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- [00:14]
Aaron
So Monday episodes, they have been a hodgepodge of stuff and I haven't really figured out what has stuck. I've tried reading from books which I've enjoyed. People have enjoyed them. I've tried answering questions people have enjoyed. I've, I've, I've enjoyed that. We've talked about trip reports, I've talked about projects, we've talked about news articles, all kinds of stuff. I've just tried a bunch of stuff, thrown a bunch of shit at the wall. I've seen what sticks. Now. The foundation of the podcast has always been the interviews I do with people. I'm continuing to do those. I love those. I feel like they're going better and better. I'm, I'm, I'm getting better at having these conversations. I'm enjoying them more. It's been a blast. And we have so much, so many great conversations that I've already had that are edited, that are going to get published soon, and so many more coming that are scheduled. So thanks for everybody that's listened so far to those long form interviews and to the Monday episodes. Going forward, I've wanted to focus a little bit more. I, I feel like Monday episodes have been something I've had to do just to get another episode out that kind of covers the other stuff, but it's a shit reason to keep doing them if I'm not extremely excited about them. And while I was brainstorming about this over the past few weeks, especially while we were just in Europe, I finally had a brain blast. I finally figured out what to do with not just the Monday episodes of the podcast, but the, the newsletter I have, the email newsletter I publish every week. Some background on this is that I, for at this point, years now, I have maybe, I don't know, maybe 18 months. It's been a while. Every week our team does what we call a debrief. Our leadership team does a debrief and they write down what the heck happened that week and what lessons they learned in that week. I then read that debrief. I typically do it Saturday morning. I read through it, they fill it out. Friday, read through it and pull out some of the nuggets. It's great for me, especially while I'm traveling, just to keep up with what the heck is going on in the business. But then I pull out some nuggets and build two weekly updates. The first is for our investors. We've raised capital twice over from industry executives, construction and caterpillar dealers. It's a great group. We have about 15 investors and I like to weekly share an email with them with some bullet points filling them in on, hey, here's what happened at Build with this week. Good, bad, indifferent. Just so you're aware. From that I do a second update for our people, for our team and that's video based where I summarize what the heck happened last week. There's a lot going on within the business. We're a remote business which is not that much different to a construction company. There's a lot of people spread out in all different areas. We can't necessarily get together in the same room every week to talk through what the heck's going on. Everybody's busy, meetings are hard to schedule. So with a five to on average eight minute video every week sent out to the team Monday, I keep everybody in the loop as far as what the heck is going on. This is representative of our value, that is transparency wins. We've had this value since day one. I'm a huge believer in sharing information. If you don't share information, people make shit up. People fill in the gaps. You can't control the narrative. You can't even tell people what the heck is true because there's a lack of information. Then there's these other narratives that take hold and 1, 2, 6, you have the entire workforce challenge the construction and mine industries, mining industries are facing today. So I like to control the narrative. I like to give information before people ask for information. That's the whole purpose of this. Which brings me to where we are today. I thought, hey, I'm already doing these weekly updates for our investors. I'm already doing them for our team. Why don't I do them for anybody else that wants to know what the heck is going on at Build with I will do, I think another episode at some point talking more about our past and how we got here today. Today we started as a marketing business. Today though we are a software business with also an annual event called the ARIAT Dirt World Summit. The software is all about building the next generation of the dirt world by developing people new to the industry and developing the next level of leadership. We're trying to build that workforce, help contractors build their most important asset, their people so that they can go build the critical infrastructure our society needs so that then our society is good to go long term. It's a really big mission, it's a really big challenge and we're doing our best to overcome it, but it's messy. We're having to try a lot of stuff out. We're truly innovating. A lot of companies talk about innovation. Very few companies do it because it's hard. You're wrong a lot. You make a lot of messes. It's stressful. It's just all kinds of stuff that a lot of people just don't want to deal with, especially big companies. It gets harder and harder to innovate the bigger you get. But that's where we are. We are, we're doing our best. We are working hard every day with this great team that we have to help the dirt world overcome its biggest challenge. That is building the next generation. So this, this Monday episode, I want to now dedicate it to a weekly build with update so that you all can have a front row seat for what the heck is going on here behind the scenes, what it is that we do, what we're thinking about, the lessons we're learning and where we are going. So this is the first BuildWIT update that I am very excited about. These will be, I think, small. These won't be very long. I want to try to keep them quite brief. There may be some other dirt talk episodes mixed in. When Jason's in the office, other people in the office, we're able to talk trip reports. So we'll still have some other stuff. But I think this will at least be once a week on Monday so that you all can follow along. Hopefully that helps. If you ever have questions on anything I'm discussing, you can write to me directly anytime. Aaronildwit.com Some of you already have. Love that I'm very accessible. I read my email every day. So write in if you want me to elaborate upon anything I'm discussing here. I would love for this to be interactive. So maybe next week if I get questions about this week, I can address those questions and we can keep going and learn together. So the very First Bill Wit Update 1 Following Bauma, I spent the week visiting various construction and mining operations throughout Germany. I'm a huge fan of visiting Europe because I think Europe is best in class. I think their contractors are best in class. There's other countries that do it very well, like in Japan, for example. Australia does it quite well. But I think Europe is right up there with the best. And I think the United States can learn a lot from how European contractors do things. And I think they're the best. It's not a, a criticism of where the United States is. They've just been, they've been building longer than we have. They're more dense than we are. And they've had a constrained labor force for longer than we have as well. So they've had to adapt, they've had to innovate, they've had to utilize different technologies, different equipment to do the same jobs, which results in and some really cool stuff to check out. So that is a little bit as far as what the heck I had going on. For the first time, our training production teams shot in two locations simultaneously. Wayne Brothers in North Carolina and Garney in Florida. We have spent years developing our nearly 2000 build wit improve videos and we are only ramping up from here. So when we sold the creative business earlier this this year, we retained all of our video production because that is essential for us going forward for two reasons. One, we've got to keep adding to this library of training videos we've created over the past few years. It is the, it's, it's now the biggest, most diverse, highest quality training library within the dirt world, period. There's nothing else that comes close, but we've got to keep adding to it because there's so many things to cover within this industry. We're getting better at building these videos out. So we're going to eventually have to replace some of these existing videos and do it in a better way. There's just always more to do. So we have teams going out to the field to work with some great companies. Garni, we were working on some underground and plant work type stuff and then with Wayne Brothers we were working on some concrete type stuff. Teams go out in the field and shoot that kind of stuff. We have some folks working on the pre production to make those shoots go successful. And then we have plenty of people involved in post production pulling those videos together, getting approvals and getting them onto the Build it Improve platform. Then second function, the second function, why we retained media is to do what I do. That's influence. That's the podcast, that's YouTube, that's social media, that's newsletter. That's everything that is regarding building trust with the industry, getting our brand out there and telling the dirt world's story. So it's a really important team and that's a little bit as far as what the heck they do. Speaking of the product, we released a new version of Build with Improve to solve bugs we've uncovered since launch about one month ago. We have plenty of development ahead, but it's really exciting to see some of the progress here on the product. So we previously had something called Build Wit Training. It's a video based software platform to help develop people within the dirt world more effectively via small videos. 3, 4, 5 minute videos on simple things like how to inspect the undercarriage of an excavator, how to resolve conflict on a job site, how to pour concrete, all kinds of different things. And we replaced that product and we're in the process of replacing that product with the next version that we've built from scratch, called BuildWit Improve. It is really exciting stuff, but when you publish a new product from a software standpoint, you can only test it so much before you launch it into the marketplace. And we were late launching it into the marketplace later than we expected. Transparency wins. So we wanted to get it out as quickly as possible. The result of that is once more people start to use it, you start to uncover all different kinds of issues that you have to resolve. And so over the past few weeks our development teams have been working through those issues, which are known as bugs, to help the product perform as it should. And it's going to take a few more weeks to keep working through those bugs to then get the product to a high functioning position. And, and now you're not just working through those bugs, but we have a team as well working on additional features. So we're adding to it while we're getting it up to speed and then we'll continue to iterate from there. So that's a little bit about product. On the marketing front, we're gathering customer stories to share on our new website, buildwit.com check it out. For a company that began in storytelling, we've struggle to tell the stories within our own world sometimes. And so we have 250 plus customers using the software products now. We're trying to be more deliberate about going out, gathering these stories, learning about what the heck these companies are doing and why and how they're being successful, and then sharing those stories on not just our website, but other mediums. So I'm very excited about that. And then finally we're in the early stages of testing a new program with companies outside of the dirt world who want to serve dirt world companies better. And in the past we would have gone full send right away, which would have caused a mess as we pivoted. But instead we're employing Jim Collins's bullets before cannonballs approach, which means firing bullets, testing small, seeing what works. And then once you've found the target with those smaller bullets, less expensive bullets, you go for the cannonball. So we're not quite at the cannonball phase yet. I think we're gonna slow roll this one. We're gonna learn with some early adopters, we're gonna build out that early platform product and as we learn, as we iterate, as we mature, it will then roll it out to a greater group later this year, which is. It sounds obvious, but it's not something we've been at the best at. We've always been really good at. Ready, fire, aim. We haven't done as much aiming and it causes chaos. Sometimes you just have to go. So sometimes you really do have to kick the door in. But a lot of times you don't have to. You can ask some questions before you do that and you can save a lot of frustration with not just our customers, but especially our team. You can save burnout. You can, you can, you can make it a more constructive process. And that's what we're trying to work through. So that is the very first build with Update, I'll share on podcast format. This is. I, I'm, I'm good at sharing things, but honestly, this is a little uncomfortable. Cause it's a lot of information about what the heck we're doing within a business. But I think now's the time to share what the heck's going on. So that is what's happening here at buildwit. I'm really happy to have you all tuned in. If you have questions about any of that, feel free again to email me. Aaron. Aaron BuildWit B u I l d w I-T-T.com with that, we'll see you next week for another BuildWit update. Stay dirty.