← Dirt Talk by BuildWitt
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Foreign welcome back. This is build with update 10 titled articulated trucks fox and 401ks. As always, this is now the Monday episode where we do a a weekly update for what the heck's going on in buildwit. I'm really excited about this. I've enjoyed this so far. If you have questions, comments, anything to address further, send me an email anytime. Aaron buildwood.com Aaron, would love to hear from you. So the first happening for this week, a new course with John Deere on articulated truck operation Dropped on build would improve. Very exciting. Producing relevant training content for the dirt world is tricky. We're great at writing, filming, editing, but we don't have the machines, the experts or the facilities to put it all together. Fortunately, however, we have some really great relationships with companies like John Deere who let us borrow their resources and produce the training content the industry needs. When we began, it was pretty, pretty haphazard with how we got equipment and facilities. A lot of our early training videos were filmed at Thompson Machinery here in Nashville, Tennessee. They would let us borrow a little space out, you know, behind their equipment yard and shop. They would let us borrow equipment as needed. Skid steer, excavator, small dozer. It was fantastic. However, it wasn't a controlled environment. We had to produce the content ourselves. We had to be the subject matter expert, which is great. We had the right people at the time, but there's a better way to do it. And so these partnerships that we have, like one with, with John Deere, are fantastic because John Deere has allowed us to come to their facilities which are dedicated for training. So it's not a production environment. We're not getting in the way of anything. They've given us their machines because they have all sorts of machines at these facilities. The one in Illinois and then the one in Arizona, depending on the time of year. And then they have a, an enormous bench of subject matter experts that can speak to repairing machines or how scrapers work, or in this case, how articulated trucks work and what you need to know while operating one. So really, really cool there. Another great course, just building out that library further and further. Further. This week I appeared on Fox businesses Red, White and Blue Collar program which was my first stab at quote, unquote, live media. I recorded it a week before it actually aired, but they were treating it like it was a live recording. Way different than my usual podcasting and social media monkey business. But any coverage outside of our normal means, our normal channels, I think is, is a big win. So if any kind of mainstream channel were to reach out and say, hey, can you talk about the dirt world and the people you visit? I'd be like, absolutely. I don't care who it is, I just want to get the word out as much as possible. I'm not the, the biggest fan of the format or at least I'm not familiar with it quite yet. It was, it was interesting doing, you know, it's just very fast. It's 2, 3 minutes, 4 minutes. Like you don't have very much time. Whereas here I can just wander and spout all kinds of nonsense as much as I would like. I don't have to think as much, I don't have to be on as much, which I like. I like this format, I like what we have on YouTube, on social media. But I am more than happy to fit in on these more traditional formats. I'm just very grateful to have an opportunity like this and hopefully we have more opportunities to preach the gospel of the dirt world. So that is that. 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. Next up, our development team worked hard this weekend to take over all build with improve back end infrastructure from our outside development partner which officially puts the ball in our court for the first time regarding the new software product build would improve. We needed an outside partner to build the infrastructure to begin with. We made that decision over a year ago. So based on where we were over a year ago, we just didn't have the desire or capacity internally to go build an entirely new product. So we leveraged that outside firm to do it. They've been helpful in making that happen. But now it's time for us to control everything ourselves. So the Team, they had that maintenance window on Saturday. They took the product down, they moved it over to our environment and now we have full control over it. Which is great because up until now, if we had an issue or changes to make, like bugs or whatever it was, we'd have to go through another party to make it happen. Whereas now we can just make it happen, which means we can resolve issues faster and develop the product faster. So it's. This is a really big step from a software standpoint. I'm really excited about this and very appreciative of our team for making it happen over the weekend. We chose the weekend because obviously we want to take the product down when people aren't using it or are probably not using it. So we wanted to avoid Monday through Friday and do it on, on a Saturday to give us 48 hours just in case anything happened before Monday morning kicked back off. Next. Since we operate on EOS, our executive team had Q3 planning. In this meeting, we reviewed last quarter's rocks, Q2's rocks, and company metrics. We discussed challenges within the business and we identified our Q3 rocks. We are rolling them out to the team this week, but all of them are around becoming a better software company. I would say Q1 was about finishing the sale of the creative business. That was a monster undertaking. It took us quite a few months to tie up those loose ends. So that's what we did. Q1 for the most part, Q2 was about finding a new sense of focus. All right, cool. We're doubling down as a software company. What does that really mean for us? And now Q3 is about more discipline, more sophistication, leveling up as a software company. So I'm, I'm really excited about this. If you are a company that has the ability to choose an operating system, I really recommend dos. We don't have any kind of deal with them as far as I know, but it's been a very helpful framework to just organize our business and organize our planning. You have your metrics, which are, you know, if you just get a piece of paper with a few numbers on them and no other information that should tell you how the business is operating, good, bad and different. And then your rocks every quarter are big multi department undertakings that need to happen to get the company closer to the ultimate objective, which you also define. And so every, every week we review those rocks. As a leadership team, we Are we on track? Are we off track? Do we need to change the rocks? It prompts some really great discussion weekly when we come together as an executive team and then now that the company rocks are set, each department then goes and sets their rocks as well. So what do they need to do within the quarter to contribute to the overall company objectives? So it's a really nice way to just organize the company a little bit better. We're still figuring it out. We don't have it all sorted, but we've been doing it for maybe two years now with, I think, good results. And then finally, every Tuesday, we have a remote weekly toolbox talk where a different team member presents on a helpful subject of their choosing, whatever they want to present on, just something that can help the team out. But this week we invited Assured Equity Management, who, who's our 401k advisor, to give our team a refresher on how our retirement program works. While many of these retirement program groups are just wildly unhelpful, like health insurance, AEM has been unbelievable. And so if, if you again are a business owner, you need somebody to help on Financial Planning, 401k, et cetera, I could not recommend AEM more. We found them three through a very large construction company we work with. So they actually have industry background. They're great people. And it's cool to have just real helpful people to, to talk to our team about retirement. Retirement. It's a big deal. We, for the size of our company, I think, have a very generous program. That's something that's been very important to me since day one. I have a huge problem with people working their whole lives and then ending everything with nothing and having to live off Social Security, which probably won't be there at some point, or at least I'm not expecting it to be there when I retire. And so if we can help people set themselves up for that retirement scenario for that success, that, that, that whatever that future scenario looks like for them, whatever they want. If we can, if we can play a part in that process, I think it's, it's a huge win for everybody. And I think part of playing a role in that process is educating people how it works. We as employers, we talk all the time about 401ks and we have the education on 401ks, but I bet a majority of people in America could not actually explain to you how a 401k works because they've never been taught, they've never been educated. The documents that you can provide them through these big financial institutions are awful. So again, having just real people explain it in real terms I think is a huge help. And then beyond that, we published AEM's phone numbers. Every person on the team, they're great. Sean, Shane and Debbie, they give out their cell phone numbers and say hey, if you have questions, if you want to figure out where you are, if you want to talk to us about anything, just give us a call anytime. And that to me is, is just, it's, it's very exciting as an employer to offer our people a service like that with something that's so important. So that is a little bit on our weekly toolbox talks and 401k program. AEM assured equity management out of Denver could not recommend them more. And that's everything for this week. Those are the highlights. I appreciate you all tuning in as always. Send me an email if you want to discuss anything, if you have any questions. Aaron buildwith.com I love hearing from everybody and we'll see you on the next one. Stay dirty everybody.