, I think we go to conferences or. We don't have a outcome in mind going into it. And then there's nothing that we can really repeat or regurgitate coming out of the event. So effectively, like nothing really stuck. And you want to really hammer and repeat into your people, whatever the one to three outcomes that you want out of them, the things that you want them to remember, you're going to need to repeat them.

It's going to sound like you're repeating yourself, but again, most people. Actually retain that information. So it's something you will need to repeat multiple times it to stick. And the one to three talking points, basically that you're going to hammer on. So it's not just the event itself, but it's all the effort that, as a leadership team, you're going to put in to that event so that you can have the outcomes that you want after it.

And that's going to last, until the next one, whenever that might be, if it's six months, a year, whatever it might be for you and your team. You need to put effort in on the front end to have a successful outcome for those events? Yes, because I have personally been involved in companies where they talked a good talk, in interviews and in front of certain people about how dedicated they were to their vision and everything else.

And I promised I wouldn't get into core values today, so I'm not going to do it. But that's. But I've been in, I've been in companies where we had these events and, two things can happen really fast in a, especially in construction. A lot of people drink a lot and these events can turn into a drunk Fest very quickly.

And there's a time and place for that. Believe me, I'm not knocking it, but not a whole lot gets done. The other thing that can happen. Yeah. If there's not the preparation that you just touched on, that the absolute true focus on what you want me to convey to your people. It turns into a really boring shit show of here's our financials.

Here's how much money we made. We signed this project. We signed that project. We're going big places, guys, Lulu, Raul rod. That's fine and good, but it's really just fluff. It doesn't do any good for long-term planning for planting the seed of your own vision in the minds of all the people that work for you or with you.

And that's where the power of a good well-planned out. Thought outing or retreat I think really comes from, is being able to plant that seed and watching it.

And the more clarity you have on your numbers, the projects you want to go after, the things that you need moving forward, the better off you're going to be. It becomes really simple. Once you do all the analysis and that chart might not look all that impressive, but all the work that goes into producing that chart, that decision.

Next step is huge and it will create so much clarity, so much benefit your organization, that the countless hours you're going to go and put into it, to, create and do a present a five, 10 minute speech on that one slide is going to be. Just enormously beneficial to your company. So don't underestimate the power of those slides, those deficient, while it might look simple, the amount of energy that goes into it is absolutely not.

Yeah. And I can attest just from the golf outing, we've talked about this last weekend and it wasn't a corporate outing by any means, but the work that goes into just playing. An event like that is, is almost unfathomable. And I will not take any of the credit. My wife does the lion's share of it.

But to see what goes into planning it and putting everything together is it's amazing because it's very much like a corporate outing or a corporate retreat. You have to plan these things. You have to really prepare because can't have it be a flop because then. If the golf outings a flop, we won't raise enough money to make it worthwhile or worse.

We'll lose money. If the corporate outing or retreat is a flop, you won't get the benefit of casting that vision and organizing, where your future of the company goes. So it's nothing that you can put off you can't procrastinate and plan it, on the night before you, you go to this event.

Cause you're bound for. And in bigger companies that might be easier, if you have a dedicated person or, an assistant or a marketing person, or whoever that, that is good at this sort of thing, event planning in a smaller company like mine, it would be, it would probably end up being me doing the bulk of it.

And I can tell you that I am no event planner by any means. So I would be scrapping all the resources and help I could find. Point being and just to echo what you said, you really got to take some time and plan these things out and make sure that it has the propensity to at least be a success before you leave.

Absolutely. In the, where this all heads a little bit is, you need to know where you're going, what people you need to bring into your organization. And one of the things. In constructing. So I'll speak a little bit to the construction side of things is for a long time, we've relied on the union to train and bring up people and to know what they, their craft is right to, to train people.

And then you've got, the springing up of other training institutions, but historically the union was the place where people learned and gained a skill, a trade On the architecture and engineering side, that's been, colleges and institutions, which, you do have a dedicated architecture school engineering is not as much dedicated to like building or construction focus, especially for, I would say the MEP trades somewhat instructional and somewhat in civil, but the ability to.

Train and bring your people up and knowing who you need to put into which seats, again, this all goes into planning the, where you're going to go, what people you need to bring into your organization, how you need to train them, all the training courses. And again, this, I mean like any business, there's a lot of moving parts, a lot of things that you need to learn or have somebody in charge of so that you can move the whole organization forward.

And yeah. Far too often. I think that's training piece. That's knowing which people to put in the right seats, as we talked about last week is hugely important. And again, far too often, like the need to bring people, the willingness to put those programs in place is effectively non-existent. And one of the reasons I want to bring this up is last week, as I'm driving around, and again, this is for sure not a cheap place to live. I very much understand that, but in the need for help, they had, we're driving around, there's a lot of hotels and whatnot. And one of the signs in front of which is call it, I think it was like a little better than a motel six, but not much.

They were four ounce cheaper. They were advertising a starting wage of $16 an hour, which to me is just crazy deeper how it's keeping that, that was like the starting wage. But the other one that really blew me away while there. The other one was a locksmith advertising for 18 to 20 bucks an hour.

And we'll train like no experience needed to show up and we'll pay you 20 bucks an hour, which again, for no skills, no, nothing is also insane. But the other one that totally floored me was the Tahoe area transit system or whatever. Heart is it's. So I guess it's co area regional transit. They were advertising for bus drivers with no experience needed.

Now isn't that a scary thought public transportation with no experience, but they're so desperate for people that will hire you. And it just floored me going around the lake. That is crazy to me.

I don't like taking public transportation normally. And maybe I'm just a little I got too much anxiety for that but to think that my bus driver who's driving, a bus with, I don't know, 50 people potentially, maybe more has never done this before. That's scary, but that's not like brain surgeon.

Who's never done it before. Scary, but it's a close second. No. And training is it's huge in any industry, you have to develop good training programs because especially in construction, we always have to work on what I call our farm team know, and that we can go out and hire people.

And it's really hard right now. We've talked about that. It's very difficult to find. People with a good skillset that you want that have a bunch of experience in the kind of building in my case that we do. But they're out there and, quite frankly, we've gotten really lucky and we've found a couple in the last month that it's really going to help us.

But now my mission is I need to start building up this farm club because, when you, one of the downsides of hiring people that have a good chunk of experience, It is that they're probably not going to work for you for 20 years or 40 years, or, forever, let's say, so you have to find young talent or young optimism.

We'll put it that way. That wants to be talented. And you have to attract these people somehow and being willing to train them and train them. I think can be a really big attractant in today's market. Politically going on and everything, with unemployment and with people just not wanting to, or not having to work, you have to find a way to stand out and be different and be better than the option.

A and I think training is one of those ways to do that

training is for sure huge. People want to grow within their position. If you're not giving them growth opportunities, they'll go somewhere else. That's really simple. And on average, somebody is going to stay with you between three and five years in this type of market, unless you give them opportunities to grow, to take on new roles, new projects, new growth opportunities within your firm.

They'll go somewhere. Because they've maxed out their position and there's no place for them to go. They've hit the ceiling in your organization. And if you don't provide new opportunities, if you don't expand as a company, then they'll go somewhere else. And then you just have to fill that flat. Okay. So totally true.

And being able to find good people to bring up under, because again, you're, you can't expect somebody to work for you forever. You're going to try, but it's ultimately not your decision. Right? Life circumstances, change people, move tons of things happen to where not everyone's going to stay with you forever and that's completely okay.

Don't take it for sure.

Yeah, absolutely. People there's a lot of reasons people leave, like you just mentioned a couple. Sometimes people get the entrepreneurial bug and decided they don't want to work for someone else anymore. Case in point, I think you're talking to two of those guys are listening to two of those guys.

But you gotta make, you gotta make it the best for the people you have and keep them interested in, benefits come in a lot. Ways and means it's not always just, health insurance and paid time off, but, to make it worthwhile and really provide meaningful work. I think that's a big one that gets overlooked a lot.

And that is one of those kind of woo topics these days. But I think it holds a lot of truth and that, if people are building. In our case, building things that matter, or that make a difference. And that somehow have some intrinsic value that you can add to the person that's working on it.

That goes a long way. And the pay is one thing, you have to provide competitive pay, especially in markets like this, you, and you mentioned a couple of examples. One that I found absolutely amazing. A week or two ago, I was driving around by, out by a new project we had, and I ran through a Wendy's drive through and Dave got signs everywhere.

First of all, they're still not open because they don't have enough people to actually open enough to have indoor dining or indoor sales. So it's strictly drive to, but they've got signs all over the place around this drive through and along with offering, I think they were at $15 an hour for a winter.

They were offering to pay for college classes. Now, I don't know about you. But when I started working and I'm going to date myself, but I started working as a stock boy at a what used to be Arbor drugs. And I think I made $6 an hour maybe $4. I don't even remember, but to think that you could go into it.

Extremely entry-level job, like a Wendy's or like a stock boy. And this company's got to find a way now to cover your costs of college, just to attract enough labor enough workforce to open, keep their doors open. That is incredible to me.

So there's. There's so many layers to this, right? If you're flipping hamburgers, it's, you really don't need that much skill. And there's a lot of things that you're seeing can be automated. So like I went into a McDonald's this last week for some breakfast sandwiches, and I don't know if you could have ordered from a person, if you wanted to, you did the little touchscreen deal.

There were six of them and. And I probably got my food faster than I ever had before, because now there's no, no front counter people and it's just everybody cooking or flipping a burger, dropping a tray or whatever. However, the heck McDonald's does their food. But that's what you're going to see is more mechanization for everything, for restaurants, for software, again, if you can't attract talent, you're going to have to find a way or you have to pay a lot for a talent. You're going to have to find a way to reduce costs in operations so that you're able to produce the same volume with effectively less people. And we're seeing that in so many industries, organizations that, as costs rise, you need to find more effective ways to do, whatever it is you're doing.

Whether yeah. Putting drywall up or flipping burgers, right? Design and buildings. It's you gotta be more efficient with less people. Yeah. Because as much as we would all love to just raise prices, I don't think that's the reality in most cases, unless you're a supplier right now, we've talked about the crazy commodities markets and what's going on and in the construction world, especially right now, But if the trades and the GCs and the designers started all raising pricing accordingly to what the material suppliers are doing, no one could afford it anymore.

No one could afford to build anything. And it's the same in every industry. No one can afford to make hamburgers. If for a sustained period of time, they have to be paying $15 an hour and paying for college classes just to get warm bodies in the. And, there's, we could argue and discuss the merits of minimum wage and levels of that, but that's probably a better for a different show, but, there's certain jobs that are frankly not meant to be permanent occupations.

They're meant to be stepping stones. And when you have jobs like that, that are paying the way a wage, a fully functioning wage that 2, 3, 4 years ago, No, a laborer on a construction crew is making it makes it really hard to compete, but it puts us in this never-ending cycle. Where do we stop?

When does it actually end? When do we come to a point where, you know, enough's enough and we can't keep going up because either these companies start going out of business or they do try and raise pricing and they end up going out of business because you just can't sustain that sort of thing.

Yeah. It comes in multiple ways. So either you're going to start paying 10 bucks for a hamburger at McDonald's, which historically was a dollar or 55 cents or a nickel or whatever it was when Ray crock really took over McDonald's like you're going to just be outrageous pricing.

And you're going to, it's going to be hard now think about that. If it's, let's just say it's six bucks. Egg McMuffin or whatever, five bucks for an egg McMuffin. So you now have to work at a $15 an hour deal. You got to work 20 minutes to afford breakfast. Like how crazy is that? So you got to work a full hour to afford a meal for the day.

Like

it's just, it becomes insane. So you've got to. Prices have to go up because the cost of inputs go up, and again, just taking a simple example, like McDonald's right. The cost of eggs went up because the pots, they had to pay their people to feed the chickens. Went up to whatever the chicken costs to acquired.

So the cost of gas, which was like six bucks or yeah, five, five bucks around Tahoe for gas. We're like three. I am in California. Like you think about like just gas prices to get the brigand egg from where it was laid to be on my sandwich. Like in everything and this goes for all of it and we know through construction, there's a lot of stuff that we have to get.

So just transportation costs in and of itself is outrageous. And then add into that all day. Which costs of people add into a training. So you're now paying a premium wage for somebody that doesn't know how to do anything, which means their productivity is lower. So you're not only paying a higher wage for that person, but you're also paying for less output.

So the, and this is why, again I saw this kind of coming years ago and this was the whole crux of the founding of the cabin. The studios was. You just saw all these old farmers through the industry. No one really came in. No one really stayed. I didn't see another way to do things other than automation.

And you're seeing it across the industry from drywall, with robots to mechanization of a lot of things. Granted, there's a lot of safety pieces that go into that where you're, somebody is now can extend the longevity of their career because their back doesn't hurt. They're able to get up and. Kind of other safety benefits to that, with no one in my ladder, things like that, that, that helped that, but it also drives productivity.

Now one person can do the job of three with the help of mechanization. And again, nobody wants to come into it. They're having to compete with Wendy's, the same wage and college, which, you know, again for construction crews, you're not always able to, or probably not even close to being able to.

That type of wage rate.

Yeah. It's making the exceedingly tough and you just said it. To attract people into the skilled trades people that haven't been doing it already, to attract new blood, new talent into the skilled trades when they can. They won't make much for longer, but they can make much sometimes to start with flipping burgers and they'll get college that's insane.

Now the flip side of that is you get people in the skilled trades and very quickly they will, out-earn most competitive competing jobs. But you gotta get them there. You gotta get them to stay and you gotta keep a motive. And figure out how to do that. You'll probably do pretty well out there right now.

And this is probably one of the things that I'd like to, as we get close to wrapping up here is to end on, for me, I was sitting on a beach, granted I love the time with my wife and, somewhat decompress, but for the most part, like I can't not do something. I can't not like work.

I dunno, probably thousand pages over the course of the week. I just, I read a lot. I still did little things here and there. And for me, like sitting on the beach, it's not the perfect Corona commercial that we're used to seeing. It's not that golden age of retirement where it's not my deal, man.

It's not my problem anymore. That's what everybody's trying to reach and really. Run towards is this golden age of retirement or not doing anything or sitting, in the beach for the Corona. And for a lot of us, it's, you're just drifting, right? You're not putting towards a purpose or meaningful work towards meaningful life.

Oh, for all of us in construction, you can provide purpose, meaningful work, meaningful life, as long as you can change it, invade, ask that vision, that purpose, those core values boards, everyone in your sphere of influence. And if you're able to do that, if you're able to show people why this matters, why this building, why this house, all these projects really matter in the meaning and purpose behind it.

You're going to create not only a great organization, but you're going to be fulfilled. Yeah, I've found sitting on the beach, like by Wednesday of this week, I was done and both my wife and I came to the same conclusion for Goodwill, like four day excursions and things that are planned out and going places.

It doesn't mean we don't provide some time for, going to breweries or distilleries and having fun and, hang over periods where you're recovering, but you in there. You're going to the next place. You're seeing the next thing. It provides some purpose and meaning some structure. And through that, you have really, I've had much better time, more structured, more eventful planned out vacations than I did for the week sitting on the.

Yeah. And I think, it's to each his own a little bit, but I think you and I are cut from a similar cloth on that end, that, that entrepreneurial fire. I do the same thing. I go stir crazy when I quote unquote sit for too long and it's not because I don't enjoy hanging out with my wife and my boys or my dogs or all of my, I love it.

I get to a point where I, something productive has to be happening in my head or else I, I just, I go a little nutty. So even when we go on vacation and we don't often, we typically go on one nice trip a year. But I'll still bring my work and I limit it drastically. And I'm getting better at limiting it even more.

But, I like to have a pulse to, on, on how my business is doing and what's going on when I'm not. But I also like to be productive and whether that's reading, like you said and still, learning and just constantly building things in my head or whether it's physically working on a project or even just touching base with my superintendents or a project manager or whatever, I like to have that pulse, but we're not all going to be like you and I've learned that the hard way it's taken a while.

I think this all kind of revolves around everything we've been talking about today, and that you have to cast a vision. You have to take time to, to sit down with your people and really make sure that they know why you're doing what you do, why I'm doing what I do. You have to provide opportunity, whether that's through training or just meaningful work, or God forbid, you got to give them college classes to come work.

Sandwich shop. It's all about attracting good talent and keeping them engaged and keeping them motivated. And that's how you move through these phases. I think

perfectly said, it's all the above and you do that. Your firm's gonna grow. It's gonna provide, a great purpose, a great benefit. Again, we're in construction guys. We build everything that you see around us. We're essential. People need us and and we need them, we need more people to come into our industry.

Do you really see how great of a industry construction is? How beneficial it can be for most people and really just the community around us, which then includes everybody. As a last reminder here, before we do final words, share the show, guys pair this out to somebody that needs to hear it to somebody that needs to hear about, going on retreats on filling some of the gaps in employment, on training, on everything that we've talked about today, or any of our other shows on, pricing or.

Core values, which we cover quite a bit or on the commodities market. Go ahead and share that if you go out again, we don't run ads, we don't ask for anything other than for you to share the show, if you liked and enjoyed it. And don't forget to rate and subscribe to us on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you listen with that.

Matt, any other closing and final words for this? I would echo what you just said, Dylan. And I'd also ask people to get in touch with us, and we're easy to find. We're both bombed by our names, Matt Vetter, or Dylan Mitchell on any of the major channels. Reach out, give us ideas of what you want to hear about.

If you want to come on the show, reach out, let's have a chat and see if you might be a good fit. We were doing this for the global good for the good of the construction community. And we'd like it. If people got more involved and we'll keep doing.

100%. And with that guys, that's this episode of the constructing corner podcast until next time.