#143 Win More Construction Business
Hello, and welcome to a nother episode of construction corner podcast. I'm Dylan, I'm your host today, Matt and I are going to be talking about technology. We're going to talk about the lack of stories and presentations and how most of your presentations just suck. Let's be real. Uh, and like all of our episodes, you're going to get some great shit out of this.
So share it. Tell a friend, we appreciate you guys, and we're just going to dive right into it. So before we went live here, we were talking about how. 22%. So like one in five guys are old timers. There's no better way to put it. They are 55 and older. They're going to retire in the next, you know, tomorrow to let's just say five years.
They're they're crotchy. They're done. And, uh, they really just don't want to deal with any more BS. So. The question, Matt, how do we handle it?
There is no easy answer. And, and we should have started handling this problem a decade ago, or maybe even maybe in longer ago. And we didn't as an industry, we didn't.
Brushing this shit under the rug. And, you know, it's, it's like the guy who won't go to the doctor cause he's afraid he might have cancer. So he doesn't go just hoping it goes away and cancer doesn't go away too often on its own. You know, we're, we're in a real, real pickle now, especially on the trade side, you know, and I've been having personally a lot of conversations, even just this week with some of my guys.
You know, who had the same thing? You know, I was with, uh, an HPAC tech yesterday afternoon in my office. He's 62 and he's like, screw it, man. I'm done. He's like, I'm on out. I'm going to go and enjoy the rest of the time with my wife. I'm going to do a garden and do some farming. And I said, well, shit, that's fine.
And good. Except you're the best HPAC. That your company has. So who's coming up the ranks behind you. And he kind of gave me this slide grant. He's like my problem, man, you know, and he's trying the companies try and they they've got some, you know, a succession plan, so to speak, but you're always going to lose that.
Right. I mean, that's, the beauty of construction is so much of it is, is all up here. People don't, don't tend to think that way. And when those people leave, that goes to.
I've been talking about this for years that you need to sit down with those little timers, have record the conversations, like put them on video or put a tape recorder or something in front of them that your phone, I don't give a shit what it is, but record those conversations, ask a bunch of questions.
Uh, this goes for like, basically all the like, uh, knowledge side of things where like, this is how we handle these situations. This is how. Do this or design, and maybe it's in front of a computer and your screen recording or whatever. And then for the field, get a camera, your phone, go out to the field and record that guy, doing whatever the hell he's doing and make your own YouTube video of how to blank and keep that in the archives of.
You know, this is how we, I don't, you know, set a toilet. This is how we, you know, Ben conduit. This is how we put sheet metal together. This is how we test and balance, whatever. Right. You start going through all these things and record all of it. Make an archive of all of your videos, so that, and then you, you know, you could do a database or one drive, or there's a lot of ways to do this, to where now somebody on their phone can go and search like, Hey, you know, how do I blank?
And it's there, right? It's simply named like how to set a toilet, how to bend conduit. Okay. Oh, this is how I do it, right. If no, one's there to help you. It's and then do training around that too, but simple ways that you can do with, again, any phone today, you go out, record this stuff and put it on a server somewhere.
I love that idea in principle, and it's something that we've actually been talking about it at my company, kind of building a. Uh, Shaffer construction, user manual almost, you know, we we've talked a lot in the last month through RTA about building systems and, and repeatability. And that's really where I've been mentally focused the last couple of weeks on how to build this, this book, right?
This, this start to finish book for the new people that come into my company, adding the video and, and the interviewing that, that takes it to a whole new level of, of worth and a greatness. I will tell you that I don't know how many of the salty, old dogs that are doing this in the field that have been doing this for, you know, 40, 50 years, whatever it might be.
I don't know how many of them are going to be cool right off the get, go with saying, all right, this young, Buck's going to record me all day. And you know, there there'll be some, some back and forth, I think for sure to get that to move. But if you could do that and start your own, your own company database, that'd be phenomenal.
Just, just even if you just get.
Well, and in that, right? So that, that salt, salty, old guy, he respects somebody that's probably 40, right? It's been an accompany for five, 10 years. Uh, you know, if he's 60, he probably has some respect for some guy that's, you know, 20 years his junior. Right. So you get that guy to do it, not the 19 year old with a camera, like you pick somebody that's that has some respect to, to do that, to partner with, to like walk through something together.
And then you also have somebody that's young there to say like, wait, well, how do you do that? Because somebody that's also experienced. You know, they're going to know how to do something. So you need a green, fresh set of eyes on it to help get those details out that, you know, people with experience, like, just know, but they don't consciously know.
Right. It's ingrained in them. So you need a fresh set of eyes, but to do like, it might be a team of three, right? You've got the really old guy, somebody he respects and then the new Greenfield. Right. So you got the master, the like senior, senior electrician or whatever. And then, you know, you're fresh apprentice off the street.
And by doing something like that, you can pull out, you know, the experienced guy knows the maybe higher level questions, ask where the, the green, fresh guys, you know, quote dumb as a box of rocks. He's, he's got some questions that you just haven't thought of in a long time to pull out those little gems that, oh, this that's why you, you know, turn the wrench this way or set a clean out here.
So it's not against the wall, right? Like,
well, because so much of it is, is intuition, right? It's not all just procedural and. I think you nailed it. If you get the young kid with, you know, the tattoos on his face and holes in his nose, talking to the crusty old guy who just knows how to do this shit, you got to have that back and forth so that some of that intuition will bleed out.
Cause it's, you know, user manual is one thing you could teach a monkey to set a toilet, let's say, but to have the forethought that. And I'm, I'm running in circles on this, but you know, to put the toilet this far off the wall, or to put it facing this direction or whatever, the various nuances are of setting a toilet to do it the best way that's going to come from inside.
Somebody's head not on a, on a user manual, and you need to kind of marry those two together, I think, to, to effectively coach and train the young guys so they can come up and actually make an impact. Once the older guys start leaving.
The other thing to remember, guys is the reason why like audio video work so well is people cannot.
Like the illiteracy rate is very high. So don't think that people can read or read well and understand. Um, and so like that's why video training. That's why audio podcasts, like what we're doing works so well is because most people have, you know, a seventh grade reading. Um, that's just what it is. So, you know, don't think that your people are above average.
Uh, cause I guarantee you probably haven't given them a literacy test, so you don't actually know and people just read it seventh grade level. Um, I mean the best sales letters, the best presentations are at seventh grade level. So don't get fancy with this. Um, you know, don't think that your people are above average, right?
There's there's one or two that I'm sure are a and the rest of them, you know, are below average. That's why it's an average. So doing video, doing audio, things like that are going to be more beneficial to your company. One, they can see like, again, construction is so much of a visual thing. Like this is how you.
This is, you know, the, the forces that you need to apply to this, to, you know, have the right torque, which becomes really important when you're putting a bolt on, you know, things like that actually matter on like how to use a torque wrench, right? Like, so a lot of those things you need visual. Uh, like assistance, if you will, uh, versus just the user manual with some pictures, you know, we've all used those from Ikea or whatever, and we know how that furniture gets put together.
Yeah, man, I mean, most people don't read a damn book after high school. It's, it's pretty sad really to, to think that that most Americans won't read a book after they graduate high school, but it's the truth.
So here's. Yeah, so like I'm probably gonna butcher the, the, the end result will be the right. So, uh, one in two families buy a book, one book a year, one and two by a book a year.
So half families don't even buy a book. People just don't buy books. So let alone all the people that don't read after college, they only buy one book one and to buy a book a year. So your neighbor doesn't read, let's just put it that way. And then on top of that, only like half of those people will finish the book.
Let alone, you know, and then there's the whole stats of like, most people don't even get past the first chapter. So you ended up going to like it's, if you finish one book a year, you're in the top 5% of all like people in the world. If you read one book a year, and then you add on top of that, like most books that are sold are fiction books.
So if you read a non-fiction book, you're automatically, I, I think I'd have to go back through all my stats, but it's like your top 5% by reading one nonfiction book a year. So any self development, any biography, any personal development, any business book you automatically, if you finish one book, read two pages a day, you are in the top 5% of all people.
So. You know, basically if you look around your community, right. One in 20 people read a book a year of non-fiction personal
development book. Yeah. 50, 50 shades of bullshit. It doesn't really help you. You got to dig into something that, that gets your mind moving in a better direction. And it it's a sad reality, but it's also by design.
You know, we, we could go down a long rabbit hole of why the powers that be don't want us to be literate and don't want us to read. But again, we try to stay out of that hole on this show because we might never come back from it.
So, I mean, this all goes to two guys. You know, use video, uh, people are Hertz higher and they're going out of the workforce.
You want to keep that knowledge in your company, knowledge transfer isn't happening, you know, organically on the job site. I mean, it is, but it's slow. So as you go through each project, right, there's certain key points that you want to have, right? Like you don't need to be out on the job site every day, watching somebody, Ben conduit or lay pipe or whatever.
Right. You can do. Hey, we're doing one. Uh, storm storm drain, right. And pipe system this week, we're going to come and video like these certain key elements of it. And you bring out somebody to do that. So it doesn't have to be like overwhelming, you know, have somebody that stays the hell out of the way. Um, and even it's the supervisor that's filming the thing, right.
It doesn't have to be a nuisance. They can use their phones. Don't make this more complicated than it needs to be. It's really simple. Have somebody talk through it on the video or do it later where you can voice over the whole thing. So again, don't make this more complicated or harder than it needs to be to keep the knowledge and information within your company.
Um, so that's really step one. Uh, or first thing that we went on to talk about, and then number two is with all these people retiring, you. And, you know, let's say you do all the knowledge transfer stuff. You're just going to have a lack of workforce, which we've been talking about for awhile, but it's, you're not take this lightly.
Like you're going to have a mass Exodus. If you look around your company, most people are probably over. You know, how long are they going to stick around? You know, did they do really well in their retirement accounts to where they hit 55 and just say, screw it. I'm moving to Florida. Um, you know, to be in heaven's waiting room, like, what are they going to do?
So with that, like, You never know when somebody has just had enough and quits, uh, and this is at any age, right? Like you have a lot of people that are just done. They're fed up. They've, they're tired of it. And they moving on. So figuring out ways like you're going to have a labor shortage, talent shortage, however you want to put it.
And this is across the board. This is a design. This is construction. This is subs. And even from some of the things I've seen recently, it might be permanent. So how are you going to get through with a quote skeleton crew? Like what, what are you going to have to do to improve is really the question that we're getting at.
Yeah, man, we we've had a labor shortage for a long time before this self-induced one that we're in now, you know, we've been talking about this whole blue collar bad-ass ID. You and I, for almost a year, I mean, I've been talking about it in, in less formal circumstances for, for a decade. And we have a tremendous shortage of people coming in, not just to the trades.
The trades are easy to talk about. You know, I have a affinity in my heart for that, but there's a lack of people coming into the industry at large, you know, and, and it's everything from design to, to ownership, to management, to everything on, down to the trades. You know, we preach about this so often on how many different jobs and roles there are in the construction industry.
You know, you have to really push that home. I think to people that you don't have to be the guy swinging the hammer. You don't have to be the guy digging the hole. You can run social media. For example, I was at an outing on, uh, last Monday for a local college local university. And when I was talking with them, Their career development person.
And I said, you know, we should really hook up and start talking. And, and she kinda gave me this squirrely look and it was like, well, you know, most of our students coming out of here, they're not going to want to go and dig a hole. And I said, that's exactly the problem. It's that mentality? I don't care. I mean, yeah, we need the trade.
We need the guys in the field, but I need somebody who's wants to come and work and run our social media. I need someone who wants to come and be a mathematician and put together multi multimillion dollar projects in their head on paper. And once I had that, we kind of talked through it for half hour or so.
Um, and she started kind of clicking and getting it and it was like, well, wow. You know? Yeah, that, that could be really powerful. You know, we, there was a guy, uh, a local business owner. He owns. I don't want to plug them too much cause I'd never met him, but he owns some sort of custom wheel shop for like bad-ass muscle cars, you know?
And he hired a girl, a woman out of this university pays her a good salary per year, you know, like a good entry level. And all this girl does is follow him around all day with a camera and a phone taking videos and taking. So it's tying back into your point number one, but it's just this, this broader discussion that needs to be had that construction industry is not just hammer swingers.
It's not just the guys with the bloody knuckles. We need them to, but we need everybody and, and it's gotta be this global discussion or, you know, you can't have one side without the other, I guess is my point. You know, it has to be at least somewhat balanced. So you've got the. Selling the jobs and build them in their head so that then the guys in the field can build them in reality.
And there's a whole, whole slew of team members that have to be around to make that.
Just think of like every well shit HGTV, right? Let's let's go there. So you've got this whole network dedicated to, you know, do it yourself, even though these guys are professionals, but like spawned this whole movement of do it yourself, whatever, like shit, my wife got 24 pallets. It's got one inch plywood on.
Uh, because they're meant to hold a thousand pounds of limestone bags, 50 pound limestone bags, so that, you know, there's thousand bounds that are meant to be held on these pallets and they couldn't reuse them cause they're kind of one and done deals. So anyway, we got these like 50 pound fricking pallets and we're making this.
You know, pallet couch. So it's, you know, free couch that costs, you know, thousand bucks, uh, is, you know, probably guys out there, I'm sure you know, of these honeydew projects, you get some free scrap, whatever, and then, you know, 18 trips to Lowe's and, uh, or home Depot and whatever else. But this is the whole point is that somebody followed a guy around with a camera.
And filmed all these homemade over these, do it, yourself, things, all this stuff, which now spawns the whole, you know, do yourself industry and really propels, you know, Lowe's home Depot stuff, uh, you know, Pinterest and everything that goes along with that. But why can't. The same thing happened in construction, right?
To fall around like a day on a construction site. And I get the, for so long, people have been worried about liability and all this stuff, but you're taking pictures of your job sites. Anyway, you're doing video B drones and all this. Anyway, like if you, if something does go wrong, like you want to catch it.
So why not have somebody to document the journey, but it also showcases. Everything that you do. And the more that you can showcase stuff have projects, like show that you're busy and working and all this stuff, it creates all this Goodwill with all your potential clients, your current clients, it promotes their new thing.
That's coming soon. And people can be a part of the process and it, it works like it's proven to work over and over again. And just like these HGTV or home hunters or house honors and all this other stuff. This is the same thing where we're doing, but just do it for your own projects and how much business can a $40,000 a year employee create for you.
The answer is a lot. That's exactly right. There's this, this cost benefit and an ROI you have to figure out. You know, people would, my business partner would, would shirk at the idea of me hiring a $40,000 employee to do nothing, but follow me around and do what we just talked about. But I can have the exact argument that we just talked about and show on paper, look at the possibilities of this.
If that $40,000 a year individual doing nothing but filming and asking questions and taking pictures and putting shit on social media, if they get. One job out of it. One job in even in two years, well, that $40,000 a year individual salary is it's not even a consideration anymore, you know? And that's the reality.
You have to do the math ahead of time because it's scary. It's scary to buy software. It's scary to buy equipment. It's scary to hire people, but you got to recognize that any of those three and there's other options too. It's not, you're not buying things. You're making. And that investment. If you do your homework and you use your damn head, it will pay off for you in the long run
and only your team talked you out of it, right?
So your team, your partners, right. Are going to talk you out of this, they'll slow walk it they'll drag their feet and it'll never get done. So you have to, you've got to move. You've got to make decisions. You've got to plow through it. And the other thing to think about, and this goes into my next point is.
Let's face it. You suck at telling stories. It's terrible. Like we're, we're just not trained to do any of that. Like, right. I'm an engineer. I thought English class was bullshit. Like let's just, let's call a spade, a spade. So in most of our English classes were to be honest, but now you go into a presentation and you need to tell a story to get that.
You're not telling stories, you're not creating anything. What if the first thing you did was throw a column sizzle reel. So like your highlight reel. The, you know, glamorous thing that you can now compile from all the jobs that you've done, all the team meetings, all the top out parties, right? Like all those things.
And you can stack all those in a three-minute video at the front of your presentation. Do you think you would have the attention of the people you're presenting? And at the end, you tell, you get a testimonial of how emotional these people are at their building opening, right? When their emotions are high and you got somebody filming the whole thing and you get their reactions to the new building that they're seeing, like, think of all those things that you can now filter in for every presentation you do moving forward a 32nd clip of somebody that you play in your next presentation.
Uh, emotional thing. Somebody having such a great experience or, you know, like for Matt, you opened a community center, like playing games, you know, the parents cheering, right? Like we built this, there's all these things that you can do to tell better stories, but frankly not been trained in story your filmography or, you know, cut scenes or how to do any of this stuff.
So. Yeah, I like that 20 year old granted they need some work, work ethic, so like, you know, choose wisely. But in this, you've got to have got, gotta have the content and they're, they're going to be able to tell those stories. They're going to love that they just put video together all day. Right? It's like they're working in up Hollywood studio, but they're working for your construction firm or you're designing.
And putting, you know, renderings and all this stuff that you guys create into a video with clients. You know, what more could you ask for out of. And again, to be emotional, like have those testimonial things, have those building grand openings have those, you know, uh, first shovel videos, right? Like all those are extremely important to showing what type of company you are, what you stand for, who your clients are.
Do they like working with you? All those types of things are going to be extremely powerful. And that, that goes to like technology. It goes to storytelling. It goes to. Recruiting and hiring people. It goes to clients like you can use this for everybody is very repurposable content. You just have to kind of think through this a little bit.
And the reality is we all do this shit already. Like we all do the stupid pictures with the brand new, hard hats and the silver coated shovels. We all do the ribbon cuttings. We all, we do all of it. I fly drones over my, or I don't, but I have. Eh, every couple of weeks, I'm constantly taking pictures. So are my guys, we, we have more storage now in pictures alone.
Then we probably have as a company in the last 15 years, and this has been in the last year. So what happens is we just get this giant closet full of data, full of marketing fodder. That's just sitting there waiting to be unleashed. So to get that person or persons who understand how to put that stuff together, 'cause I'll be honest.
I don't have time to learn how to do it and I'm not. I have tried and I'm not good at it, but I can take a mean picture and I can hand it off to someone who has that technical aptitude, who can whip it up into a, a compelling sizzle reel, or a compelling marketing video. And that's huge, you know, a shout out to, uh, to ed my lead, but he always says facts, tell stories, sell.
And that is. Goddamn truth, man, because you could tell numbers and facts all day long and bore people to tears. You could show PowerPoint slides of this and that, but if you get a story that resonates with someone that somehow touches their, their psyche, you know, or their soul or whatever, you know, the woo shit you want to use for the day, that's how the magic happens.
You know, there you go, audience. Five minutes. We literally just gave you the secret sauce of how to succeed in any business out there.
And it could be as simple as you, you take those drone videos that you're taking for your sites. Anyway, your walkthroughs, your whatever, put some music behind it. And voiceover, a little thing of what this building is with a, you know, out cut scene of your company or a little logo fly in thing that somebody created for you.
It could be 15 seconds, 30 seconds a minute. It doesn't really matter. Put some exciting music on it, maybe a voiceover, right. Of like, you know, Hey, this is a walkthrough of our newest project, blah blah. Yeah. That you know, is built by us and here's our subs and here's the owner. Right. Whatever, you know, Voiceover or literally just video music outro.
It can be that simple. Like it don't again, simple works. Consistency works. Like that's how this game is played.
Yeah, totally. But simple today. Doesn't hold a candle to what simple was 10 years ago. Right. And so 10 years ago we could get by with just post instill shots and, and, you know, putting ads in magazine video is the, is the name of the game right now.
And it's cheap and it's easy. So I'm going to leave this recording today and I'm going to go and put together a sizzle reel to the Rocky theme song. And I'm going to post it this weekend just to show you that even a, an old idiot like me can grab this shit and put it together and come up with something that means something to people.
Yeah. And just as a slight aside, uh, for music like that, you can totally post it on your own personal social. You use it as like ad creative or even I think in like IgE and stuff, they're going to flag it for commercial rights, um, cause you haven't licensed songs, so totally be like careful in that piece, but there's a ton of like literally go and like Google free music and there is a shit ton of, uh, Audio out there to use.
Um, so just as an aside, like, you know, YouTube, Facebook, all those will flag, like, you know, hit songs. Uh, so just as a little aside, the Amazon, uh, for all their shows, they can use top hits because of Amazon music that they've already licensed all the rights to. So an Amazon. Studio stuff they can use top hits where most movies have to create their own music for it, Amazon doesn't because they already own the rights to everything.
So a little like, uh, intellectual property, you know, note there.
I appreciate that from my lawyer friend, you're keeping me out of jail.
Well, it'll just get taken down. Like it's not gonna, you know, you're not going to pay fines or anything like that on it for the most part, it'll just get ripped off. So, um, you know, if you want stuff to like stay and, uh, do the test of time, you know, like you can do, I think it's 15 seconds is the.
Piece where you can do like, uh, clips. I think it's 15 seconds. Uh, so anything under that, like it's not going to get flagged, but if you do like the whole theme song, like you're not going to be, it will not stay on a platform. So just for yeah. Uh, legal ramifications, uh, you know, side note.
It's definitely good to know.
Definitely good.
The, the last thing that I really wanted to cover today, like, look, we've covered, you know, people are retiring, they're old, you need to figure out how you're going to keep all that knowledge in, um, the company, labor shortages, which again, we've talked about drastically, um, having content, having marketing out there.
Um, the other thing is like, for all of your positions is. There's probably some guy somewhere, you know, it could be your senior electricians. It could be your spreadsheet guy. Right? You're a tech guy that if he gets sick, goes on vacation. You know, it gets hit by a bus, whatever, uh, what are you going to do?
Right. If that one linchpin within your organization, uh, gets something bad happens, right. Or just says he's done. And, uh, he, or she, and just never comes back. What are you going to do? Right. You have these monsters spreadsheets that, you know, is like reading the matrix. Nobody can do it. So. What are you going to do in those cases?
I mean, the first thing is hire somebody to like, learn from that person on how to use a spreadsheet and then make that guy, tell them how to do this. Uh, just and explain it like, Hey, if you get hit by a bus, if you get sick, if you go on vacation, like we're kind of Sol and we need, like, we just need a backup plan and that's really what it amounts to.
But so to walk through that with, with some of these guys, again, it's all in knowledge transfer. Um, but don't have one position within your company. That's if that guy again gets hit by a bus or gets sick, or she goes on maternity leave or whatever, that you're just you're screwed. So don't let your organization get in that kind of pickle.
Um, really for no good reason.
What is it? A two is one and one is none. No, that's a scary thing. We can all hire a redundant positions, but it's also something to maybe push to, to cross train people you already do have, you know, so that if, if someone does get removed, let's say from that position, for whatever reason, it may be that the rest of the team can at least each chip in a little bit to fill up that, that hole that's not missing.
Yeah, again, it's like the basics, right. Of, you know, they don't need to know everything, but like, how do we get by, right. How do we limp through a week of you not being here or two weeks or whatever it might be? Um, And that that's really just a big thing. And some of this can be, you know, it's little cadences, it's little one-on-ones, it's, you know, an hour here, an hour there, uh, not to disrupt like the big workflow, but something that you do need to add in, on a fairly consistent basis, you know, two, three times a week to have somebody sit, learn, digest it, come back and repeat that process, you know, which goes to whole communication cadences, uh, which we've also beat to death here.
But again, it's, it's that important that we need to talk.
You gotta be careful how you approach it though. And I'm gonna share this from personal experience from, from me, screwing it up. And I tried to do this with one of my employees and say, listen, We need to do just what we talked about. We need to document everything you do on a daily basis.
And I came on like, I normally do, you know, kick the door in and gung-ho like, it has to be done in a week. I want it processed out. I want everything written down so that anyone can come in and do your job. What I wasn't thinking in my head, you know, in my, my just outrage barrage of attack on this person was is that this person's thinking shit, I'm getting fired.
They want to replace me. So they're trying to. Suck out what I do so they can have someone else to do it. And while that wasn't the case at all, that was the out that wasn't the outcome burdening it fired, but none of it got done because this person was like, well, hold on a minute. Now I'm holding the high card.
And if I don't do it, if I don't document it all, you can't get rid of it. We ended up having, once I realized like, oh shit, okay. I came on a little strong. I didn't mean that. I just, I tend to do that sometimes. You know, we had the conversation and now we're slowly starting to build it up in a more, probably appropriate manner, you know, slowly but surely building these systems and documenting what we all do.
Yeah, for sure. Like people are gonna get threatened and it's, it's also like, Hey, we're looking to grow, right. Hey, we're looking to, to grow the team and we need, we need, you're not going to be able to handle this. Right. Like, do you want to work 70 hour weeks? No. So to, to make it so that you're not being killed, like we're going to have somebody come in and help.
Do this right? So we need to train people. You need to spend some time on it, you know, we'll, you know, figure something out on how this all works, uh, and, you know, start moving forward that way. So yeah, like definitely not a bull in a China shop approach, but you know, like you can phrase it in a way that that works.
That includes them. That makes them feel. Um, and respected, you know, and what they do, that it's important on what they do, obviously. That's why we're trying to document all this stuff. Um, you know, and phrase it in a way of like, Hey, if you get hit by a bus, like we need to know this stuff. Um, you know, we want to grow, we want somebody else to come in.
We want you to lead this effort. Right. All those types of things to, to make them feel good.
Yeah. Couldn't have said it better.
All right guys, uh, We're going to wrap the show up here. Any final words, Matt, before I summarize today,
you know, I do, and we can cut this later if you want to, but I just want to shout real quick at the people who are still sitting around.
Not saying anything, the shit that's going on out there in our world right now is there's a lot of. Just wrong. And there are way too many people sitting on their hands, thinking that somebody is coming, arrest you on that, that all the people who are telling us what to do, have our best interest in mind.
And it is time for that shit to stop. We need to speak up, stand our ground and I don't care which side you're on. You don't have to agree with me politically. You don't have to agree with me on, on any of the issues. But you need to speak your own mind because no one is speaking it for us right now. And we have reached a point of, I think, no return.
So I just want to encourage everybody to, when you're done sharing this wonderful episode with all your friends and family, get out there and speak your mind. Don't be afraid to speak up and ask questions and say with what you believe in.
And guys with that, like Matt and I are aligned on a lot of this stuff is.
Okay, look, whatever you believe in is in America. You're right. This is the beauty of the country we live in. It's free speech. It's you know, you can, you have your opinion, you know, we have a show and we give you ours. So whatever yours is, that's fine. You don't have to agree with us and you don't have to agree with everything we say.
But you need to also like have opinion, stand your ground on whatever your opinion is, you know, whether you're for or against whatever. Again, that's the whole point and purpose is that you, you do have a say you do have a, a vote, like, so I live in Califor. And unlike most other states, California can kick out their own governors and all that, but it's, we, the people have that ability to do these types of things.
We can kick out, basically anybody we choose because of how California is set up as a state. So in that, like you have your, your say your opinion again, you don't have to agree with. Any of the candidates or anything like that. But like you have a say you have a vote on who you choose to do that. Same with your kids.
You have a vote and a say on where they go to school. Uh, there's a lot of resources out there you choose to homeschool or not. There's a lot of resources on, you know, going to school boards and all those meetings, your county commissioners, like again, whatever you have. Uh, opinion on don't be afraid to voice it and do that.
I mean, obviously it's important on social cause you could reach more people, but it's just as important to have those one-on-one conversations, you know? And again, you don't have to agree on the end result. You're like debates. You're not going to really change anybody's mind, but just say like, Hey, this is, this is where I stand.
This is what I believe. These are the things that I've seen and. You know, all the data information that I've read and share that with your friends, family, whatever. Um, again, like for most of us, like it's still loves my neighbor. Right. Um, you know, you got to live with these people. You gotta deal with them, even family.
Right? Like, I don't agree with everything on my, with my family on a lot of things, but you know, at the end of the day it was a level. But you don't have to agree with everything. You know, it's the heated conversations at the dinner table and then a, Hey, let's eat dessert, right? Like it's all those types of things to where have an opinion be confident in your opinion.
And then also like, to not be hypocritical in the things that you're standing for. Right. You can't say that you're for free speech and then, you know, slamming other people for having a. Um, you can't be, you know, not for mass and then wear one. When you go to a restaurant, that's not how this works. So, you know, try to point out them, little hypocritical things that you, you know, you probably do, um, in ways, you know, again, not, not non guilty here, but, uh, you try to weed those out over time and you just get better as you go.
Um, that's really all there is to it. It's open dialogue, it's conversations like we have here. Um, And that's doing your part amen to that brother. All right, guys. So today we talked about you retiring, um, talked about freedoms and liberties talked about documenting your knowledge, you know, again, having multiple generations working together to a common outcome goal, uh, and you can phrase a lot of this too.
Look, you, when you retire, where's your knowledge go? Where's all the things that you've learned, and it can be a legacy type of play too, that you use for these, uh, guys and gals that have been in the trades or industry, right. It could be. Design construction, you know, owners, whatever for 30 plus years, you want to get their knowledge, make it a legacy, play appeal to their emotions, uh, unless they just really don't care.
But somewhere deep outside that outer crust is somebody that does care about what the work that they do. And you're going to be able to help them pass on their knowledge. Uh, have them have a legacy in your company forever. It's going to be, you know, ingrained in video or whatever medium you decide.
That's going to be hugely important to them. Um, and then on labor and, uh, bringing people in the industry, uh, just like Matt talks about, you need to have conversations that you're with your local leaders, school boards, community leaders, uh, career services, offices at the high school community college college.
Um, just people in general, like have a conversation about like the wide variety of things that you can do in this industry. And then on top of that, you know, have those communication cadences document, document, document, and that's ultimately, you know, it's not going to just grow your firm, but bring people into the industry.
Keep the trades. You know, we need construction. We need people who build shit or at a, you know, 10 year high of building things. And, uh, we'd like that to continue. So with that guys share this episode, um, you know, we believe in the rights that we have here in the U S and everything that we're able to do for living here in America.
And for all of you outside of the U S. You know, uh, do your part too, in your countries and your communities to, to stand up and have your say as well. So again, we live in, we live in America, I'm born here, raised here, and, you know, we're, we're privileged and proud of the responsibilities, the rights that we have as Americans to, to do our part, to hold up the flag and constitution and, uh, you know, our liberties that have been granted to us for being born here.
So with that, that's this episode of the construction corner podcast. And until next time.