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Foreign welcome back. This is the Monday edition of the Dirt Talk Podcast. Today it's Build with update number 16, titled this one Data Centers, ARIAT and Momentum. For anybody that has not listened yet, this is a weekly account of some of the things that have happened within the company. I'm asked all the time what the heck Buildwood does, and this is one of my measly attempts to explain what it is the company does. The company is not just me. There's about 50 people here now full time. Primary is business, is software. That's really the economic engine of the company. It's the future of the company. We no longer do outside marketing. We also have an event called the Area Dirt World Summit, which will be this year, November 5th through the 7th in Dallas and then in the Southwest in 2026. And I know where 2027 is going to be, but can't tell you yet. That's how we really make our money. Than me. I run around the world usually with TJ and Jack to tell the story of the dirt world, build our brand, connect with people, develop trust, which will then help grow the business, which will then make an impact across the industry, build the next generation, so on and so forth. And that's at least the play we're running right now. So with that background out of the way, here's what happened last week. Week first off, the Influence team, which is again me, Jack, tj, typically out in the field. We visited Mortensen in Louisiana where they're working on one of the world's largest data center projects. We arrived first thing to meet some of their team and then watched their crews climb into roughly 500 pieces of heavy equipment to move about 75,000 cubic yards of dirt every day. All work was remarkably professional, considering especially they've had about 90 rain days in the past nine months. So I was extremely impressed. It was the first time I had experienced anything with Mortensen Civil. A good friend of mine, Eric Selman, who was on the podcast recently, helped to lead that group for a very long time, helped build it. They first helped focus primarily on wind and solar, on renewable energy, and have since grown into the data center market. Mortensen primarily a general contractor, so they're a big building contractor based out of Minnesota. They work across the United States. They do some just monster projects. So usually a general contractor is subbing out the site work, but Mortensen has the capability because of their civil division, to do the site work themselves. And they weren't just doing it on their own because this site. It's thousands of acres with many millions of yards to move. So there were quite a few other companies out there, one of which being CJ Moyna. We've had Mobile Track Solutions, a sister company, on the podcast Phil, earlier this year as well. I'm going out to their event in a few weeks, the at the Earth Mover Legacy center beginning middle of September for the 100 years of caterpillar. So it was crazy. This data center stuff is bananas. I hadn't really experienced it until this year. I had been to data center projects in previous years. The scale has always been crazy, but I guess the past year the scale has really been ratcheted up. There's some big projects in Nevada, in this one in Louisiana, on the east coast, up into the Northeast. Idaho had some big ones. Texas, of course, with the Stargate project and, and I don't know a lot about AI, I don't know a lot about technology. But funny enough, I'm kind of in the middle of all of it because I know the people doing the work and I get to see the projects happening, which is pretty cool. But we're just focused on the dirt, on the infrastructure. Once the big fence with razor wire goes up around the perimeter, I'm out of there because then it's just a little too complicated, a little too fancy for my liking. But great visit with Mortenson. The team was amazing, the people were amazing, the work was, was really impressive. And I don't just say that about everything. I've been to a lot of sites that are not that impressive. Big yardage does not mean it's going to be looking very good, especially with such just terrible material. In Louisiana, it's either muddy or very sandy, which is tough to work with, especially when very wet. But they made it look easy. So it was a great visit. And we'll have a video coming to YouTube full length. Soon after Mortenson, Jack went home. We drove then from Louisiana to Dallas to catch a flight. Flying into Louisiana is a little tricky. There's not a lot going on there. So we drove to Dallas, Jack took a flight back to Nashville. TJ and I then got onto a flight to Oakland. We landed at about midnight, Pacific time, woke up, had breakfast at a local Oakland diner. That was amazing. I wish I remember the name. And then we spent the day at ar. Now, as you may know, AR has for the past three, three years and into the fourth year of the summit has been our title sponsor, which is unbelievable. They sponsored the podcast last year and now they are sponsoring a lot. Regarding the vlog, I have been very reluctant to take any kind of sponsorship dollars since the very beginning of Build Whip. That's never how we've financed anything. It's the only sponsorship dollars I've ever taken is with ar. And I've partnered with them because they've, they've been just so great. They're a phenomenal partner. They're phenomenal people. And I've used their boots since I was working in construction. They're what I travel in. I've been around the world in them now. I will go to Australia in them next week. Every video, everything you've ever seen me doing out the field is in Ariat boots. Huge fan, huge fan of their Western pedigree of their workwear. And the more I've gotten to know them, the more impressed I am with them. So partnering with them ongoing has been an easy decision for us. Again, they've been a great fan of ours, which I wholeheartedly appreciate because it's not always been easy to get people to believe in us. But they've been behind us from quite a few years ago and, and, and, and they will be with us, I think, well into the future. So we stopped by their office. I got my feet measured, I checked out their latest workwear, I checked out their latest footwear. They got me some new boots. I actually got them to the office yesterday. They sent them over here. They checked out my boots. I talked to their marketing team about some of the stuff we could work on. So it was, and, and I just tried to pass along a lot of information regarding what I see out in the field. I, I've been careful with sponsorships too, because I never want it to come off like I'm a working man. I'm not, I'm, I'm fully aware of that. So every time somebody comments, acting like I'm playing construction workers, like, yeah, I know that, I know that, dude. But it's like, well, what else am I supposed to wear on a job site when I'm visiting? Like, you have to, you have to play the part as well. Dum. Dummy. Um, but I'm not a working man, so, yeah, I, I, I put the boots through their paces. We go to a lot of different environments, a lot of different places, and I've put a lot of time and steps into the boots I've worn. However, I more importantly, view myself as really just a representative and, and conduit of, of what's happening out the field and try to speak on behalf of people in the field and not position myself as the expert, but just say, hey, here's what I'm seeing, here's how I see people use the products, here's what I think resonates with people. Here's what people could potentially benefit from. I talk with a lot of working class people. I'm a huge fan of working class people. I have nothing but respect for them and if I can help support them by just sharing their experiences with others, then that's what I'm going to do. So that's also what I tried to do at the meeting with Ariat. 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. Back home or not back home? I guess still abroad. Travel Sense Our training video team shot 24 videos with a customer in Texas and as part of their new buildwit improve agreement. So not only do they have the platform, an entire training video library for their team, but we agreed to shoot custom videos based on their needs which we're now offering to other existing and potential customers. So it's an offer we've talked about with a lot of firms. Now oftentimes the bigger companies, hey, if you do a longer term deal for build would improve. A three year agreement will give you x amount of videos. They'll all be custom to whatever you want. There's no other team that's produced this many training videos as as successfully as we have within the construction industry now in as big of a variety of topics, locations, subject matter, experts, etc. So we can come in and we can be just a lot more efficient than somebody internal within a marketing department within these companies, local video agency, etc. There's a lot more to training videos, go figure, than just shooting them. And that's taken us years and millions of dollars to figure out. So we're trying to put that leverage, that experience to the benefit of others beyond just the overall training library that's available on the software product and offer that service specifically to contractors we're working with. And that was an example last week in Texas of that happening. Our first batch of Spanish dubbed videos is complete and verified by multiple native Spanish speakers. So now that we know our new system works, we can proceed with dubbing the remainder of our 2000 or so training video in our library. I mentioned this a few weeks ago. We found, you know, we had our videos dubbed in the past. We went to a different platform, so we've had to redo it, which is fine because we can improve upon it as we redo it. We found a system to do this. We weren't sure how it was going to go, but thanks to technology, you can try stuff, you can see how it works, and you can either continue down that path or you can pivot. Fortunately for us, the system we found has worked and so now we can proceed with dubbing the remainder of our content, which is a lot. It's, I think it's like 4,000 plus minutes of training that we have to dub. And not only do you have to dub, but then you have to verify with multiple people that it is accurate and then even then it might not be accurate. So you have to gather feedback. It's a process. But this is really important as well. There's a lot of Spanish speakers out in the construction industry, not even just one region anymore, but across the entire country. So we're trying to offer everything in not just English, but also Spanish. Since May, we've averaged about 9,000 lessons completed weekly on Buildwood Improve. But this week there was an increase to about 14,000, which is an exciting change given how busy the field still is. Since it's summer, we continue developing additional ways to drive adoption. But the daily training method for those in the field is picking up steam. Daily training, it's, it's been an uphill battle. It's new to the industry and when you're pioneering something, it's slow incremental progress. However, the Build it Improve platform is a dramatic improvement, no pun intended, over the former Build with training program. And not only is the platform better, the content continues to improve. The content delivery is much better, the administrative functionality is much better, and then our ability to implement and support customers is substantially improving as well. This has been a weak, weak area of ours is driving adoption and maintaining adoption. However, we're starting to see these, these much stronger metrics proving that adoption is, is growing substantially. And we don't even have most of the existing customers onto the platform yet. So that number should substantially climb from here over the coming months and then hopefully continue climbing from there. It should never go down, it should just go up from here. So that's at least the goal. 14,000 lessons in a week is fantastic, but the goal is much, much bigger than that future state. And finally in July, sales momentum really picked up, which is awesome. Going into August, we'll have five new business development reps going full bore. Our sales team and strategy changes will continue to mature and ticket momentum will accelerate. Being 90 days out from the Area Dirt World Summit with 43 tickets sold this week alone and the hotels are starting to get started. Slim. Tickets are getting slim. So we're hoping to close that gap over the coming month as well. So like I've talked to you about over the, the past few months, sales has been a challenge, a substantial challenge for us. Part of that is summer. Contractors get really busy in the summer. They're just not answering their phones. They've got stuff to build, they've got to make hay while the sun's shining. And there's been some self inflicted wounds within the sales structure. The sales strategy for us that we've had to reconcile. So we've done those things. We've controlled what we can control. We can't control busy contractors, but we can control structure, strategy, focus the business development reps, how we're talking with customers, how we're training our people, how we're positioning our product, who we're talking to. And, and we've gotten a lot better. The numbers reflect that, which is for me in my position, just relieving, just relieving when things work as planned. So effort does pay off, which is really cool to see. So with that, that's everything from the past week. Buildwood Update 16 if you have questions, comments, you can reach out to me anytime. Aaron A a r o nildwood.com just give you my direct email. Would love to hear from you. I try to answer every message I get on every platform. I can't get to all of them, but I do my best. So thank you so much for listening and we will see you on the next one.