He Builds People, Not Just Projects - John Dudlicek - DT 436

Summary

Podcast Summary

Dirt Talk by BuildWitt

Episode Title: He Builds People, Not Just Projects – John Dudlicek – DT 436
Date: April 23, 2026
Host: Aaron Witt
Guest: John Dudlicek (VP & COO, Grimmer Construction, Indiana)

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Overview

This episode features a candid, wide-ranging conversation between Aaron Witt and John Dudlicek, where the main theme is the essential, often overlooked work of "building people" in the construction industry—rather than just focusing on the projects themselves. Drawing deeply from John’s personal experiences and leadership at Grimmer Construction, the discussion weaves through topics of safety, organizational culture, generational change, the state of American infrastructure, and the critical role that personal and community investment play in the future of the industry and society.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Personal Goals, Endurance, and Life Lessons

[01:37 – 04:35]

• Aaron kicks off sharing personal athletic goals (qualifying for the Boston Marathon, running 100 miles, triathlon) and how the journey is more about perseverance than a strict training plan.
• John relates, explaining his preference for running for personal well-being rather than competition, touching on recovery and the importance of good habits replacing bad.
• Notable insight: Setting big, scary goals is a good mental exercise for confidence and personal growth.

Quote:
"Because here's what happens when I'm out on a run, my daily run, that's like, part of my life, you know, I'm a recovering guy, so, like, that's been, like, a thing for me… you gotta replace bad habits with good ones." — John [03:24]

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Common Humanity, Compassion, and Global Perspective

[06:32 – 16:23]

• Aaron reflects on his international experiences, challenging stereotypes and misconceptions, especially regarding other faiths.
• John and Aaron agree that, at the core, humans everywhere share similar values: providing for one’s family, desiring a better future, showing kindness.
• The importance of humor, smiling, and simple human connections is emphasized.

Quotes:
"The most surprising thing is how similar every human being is. We're all just humans, so we all just want to care for one another." — Aaron [11:22]
"Even just one time… This feels so human. Nothing else makes me feel more connected with people." — Aaron [16:01]

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Isolation in Modern Society vs. Connection in Construction

[17:35 – 21:25]

• Aaron paints a bleak scenario of urban isolation despite physical proximity, noting construction as an antidote.
• John details how construction—especially complex, hazardous work—demands teamwork, communication, and real human connection.

Quotes:
"You can still be around people all day, but be completely isolated and alone." — Aaron [18:51]
"That bottom man in that trench has to be completely connected to that operator. They've got to be one unit." — John [21:17]

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Safety Culture: Beyond Rules to Human Care

[22:47 – 29:21]

• Both critique the over-reliance on policies and OSHA/MSHA as the baseline, arguing real safety comes from authentic caring for co-workers.
• John describes Grimmer’s bottom-up safety committee, where fieldworkers drive safety initiatives.
• Tough stories are shared about learning from accidents and near-misses; openness about past incidents strengthens safety cultures.

Quotes:
"The best safety programs I've ever seen are human… Most of it's just about a genuine sense of care for those around you." — Aaron [25:48]
"Developing that… giving it the space… they actually do care about each other. And then whatever the OSHA rules are, they're going to watch each other's back." — John [27:01]

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The Crisis and Opportunity of Aging Infrastructure

[38:44 – 52:46]

• John draws parallels between the aging baby boomer generation and America's infrastructure, noting much of it was built at once and is now breaking down simultaneously.
• There’s an urgent need to both attract new talent and become more efficient at rebuilding.
• Discussion recognizes China’s explosive, government-driven modernization as a counterpoint to America’s challenge.

Quotes:
"The life of a water main is about similar that of the life of a person… all that stuff is ending its life now." — John [44:38]
"America is only more and more… incapable of building. No one wants to say it. It's 100% true." — Aaron [38:44]

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The Role of Leadership & Family-Oriented Company Culture

[63:08 – 70:05]

• John tells the story of his first day at Grimmer Construction, where company leadership prioritized understanding his family situation above all else—establishing that family is the core company value.
• The tangible impact: Trust, loyalty, and a sense of belonging propagate throughout the company.
• Both express skepticism that mega-projects and mega-firms can foster this environment.

Quotes:
"The first order of business in that company was family. I mean, dude, I mean, I'll climb a mountain for that guy." — John [64:34]
"This is the way they care for their families and get what they want for their families… If I can align this business with their wants and future, now we're really cooking." — Aaron [67:43]

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Industry Fragmentation, Succession, and Mentorship

[77:14 – 94:55]

• Aaron notes that construction—unlike airlines, telecom, banks—is still open to newcomers: "the American dream is still alive."
• But there’s a pressing need for the older generation to reinvest time, money, and mentorship into the next, both to sustain the trade and pass along wisdom.
• John calls on experienced tradesmen to actively mentor younger people, noting the critical impact on the community and industry.

Quotes:
"I don’t think the solution is a bunch of mega-contractors… the American dream is still alive in civil construction." — Aaron [77:14]
"If you just hand them a bunch of cash… it's a 90% chance that your kids are going to be completely fucked up from it." — Aaron [92:18]

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Real-World Training, Not Just Policy or Tech

[97:56 – 105:02]

• Both lament technology as a panacea for workforce woes; real skills come from mentorship and hands-on experience.
• Highlights innovative school programs (like Indiana Constructors’ civil construction curriculum) and the need for industry professionals to step up at the local level.

Quotes:
"If you just wait for that program to show up… I met with our school last week to say, hey, let me talk to your students about the trades. Let me bring some of my tradesmen into the classroom." — John [103:02]
"It's not gonna just show up. We got to do it." — John [104:30]

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The Call to Duty: Creating, Not Consuming

[108:34 – end]

• John issues a passionate call to industry peers: Men (and women) in construction have a duty to teach, mentor, and help others.
• The dichotomy: to create or to destroy. Construction is fundamentally about creation—and duty to self, family, company, community, and nation.
• The greatest impact is achieved one person at a time.

Quotes:
"We have a duty as men… to make sure America is what we all envision… Be with me on this." — John [109:25]
"If that's the message, it's that: create more than you consume and damn, don't destroy." — John [114:18]
"You seek and you shall find… Go out there and find a way to put myself in front of kids." — John [108:07]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "The message was love God and love your neighbor. That’s the Bible in a nutshell." — John [10:03]
• "You need people to build society." — Aaron [81:04]
• "I don't actually care about money. I mean, I do, only enough that I don't have to care about it." — John [71:48]
• "There’s no hack, there’s no shortcut, there’s no scale. When people talk scale, fuck your scale. It doesn’t work. It’s one human being at a time." — Aaron [58:46]
• "Create more than you consume…" — John [114:18]
• "It starts with that family, then my company, then community, then county… then maybe stretch it out…" — John [72:33]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:37–05:40] — Endurance sports, mental toughness, and goal-setting.
• [06:32–16:23] — Traveling, global compassion, and universality of human experience.
• [17:35–21:25] — Modern isolation vs. connection in construction.
• [22:47–29:21] — Safety culture: human care over regulations.
• [38:44–52:46] — The infrastructure crisis and generational transitions.
• [63:08–70:05] — Family-first company culture; personal leadership stories.
• [77:14–94:55] — Industry structure, the need for mentorship and reinvestment.
• [97:56–105:02] — Real skills, hands-on learning, and educational reform.
• [108:34–114:18] — Duty, mentorship, and the call to create over consume.

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Final Takeaway

John Dudlicek’s philosophy—deeply rooted in faith, family, connection, and honesty—is echoed throughout the conversation. Both guests insist that the future of construction, like the future of society, hinges not on policies, programs, or technology, but rather on people: those willing to care, teach, and lead one person at a time. The industry must reclaim its human focus, starting with the family, extending to companies and communities, and ultimately rebuilding not just infrastructure, but hope and opportunity for generations to come.

Transcript

[Aaron]

This episode of the Dirt Talk podcast is with John Dudlechek of Grimer Construction. John is the VP and COO of Grimer, an Indiana based civil construction company. He's been involved in building a long list of complex projects over the years, but he believes his finest work is instead the people he's built along the way. I spoke with John maybe two months ago and within 15 minutes was like, this is my kind of guy. I was like, john, would you like to come down and be on the Dirt Talk podcast and expand this conversation about people, the future, etc. And he said, absolutely. So it'll be clear to you this guy is as passionate as it gets, and I am grateful for being around very passionate people. I would like to consider myself a passionate person, but there's not a lot of folks like that out there. And John, though, is certainly one of those people. It's infectious. His care is obvious. So enjoy this episode. I had a blast. Here it is. Yeah, I. I've never had a complex training plan like people. It's funny. Like, I don't know if I'm an idiot or if it's actually a good way to do it, but I. When I was. It was 20. 20. 2020 was just. That was a jacked up year for everybody.

[John Dudlechek]

Oh, yeah.

[Aaron]

So I was like, I'm gonna set three goals and I. I have no idea why. I don't know where they came from. Not a single clue. But I was like, I'm going to qualify for the Boston Marathon. I'm going to run 100 miles and I'm going to finish a full triathlon.

[John Dudlechek]

Nice.

[Aaron]

And I'm just going to work until I do those things. I don't know how long they're going to take, but I'm just going to keep working on them. And I attempted to run 100 miles and got injured, like 65 miles in. And DNF, I can't imagine why.

[John Dudlechek]

Is a long damn way, dude.

[Aaron]

It's a long way. So. So I failed on the first attempt. Then I was like, you know, I'm just gonna go try something else. And so I tried qualifying for the Boston Marathon. I qualified and then I ran it, which was awesome. So I'm like, okay. And that was probably the hardest of the three, I would say. Like, that's. I don't. I still don't know how I did that. And then I went back and did the hundred miles, different race, finished that one. And then I DNF'd the original 100 mile race. I. I Ran. I still need to finish it one day. I just.

[John Dudlechek]

Where was that?

[Aaron]

In Texas.

[John Dudlechek]

Oh, wow.

[Aaron]

I just. I've put that one off to the side for a moment, and then I've. I've been doing triathlons, and I did. I did the full. And I've done some halfs, and we'll do more this year, but everybody's like, how'd you train for it? And it's like, I don't know. I just ran every day.

[John Dudlechek]

Right. Right.

[Aaron]

I just. I just. I'm just on the bike a lot now. I'm just. I get in the pool. I, I, I. That's it.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

There's not a whole lot. There's no strategy. There's no training plan.

[John Dudlechek]

That's pretty much no.

[Aaron]

Like, I have to run seven miles today.

[John Dudlechek]

Yep. That's pretty much what I do. I started out with, you know, like, what am I doing? I'm just trying to chart it and all that stuff. And I stopped doing it many years ago, and I just run to feel good, you know, And I don't even run that many races. I don't like. Because here's what happens when I'm out on a run, my daily run, that's like, part of my life part. You know, I'm a recovering guy, so, like, that's been, like, a thing for me. It's like, you know, you gotta replace bad habits with good ones, you know, and that started kind of like that, you know? And so, like, it's my peace with God and my dog. We're doing this thing, and I'm all, love it. And then I enter a race, and now I'm a piece of shit. I'm too slow. He's better than me. Why is he faster? I suck. All this stuff. And all, you know, and all competitive juices start flowing, and I turn it into this thing that I don't like anymore.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

So I. I don't race many races now. I've gotten into canine cross, you know, where it's not. And that's not even, like, competitive. It's more like a community. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where we run it in the woods with our dogs, you know, that's cool. You know, And I do a lot of miles, but I don't. I don't like the race. And it's kind of like fishing. I. I fish all the time, but I've never done a tournament and I won't. I do look at the results. I'm like. I think I'd do pretty good if I did, but I don't. But I don't.

[Aaron]

I like racing, you know, just a few times a year, because for me, it's. I like something scary.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Aaron]

You know, I like something that's like. I mean. Yeah. Even, like a full triathlon now. It's like, gosh, yeah, that's. That's a long ways. I can't even imagine I've done it, but I'm going into, like. Yeah, this is uncomfortable. Like, I'm not. I'm not excited about this. I am, but I'm not. And I think it's, like, it's good for me, mentally, to put this big, scary thing on the calendar.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

And to knock it off from a confidence standpoint.

[John Dudlechek]

Scary. I mean, I just. We just did a company. There was eight of us. Eight or nine of us that just ran Chicago Marathon, which is really great. I mean, what an experience that was. But that. I mean, 26 miles is ridiculous. It's a ridiculous, you know, I mean, marathon. Doing that, you know, trying to. So it's, like, not, like, naturally that you can go 26 miles unless you prepare for that. I cannot imagine then adding a. But, I mean, how long is the bike?

[Aaron]

112.

[John Dudlechek]

Oh, my gosh.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

What's the swim?

[Aaron]

2.6.

[John Dudlechek]

That's ridiculous.

[Aaron]

I think. No, 2.4.

[John Dudlechek]

2.4. It's ridiculous.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

But, yeah, we did Chicago. That was a great experience.

[Aaron]

I would love to do something like that.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah. You know, I grew up in the region or in Illinois, in Lockport, and so Chicago, you know, has been part of my life, and I'm Cubs fan and all this. So to spend. Spend that day, man, whatever that was 55,000 racers. And then all of the people lining the streets, you know, as thick as we could see, cheering us on, and, you know, I'm running as fast as I can to see as many people as I can. Like, they're all, like, happy that we're there. You know, it was really quite an experience of positive humanity. You know, we hear about all this in the world, and everybody hates each other and all that stuff, and they don't. Well, we don't.

[Aaron]

I. I've really struggled buying into any of that. I haven't bought into a single minute of it because I spend too much time out and about.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah. In.

[Aaron]

In the real world, like, I travel too much to buy into the whole thing that everybody hates one another or even. It's really bugged me, the stuff that I see people saying, like. Like right now about, like, the whole Muslim Faith. Yeah, because it's. It's crazy. It's like, sure, you have these radicalists like you do in any kind of organized group in the world. And to generalize, whatever it is, a billion plus people may. I think it's actually substantially more than a billion is crazy. And I've spent. I've. I've spent quite a bit of time in these Islamic countries, like in Indonesia, like a Saudi Arabia, like a uae, like a. Like a Jordan. And it is. It's incredible, the dedication that they have to their faith. You can't. Like, any rational person just has to sit there and be like, wow, they are so. I mean, I remember we're driving 12 hours in Indonesia, and, you know, every so often we pull off and the driver just doesn't say anything, gets out, goes into the roadside mosque for 15 minutes to pray. To pray. And. And before they pray, they wash their body in a very specific way every time. And they go through this prayer, and then they get back in and they do their, you know, do the rest of their day. Then they stop again five times a day. And then you've got Ramadan. And just the more you learn about it, you're like, whoa. And just how kind everybody is and how thoughtful everybody is. And it's like, I can't buy into any of it.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

Because I've seen enough of it now. And it's just like, that's so far from the truth for almost everybody here. This is crazy.

[John Dudlechek]

That tracks with my experience, too, you know, and I haven't studied Islam that much. I've studied Christianity a ton. I've studied Judaism a decent amount, you know, and some other things. And, you know, I find that we're all kind of saying the same truth. And, boy, my Christian brothers would say, no, we're not, you know. Well, hold on a minute. You know, we are. We really are, you know, and we can talk about Christ to those people. Jesus Christ. And if they actually knew what Christ was, I think maybe we'd all kind of actually agree.

[Aaron]

Well, and I think most of the principles are similar. They are, neighbor. Yeah. Old rule. Which is a really good principle, for sure. Yeah. And then me, you know, like, somebody that says another religion is wrong. That, to me makes no sense as well. It's like, how do you.

[John Dudlechek]

So you're right, right, right.

[Aaron]

Like, oh, you. Oh, you know, what's going on here? Oh, okay, shoot. You have everything figured out. Like, that's the craziest.

[John Dudlechek]

Yep. And I stopped plugging into that years ago, like, trying to Prove that, you know, my religion. I don't know, even whatever a religion, what is that? You know? But my faith is right. And yours. I stopped doing all that. I. I don't know that I ever did that actually, but I stopped listening to that. You know that I call myself a Christian. Yeah. But my Christian, I would hear from my Christian brothers a lot, that they're wrong and we're right, you know, And I'm like, yeah, dude, that's. I don't think Jesus would want you, like, doing that.

[Aaron]

Well, in the whole. It's like, judge, not be judged. Like, don't judge people. Like, that's judgment.

[John Dudlechek]

Right. 100%.

[Aaron]

It's.

[John Dudlechek]

The message was love God and love your neighbor. That was the, you know, they asked him, like, what's the most important thing? You know, that's the Bible in a nutshell. It's like this thing, this one thing, like love God and love neighbor. That's the same thing. It's one, two, whatever, but. And it wasn't all these other things that they talk about now. Sure, sure. You know, don't steal, don't murder, don't commit. But you know, like I told my group of guys I hang out with and we talk about this stuff, you know, I don't need, you know, don't commit adultery. Okay. Yeah, but what Jesus says, like, love your wife so much. Put, put, you know, that you love her so much. Like, that's not even, like, I don't even think about adultery. You know, I'm a man, sure, I can recognize a good looking woman or whatever, but I love my wife so much, so committed to that, that it's not even in the language. And that's what to me, like fulfilling the law meant, you know, just that you just fill it up with love and then, and then all that other stuff kind of just.

[Aaron]

But that. And that dissipates. That's what I feel though, when I travel. It's just this, this sense of love and care for us. No matter where I am in the world, it's just like I've been all over the world now.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes.

[Aaron]

And it's the same. Everybody's like, what's different? And I'm like, the by far the most surprising thing is that how similar every human being.

[John Dudlechek]

Right, Right.

[Aaron]

We're all just humans, so we all just want to care for one another. We all just want to feed our families. We all just want a better future for our children.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

Than the, the life that we've been able to live, hopefully.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

Some People don't nowadays, but hopefully like most everybody.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

And. And it's just this, this, like you can, you can be on the complete different side of the planet with a different faith, with a completely different upbringing, with a totally different socioeconomic reality.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

And still just look at somebody in the eyes, shake their hand and experience that just genuine interaction, kindness and connection. It's just like, wow.

[John Dudlechek]

And that's great that you're doing it over there. I mean, that's terrific. I. You know.

[Aaron]

You know, you can do it anywhere.

[John Dudlechek]

You can.

[Aaron]

Don't have to go halfway around the world.

[John Dudlechek]

You don't, you don't. You can do it right here in America. No. Right. You know, because what is that, what is that common thing that we're experiencing? You know, you say it's love or whatever. I mean, in the Bible, it's the Holy Spirit, right? It's the Holy Spirit. What is that? You know, I've been talking about this a lot with my friends and whatever. I think here in America, though. Here in America, because, you know, it's hard. It's hard for me to like, I can't even grasp what to do every day the right way, you know, in my own town in Griffith, let alone, you know, the middle Easter and all that. It's like, whoa, you know, America first, maybe, maybe just my town first, my. My family first, you know what. But here in America, I think that Holy Spirit thing, I think we. I think it's a proxy for the. For liberty. What we call. We named it Liberty, you know.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

Just. It's just like those guys that wrote the things in the Declaration Independence and the Constitution and stuff, you know, those were, they were, they were Christian guys, you know, it's not a Christian nation, so to speak. But they wanted to make sure that the morality of their beliefs, which is the beliefs of all humans, as you're saying, are extracted out of that and made sure it's put into, you know, our America, our spirit of what America is in the Declaration of Independence, you know, we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, and we're endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights, you know, and among those are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And I realized, you know, I looked at that and I'm like, wow, what that really is Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Those guys came from a Christian background and what it. That was the fruit of their work there. To write that thing that's. Life is a father, Father Liberty. Jesus was the liberator and then Holy Spirit is. Why do you do that? Pursuit of happiness. That's the Holy Spirit. That's the triune God came out in Thomas Jefferson. It wasn't just Thomas Jefferson. There was the five of them that put that together. But, you know, it's like infused in America. And it's not that Christianity is. It's the morality behind that.

[Aaron]

Yeah. I just think, like, fused in there. And I think like humanity is infused within Christianity. Correct. Like it's correct.

[John Dudlechek]

It's correct.

[Aaron]

The expression of the most pure form of humanity.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes.

[Aaron]

And, but, but that's. I guess that's what I recogn. Like, I was just in India, and in India there's very few Christians. And yet you feel the same thing. It's still life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in like a pure form. Right. Again, I'm not colored with red, white and blue. Yeah. Which is very red, white and blue. Yeah. This is a very idealistic conversation.

[John Dudlechek]

Sure.

[Aaron]

I'm painting with a very broad brush. I'm not living their reality every day of the week. And so can I speak on their behalf? Absolutely not. And I could never even say that I understand a place like India, even if I spent years there, because it's just so big, so dynamic. But there are these common threads. Like, once you have enough data points, you start to be like, yes, there is something here that is very profound

[John Dudlechek]

and it becomes very apparent that's undeniably true. It's self evident.

[Aaron]

Yes.

[John Dudlechek]

It's self evident.

[Aaron]

Even just like, you know, just how, how you can bond with somebody over, like a smile.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes.

[Aaron]

Or just a joke.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes.

[Aaron]

Like a laugh.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes.

[Aaron]

Just everybody laughing together. Even just one time. It's like, wow, this feels so human. This feels so. Like. Almost nothing else I've ever done has made me feel more connected with people.

[John Dudlechek]

Right. Than.

[Aaron]

Than just cracking a joke with somebody that speaks a completely different language from me.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And it just. We both get it, though.

[John Dudlechek]

You can do that over there. Because it's hard to relate to somebody that comes from a completely different cultural background.

[Aaron]

But it's not. But it's been the same grounds.

[John Dudlechek]

You can, Right? Yeah. On those grounds of.

[Aaron]

It's so.

[John Dudlechek]

Smile of love and God, it's so universal.

[Aaron]

Yeah. And humor is just universal. It's just like, if it's funny, it's funny. And it's like, wow, this is amazing. And there's. There's different textures of it, but it's just.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah. And I love that too. I do that when I walk around in life. I drive my wife and kids nuts because they're always like, oh, there goes dad again. Because I'm always, like, connecting with people and making jokes. I mean, just this talk.

[Aaron]

I bet if I were your child, that would just drive me nuts because my dad's the same. And it's just like, oh, can we just order some food, for goodness sakes?

[John Dudlechek]

You don't need to pet every damn dog.

[Aaron]

Yeah, we don't need to make friends with everybody here.

[John Dudlechek]

All right?

[Aaron]

And like, like, dad, they're just trying to eat their breakfast

[John Dudlechek]

all the time. I try to back off, dial it back. When I'm by myself. I'm, like, saying hello to everybody and talking to him. I like doing it, man, because it's. It's human interaction. It's what we're supposed to do, you know, it's just like. That's just like what we're, like, bred to do is, like, just interact and love each other. I mean, Jesus said it. Love your neighbor.

[Aaron]

Yeah. But you have to. I think now you have to create it. Because we're in this world that has removed us further and further and further from interaction. Like my life. If I didn't have the job I did. If I just went to. If I just worked at bank of America and I lived in a, you know, an apartment.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And bank of America was 34 minutes away. And I sit in traffic and I go to bank of America and I sit there and I.

[John Dudlechek]

And it's a challenge.

[Aaron]

Transact with people all day. And then I'm sick of my job. I don't like it. So then I go to lunch and I sit there by myself and I stare at my phone. I just need something mindless to take my. My.

[John Dudlechek]

Just.

[Aaron]

Just get out of this reality. So I'm just sitting there, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling at subway down the street. I go back to bank of America. Oh, thank goodness, it's five o'.

[John Dudlechek]

Clock.

[Aaron]

I go home. I, you know, probably don't eat well. I watch some Netflix. I go to bed, rinse and repeat. Friday comes around. I might go drink with a bunch of people. Otherwise I'm not really interacting with anybody. Which is crazy. Same people, same places. And you can still be around people all day, but be completely isolated and alone.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

Which is crazy.

[John Dudlechek]

It is crazy. Yeah. Which is one of the reasons why I love what I do for a living.

[Aaron]

Yes, likewise.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

But. But construction.

[John Dudlechek]

Construction, there's as well.

[Aaron]

Like, you have to.

[John Dudlechek]

Absolutely have to.

[Aaron]

Yeah. You can't. Like, in construction. Like, again, if you work at a Bank.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

And, and congrats on bank of America for record profits. Congratulations. They're just killing it. Good for you guys. So happy for you. If you work at a bank, you don't really have to get along with anybody.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

You don't really have to care about anybody. You can just show up. You can. It's so easily just do your job and get out of it.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

Whereas construction you can't. I mean there are some lazy pos's out there. You get that everywhere. But you can't really mail it in because it's a meritocracy like. And it's a team sport.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Aaron]

And if the excavator operator's sleeping and you've got a pipe crew, you know it doesn't work.

[John Dudlechek]

It doesn't work at all. Right.

[Aaron]

If the top man isn't getting his job done, then pipewires and they're not getting there done. If the truck driver is not bringing the materials, not dropping the rock off when the pipe crew or the pipe when they need it, they can't. Or if the dispatch in the office isn't scheduling the right machine to be there on this.

[John Dudlechek]

You know, it's just right even. And we need banks. We need banks. I guess I don't.

[Aaron]

Oh yes we do.

[John Dudlechek]

And my son might be getting in the banking industry and I'm talking about it. But you know, so you got to do extra things outside of your job to make sure you're connecting with people. Because if you stop connecting with people then you're not connected to people. And that's a problem. Yeah, but in what we do. Not everything you just said is true, but even more acute. Like think about what we do. What grimmer construction does. I mean we, we, you know. Yeah. We install underground utilities, you know, sanitary storm and water and like the most difficult kind you like. We try to find the like the ones that nobody else can do, you know, like 35ft deep and all kinds of crazy shit. Gas mains hanging in your hair, in the air and electric lines and telephone poles and buildings next to you and all this stuff. So everything you said is true. But, but even like that you got to have that human interaction. Like that bottom man in that trench has. Has to be completely connected to that operator. Like they gotta be one unit. Like they know each other's moves and, and, and you don't just put any guy in the bottom and any guy in that excavator and any guy in the top. They've gotta like gel as humans.

[Aaron]

Like in theory. Like, that's why I think you need to keep pipe crews together.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes.

[Aaron]

Whereas some companies just switch people around all the time.

[John Dudlechek]

Yep.

[Aaron]

What are you doing?

[John Dudlechek]

Like, I mean, it's too dangerous. The way we see it is. That's.

[Aaron]

I agree.

[John Dudlechek]

I mean, what are they doing there? I mean, they're fighting against all the fortunes and forces in nature. Everything wants to kill them. The excavator, the hydraulic hoses want to break in the middle of it or whatever. And we're humans. We make mistakes. That thing will crush them. The. The sides of the trench want to come in on cars everywhere. Cars everywhere. The gas main wants to. Gravity wants to put the water mean that we're supposed to be going underneath. Wants to fall apart. All. All this stuff is fighting. And so the only way you're gonna like, be if you're just putting anybody in there that's not in sync, you're gonna that up.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

You're gonna have a disaster. Yeah, a disaster. Like, and especially in today. I mean, today being like where we are in America, related to what our infrastructure looks like. When you start digging in the ground, it's pretty damn scary that people get hurt unless you know what you're doing. You know, and that's, you know, these. I can get off on tangents, but OSHA and all that, it's like, okay, okay, whatever. Like, we all have like a much more inherent interest in making sure these people that we love are safe and good and go home than you do. So like, we kind of know how to handle those things.

[Aaron]

You know, anybody that like, clings to the OSHA standard is like, that's why we're safe is hopeless. Like, if that's your motivation, not getting, not getting, not. Not getting fined and OSHA only comes out probably if you killed somebody to begin with. Like, right. If that. If that's what you're hanging your hat on.

[John Dudlechek]

Trouble.

[Aaron]

Something's really wrong.

[John Dudlechek]

That's almost trite now. Like, everybody knows that at this point.

[Aaron]

I think.

[John Dudlechek]

I don't think I'm saying anything anybody doesn't know.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

You know, we all kind of know that to be true.

[Aaron]

No, but yeah, if as an industry we're looking around, but, but, but then the industry oftentimes uses the. The government as the boogeyman to enforce other rules, which I'm not a fan of. Mining does it even worse with msha? They say, oh, it's MSHA this and that. It's like, where. Where does it say that within the document? Show me. You can't show me it's your rule. Like. Yeah, but, but if that's the standard, that's like the bare minimum.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

That's like the, the bottom of the rung. Like you've got to get over it. But there's so much beyond that. And, and it's, it's like OSHA is a good set of principles.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

It's a good framework. It is.

[John Dudlechek]

Sure.

[Aaron]

There's good rules in there, like trench protection, for example, ladders in the trench. Some good principles. But that's not how you stay safe.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Like you were talking about a dinner.

[John Dudlechek]

Beyond that.

[Aaron]

Yeah, that's, that's not safety.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

And, and this is what drives me nuts is people think safety is just forcing policies down people, people's throats, which is a majority of safety, I would say, in the industry. Because it's easier that way.

[John Dudlechek]

Yep.

[Aaron]

I can just make policies. Just don't think.

[John Dudlechek]

Yep.

[Aaron]

And if something bad happens, we make a new policy and a new policy and a new policy. We only add to policies. We don't ever question policies. And then now you've got this giant rule book that you have to follow with everything. And if you don't follow it, we're going to fire you.

[John Dudlechek]

Right, right. And so what we've done and it was thank, but it was. My owner of my company, Mark Grimmer was idea. You know, you've heard of safety committees before, but, but a real one, you know, he, he was the one that said let's, let's get a safety. We have a. So we have a safety manager. He comes from dewatering background. So he's actually built some things and pipelines and stuff. So. Eric Mercino and, and, but, but let's, let's, let's build on that. Let's make a safety committee that's of the guys in the field. So we've got, you know, operators, laborers, carpenters that are. That. Now the way the way we see it is they're the boss. You know, you get. And it's a real active. Like, like they bring stuff to me and my safety manager. Like this is what, this is what we need. You know, we had a thing where our trench boxes were getting a little wonky because the wallowing out the cross beam or the spreader bar. And so they, you know, talked about how to make that better. And so then we got that through our mechanic and like, and so we're actually like bringing in what the guys in the field say. This is our problem. This is how we, you know, whatever that's just an example. And then we actually put it in action. So the safety is driven from literally

[Aaron]

the bottom up, but that.

[John Dudlechek]

The bottom up.

[Aaron]

Like, I think the best safety programs I've ever seen are human. Yes, they're human.

[John Dudlechek]

Right, right.

[Aaron]

When you care about the people around you.

[John Dudlechek]

Yep, yep.

[Aaron]

When you have. You need education as well, so you need training.

[John Dudlechek]

Sure.

[Aaron]

You don't know what you don't know, so you do have to learn some things.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

But most of it's just about a genuine sense of care for those around you.

[John Dudlechek]

Right. And so how do you get that care? I mean, you got to know who you're working with. You got to be with the same crew. Right.

[Aaron]

Gotta be with the same crew.

[John Dudlechek]

And that you're gelling and that. Yeah, yeah. There is some personal stuff, you know, like, how's your wife? How's your kids? You know, not just for me to them, but them to each other, you know?

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

I had an operator last week or two weeks ago, was having some. Whatever. Some issues, and he was considering leaving, you know, and. And because whatever he was, we were going to send him on a job that he didn't really want to go on. And. And I got to talking to him. Why do you want to leave? He said, well, really, it's just. I don't want to leave this crew. I don't. I want to work with Dwight. I love working with Dwight. And these guys, like, okay, then you just work with Dwight. I'll just leave you where you are. Okay. Because they love each. They care about each other. They actually, you know, he's like, I'm learning a lot from this guy. It's like, all right, I'm not going to fight. You know, sometimes you got to do what you got to do. But my point is, is that developing that everybody talks about culture, but I'm not developing. I'm just like, let it. Giving it the space. Giving those guys the space to develop that culture themselves that they actually do care about. Love each other. Christ's message that they, you know, whether or not they're Christian. I'm just saying that they actually care about each other. And then whatever the Hoshu rules are, whatever, they're going to watch each other's back and they do. They actually do. Yeah.

[Aaron]

You're just watching out for people.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah, yeah.

[Aaron]

That's all it is.

[John Dudlechek]

Watch out for that thing, you know?

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

Oh, that Banks, you know, whatever. You know, they just. They. Yeah, they're on it because they care about that guy, you know, fed injuries yeah, we've had injuries and it's like it hurts everybody's heart, you know, so we make sure that doesn't happen.

[Aaron]

Well, any construction company that says they haven't had those is dishonest. No one will talk about it, of course, because everybody's perfect, right? It's like it's just a complete.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

It's such a bummer. This. I get why people don't talk about it because they're afraid of all these things. But it makes the industry less safe by not talking about it. Because those examples are where I've learned most about safety. And unfortunately, most of those examples, you have to find them on the Internet. When somebody dies, typically it's typically a sketch trench shoring scenario or I still remember to this day, my foreman, Eric, he showed me some wild pictures of guys like I was. I was working too close to the excavator. It was like first week on the job. Second, I'd never been on a construction site in my life. I didn't know. I didn't know what a counterweight was, swing radius. I didn't know anything about these machines. And it was like 40, you know, 45 ton machine, pretty big excavator. And he shows me a picture of a guy that got run over by an excavator and his head like. Yeah, like a cherry tomato. Disgusting. Just all over the. All over the road. And it's like, I can sit here. I will never forget that picture.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

But that's all I needed to see. Yeah, I didn't need a lecture on how dangerous machines could be. All I needed to see was that. And it was like, okay, yes, sir. I completely understand what's going on here. And I've been very careful around machines.

[John Dudlechek]

So that's from a picture, you know. So we, you know, we. We had our annual safety, I guess, gathering or whatever you want to call it, but we turned it more into like a job training thing where, you know, we've got a core group of whatever, like 80 guys or something like that that we keep all winter long and try to keep them busy, whatever. So in February and President's Day, we do it every year, bring everybody in for safety meeting. We usually were bringing people from the outside, you know, somebody from whatever, from trench safety or national trench safety or something to talk about that or whatever. Bring somebody from the outside. But what we did this year, it was really great, is we just taught ourselves like Jake is one of our laborers. It's like everybody loves Jake. He's like the the ultimate laborer. Like, if you want the labor, you ask for Jake. Well, Jake's, you know, better. He's done this for a long time, and he knows the correct way to, like, how to handle the demo saw. The demo saw is probably the most dangerous damn thing we use.

[Aaron]

Super dangerous.

[John Dudlechek]

It's so crazy bad. And, you know, yeah, we've had kickbacks and we've had guys cut themselves really bad and almost die. You know, that workforce still. Or did or whatever, they're retired now or whatever. So Jake is up there teaching our guy. Not even teaching. Like, here's what I do. And we have a truly interactive thing where other people are, you know, well, I do this or I do that. And then Jake was able to ref. Not a picture. But remember when, you know, when Kevin. When the saw kicked back and cut his. Oh, yeah. You know, everybody knows Kevin. He knows he can show him the damn scar. You know, it's like, sure, that's real. You know, it's more than. It's not some arbit. Not your picture worked. But I'm just saying, it's not even like somebody that Some horrible thing that we don't know. It's like the guy sitting next to you that experienced that injury. Yeah. So let's not hide and pretend it didn't happen.

[Aaron]

No.

[John Dudlechek]

You know, we got a guy, Dwight, he had his hand smashed years ago. Trench box landed on it, lost a couple fingers. You know, he's still working for us, and he's got that hand everybody sees. You know, let's talk about what happened. Where were our mistakes? You know, so we, you know, if you hide it and you pretend it didn't happen, then. Then you know, you know where that leads, you know, well, there's.

[Aaron]

There's this. I'm saying this as a guy without a construction company, so I don't have people in the field, but to me, in my head, there's this, like, constant battle between. We want everybody to go home safe. Of course.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

There's not a single rational person that would be like, no, that's ridiculous.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

So, yeah, obviously. But then the other side of it is that, like, there's inherent danger.

[John Dudlechek]

Yep.

[Aaron]

In this. In this industry.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And to think that you can control all of those uncontrollable and you can regulate it out is insane. Like, okay, you are the most perfect underground operation ever in existence. Everything could not be more safe. But you're on a street, four lanes, you have a closure for one. You've got traffic on three.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

The best Traffic control plan in the world still doesn't save you.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

Still doesn't eliminate that hazard.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

You could have somebody just barrel through that site at any hour, any day and wipe out multiple people in one go.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

There's just. But that's what it takes. That like, we're in the real world.

[John Dudlechek]

Yep. We're.

[Aaron]

We're not in an office. Yeah. In a factory. Like, this is real shit. And. And it needs to happen to keep society moving. And so that's like, that's the constant push and pull in my head. And no one wants to acknowledge the fact that, like, we can't actually control all of the hazards, but we need people to do this work. Like, there is just. You just have to make it happen.

[John Dudlechek]

You know? And I don't know if there's an answer to that, but I know the answer is not that. That some third party separate from my guys and my company and the people that love each other like I described, some third party outside is going to dictate to us how to handle that trench right there. And it pisses me off when it happens. And I had it happen just recently, about two years ago or whatever. We're doing a jack and bore underneath Midwest Mall. Doing it for us. Jack and bore underneath a railroad. And. And so the trench was completely safe. We've got, you know, double trench boxes and whatever. But if you know how the. The two spreaders on the front face, the two are kind of close to each other. Okay. Now, we had the sides backfilled and all that was. It was all, you know, so it wasn't like the sides could cave in and crush the box or whatever. We had everything backfilled. Nice. It was good. But that second bar, that lower bar we had out.

[Aaron]

Okay.

[John Dudlechek]

And the reason why we had it out is because the operator sitting on the, on the, on the, on the auger, on the jack machine has to go underneath that bar, you know, however, whatever, a couple hundred times during this process. Right. And so it's right at his head. It's right at where his head would be. Now you look. Is it. Do you need that bar? I mean, by the rules of osha, yes. But I'm a professional engineer, started in geotechnical engineering. Like, I know a thing or two about dirt. And we're on dirt talk, right?

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

Like, I've been building shit and all my guys, and I'm not. Forget me. Like that guy that's working for me and that guy's working for me there, you know, doing all these we have collective knowledge here of hundreds of years, and everybody knows that thing's safe. And you're. And we had the, you know, the safety manager make us put that bar back in. And I argued with him. The problem. Problem with that is now you're asking that human to remember every single time he goes under that don't ever forget that that bar is there. Don't turn your head and turn back and smack your face or, you know, gosh, you know, even worse that it crushed you or something like that. You got to remember. And so his answer to that was write it. You know, write up a. You know, do a job hazard analysis in the morning. Write up a policy about the. You know, like that's your answer. Right.

[Aaron]

If we've got a piece of paper saying it's there.

[John Dudlechek]

But if I take that bar out. Nothing. There's no. I can. We all can see it.

[Aaron]

This is purely safe and for. Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

And then you have to think about that.

[Aaron]

Well, for anybody not following, it's. There's still a. There's still trench protection for sure. You're not removing trench protection. There's still a spreader bar there still a spreader bar. And the spreader bar is not going anywhere.

[John Dudlechek]

Right. Spreader bars aren't going anywhere. Yeah, right, right, right.

[Aaron]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

So. And there's more than that. You know, we had all kinds of other things, but the rules say you got to have that second spreader bar in there, dudes. You know, and nothing happened. But we. In order to check that box that we had, all the spreader bars are in. We created a hazard. We created a hazard.

[Aaron]

Yep.

[John Dudlechek]

Now we have a. You know, I'm doing my daily hazard analysis. That's a hazard. This guy could whack his head on that thing.

[Aaron]

Well, in a hazard and just additional friction in an already demanding process.

[John Dudlechek]

Sure.

[Aaron]

Yeah. And so even just the distraction of it.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes.

[Aaron]

Now his mind's on that. Exactly.

[John Dudlechek]

Bar. Instead of like paying attention to the auger spinning and my. Hey, did he put his hand near that auger or whatever? No, he's thinking about the bar that's going to hit him in a damn head.

[Aaron]

Yes.

[John Dudlechek]

It created a hazard in order to check a box. That's wrong. And why does that guy who I never met before, the safety manager for some other company that won't name, is going to tell me how to protect my guys and tell my guys how to protect their own selves? Who is he to have that authority? I. I'm sorry, but we're the professionals. We know better than you do. We've been doing this longer than you. And even if you've been doing it longer, you're fricking wrong.

[Aaron]

Yeah, but that. You can translate that to engineering, to inspectors.

[John Dudlechek]

Absolutely.

[Aaron]

Owners, like. To a lot of people.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes.

[Aaron]

And it's like, I think that's a big challenge right now. You've got all these other people on the outside of construction projects telling you how to build.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

When you're the one standing there building. And like we were talking about last night, you're also the one with all the risk.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes. Yeah.

[Aaron]

So it's like, why? Why? Okay. If I have the risk and they're my guys, like, I have the safety risk here.

[John Dudlechek]

Yep.

[Aaron]

I'm the first one in line with the responsibility for what's going on here. Number one.

[John Dudlechek]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Like my. And that. It's like, why, why, why? Why can't I not then control the destiny of what's going on here?

[John Dudlechek]

Yep. All the risk is pushed down. You've talked about that. And it's all pushed down to us. Right. So if the. But I'm fine with that. We live in risk, you know.

[Aaron]

Sure. You should be able to make the call.

[John Dudlechek]

Right. If I own the risk, I gotta own the decision, not you. And it's not just. You're right. It's not just safety. There's a lot of other things. You know, and, you know, why does all this matter, though? You know, why does it matter? Well, it matters because, I mean, you've been talking about we got a shortage of people, but we got a shortage of a lot of things. Resources in general, not enough money to do what we need to do. And what do we need to do? Well, what we need to do is we need to replace our infrastructure.

[Aaron]

Yeah. And.

[John Dudlechek]

And.

[Aaron]

And that's. That's exactly what matters. Because I think for two reasons. One, we are horribly inefficient at building things right now. America is only more and more and more and more incapable of building.

[John Dudlechek]

Yep.

[Aaron]

No one wants to say it. It's 100% true. Look at the trillion dollars we just spent for getting. And got nothing for it. And it's just like, there's something so wrong here.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes.

[Aaron]

And this is not gonna continue.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

We're. This is not sustainable. What the program we're on right now. And then two, from a workforce standpoint, we're trying to attract people. It needs to be an enjoyable place to work.

[John Dudlechek]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Some of these companies are miserable.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

I'm around them often. Not, Not. Not up close. But from afar. And I'm watching this and I'm like, I would never in a million years work for that company, right? To put up with that. Like, no, man, I'm good. Like, I don't need to be treated like a kindergartner, right? I'm an adult. I can make my own decisions. I don't need you to tell me what's in my best interest physically. Like, I'm a triathlete, dude. I'm good. Like, I, I know what's right for my body. Like, like I am the one again in, like in line. I'm the one closest to my health and well being. So I find it funny when somebody's like, you know, your health is my responsibility. It's like, no, it's not my health, it's my responsibility. Like, trust me, I know you don't want me to get run over by a truck, but I don't want to get run over by a truck way more than you don't. Way more.

[John Dudlechek]

I have a wife, wife and kids and a company that I'm responsible in. Yeah, right.

[Aaron]

Let's not kid ourselves. Like, I appreciate it, but trust me, I way more.

[John Dudlechek]

And I've shown. I'm not an idiot. I've shown. Actually I know a thing or two. I'm a competent man. I've been doing this for a long time. You like to call me and give me, get advice from me about other matters like how to put this pipe in the ground or how so then when it comes to these other matters that, why do you pass that off to the, you know, some government rule or some shit like that. Like, just let me handle that stuff because I'm, you know, it's not my first, not only my. But it's not our first day. I'm not going at this alone.

[Aaron]

And this, and I think this, like we, we're having this conversation, not like sitting at the bar just bitching. Like these are core the industries. You've seen it longer than I have. You've been in this industry a long time. It's only gone more and more and more and more and more in this direction. Like, at what point do we have to say, guys, we just have to build stuff, right? Like, I understand all these things and congratulations, everybody's making all this money outside of building stuff. But like, we're not going to have a country if we don't build stuff, right? Our kids are not going to have a future if we don't build stuff. Like we're playing with the whole fabric of society right now for the sake of people making more money.

[John Dudlechek]

Right, right.

[Aaron]

How long can you do that for?

[John Dudlechek]

I don't know if every people understand that how. What you just said, the fabrics of society. So like, I talk about this a lot. So if you think about the baby boomers as a people, as a generation, you know, what's their condition right now? They're, you know, they're old.

[Aaron]

Yeah. My dad's baby boomer.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Aaron]

He's in his 70s.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah. 70s, right. And that's a young. There's baby boomers now and you know, 80s and they're dying. And you know, it was a generation that came out of post World War II. My dad's World War II. Okay. So he's that. That generation. And you know, what, what was World War II? I mean, what was that? That was the beginning of building the American empire, you know, which was fine. You know, it was a great period of time. I mean, but we came out of this like, thing. This thing where 60 million people were killed violently.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

And you know, we started this talk off about religion and stuff, like violent religious based origin, you know, just dropping atomic bombs on people and you know, it was, I mean, objectively true. The most horrible time in human history. I mean, that's objectively. I mean, I don't think there's any been any other time in history where we've killed 60 million people in one war. I mean, that's the post industrial revolution used as a thing of war. So, you know, we won that thing. Okay. Whatever that means. But what happened afterwards, it was neat. Is like we wanted to be safe. You know, the 1950s in America was like, let's build America safe. We want safe streets.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

Clean drinking water.

[Aaron]

Well. And like we just had all this industrial capacity.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes.

[Aaron]

That went to building a crazy amount of bombs and planes and ships.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes.

[Aaron]

All that ends and it's like, what are we gonna do with all this? Yeah. And now we've got all these people coming back home.

[John Dudlechek]

Yep. Then they started making babies like crazy.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

Hence the baby boom. So all that and, and the big cities, you know, Chicago and Cleveland and New York, whatever, the big cities, those were all pretty developed. But the, but the suburbs of those, that's when they boomed to provide homes and communities for these baby boomers.

[Aaron]

Yeah. And that's when home ownership started to become a thing in the first place too. Like, and the government was really pushing homeownership and mortgages started to become a thing. And then you had crazy government spending. Post World War II as well, like a lot of it was facilitated by the government.

[John Dudlechek]

Right. Well, we had a central bank now. So then we start to amass debt.

[Aaron]

Yeah, we, we're reserve become eventually reserve currency. Yeah. Now you can start to. Now you don't operate on what comes in. You can just print more.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

So let's go. And now Europe owes us.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

Europe's under our thumb. Japan's under our thumb.

[John Dudlechek]

Anyway, so that bill becomes due and yeah, we can get off into.

[Aaron]

Yeah, that's, that's a, It's a big. I spend too much of my time.

[John Dudlechek]

Me too.

[Aaron]

About this. Me too.

[John Dudlechek]

And I get, you know, but, but to bring it back down to earth and the ground is. Yeah. During that time we built all these water mains.

[Aaron]

We built a bunch of.

[John Dudlechek]

Built a bunch of shit.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

And, and that, that we built like a water main, for instance. The life of a water main is about similar that of the life of a person. That's why I'm talking about the baby boomers, because as that generation's condition is. Is very analogous to the condition of our underground infrastructure. Water mains and sanitary sewers and storm sewers and whatnot. And of course, it's. The drinking water is the most important one. They're breaking everywhere. I mean, we're on emergency repairs all the time because of water mains that have just ended their life. They're 70 years old. There's, you know, just like the baby boomers, they're. They're. There's things are starting to hurt, things are starting to pop. Things are starting to, you know, and so, and the problem is, is that's such a big system that at least I could, I know in Northwest Indiana, I think about all the towns we work in, in Sherryville, Dyer, Griffith, St. John, all of those. They kind of all were built. Highland, where our offices was all built during the same period of time. There was like a 20, 30 year span there. And all of that stuff. I mean some of it's been replaced and maintained, but all of that stuff is ending its life now.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[John Dudlechek]

And we've built pools and sheds and back, you know, houses and on top or around it. And so when it was originally put in, there was nothing there. You could just open up the ground and do your thing. And now we gotta dance around all this stuff and holy cow. Like it's a homogeneous aged infrastructure. Like the old World as a heterogeneous age, you don't have like big blocks of areas that all go down at once. But we're gonna. I don't know that the world's ever faced this where we've had so much infrastructure built at once. Because we had the things we're just talking about post industrial revolution.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

A central bank with not much debt. So let's amass that debt, build a bunch of shit, make a bunch of babies. And so the amount of infrastructure built during that period I don't think has ever been done in all of history.

[Aaron]

Well, China.

[John Dudlechek]

Okay.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Except for, except for the whole China thing. And the infrastructure they've built within like 20 years is insane compared to what we did. So when was that like really ramped up in the 90s, then 2000s.

[John Dudlechek]

So after us.

[Aaron]

Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. How about we become. But yeah, they like. Yeah, they were a beneficiary of what happened. I mean China couldn't have really happened the way it has without us in Japan. Because like, it's really interesting. The speed at which Japan came back post World War II is crazy. Yes. A lot of that is due to foreign investment in their manufacturing capabilities. They become a world class manufacturer, they generate their own wealth. Now we have to go put our manufacturing facilities elsewhere. So they move over to China, they move over to Taiwan, they move over to Korea. And then each one of those start to. Well, now we're making the Japanese stuff, but we're starting to get better at manufacturing now. We're making our own money now let's plow that into our own industrial base. And so then grows and grows and grows. And now with China, it's really interesting because they became like this is quote, unquote, the world's workshop, the world's factory, essentially. But now they're maturing and, and, and they don't just want to make the very like the, they don't just want to make, you know, in value, $3 of every hundred dollars within an iPhone, they want to capture 50 of that hundred dollars. So now they don't just want to make the bare bone components or put it all together at the end. They also want to make the glass. They also want to make the case. They also want to make the chips. And now they're investing in more modern manufacturing processes.

[John Dudlechek]

It's. But they have the capacity to do that because they have a fresh infrastructure. You're talking about the 90s.

[Aaron]

Correct. And they had, they had a.

[John Dudlechek]

Where ours is dying and old.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Because their government was like. And again, good, bad, indifferent. There's problems everywhere for sure. But their government was like, listen, we're going to go raise our Entire a billion people out of poverty. How do you do that? You go build a bunch of shit. There's only one way to do it. You just build. Let's let her rip. And they did that. And there's never been an explosion in wealth interesting ever in human history. It's crazy how fast it happened. That's what our government was doing back in the day was like, listen, we've got to build, so let's go. And we've ridden those coattails since.

[John Dudlechek]

Right? We have. And that bill's coming due now. Like, and we've got it now. We've got to replace, we've got to got, you know, we've got to be ready and you know, we're already short all this labor and, and, and that's just to like, take care of what we got now.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

Not even talking about building more for future.

[Aaron]

And not only is that build due, but we've gotten away with putting a bunch of shit elsewhere, like building stuff, manufacturing stuff, resources. We've just been able to get it from all over the world. That can't work long term. Well, yeah, that can't work long term. We've got to do more within our sphere of influence. Maybe not just in America, but certainly within our hemisphere.

[John Dudlechek]

Sure.

[Aaron]

Again, all of that requires infrastructure.

[John Dudlechek]

It does. And, and so we're talking about things that I have trouble like wrapping my brain around, you know, you've been to places I never been and, and, but I grew up here in America, you know, and I understand like the Midwest and I understand what the, you know, what that vision that we have as Americans, you know, we gotta answer that question right now. We've, you know, feel. How about it? You want. But the borders were open for a number of years there. We've got a lot of immigrants that came here and feel how you want about what to do about that. I don't. I'm not. I can't solve that problem.

[Aaron]

It happened.

[John Dudlechek]

It happened. They're here, you know, and so the only. I know what Jesus told me, like, love your neighbor. So, like, I don't know. I gotta, like. We gotta. Who are we? Who. You know, like, we got to get along. We gotta like, figure out what we are. So, so, you know, what is. What is America? Who are we as Americans? I think that's something we gotta, we gotta answer.

[Aaron]

And Yeah, I. So I think we know that that was defined for us 250 years ago.

[John Dudlechek]

It was.

[Aaron]

It's. I think it's. I think the question is, are we going to get back to that. Are we going to live up to that? Because we haven't for a long time now.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

And. And partial. Part of, part of this is on the baby boomers. They've just been the. What's in it for me? I want more. More, more, more, more, more, more, more. Yes. Yeah. I want more.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes.

[Aaron]

And it's like, okay, cool, guys. We've been doing that for a while now.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Life expectancies declining. The. The gap between rich and poor has never been bigger than home affordability. Like for me to buy a home right now, not a fucking chance.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

The debt has is what, $40 trillion or something? Yeah. Our military can't even control the strait right now. The world's best navy can't even do that. Like there's some like blinking, blinking red. Birth rates declining. Like. Yeah, there's some. Really. You just, you just look around. You're like, are we winning right now? Are we the best ever? Because I don't know, like you're, you're up. Go to Gary, Indiana.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

Look around. Are you like, wow. Yes. Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

That's a failing city.

[Aaron]

It is depressed.

[John Dudlechek]

And I don't know that we had one of those yet in our. I think that might unfortunately might end up being one of the. I don't want to go dark. I really don't want to go dark because I think there are some ways to turn that city around. I don't know. But. No, there are. Yeah. Yeah.

[Aaron]

It was a great city.

[John Dudlechek]

Back up a second. You said. Yes. We did define that 250 years ago who we are as Americans. But I think we forgot. I don't. We don't. Because you just described this. Gimme, gimme, gimme. That is not who we are. It's that we're supposed to give.

[Aaron]

Yes. Yeah. And that's. But that's this framework that they established requires constant effort.

[John Dudlechek]

It does.

[Aaron]

You've got to work for it.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

You've got to work because you have all these forces pushing against it.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

It's, it's, it's, it's not.

[John Dudlechek]

Some of it's our own for we creating it to ourselves. Yes. You know, this self governance. We turned government into a separate thing that it's this thing that exists on its own to like tell us what to do. And that's, that's not what the vision of a republic was or is. It's not what are a true healthy Republican, the one that was envisioned 250 years ago.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

And so when I say we got to Know who we are as Americans. Yeah. You and I, because we grew up here. We know what that was. It was answered 250 years ago. But that's why, you know, I open with a. We hold certain truths, self evident, you know, and the big one is liberty, man. And that word means a lot more than freedom now. I mean, not now, just it means a lot more than freedom. You know, there's some principles there that, that really define. Look, I think it defines us as a people, as a humanity across the globe. Sure. I just can't go all there. It's just too much.

[Aaron]

No, but there is something unique about this whole American experiment.

[John Dudlechek]

I think there is, it is, there's just this.

[Aaron]

The way I've best explained it is like there's just this fuck you attitude in America. And I say that in a very positive way. Positive way, right? Yeah. Like tell me I can't. Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

Tell me I can't. Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

I'm take care of my own. Right.

[Aaron]

Let's go, let's go.

[John Dudlechek]

Let me show you. Hold my beer.

[Aaron]

And that's a double edged sword. But I think it's, it's really positive. Like what I've been able to do, the life I've lived is only possible here.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

And Correct. And I want that for future generations. But is that, can anybody confidently say, like, can you confidently say that your kids lives are going to be better than your life? And I've asked a lot of people this and they're just like.

[John Dudlechek]

So I can answer that. I can answer that. I'd like, I'd like to answer that. Aaron. My kids are my two person. John Dudlecheck's kids, Ryan and Gabriel Dudlecheck are going to have a better life than I do. I say better. They're going to have at least as an enriching experience as I have had.

[Aaron]

Sure.

[John Dudlechek]

Because we're all rowing in the same boat.

[Aaron]

Yes.

[John Dudlechek]

Because it started with family first.

[Aaron]

And that's a, that's a great response.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes.

[Aaron]

But they're still in the boat that is the United States of America.

[John Dudlechek]

They are. I refuse. Because you know what? Try to, to your point. Tell me I can't provide that for my family. Sure. And I'm going to say fuck you. I can. I don't give a damn what that government says or what that safety guy says or whatever. Or whatever. They tell me that. I hear you about unaffordability homes. I hear you that. Okay. But I'm gonna, Okay. I don't know. I'm gonna make sure that. Not. I'm. We. We, my family together, we're, you know, we're this unit. We are going to make sure our lives are enriched first, fully, so that we can enrich others. And, like, these principles are. My kids embody it, like, better than I do. They understand this stuff way soon. I didn't, like, you know, I'm a recovering alcoholic, dude. So, like, I went out there and did really stupid shit for a lot of years and tried to wreck my life over, you know, over a addiction to a drink. You know, and, like, you do that for a while and then recover from that and learn how to, like, live a different life of rigorous honesty. Like, rigorous honesty, dude.

[Aaron]

That's why I like talking to alcoholics, though, because they're honest.

[John Dudlechek]

You have to be.

[Aaron]

They're honest people. I'm dead if I don't, like, like, very. They're. They're. They're the most. I would say they're like the most honest group in our society.

[John Dudlechek]

It is the core principle of our existence.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

I am dead.

[Aaron]

So it's the only way it works.

[John Dudlechek]

Oh, yeah. And I make mistakes. Sure. And I'll say shit, that's wrong.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

All the time. Ask my wife. She'll tell you.

[Aaron]

You're in good company.

[John Dudlechek]

But it's like, I mean, as part of, like, living, I have to do a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself on a regular basis. Like, who does that? And. And I've been practicing that in all my affairs for 20 plus years.

[Aaron]

When you. When did you stop drinking?

[John Dudlechek]

2005.

[Aaron]

Oh, yeah. So you've been on this one.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah, 2005. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and. And yeah. So you live a life of rigorous honesty and, like, a thing where you're like, okay, admit to myself, to my God and another human being. The exact nature is my wrongs. Whenever I harm somebody and then go make amends to.

[Aaron]

Well, I think it's like, whoa, the process makes you fully admit that you're a flawed human being.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah. Right.

[Aaron]

And that alone.

[John Dudlechek]

Yep.

[Aaron]

It doesn't make it easier, but, boy, does it, like, bring you a sense of peace. Like. Oh. Oh, yeah. I am deeply flawed.

[John Dudlechek]

And thank God for my wife. She's like my guiding light and all this stuff. And. And so because of all that, like, to answer your question about my kids are gonna live at least, I mean, I'd say yeah, for sure, because they're more enlightened about these principles than I was at that age.

[Aaron]

So I think that's the solution. What you've said if everybody was doing that with their kids. Yeah, we're in a pretty damn good place.

[John Dudlechek]

Well, that's.

[Aaron]

And that's why I'm optimistic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is no other way. There's no other way.

[John Dudlechek]

Start there.

[Aaron]

Like, when I talk in generalities, that's all I do. But when it comes to building a better dirt world, building the next generation, it's one person at a time.

[John Dudlechek]

It is.

[Aaron]

That's it.

[John Dudlechek]

And there's.

[Aaron]

There's no hack, there's no shortcut, there's no scale. When people talk scale. Fuck your scale. It doesn't work. That's not. It's one human being at a time. Well, maybe, yeah. But you've got to master the one at a time.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes.

[Aaron]

Before it scales. Like, it, it, it. It's. But it's in its essence the purest form. It's just one person at a time.

[John Dudlechek]

So we talk your dirt world trades, dude. Honestly, I'm no tradesman.

[Aaron]

Like, I'm not.

[John Dudlechek]

If you look at the shit I build. I try to do drywall in my house. It's ripply and looks like when I.

[Aaron]

When I change the batteries out on something successfully, I'm like, I'm a hell of a man. Change a change of tire, I'm like, yeah, yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

You know, I'm a homeowner, so I've got. I've gotten a little better. But it started. I remember my first house. I broke a little window pane in the door. I'm like, how the fuck do you fix a window pane? And like, I didn't know what to do. Like, how do you get a shape of a window exactly like that? Like, I didn't know anything. I knew nothing.

[Aaron]

And now I'm a renter, so that window panes. Not my problem.

[John Dudlechek]

Hey. Yeah. But I'm just saying, as an actual trip tradesmen with my hands, I'm not even mediocre. I'm way below average. I suck. Okay. I'm not a very good builder of stuff. My kids are. But what I am pretty. I've gotten pretty good at is being a builder of men, you know? Yeah. It starts the family first. And so my kids now out of the house and they're independent and they're on their own. One of them lives here in Nashville and one lives in Boulder, and. And they're great. And it's just my wife and I and my dog and. But. But now I, you know, it's my company. It's Grimmer Construction, Inc. Like, all the dudes that work there are, you know, I kind of consider them a little bit like my adopted kids, you know, A little bit sort of. I mean, I'm adopted, so, like, I understand adoption, right? I understand like being a father figure to somebody that's not your blood, you know, And I really care about those dudes. I gotta. The guy across the hall from me is Michael Tiller. Like, he came to see me when he was in 8th grade. 8th grade. To see what civil engineering is, you know. He's across the hall for me now. He's like, like, if I were like, who? Like, if I were to like get run over by a truck tomorrow, like, Mike would step in and like, do a lot of the shit that I do, you know, I got, you know, guys like, that many of them, you know, Colin, you know, I've been talking about this liberty stuff with him and Holy Spirit and Christianity and God and like, he, like how he like, helped me see something. It was very enlightening. Like, oh, all right, there's my Christian brother there. And I don't know, it was like my guy Sam, you know, he was one of the first. He was my first hire. I was working at grimmer for just two years. 1998 or 99 or something like that. Same. We hired Sam and now he's my brother. He's like, you know, what am I saying? I'm saying, like, yeah, it starts with that family and then. That's the scale I'm talking about, dude. Like, I think we can. Because I think we can scale it up. I think our model at Grimmer is something along the lines of scaling up what we're talking about, like all of those guys. And there's Brent and names don't mean anybody but Luke and Max and all these, like, we know each other, we care about each other. And they're out there keeping their eyes open to like, not only keeping their eyes open, like, trying to encourage other men to like, join us, like, come do this trades thing. Like, what we're doing is. Is what we're doing is, you know, keeping America alive. You know, that hierarchy that you talk. Like, first thing is drinking water. It's like, hey, hey, guys. Like, they're showing young people, like, this is what we do. We. So I don't know, man. I don't know how to like make programs or big corporations that generate, you know, a whole bunch of workers and all. We're a small company, We're a family owned business. We're just there in northwest Indiana. But we got a model That I think is pretty special. I don't know, people that, like, come inside our company and look at us, they say, wow, the talent, the love, the. I mean, everybody around us is having babies and stuff. You know, like, it's a bit. It is truly a family company. I always tell my first day of work. Can I tell my first day of work?

[Aaron]

Sure.

[John Dudlechek]

So I go to work for this company in Grimmer Construction, and I was fired from my previous job. I was fired from my previous job. Big dirt contractor. Right.

[Aaron]

What were you fired for? For?

[John Dudlechek]

I was driving the truck on personal time without permission. I got an accident.

[Aaron]

Oh.

[John Dudlechek]

I broke the letter of the law.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Yeah. You and a lot of other people on that one, I'm sure.

[John Dudlechek]

Yep. I broke the letter of law, so they fired me. Rules of rules.

[Aaron]

Yeah, sure. Yeah, that's.

[John Dudlechek]

You know, we thought you're a great. You know, rules are rules. They're out of business. Whatever. Good company, though. I shouldn't do that because I learned a lot about how to move big dirt, you know. You know, I had, you know, big, you know.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

30 scrapers, and I was running as a foreman. A kid, you know, I was two years. Two years out of college. First I worked for a geotech firm in Elmhurst, Illinois, and did that for a while. I'm a civil engineer and then went to work for this company I'm talking about Brown Incorporated, Michigan City as a good. I learned a lot from him. And one of the relations works for me now, but anyway. Works with me now, anyway. Yeah, so. So. So my wife tells me about Grimmer Construction because she worked for Indot. She's a civil engineer as well, and she'd heard that they were looking for some help. So I literally walked in the door with a resume and said, you know, I hear you guys are looking for a job. And now I run the place, but. So we not run. I run the operations and whatever. It's a family business. Okay. Father's the president. Mark is the son and vice president at the time. And I don't know, maybe two crews or something like that. We work a deal out. I'm gonna come work for them. I go to work for them. My first day of work, Greg Senior calls me into his office, you know, and just starts talking to me about, you know, you got a wife? You have kids? No, at the time, I didn't have kids yet. Are you going to have kids? This is the first day of work. We didn't talk about manholes or pipe or dirt or how, you know, what? As an engineer, do you have a wife and are you going to have kids? Okay. And I was like, yeah, well, we're going to have kids. Yeah. All right. So is she going to work after you have kids or is she going to stay? He's asking these kinds of questions. I'm like, you know, she'll probably, you know, be a stay at home mom for a little bit. I don't know. Yeah. Oh, then she'll come in on our insurance. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she'll come on our insurance. Then Greg, hold on a minute, picks up the phone, calls their insurance agent to make sure that if she's pregnant, would that be a pre existing condition? Like my whole point in that is like the first order of business in that company was family. I mean, dude, I mean, I'll climb a mountain for that guy. You know what I mean? I mean, and then I think about all the things since then in my family that that company has provided for me and then we provide back. And it starts from that kind of like love. And I saw it in her family and they accepted me as not family. And like, oh, he's got some talents. They trusted what I said because I told the truth. And the next thing you know, we're got this company that everybody respects and everybody loves each other. We're growing, we are scaling it up. It's not super fast. Mark always says, steady Eddie in our growth, our growth is bound by like our ability to like make sure we have that care that their identity of being really good at what we do, but also to care for each other. And that's our controlled thing.

[Aaron]

But that I think, like there's a lot of business owners that I feel like lose, lose that, lose the plot. And I get why, because I've talked about this to them, the business is number one. It's, it's number one.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

They may, they may admit it, they may not admit it. It's, it's, it's number one. And so then they, it's human nature mistakenly think that that is the state of affairs for everybody as well. Or they're just not very good with their personal life. They're much better with business. So that's the channel that they, they typically thrive within. That's what they stay within. But if you ask anybody within any business, like pick the business of your family, right? It's, it's an obvious answer.

[John Dudlechek]

Like, listen, family, family, right?

[Aaron]

And so I feel like that's a great lesson in a leader identifying, listen, everybody here. Their priority is not the company.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

That's. This is not the point.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

The point is their families.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

This is the way, this is important.

[John Dudlechek]

Yep.

[Aaron]

This is the way they care for their families and get what they want for their families.

[John Dudlechek]

Right, Right.

[Aaron]

If I can align this business with their wants and future.

[John Dudlechek]

Yep.

[Aaron]

Now we're really cooking.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

And that I've struggled there some. I've done well in other ways there. I've always tried to really keep in mind, like, what is everybody around me playing for?

[John Dudlechek]

Yep.

[Aaron]

And how can I get them there?

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

If I get them there, I'll be fine.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

But let me figure out what they're playing for and position it not in what I want, not in what the company wants, but in their best interest to ultimately achieve that.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes.

[Aaron]

And, and I just did it, you know, a few months ago in a pretty key way. And it's like, yeah, this is, but if I had approached it with my needs, the businesses needs, it doesn't work.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

But that's, you see a lot of people doing that. Now I understand why. I get it. I've fallen into that trap 100 times over. But it's not the state of affairs. And I think that's like, also the construction industry is just working under these, set this, this, this set of principles right now that almost doesn't allow for family from an hours worked perspective and a schedule standpoint right now, like, oh, these, all these mega projects, you've got this date.

[John Dudlechek]

I don't care.

[Aaron]

Exactly.

[John Dudlechek]

Like,

[Aaron]

But we're the best company in the world to work for.

[John Dudlechek]

For. Yeah.

[Aaron]

We're on this list in this magazine. We're the best. But you, your family get the job done because there's too much money on the line and our shareholders are up the ass. And, and so work your 80 hours a week. But if you're doing 80s, if you're doing even 60s, it is hard consistently

[John Dudlechek]

that you're putting family first. How do you say you're putting family first if you're working 70 hours a week? I don't see it, dude.

[Aaron]

I, I, that's where it's like, I put it on a whiteboard. I'm like, no, how do you do that?

[John Dudlechek]

I don't know.

[Aaron]

You know, and then, and then you're doing it and you're doing it for not even that much money anymore.

[John Dudlechek]

I know.

[Aaron]

In your area, it's, in our area, it's better.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

But if you're doing it in Nashville, you're working 70 hours a week in Nashville, Tennessee.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

Good luck. Even like, good luck being a one income household with three kids.

[John Dudlechek]

Right, right. Yeah.

[Aaron]

Let alone seeing your kids. But you're just working, working, working, not seeing your kids and then probably not like barely getting by, I bet.

[John Dudlechek]

So I, I don't know, man. I don't know if you can make a company that big to build these mega projects and have what we have. My company has at grimmer because I don't know, I'm starting to see a pathway to it though. I'm starting to see a way. But because all that said about family, it's all true, but we gotta have a, like a productive use. Like why do we exist as a business?

[Aaron]

You have to make money.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes. Yeah, yeah. And so I think part of that has to do with like being a true believer. And that's why I told all that story about infrastructure. Like, I, I don't know, I raised my family in Griffith, Indiana. I actually care about Griffith, Indiana. You know, I was on school board for eight years. I built the roads in the town. I, you know, I coached the baseball teams and Cub Scouts and whatever. Elder. It's like I care about this thing that it has, it continues on, you know, it's a really great place to live. Griffith, Indiana, it's wonderful. So, but then it's part of the bigger thing of Lake county in Indiana and like, oh wait, we're building the lifeblood, like drinking water and stuff and roads and like how do we, you know, exist as a civil society of. Well, I actually care about that. And not just me, but I've talked to all the guys, all my men, like they all care about it too because they're young. I'm the old guy at 55. You know, there's a bunch of 30 year olds that work for me that are having family and making kids and all that. And so they want to have Northwest Indiana be a vibrant area as well. And so we're all like, hey, yeah, this company is like this thing for income so we can grow our family. We care about each other. True. But we're also going to have to put ourselves at risk and dig gigantic trenches in the ground to go put in infrastructure so that Northwest Indiana is healthy for generations to come. Like, do we all believe in this? And they all do. We all do. That's what we're doing. We're not just like making money. Like we're gonna make money. I've always told my, I tell everybody, I tell my kids, I tell it myself, I tell my boss. And then I'm like, I probably shouldn't tell him this. That I don't actually care about money. I mean, I do only enough that I don't have to care about it. You know what I mean? Like, I just want to do this thing where like I'm helping other people, all with the purpose of the family, then my community and then maybe stretch it out to my county. Maybe stretch it out to the state of Indiana. I don't know. Maybe we can stretch it all across America. Yeah. But we can do that.

[Aaron]

Like, I think the way we stretch it out is like we just have you guys doing your thing and your sphere of influence.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And then the next year over, you've got somebody doing their thing.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And somebody doing their thing.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

All on the same operating system.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

But I think that's the only way to do it because in, in this world as well, when you become these mega companies.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

It is so hard to keep the thing. The thing.

[John Dudlechek]

I'm sure it is.

[Aaron]

And I've only seen it done a few times. I can count big, big, big companies that still like that I'd go to work for.

[John Dudlechek]

I see.

[Aaron]

That are still like human on one hand. I would say in the States there's not many of them. Once you start to exceed a certain threshold now you have to install. You don't have to. But there's more and more forces acting upon the business to install that more traditional command and control type infrastructure.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

And I, I don't know how you do that.

[John Dudlechek]

I really don't. And, and you know, I mean, when I started at Grimmer, we had two crews or something like that. Now what do we got? 13 civil crews and a couple of carpentry crews and all that. And so we're scaling up a little bit, but nowhere near like. Yeah, you know, I, I got a place on Rough river in Kentucky. They're redoing the, the dam there, which is really impressive. You know, we do army. I do Army Corps work, but it's local project nonsense. You know, little local stream.

[Aaron]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

It's. It's kind of a joke that it's run through Army Corps. It's like I could do this for seriously, like literally half the price.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

The Army Corps just get out of my way and let me do what I want to do. You know, literally half the price.

[Aaron]

Or. Or less federal government.

[John Dudlechek]

They're good.

[Aaron]

They're great at some stuff. Yeah, yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

But I'm driving. You know, the, the dam there and Rough river is getting redone and I, you know, it's a Billion dollar project or 900 million.

[Aaron]

And that's something you need the core for, like.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes, yeah, yes. That's a legitimate thing. You know. And I'm saying this, I'm like, I probably shouldn't say it because I, yeah. The two 19 type projects that come in our area, you know, we do them.

[Aaron]

So yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

Oh, that's kind of nice. We keep money.

[Aaron]

The core has been great to us.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

So yeah, I'm actually really impressed.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah. Yeah. Well. And they certainly the big projects there. But anyway, is a big company there that you need the big company to do that as well. I think you do.

[Aaron]

You do. But I also think those projects are bigger than they need to be, if that makes sense. Like you've got more and more people on those projects administering the, the project.

[John Dudlechek]

Oh, you're probably right.

[Aaron]

Instead of like on a percentage basis, the amount of people actually doing the work on those projects I would venture to guess is a lower percentage. You've got a ton of people. I mean they call them briefcase contractors for a reason. Like you, you see these joint ventures where it's like, who are these guys? It's like, well, they're the ones to take care of the paperwork and they also help with finance.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

Oh, actually build it. I got it. But I like, sure. There's an argument to be made for the mega companies and I respect the mega companies. What they do is really cool and a lot of them have been great to us.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

No complaints. But I think I've always viewed the fragmentation of the civil construction industry as a negative. And I think it is a negative in a lot of ways. It's created this hyper competitive world in which we all think we have to go kill one another. And it's, it's this, it's, it's this feast or famine mentality. I'm seeing the eight pieces of shit that I bid against every week and I want to go kick their ass every week. And it's just this, it's this dog eat dog world which has then allowed all of these other far more consolidated industries that also serve this world. Materials engineering, equipment manufacturers, you can go down the list. Consulting firms, they have benefited, General contractors benefited from that.

[John Dudlechek]

Yep.

[Aaron]

From everybody kicking the shit out of one another. And they've, they make their money and they're doing better than ever. Congratulations. Wow. It's great. But I actually think it's, it's, it's part of the problem, but I also think it's the solution. Like, I don't think the solution is a bunch of. It's consolidation and a bunch of mega contractors. I actually think that's why civil construction is one of the few industries in America that's still like the American dream is still alive. Like the American dream is not alive in most industries. Now you want to go start an airline?

[John Dudlechek]

Okay, yeah, good luck.

[Aaron]

You want to go start a. Yeah. A telecom company. Okay. Bank. Yeah, good luck.

[John Dudlechek]

But you can start a construction company.

[Aaron]

Anybody can go start a construction company tomorrow.

[John Dudlechek]

That's correct.

[Aaron]

And.

[John Dudlechek]

And we need it. Yeah, go ahead and do that.

[Aaron]

And so. And, but, but I think, like, I think you can scale, but you also can't scale what we're talking about. Like, you can't. You, you, you. I don't think it should be scaled in some ways. Like, I think within an organization like yours, like, sure, it maybe, you know, it can get to hundreds of people and maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you can get to thousands. I don't know.

[John Dudlechek]

I don't know either.

[Aaron]

I haven't seen that necessarily because I. I just think like, it's just math at that point.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

Like the creating a truly caring structure. Unless you break it up into a bunch of pieces. Like, Barry Waymiller did this. They had a bunch of different businesses. So they. Sure, it's this giant tens of thousands of people, but it's a bunch of pieces. Yeah. And so it's not this giant, one single homogenous corporation. Like, I think it's probably worked somewhere, but I think each individual business needs to do this in civil construction and take care of their community. And then you scale it by getting all of the civil construction companies on a similar operating system and getting everybody in the same boat. Like, listen, guys, we're all on the same team here. Let's do this together. That's how you scale it. You influence one another.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

But then there you go. You have America covered.

[John Dudlechek]

Right?

[Aaron]

I don't think in that much time.

[John Dudlechek]

Well, what's great at what you do, Aaron, because we didn't have a platform to get that message out. What do you do? Write a newsletter and send it to all your construction buddies in the other states and stuff? Like, hey, here's what the ideal company looks like. But we have this platform here and others to actually talk about that. Not talk about, like show an example. And I keep talking about our companies like a model. We're not perfect, but I mean a model. Like, I don't know. Like, I don't know. What we do is ask anybody around that works for us and we're all like, yeah, we like working here, so we're probably doing something right. So. So, yeah, you know, but that, that's

[Aaron]

what we're trying to serve as, is. We're trying to serve as that stage for you to get up on it and be like, here's what we're doing.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And then hopefully you're able. And I think you have. You've been able to listen to other things or seen other things from other people. And it's like, shit, that's pretty good too, right? Like, let me take some of that and put it here and let me take what I have and offer it out there. And I think if we just again, we're just all coming together and like, let's find this great formula.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

That allows us to really care for our people, love our people, draw more people in, build phenomenal infrastructure, make a lot more money as we do it so that we can keep reinvesting in our people. We can rebuild the America. We can rebuild the middle class. We can build a whole next generation that is far better than this generation. Like, that's how you do it. You don't do it with AI. You don't do it with technology. You do it with pipe, with dirt, with concrete, with asphalt. That's how you can do it. Men with human.

[John Dudlechek]

Competent.

[Aaron]

Yes.

[John Dudlechek]

Strong men.

[Aaron]

Yes. With human beings.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes. That are competent. What I mean by that Strong. What I mean Physically fit. Because what we do is tough. You know, you gotta be physically fit. You gotta be sure who you are, you know. This is not a place for wimpy men.

[Aaron]

No. Taking acceptable risk.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah. Acceptable risk.

[Aaron]

And working hard alongside others. When it's cold, when it's hot, middle of the night. Like, you need people to build a society.

[John Dudlechek]

Now what we're up against, though, to my thing about the whole infrastructure, you know, impending doom. That this homogeneous system that we need to build. What we're up against though, is we can. I think we can, we can handle that. We as a nation can handle that, but only if we're allowed to do it.

[Aaron]

Yes.

[John Dudlechek]

You gotta, like, let us. Who's us. Like the.

[Aaron]

So. But. But yeah, this is. This is where my mind goes on this. I think there's stuff happening right now like the American Empire. It's. It's been around since World War II. It will not continue.

[John Dudlechek]

Correct.

[Aaron]

It's just a matter of time. The American Empire took over for the British Empire. We don't call it an empire.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

It's 100% been an empire.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes, it is.

[Aaron]

But it hasn't been. Well, it has been. We have a huge military presence in Japan, a huge military presence in Korea, a huge military presence in the Middle East. Like you can go down the list in Europe, you know, go. But, but it's not been a traditional empire. It's been a fiscal empire.

[John Dudlechek]

Economic.

[Aaron]

An economic empire.

[John Dudlechek]

Economic hitman.

[Aaron]

Yes. Backed by the world's most powerful military.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

That cannot continue.

[John Dudlechek]

And, and put a pin in there for one second because I said, and for those that like, love the empire, look here, maybe we needed to do that. Maybe I'm not going back in time.

[Aaron]

Yes. I don't.

[John Dudlechek]

I had one. You know, I grew up in the. I was born in 1971, dude. Like, what a great time to grow up in America. I mean the 70s and the 80s and all the movies and the music and all that. Like just what a wonderful riching experience I had. To your point. You know, like, and I, and my kids, they're, they're too, they're like, we're gonna have, you know, they are adamant that their experience is going to be as. Not the same, but as enriching as mine. And we can. And so I'm not saying that the empire is bad or was bad or that it's, you know, whatever, whatever. I don't know. The truth is though, what you're saying is it's gonna.

[Aaron]

No, it's gonna be corrected.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah. It cannot get over its skis. If it gets over its skis, too much bad things happen.

[Aaron]

Well, and that, that's my whole point is like, regardless of what's happened.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes.

[Aaron]

And I don't know how it's going to happen. Future state, anybody that says this is what's going to happen is full of.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah, they don't know.

[Aaron]

I'm just looking at the world. I'm just looking at demographics at declining birth rates around the entire world now. I'm just looking at $40 trillion of debt. I'm just looking at a, a military that is close, clearly not capable of what they say they are right now. And decades and decades and decades of war and a government that can't get anything done. And a federal government that just told us one thing and has done everything differently.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

The opposite. For a year now. I'm just looking at all those things like this, not sustainable. Yeah, this is not sustainable. This, this will break at a certain amount in a, at a certain time. Maybe in my lifetime. Maybe not. I don't know. Like, maybe it just continues.

[John Dudlechek]

Who knows? But I don't see how it continues because you can't. Yeah.

[Aaron]

No, but what, how I view it is like, listen, the world is going to be very different future state. I think that's a tremendous opportunity. I actually think it's exciting for me. I go into this fear based mode of like, oh my God, what's going to happen? This and that. And then I'm like, wait a minute. This is an opportunity to be a part of defining what the next 250 years of America looks like.

[John Dudlechek]

There you go.

[Aaron]

What a fucking crazy opportunity that is. And I don't know how that's gonna shake out. But I am gonna ensure me as an individual, I'm ready for whatever comes my way. So I'm gonna get stronger spiritually, I'm gonna get stronger mentally, I'm gonna get stronger physically. I'm gonna do my best to build a great business. Emotionally, I'm gonna do my best to care for those around me.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

And I think if every contractor was doing the same right now, like we don't control the federal government or state agencies or whatever it is, but all of that, it's gonna shake out in a very different fashion than our lifetimes.

[John Dudlechek]

I think I 100% agree.

[Aaron]

And so we don't know how that's gonna be.

[John Dudlechek]

We don't know, you know what I, I mean I know what I want. Want and want a slow change. Abrupt changes are usually ugly. I think that it ought to, you know, but what do I know?

[Aaron]

It could, it could be nice and comfy. It could be civil war. Who knows, it could be nuclear war tomorrow and we're done. Like there's, it's, it's used to believe that.

[John Dudlechek]

Well, but because I can't, I can't.

[Aaron]

Yeah, but, but it's, it's a, it's this whole spectrum of options.

[John Dudlechek]

Right? Correct.

[Aaron]

I have no influence over that spectrum

[John Dudlechek]

starts to blow up.

[Aaron]

Yeah, yeah. But, but I do have influence over my family. Exactly.

[John Dudlechek]

My community, my business that I run.

[Aaron]

Exactly.

[John Dudlechek]

Maybe. And I'm at a point in my career. Yeah. I got some influence in my region.

[Aaron]

Sure. And even in your region, your town, like everybody has influence. Like there's in the construction industry, there's 8 million people in the United States of America. You go impact 10, 12 people a year.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah, yeah.

[Aaron]

One a month. That's 100 million people. That's a, that's a, almost a third of the entire United States that we're covering with this industry, let alone the product that we're creating, which impacts every single human being within the borders.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes, yes. So all this is talk and it's great because we're just talking and that talk's been kind of going around and we were talking about last night, like a lot of guys.

[Aaron]

No, this, this, the talk that's been going around is oh, poor me.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Aaron]

Oh, poor me. And while I'm stacking up money, oh, poor me. Everybody's out to get me. Yeah, that's what I'm tired of.

[John Dudlechek]

Fair enough, I guess. So what I was getting at when I'm, I guess I'm calling upon my peers, you know, like, hey guys, you know, you 50 year olds that, you know, know some shit, you know how to build things, you know how to do this stuff. Like, hey, you know, your kids are grown and out, like mine are. All right, get in your local school and you know, or, or your local whatever thing to talk to young people about the trades about getting like actually get active. Don't just tell kids should get into trades, like get involved with that stuff, you know. And then to my communities, you know, the, you know, the, those in authority in, you know, my towns and my, you know, in, in the county and even in the state, you know, it's like there's some stuff that we have disagreements on when I say authority, like. Yeah, and as, as an example, we gotta stop doing stupid shit is what I'm trying to get to here because we're, we're, we have to get much more efficient with what we're doing and we all know there's some stupid shit that we do that really doesn't need to be done. I pick on this one easily because if you just want to, because it's such an easy one, is like this erosion control nonsense. Like I've been building construction projects for 30 years, man, that erosion. I watched it all happen. All that swift stuff come about and it's, I mean, just this morning I went on a run this morning here in Nashville and running down the sidewalk and I took a picture of it. There's a construction site there with silk fence jammed into the sidewalk. The whole property is like, got grass and shit on it. There's some open ground up here, but they put the silk fence around and now it's leaning over in the sidewalk. The stakes are, I had to jump over them when I'm running, you know, it's like a hazard, you know, and it's all just like a little hazard. But if you like I did a little back of the envelope calculates. I'm a professional estimator Right. So. And I'm coming up with something north of a billion dollars spent in the state of Indiana on preventative erosion control measures that do absolutely nothing.

[Aaron]

Have you talked to the fish about that?

[John Dudlechek]

Have I? I am a fisherman, sir. Well, yeah, I am a fisherman and I know.

[Aaron]

What do they say about it?

[John Dudlechek]

They don't give a shit. They don't care about dirt in the freaking. In the lakes. They don't care at all.

[Aaron]

In fact, they, you know, so.

[John Dudlechek]

But, but it's a natural occurrence that happens when it rains. There's silt that goes into lakes.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

It's nonsense.

[Aaron]

While the farms are just flushing.

[John Dudlechek]

Oh, right, right. They're all exempt to it. It's all nonsense.

[Aaron]

And all these regulate now to grow ethanol for what?

[John Dudlechek]

Right, right, right, right.

[Aaron]

Yeah. And that's a whole other.

[John Dudlechek]

So like if we had a law that said like, if somebody if like town of Griffith made a law that the first thing you do when you walk on a job site for the town is you take a $5,000 in cash and pour gasoline on it and burn it up, you know, before you start the job. We would all say no, we refuse to do that. But they tell you the first thing I want you to do is go spend about $5,000 in erosion control. That's going to do nothing but it be a tripping hazard. I know there's a natural vegetative barrier around this, but put silt a fence up anyway and do all this other nonsense. Fill out these forms and do. And we're all doing, you know, and then you don't have your stockpile with the silt worm around it, like, shut up. It means nothing.

[Aaron]

But it's, it's again, we just spent $1.2 trillion to get nothing. And I cannot find a single person that can say this is exactly what we got here is how life is better.

[John Dudlechek]

Right, right, right.

[Aaron]

But like my plea is to people of your demographic and older. It's like we need the people that have built this industry. I know you're tired. I know you've worked your ass off. I know you've worked all this time to make this money and now you can enjoy it. But it's like we need this previous generation now more than ever for sure. We need them involved in some capacity somewhere. And some guys are, which I like. Herb will be here next week. Endless appreciation for somebody like a Herb sergeant. I think he is the poster child for this. Like, listen, I could go just hang out on the beach in Florida. Yeah, I want to Go hang out on the beach in Florida. But that's not my thing. I've got to go give back. I've got to ensure this industry is better than I found it and well beyond my company. Like, I left my company at a good place with the right leadership. Now I've got to go beyond that. I've got to go do other things. And it's like with your time, get involved with your community. Get involved. If you're one of these guys with a bunch of money, like, sure, go spend it. Go buy a boat, go buy a plane, go buy houses. Great. Congratulations. I love that, love that, love that. I want a plane. I'm gonna have a plan.

[John Dudlechek]

You do.

[Aaron]

Let's go. Well, no, it's, it's, it's. Then they go stash it away in some. With JP Morgan or some complex trust scheme or real estate. Let's go invest in some REITs or whatever, venture fund, this and that. And then it's like, I'm gonna go give it to my kids and I'm, I promise you, nine out of. It's a 90% chance that your kids are going to be completely fucked up from it.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah. If you just hand them a bunch of cash.

[Aaron]

And for me, that's the craziest proposition ever to, like, almost with, for sure ruin my kids. Like, I'm not giving my kids money. That's insane. I've seen it happen terribly too many times over, like very close. I've seen the destruction. It doesn't work right.

[John Dudlechek]

And it's like you're part of their, you're their support system. Yeah, but go. You're not.

[Aaron]

But just, just reinvest a little bit of that money in what made the money to begin with. Like, you're entitled to it. I get it. Great. But like, just put a little bit back in, in some fashion and that's great. You're going to go invest in feeding kids in different countries, different continents. This, Go do all that. But just find somewhere in this industry or in your community or, or, or, or just somewhere at home that you can pour that money back into to make the industry a little bit better, to make the community a little bit better. That's what makes the most sense to me.

[John Dudlechek]

100%. 100%. And for those that don't have that kind of money, but you know, because like, not that you're talking about business owners, but. Yeah, but to the tradesmen, you know. Yeah. Maybe you don't, because, yeah, you work, but you were tradesmen, so you're not like dripping in wealth and gonna go buy planes. But what you can give back is, is teach, be a mentor. Mentorship. Like actually like find some kids that you're gonna teach your trade to, you know, before you retire. And then after you retire, like, find other ways to like encourage that. You know, I, I, I run into guys that rough river where I go go fishing and retired guys out there a lot of times and, and they run the, the, the high school bass tournaments. You know, these are guys in their 70s that are retired, maybe even early 80s, I don't know. They're retired and they're, and they help the high school bass teams, you know, like how to fish, you know, and they're like, that's a recreational trade, but at least they're plugging into youth still. I mean, this, this, this, it was so, you know, this gatekeeping thing that happened for so long with, you know, that they'll take our jobs stuff, you know that I think finally the trades kind of see, we need that help. But that's, yeah, to my peer group, the 50s and 60 year olds. I mean, if you don't have the money to be putting your money back in, put your time back in, just

[Aaron]

pour back in or back, whatever you got a lot of the people that listen to this podcast. I know how liquid they are.

[John Dudlechek]

Oh, sure.

[Aaron]

I spent, I spent four years asking for money in this industry. I was told no, you know, a thousand times.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

I'm not even upset about that. It's worked out. I believe it works out just fine. I know how liquid these people are.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah, I hear you.

[Aaron]

I know how liquid they, yeah, okay. And it's like, just, just do something. Yeah, yeah, just do something. Please. Just invest somewhere cool in something that makes us better.

[John Dudlechek]

That's it, right? That's it. Yeah.

[Aaron]

Like, or if they're running a company today, like, just pour back into your people in some way and like apply some kind of creativity to it.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah, sure.

[Aaron]

Like, you know, it's, yeah, there's, there's, there's all these things. It's not even to beat up on. Like, I think simulators are great, but people love talking about how much money they spent on simulators, right? Love it. And it's like, that's great. But what else? Like, what else is there? What else, what other opportunities are we pursuing here? How else are we caring for people, training for people? Like, and it's, it's not even, that's not even the best example because I don't want to beat up on simulators but it's like the amount of times I've heard about, oh, we're investing in the next generation.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

How much we spent on these similarities. Like, frankly, I don't give a shit. Like, okay, cool. But show me. I'm a lot more interested in the excavator out back. Can you just show me that? Like. And they have their place. They're a powerful.

[John Dudlechek]

Sure.

[Aaron]

Great.

[John Dudlechek]

Sure.

[Aaron]

But it's just like easy button. We're investing.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah. We're making this technology thing that you can play a video game.

[Aaron]

Kids love technology. I've heard about it. They love their damn phones. Right.

[John Dudlechek]

They don't know what kids, kids actually want.

[Aaron]

No, no, I just, I want a damn excavator. Yeah, I just, I, I, I, I told you. I, Maybe it's the real world. Maybe at dinner. Yeah, it was like at Con Expo. You know, someone's showing me something about this, this technology because the kids like the technology and the. I could not. I think it's maybe because I'm getting older. I used to play ball a little bit better. But like in my head I was struggling to find even a single to give. I almost just wanted to just. I don't have time for this. Yeah, right. Yeah. It was, it was just technology. I'll just, just technology. And it's just like, go talk to some kids. Like go go talk to some kids. And, and, and for me it's like I really. Con Expo is actually really interesting to me because it was like, I actually don't give a about technology at all.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

Hey, I don't care about it. And maybe I'm unique, but just give me a D6 dozer. Just give me an excavator. Just give me a truck.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Just, just, just show me some pipeline. Show me some asphalt. Show me some earth moving.

[John Dudlechek]

My son's a robotic engineer, so you're really pissing them off if you don't.

[Aaron]

Well, it's part of it. I need those people. Yeah, but to like, just generalize it. Like. Well, you know, all these kids have grown up on iPads. So we need to make the industry that's such. On an iPad.

[John Dudlechek]

Way to see these young. They like technology. Like idiot. No, they don't.

[Aaron]

Yeah. And you're scrolling on Instagram or Facebook just as much as they are. I watched you guys at the airport. There's always some guy, 67 years old. Dude, he's just scrolling.

[John Dudlechek]

I think we're worse. My scroll, man. My wife's been on my ass about it and she's 100% right that I get those stupid AirPods in my AirPods in my ears too much. And like. Yeah. On my phone. I think our generation is the worst. I really do. I don't think I, I look at the kid, I look at my sons and their friends and, and they, when they're with each other, they're interacting. They're not. Their faces aren't bare or the, the.

[Aaron]

The. It's an older demographic too. They're sitting on their like phone games. And I'm, I'm always like, who plays phone games?

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

Candy Crush on airplanes. Like the amount of middle aged women I've seen playing Candy Crush on airplanes. Half the airplanes on Candy Crush, they're just, they're just sitting there just non stop.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

And it's like you're the ones telling us that we're all about technology. You're sitting here using it just as much.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah. And what's the. That's in Indiana we're doing this. These Career Path Indiana Constructors Inc. Ici.

[Aaron]

They're great, man.

[John Dudlechek]

It's. It's phenomenal. Yeah. We're huge. Yeah. It's what a. It's a great organization. And, and they've.

[Aaron]

I think we dealt with Eric Fisher there.

[John Dudlechek]

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. And don't do names, I'll screw up. But the program itself that they started the civil pathways in the schools. You know, here's this crazy thing that whole. I remember so when I was on school board this was the thing frequently would hear people say around me college isn't for everybody so kids should get into trades. So what the kids heard was if you're stupid. Yeah.

[Aaron]

That's the other thing.

[John Dudlechek]

It's like if you're stupid going. So then they laid back like they fucking forget about school. They didn't pay attention. And then they, they graduate 12 years of fucking school. Get a high school degree with no ability to be employed.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

But no ability to build things. And so what ICI has been doing is getting these. The civil construction actual curriculum in the high schools scattered about the state. You know, they only have so many resources too. It's like this would be great if it were in every school in Indiana. But we're getting there. We. And one of my guys, Dan Harrington has been involved with helping develop that program. And it's a legit like curriculum school credit where they're actually on excavators, running bobcats, little cranes, got the sandbox. They have a competition at the end of the season where they have to make a level pad and shoot grade and all that kind of stuff and actually learning the trade. I interviewed a kid that came out of that program. It was a. I think it was at Chesterton High School. And what, I mean, what a bright kid. You know, I'm like, come work for me now. You know, coming up. That's what it should. Like, my dad came out of high school, I looked at. He. My dad died in 2016, but you know, he's born in 1925. And I looked at when I was going through all his stuff, cleaning out his house, I like found his schoolwork, you know, and it was all, it was like mechanic stuff that he used on his job. Like, he came out of high school, he went to war. But then when he. The stuff that he learned in school, he actually used on his job. It was actual vocational studies.

[Aaron]

It wasn't photosynthesis.

[John Dudlechek]

No, it was not photosynthesis or poli sci.

[Aaron]

Or the lunar calendar.

[John Dudlechek]

Right, right, right, right. You know, or whatever else we come up with.

[Aaron]

Pythagorean theorem.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah. So. Yeah, So I mean, but, but, but

[Aaron]

that, like, that's another.

[John Dudlechek]

Just hands on is what I'm saying.

[Aaron]

Yeah, yes, but that's such a tired talk. Like we, we need more kids to not go to college and this and that. Oh, right. It's like. Okay, I agree with you. 1. Did you go to college? Oh, you went to college. Oh, oh, okay.

[John Dudlechek]

All right.

[Aaron]

Did your kids go to college? Did you tell them to go to college?

[John Dudlechek]

Oh, they did.

[Aaron]

Oh, okay, okay. But we'll put that over here.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah, great.

[Aaron]

There are no vocational programs. And a grand level for civil construction.

[John Dudlechek]

Correct.

[Aaron]

Doesn't exist.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying, though. It doesn't. Indian a little bit.

[Aaron]

It doesn't.

[John Dudlechek]

It.

[Aaron]

Yes, it does in Indiana. It does in Alabama a little bit. It does in Georgia a little bit. There are some great programs. North Dakota, I've seen a great program there. But it exists there because industry professionals have gotten involved.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes.

[Aaron]

And have made it exist.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes, you're right.

[Aaron]

Everybody's just sitting around like, ah, who's gonna do something about it? And I'm like, you. Yes, yes, you go do something. They're like, when are you gonna go to schools? I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't you put this on me. Yes, you go into the schools.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes. You go 100%. Right?

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

That's why I said, you know, I was on. And I was on school board and I saw how that system doesn't Work. The public school system is broken big time. And it wasn't until that we as the trades decided that, you know, we as an industry rather at least in Indiana, did exactly what you said. We're going in there through ici, what a great organization.

[Aaron]

But it's fed by the industry. It's not just gonna happen by accident

[John Dudlechek]

because if you just wait and. Well, here's the other thing though. Here's the other thing. Like, I talked about Griffith a lot because that's my community. Highland, Griffith, Sherryville, whatever. That's the region I work in. If I wait for that program to show up from ici, bringing it there and like, I might, I'll be retired. I mean, they only have so many resources. So I met with our school last week to say, hey, you know, can I. Let me talk to your students about the trades. Let me bring some of my tradesmen into the classroom. And they totally agree to it because I have access to that because I've been in plugged into my community. And then the next step, like, how about you? These are the kinds of people we want, you know, physically fit, you know, general common sense. You know, there's like good work ethic, these kinds of things. If you see anybody like that, like, give me their names and we'll, we'll take them up, we'll do a job shadow, we'll show them, show them what we do and see if they're. That's something that might interest them when they graduate high school. So and we can mentor them, you know. And I got, I got several guys in the operators union that could show them how to become that. I got guys that are laborers. And when you say laborers, these are skilled, high end laborers that make good money. And I mean, yeah, in our region, the unions do pretty good and they make good money and they are able to buy a house and have a family and make kids and all that kind of stuff. And so my point is, like, if you just wait to the school to do it or the, to your point, some other entity to like come up with ways we're gonna like encourage kids to get into trades and train them and all that. Well, forget it. You know, it's not gonna, it's not gonna just show up. We got to do it. So go to your schools or go whatever, get, find whatever access point you have to youth and start bringing this to them and bring them into your. And you don't have to be the COO or the owner or you just, you work for a construction company, you have Every ability to encourage and to not more encourage to bring this workforce to the company, to the industry, but that.

[Aaron]

And again, that's the solution. It's like one on one. It's one on one. One on one. And it's everybody's responsibility.

[John Dudlechek]

If you're an operator, if you're a laborer, if you're a carpenter, if you're a plumber, like, you are out in the world, you know, if you have kids, you're out there, you're around these kids. Talk about what you do. Talk about how? Talk. I had to talk about your mistakes, you know, like, just. If you're a dude. I mean, I talk to men because I'm a man, you know, like, guys like, freaking start talking to youth.

[Aaron]

Like, every opportunity, whenever somebody reaches out, they're like, hey, can I talk to you about something? I'm like, here's my cell phone number. Give me a shout. And I talk to him like, yeah, yeah, I fucked that up too.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah, Right, right, right, right, right, right, right.

[Aaron]

And here's what I did about it.

[John Dudlechek]

And.

[Aaron]

And I like doing that now because there's a giant list of people that have done that for me right now. And especially when I was like, late teens, early 20s. Like, that's a really formative time in somebody's life.

[John Dudlechek]

Yep, yep.

[Aaron]

If you can pass down even just one little thing.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes.

[Aaron]

That helps shape their life. It's a really big deal at that age.

[John Dudlechek]

100% correct. And especially when it comes from a father figure. Comes from a man. So if there was one thing I saw, like, if could I move the needle in the school system? Like, how could I actually move the needle? If there was one thing, it would be to put. Why is this stupid thing? If there was one thing, it would be to put men in front of students. And so what's a. You know, you can't. Because no father in the home is probably our number one problem with incarceration. The reason kids turn to crime is because they don't have a father figure, a positive father figure. And everybody says. Everybody knows this to be true.

[Aaron]

So I think it's both nowadays.

[John Dudlechek]

Both.

[Aaron]

I think they're missing both parents.

[John Dudlechek]

Oh, shit.

[Aaron]

Because both. Both parents are working.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah, that's true.

[Aaron]

Like, yes, that is one thing. But I, I think. I think it's a big issue having both parents out of the home for kids. Like, there's a huge cost to that.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

Huge cost to that.

[John Dudlechek]

Right? There is. There is. And yes, we are at a state here where it's like, what are the options? You know, Exactly.

[Aaron]

Because. And they're both out of the house oftentimes. Because they have to be. Right. Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

Just.

[Aaron]

Just to live.

[John Dudlechek]

Correct, Correct, correct, correct. So my only point in all that is, like, I mean, I'm. I only. The point is talking to guys. Talking is fine, but you know what? Go show that kid how to do that thing, like, where he screwed up. Like, hey, let me show you how to do it right. You know, or find. Find an opportunity. Like, if you know how to drywall, find an opportunity to teach some kids that you don't need. Like, to have, like, a classroom or you don't need whatever. Like, you find. Find it. Find it in life. Go out there and find it. Yeah, that's what I do. I mean, I go out there and find a way to put myself in front of kids.

[Aaron]

It's just like, yes, you seek and you shall find.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes.

[Aaron]

Like, yeah, it's not gonna come hit you over the head.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

You've got to go find it. But it's not that hard, right, to start bringing this home. If you. If you're addressing a room of other COOs, VPs, industry leaders, what would you tell them? Based on this conversation and based on what you're doing at your company?

[John Dudlechek]

What would I tell them

[Aaron]

beyond the past two hours of everything you've said?

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah, We have a duty. We have a duty as men. I mentioned the word liberty. You know, liberty is. You know, there's this first thing about it called the non aggression principle. You know that I'm not. Jesus said, love your neighbor. But the first principle of liberty says, don't aggress against your neighbor. Don't hurt them. Like, start with that. Don't. Don't do that. But the other side of that is duty. We have a responsibility to this country, to America. I mean, we're in charge now. The baby boomers are gone. Mm. Or they're going, whatever.

[Aaron]

Yeah. And they're taking all their money with them.

[John Dudlechek]

Taking all their money with them.

[Aaron]

Let's go.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah. Yeah, they're taking all their money with them.

[Aaron]

Oh, boy. Are they. Yeah. Anyway.

[John Dudlechek]

And I'm not.

[Aaron]

Excuse me.

[John Dudlechek]

It's okay. So I said, I have money. I don't know what to say about that. I'm really shitty with money. I don't know how to. Like, I hate gambling. I don't know. I'm no good at finance, but I know how to do some stuff, and so do my peers. So do my fellow men know how to build things. We know how to Protect women and children. We know how to protect each other. We know how to build America. We know how to, like, if you just sit on that and just, like, bitch and moan about life instead of actually making a difference and stand up and be a man, you're not with me. Be with me on this. Like, we have a duty. We have a calling from something higher than us. It's obviously true. So respond to that. Don't leave it in the hands of something, some other entity like government or rules or whatever. Just, like, forget about all that stuff. Love your neighbor. Like, as a responsibility, as a duty. If you know how to build stuff, teach somebody else how to do that. Don't sit on that and then foster them through that. Like, actually take it in your heart that this is my responsibility to make sure that other man is good, that he can be himself, he can be free, he can be who he wants to be so that I could be me. And then we do that for each other. Like, take this really damn serious, because, yes, America is about to change, you know, and we saw some things happen over the last few years that are really damn scary when we got feel grown big men and guns running around our cities and people getting shot. What we need to take charge. We have a duty as men to make sure America is what we all envision. And, you know, there's a bunch of general statements, but we can be specific with that. You know this. You guys know the specifics. You know the specifics. Do it. Throw away that, you know, whatever. I'm not alcohol, a drug, whatever. Like, what are you doing? I'm sorry if you're, like, overweight and not able to, like, function and you're like, oh, I hate in life. Get yourself in shape. You have a duty as a man to, like, serve other people. Do that. And I promise you, dude, I promise you. I promise you, like, I will show you. Like, my life is so beautiful. I have loving family, loving kids, loving wife, loving community, loving company. Like, I seriously, like, as a kid, like, I had a vision of, like, what I wanted to be, you know, and, like, what kind of family I want to have. And I had some dysfunction growing up. And it was a adopted. All four of us were adopted with some kind of craziness going on. So I had a vision of, like, what do I want as, like, a life? And it's like, God just gave me something way better than I ever could think of. So I'm just like. My point is, like, if you do that, like, a total, like, life of service that duty to help other people. And I guess I'm going to talk to the men to help other men, because that's what we are. It's going to come back at you so much stronger than you could ever possibly imagine. So, as you know. So I guess specifically, it's like, go build. Like, that's the dichotomy of man. Like, we can build or we can destroy.

[Aaron]

Yeah. I think about that all the time.

[John Dudlechek]

Create or we can.

[Aaron]

Creation and destruction.

[John Dudlechek]

And so I choose to create.

[Aaron]

Yeah. Which is why I love this industry. It's. Yes. It's founded in creation. That's all it is.

[John Dudlechek]

I mean, our creator. I mean, that's what. That's why, you know, that's when I talk about America, first off, that's because, you know, they put it in those terms, like, that's what we're all created. Right.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

We are creators. That's what we are. And when we turn it to destructors, that's when life gets dark.

[Aaron]

And consumers.

[John Dudlechek]

Sure.

[Aaron]

And I think that's a majority of society right now.

[John Dudlechek]

I think boomers. Yeah.

[Aaron]

What's the root of a lot of issues right now is there's so many people consuming.

[John Dudlechek]

Right.

[Aaron]

They're not creating.

[John Dudlechek]

Need to pull your weight. Whatever you're consuming, you ought to be creating. At least that.

[Aaron]

Probably that. Definitely more.

[John Dudlechek]

Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. So, yeah, if that's the message, it's that, you know. Yeah. Create more than you consume and don't. Damn. Don't destroy. I mean, we don't need to destroy. It's much more fun to get. Consumption is fun, right? Yeah, it's fun. It's fun to consume. That's the pursuit of happiness is like, to own some property and, like, do shit with it. Right. And consume. Like somebody has some product that they make use it. If somebody does some entertainment.

[Aaron]

Yeah. It's indulgent. And we're human beings.

[John Dudlechek]

It's fine, though, if you're pulling your weight.

[Aaron]

Correct. Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

You know, and then some, if you're a man.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[John Dudlechek]

Because you got to pull the weight for some other people. Because there's some people that can't. You know, there's some people that can't. I got, you know, I got this golden retriever as a therapy dog. We run around and, you know, try to help people. Help. We, like, try to bring a little brightness to, like, some old people's lives, you know, in our nursing homes and stuff, because they can't create anymore. And okay. You know, we got to pull the weight for them. Us competent men that have, you know, ability to build things, like, let's get to work, guys, like, stop making it about you. And it's more than just that. Yeah, I want to work. Yeah, well, you want the next generation to work, too, because you're going to be that old one in the nursing home one day. And at the rate we were headed, and maybe still heading, I don't know, man. I don't know. It's time to stand up, take charge.

[Aaron]

I agree. Well, John, thanks for stopping by.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah, thanks, man. It was cool. I appreciate this. It was a really good time.

[Aaron]

Yeah, likewise.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah, we covered a lot of stuff, but it was fun.

[Aaron]

I don't know what we talked about.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah, I don't know either.

[Aaron]

I don't know either, but yeah. Yeah. Really enjoyed it.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Appreciate you coming down.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

And hopefully we see you soon.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah. And if you're ever up in the area, you know, say, hey, we'll show you our place.

[Aaron]

Definitely.

[John Dudlechek]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

Cool.

[John Dudlechek]

All right, man. Thank you.