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Hey, everybody. Dirt Talk podcast Bill with update number 12. I titled this one Another base Hit. That's because it wasn't a sexy week. But I think this was a lie I subscribed to early in business. That was. It's the big moves, the big sexy moves that push you forward, that set you up for ultimate success, whatever that may be. But that is just not the case. It is way more about consistent forward motion. And a lot of times it's not even that much, but it's just about getting on base. And so I say that all the time. The team will say, yeah, Aaron says it all the time. Base hits, just get on base. Another base hit. And if we're doing that, we're good to go. And if we hit a home run every once in a while, fantastic. But that's not what we're looking for here. We're just looking for base hits and we're looking for that consistency. So this wasn't a sexy week. We didn't do anything all that dramatic. But it was a lot of good progress, small progress to get us to where we ultimately want to be. So with that preface established here this week, we successfully migrated our first group of 15 customers from our old build with training product to the new build with improve product. One customer had 2000 accounts to move. So it's quite the relief. Everything went smoothly. And for some background here, you know, man, a lot of people, and this is on us, this is on me. We've done a very poor job of explaining what it is our business does. And in fairness, it used to do one thing, then it did another, now it does another. Oh, we've been all over the place. But this year, if we are to succeed, if we are to to win the game, going back to the analogy, we have to clarify what it is we do and why we do it. That's why we divested of the marketing business. That was a big move, a big reason why, and it's given us this clear path to run within software. But to give you some context here, and maybe you know this, maybe you don't, but we built the original software products we built was called build with training. However, maybe 18 months ago now it's been a little bit. We evaluated the platform that we had created and it was two pathways. One, it was continue to iterate upon that platform, or two, build from the ground up, rebuild the product to have then more effective architecture for the future. We ultimately decided for option two, that was build an entirely new product alongside the existing product. So we were running and selling the existing product while building the new product. Now that we've brought the new product out months ago, we renamed it as well. So not only is it a new product, but we named it Build It Improve to focus on daily improvement. We think that's most valuable since we launched that we've been bringing on new customers so they were customers that were not on the old platform. Build with Training. So we've onboarded all of those customers onto improvement and now we must migrate the existing training customers to the improved platform. And once that's done, we can then shut down Build with training, shut down the old platform and focus wholly on the new one. So this was the first step in getting those customers to the new platform. The existing customers, our biggest customer with about 2,000 accounts was in that cohort. It all went according to plan and now we can continue the migration over the coming weeks and months to then sunset Build with training. So that's a little bit of background on product, software, etc. If you're looking for another industry event that is a snooze fest, this is definitely not for you. But if you're a leader looking to elevate yourself, your team looking for like minded individuals that are hungry, then look no further than the Ariat Dirt World Summit November 5th through the 7th in Dallas, Texas. In our third year we'll have about 1500 hungry industry leaders from about 500 companies looking to learn, grow, teach. It's going to be fantastic. We also have a world class lineup. We've got Jesse Cole from the Savannah Bananas, James Clear, Atomic Habits, Kim Scott, Radical Candor, Mark Miller, Chick Fil A Leadership Tim Grover who is Michael Jordan's trainer. You will not hear from a lineup like this anywhere else so check out details now. Dirtworld.com you can use code AARON10 for 10% off any registrations and we'll see you November 5th through the 7th in Dallas, Texas with our Q3 rocks rolled out. Next one each team met to review which impacts them and what subrocks they have to set to keep us on track. One focuses on improving the software experience for all users so our development team will spend the next three months on further bug fixes and updates to facilitate even simpler use for those in the field. Again, this is the first time we've had simple rocks and the clarity is already bearing fruit. Go figure. The way the rocks work. I've explained it. Big picture from an executive level we set three rocks for the quarter Q3. These are the three really big things that need to happen this quarter to get our business to the next level. They're big picture, real big picture. And so each team then looks at the rocks and asks hey, do we have a hand in making this successful? Executing upon this? If we do what are then the. How do we break it down? What are then the. The rocks that we have to create unown to then contribute to that bigger rock, the sub rocks. And if we don't have any part in that rock then we don't have additional sub rocks. So each team then they meet, they ask what do we need to do to drive the business forward to accomplish these rocks they establish their subrocks and then they focus on those subrocks for the quarter. If everybody stays on track, does what they're supposed to do, it all then leads to the company moving forward in the direction it should. So we've been doing this like I've said for years, but I think this is the first quarter. We've been very simple and disciplined about it and about this approach and I think it's going to do us a lot of good Next one. We are working on training videos regarding effective discussions. Having worked with hundreds of construction companies and thousands of people overall, we've recognized that the morning meeting is the most important 10 to 15 minutes on any job site. However, those leading these meetings are rarely all that effective when it comes to addressing their team and communicating the day's plan. The industry assumes that leaders will be able to effectively communicate, but it's a skill. Communicating effectively is like finishing concrete. You don't just have the skill, you've got to learn it, you've got to practice it. And it takes time. So with Billwood Improve and with our nearly 2, 000 training videos we've created now, a lot of it is skills based. So a lot of it is how to use an excavator effectively, how to lay pipe, how to use a cutoff saw. Whatever it is, it's stuff that it's happening day to day on civil construction sites across the United States. But it's also a vast majority of our training videos. Not that, not, not, not the majority but a vast portion of the training videos are soft skills and leadership. Because I still maintain that's what the industry needs most. And right now we have this, this generational shift. It's not just happening at the executive level, leadership level. It's happening on every job site. You have the older foreman, superintendents, project managers, whatever it is, retiring. You have these younger individuals who have been typically top performers in pipeline, earth, moving, concrete, pouring, whatever, stepping into these leadership roles, but they don't have the leadership abilities. And so that's where we're trying to fill that void. And effective discussions is key in helping these leaders and these crews get ahead. So we're creating a whole video training course on that right now and I'm very excited for the outcome. Finally, marketing and sales are also benefiting from our renewed focus. We plan to pour substantial time and effort into growing Ariat Dirt World Summit sales for this summer into the fall. And we've already sold more tickets by summer this year than the previous two years combined, which is fantastic. But we still have a lot of work to do to make it the industry's best conference period. You know, the summit it'll be this year. Area dirt world summit November 5th through the 7th. Our income for the business is split in three. You have two big buckets. One is software, the build and improve product. The next is the summit. Dirt World. It's, it's a big deal. It's, it's a huge source of, of income for us and it's, it's, it's important because it's cash flow. It allows us to float the business throughout the year. Any business owner, anybody involved in operations knows that cash is king. You've got a lot of bills to pay and the more cash you can bring in that you can use to, to grow your business and float things, the better. So it's, it's, it's great for that and it's, it's great for our mission. It's great for, for, for building the next generation of the dirt world, for changing the industry. It's really the, the only meeting, as far as I'm concerned, with the industry's most forward thinking leaders all in one place, learning from some of the most forward thinking leaders in the entire United States, not just in the industry, but outside of the industry as well. But it's, it's still, despite its value, it's still only in its third year. And this is another thing I've had to wrestle with and come to terms with as a young man and young business owner. That is, things take time. So while in the next few years I think the event will sell itself and sell out probably the week after each event is, is the goal, I don't see why that wouldn't be the case. We have had to build the momentum and we've been growing the event as well. So the first year we had about 675 people, which is enormous for an event that's never happened before. Then we went up last year to about 1100. This year will be between 14, 1500. It's going to be a big event and that's about where it'll stay from here. I don't think we want it to get all that bigger. Once you get bigger, you start to lose feel and it starts to get limited. From a venue standpoint, then Vegas is really the only place that can accommodate such a, such an event. And I don't know, there's already enough going on in Vegas. But not only have we been building momentum for a new event, we've been growing the event as well. So we've doubled the size of the event over the past three years. And that just takes effort. That's takes time. That takes phone calls, emails, text messages. Maybe some of you listening to this have been bothered by me to get your damn tickets. It's in everybody's best interest. Again, I think it's the most valuable feature few days within the construction industry, period. At this point. I am a very big proponent of, of this event. I have my obvious biases, but there is just nothing like it. We didn't create it just to create another event. I was against putting together the event in the first place, but now that I've, I've seen it play out over the past few years, it's been great. But the point is here it still takes a lot of effort to, to get people there to sell the event out because we're only in the third year and we are putting our sales team, our marketing team to work on making that happen through summer, into fall and then into fall. That's when momentum really picks up. August, September, October is when we sell a big sum of tickets. And I think by October, if I had to guess, we'll be sold out. So that is that. So that's what happened this week. Again, not a lot of drama, but that means everybody's executing accordingly. And I'm very grateful for that. I'm grateful for you all listening. If you have questions, comments, anytime, send me an email. Aaronilwood.com would love to hear from you. And with that, we'll see you on the next one. One. Stay dirty, everybody.