← Dirt Talk by BuildWitt
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hello, everybody. Welcome to bill IT Update number nine. This one's titled Dave Ramsey Servers and Offers. Now, before I begin, there's some construction going on. My phone's ringing. There's some construction going on downstairs. So if you hear that in the background. I'm not on a job site, unfortunately, I'm in the studio. It should be quiet at this time of day, but it's not. A lesson learned was that I, I leased the space. We're in the office space in 2020. I thought it was really cool and it is really cool. It's an amazing over 100-year-old brick building, which is very, very rare in Nashville. They've knocked them all down to build garbage apartments. So we're in one of the few. It's a beautiful space. However, the downside of the space is that it is upstairs from a bar and restaurant. Bars and restaurants, plural. So when there's stuff going on in the restaurant bars, it can get pretty noisy. Usually there's not construction, but they're doing something, some kind of construction somewhere. So that's what's in the background. So lesson learned there. When you are leasing an office space or apartment, whatever it is, make sure there is not a bar or restaurant right downstairs. If there is, expect some noise because that's just how bars and restaurants work. Now to get into this week's bill with update, we will start with the first point and that is our new media server, which is very exciting. Keeping our photos and video files safe has been challenging from day one. Initially, I kept everything on small unorganized drives, sandisk, solid state drives. Then we graduated to larger drives scattered across America. Because in the early days it was me, Chell and Angel. Angel was in California, Chell in Utah, me in Nashville. Well, Arizona, then Nashville. Then we started to add other people in other states and there were drives scattered all over the place, which was worse. So when we did build this headquarters, we leased it in 2020, built it out in 2021. I said enough was enough and we bought a server, a big daddy grown up Dell server. While great on paper, I had no idea what I was doing when I chose the server. And it did fine. But it was not the ideal case for our business at all. Now we had to live with it for quite a few years because we spent a boatload of money on it. That's happened to a lot of businesses. You invest in something, you think it's going to be a good thing and now you're stuck with it for a while, especially technology. But now we are prioritizing security, we're prioritizing data security, keeping everything backed up, etc. We knew we needed a different solution, so we sat our team down that is in charge of media. We said, hey, figure out something that's better, that works best for you, that is also cost effective. And they came up with a phenomenal option. So imagine that if you ask people that know what they're doing to build the solution, you end up with a great solution. And that's what we have, a great solution. It works better for our media library and it's more cost effective, which is phenomenal in both ways. And then the teams bought in on it because it was their solution, not my solution. And like I said, this is, it's a big deal because we have spent so, so many millions of dollars at this point and years of my life, years of other people's lives creating this content. Not just the training content, the thousands of training videos we have, but also everything we've done for the vlog, social media for customers back in the day. From marketing standpoint, we probably have a bigger, more diverse library of industry footage than any other company in the world now, and keeping that safe and sound is paramount. So this was a big deal, a huge undertaking, many months in the making, but to implement it within a week was phenomenal and I'm very excited about it. So that's server news. 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 is another thing that's quite exciting and that is that I was able to interview Dave Ramsey last week for the Dirt Talk podcast which should be out by now. With this podcast airings, we're A little delayed on these updates to give me some wiggle room for travel, but the podcast should be out so you can listen to it if you haven't already. It was a super cool life moment. And over the years we have formed some really great relationships with some phenomenal outside organizations that also want to make the dirt world a better place alongside us like Entrez Leadership and Ramsey Solutions. And so as a result of these relationships we've built, we've had and I've had incredible opportunities like sitting in Dave Ramsey studio and talking to him about business in the dirt world. Other things that we've, you know, other people we've gotten to know, people like Chad Wright who spoke at last year's summit, Jocko Echelon front that whole organization we've gotten to know really well. There's a long list of people that I never thought first form another great one that I never thought I'd be hanging out with or working with or spending time with these people. But because of these relationships, because of our mission, because of our service to the dirt world, we've gotten to know some, some great folks. So again, hopefully you enjoy that conversation. What's even cooler is that it's not just me having conversations with these people. For, for my sake, I get to do it with a microphone in front of us, record it, and then share it all with you. So yeah, if you haven't listened to it, scroll back, find it. I think it's well worth a listen, especially if you're a business owner in the dirt world. Next up, I am really fighting through the hammering that's happening right below us. A few new BuildWit Improve customers have reached 90 to 100% adoption after onboarding their teams recently. Very, very promising. And this speaks to improvements in the software product and our implementation process. What we've learned is that rarely are we replacing, especially with quote unquote, smaller civil construction companies about 250 below. Rarely are we replacing a built out existing training program. So not only are we helping them to get on another software product, a new software product, but we're helping them build a daily training program from scratch. And it's taken us many years of working alongside some of the best companies in the industry to learn what the best approach is. And we haven't until recently been able to verbalize and systematize that approach, but we have. And not only that, but the product itself is a lot easier to use. The new software product improve and it's easier to get users on board so that 90 to 100% adoption. That means 100% of people at the company that it's being implemented at, they're using that product in the first week, first few weeks, a huge achievement. It means we were able to get all of their users on from a product standpoint and then we were able to help them build that system, that, that daily use system as well. From an implementation standpoint, that's been a huge undertaking and it speaks volumes to the product team and our implementation team. So that's a big deal. There's still a lot of work to go, but it's an extremely promising trend and that is why we replace the product with this new product, mostly to make it easier to use. And the data is saying it is easier to use, which is really, really not just exciting, but relieving feeling. Next, on the marketing front, um, I had mentioned that we were pushing on the area Dirt World Summit quite a bit. Marketing team spent a week, a little over a week going back to the drawing board on the Dirt World Summit website and they overhauled the entire thing this past week. So brand new website. They've, they've added a ton more information. They have testimonials, speaker bios, information on the Dallas venue. We, one of our values is keep it simple stupid, but sometimes we can keep it a little too simple. And we built out the original dirtworld website very simply to just get something up while we had other priorities. But now that we have more bandwidth from a marketing standpoint, now that improve is starting to get more spun up, we're able to backtrack and add more critical information. So I think that was the flaw of the site was it just didn't have enough information. But marketing team was able to move really quickly add all of that information to the website. So it is way more helpful, which is a lot of fun to be able to do that internally. It's a huge advantage to have the team that we have moving as quickly as they are making those essential changes. We need to continue growing, not just the event, but our business overall. And then finally we sent out two more offer letters this week to grow our sales team. Very exciting. Which gives us way more sales capacity. By the beginning of July. After slowing hiring, I am super thrilled to bring more world class people into the fold. And we're a young team which has its perks, but experience also has an essential place in any growing company and these people are a little bit more seasoned from a sales standpoint. So over the past few years we've definitely been on a trend that's a declining headcount for all sorts of different reasons. Mostly it's been just natural attrition. Over the past two years, we've chosen not to rehire a lot of those positions as we've just gotten more and more lean and as our business has changed. We've changed a lot over the past few years as well. That's been part of it. I love hiring people, though. I just have learned you don't want to hire people unless you absolutely need them. And we are at the point where we absolutely need more sales capacity, which, which I've explained on previous updates. And to finally identify two great candidates, to have them through the process, to have everybody say, these are some great people, they don't just have the right experience, but they have the right attitude. They're the right people, not just professionals, but just people, is a great feeling. Offer letters are out. Hopefully they accept. Hopefully they feel the same way about us. We do them, get them in the door, spool them up, their experience, they should hit the ground running. And that's a lot more capacity from a sales standpoint that we've been missing for this year. So really excited to have more sales capacity and also be adding to our team. It's just so much fun to bring new people in. Different experiences, different perspectives. It changes the business. I always think, well, you usually in a positive way if they are the right people, but I think these two are. So that's a little bit on the hiring front. And with that, that's everything you need to know about what the heck is going on in Buildwit or what went on this past week. I appreciate you all tuning into these. If you have questions or comments on any of them, send me a note at any time. Aaron, buildwit.com would love to hear from you and we will see you on the next one. Stay dirty.