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Foreign. Let's do another one, everybody. Yep. One heck of an intro to this podcast. Yeah, that's how we're starting. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't. Don't you worry. Don't you worry. We're gonna have building buildwit number 52. Welcome back. Happy to have you. I don't know who you are, but you're there, you're listening. You're in your car, you're at home, you're in bed. Wherever you are, it's great to be here with you, whoever you are, wherever you are. All right, all right, all right. I've titled this one Indian Adventure because we went on an Indian adventure. Let's go first. This is my weekly attempt at explaining what it is buildwit does. We are here to build the dirt world's next generation. We do that through BuildWit and Prove, which develops people that build the world around us. Training and development platform for the civil construction industry. We've got our annual leadership event, the Erie at dirtworld Summit. And then we've got yours truly and the Brand team preaching the gospel about the dirt world to promote the industry to the right kind of people, bring them in, and make sure we've got that next generation to make it happen for society, for the United States of America, for the world. So, as I teased last week, if you didn't hear, last week we went to South Korea with HD construction equipment. Hyundai, for those of you in the States, also Doosan, or formerly Devil On, Formerly Doosan. Excuse me. Most people are still familiar in the States with that Doosan name. Same company, when they came to us, they said, hey, we'd love for you to visit in South Korea. That's our home. But we also have facilities in other parts of the world, namely India. Would you like to see one of those at some point? And I said, boy, would I. Why don't we just combine the trips? We do a week in South Korea, and then we do a week in India. And they said, sure, that sounds great. So we did our week in South Korea. We went to the airport in Seoul, and from Seoul, we flew to New Delhi. To Delhi. This was not for west work. We didn't go to Delhi for work. We went to Delhi to see the Taj Mahal, because how could I go to India and not see the Taj Mahal? So HD construction equipment, they were nice enough to have us out there to see one of the wonders, modern wonders of the world. And it was absolutely incredible. It was very busy. I took a Lot of pictures with strangers. They asked me because apparently I stand out in India. I don't know why, but we, We. We toured the. The grounds and we walked. We went into the Taj Mahal, and. And the whole time it's just like, man, this place is twice as old as America. And you couldn't do this today. You couldn't figure this out. There's no way. There's no way how much this, this marble weighed and how far it came from and. And how everything was carved just so perfectly. They had 20,000 people working on the project at its peak for over 20 years to make this thing happen. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. So we got to see that. Delhi itself, you know, travel is really interesting. International travel. International. International travel to places that people don't travel to, you know, that's awesome that you've been to Paris. Great. That's great. You've been to Toronto. You know, there's places that's like, that's good to see, but there's other places that's like, it really opens your eyes. And the way I've explained it to people is like, you go from seeing in black and white to seeing in color. It just. It adds texture to life. The first time I had these, like. Like a real. A real challenging experience was when I went to China, because China. My whole life I've been told one thing about China as an American, and the one thing is that it kind of sucks, for lack of better term. But then I went to China. I. I went to China. I don't know that many people that have actually been to China. Americans. And I went there, and I'm like, wait a minute. This is pretty incredible. Like, am I just seeing the one part that's amazing or was I lied to my entire life? And as the time went on, I realized, wait a minute, I was lied to. And then the second experience was when I first went to the Middle East. You know, of course, my American perspective, going to the Middle east, when. When I tell somebody I'm going to Saudi Arabia, they'd be like, oh, you better. You better figure out your life insurance policy. And it's like, what am I getting myself into? Myself into? And then I go to Saudi Arabia, and I go to every major city and all kinds of rural. All over the country. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And it's incredible. And I've been since to the uae. I've been to Jordan. I've been to the Middle east four times now. And every time it just. It's better and better. It's like, this is an incredible place. This is an incredible place. I've been lied to. I've been lied to. India, same thing. The American perspective. I tell people I'm going to India and they're just like, ah, why? I'm like, why not? Why? Why would you not want to go to India? Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? I've always wanted to go to India, but I still go into it with those, those, those, those thoughts in the back of my mind. And we come into Delhi and it's amazing. Now I'm romanticizing a little bit. Everywhere has its problems. America, we've got plenty of them. Look at our cities. Look at our cities. We've got trillions of dollars for our military, but our cities are a disaster. Well, let's not talk about that. We've got our problems. India has got its problems. I don't want to sit here and be Mr. Western. Like, wow, these people have it so figured out. Like, sure, lots of poverty, people living in a different world, so on and so forth. But it wasn't at all what it's made out to be. It's a beautiful place. The people are extraordinary. And I, I loved my time there. But Delhi, that first day was just shocking because it's like, the heck, this is, this is gorgeous. This is a beautiful place. And I'm really grateful I had that opportunity. I'm really grateful I've had all of those opportunities to break down those, those, those preconceived notions that I, that I wouldn't otherwise be able to. And because I've had those beliefs, those core beliefs coming up challenged, I've been able to challenge other beliefs I've held along the way. I've been able to get rid of those beliefs that don't serve me and get new ones that do better. So serve me. It's not just made me a traveler, it's made me a better human being. It's made me a better leader. It's one of the most effective things I do. It's incredible. People think one year of experience is one year of experience. It's bullshit. One year to someone is not the same as the other person. You can bend time, you can compress time, you can pack more into that year in various ways. One of those things is to do hard, physical things. Like you go, do you know you've never run before? And you go train three months for a half marathon, and you go run a half marathon. That's going to make you a whole lot better. That's going to compress time and give you a whole lot more life experience. And in a shorter amount of time, there's things like maybe becoming a parent. I haven't experienced that, but I've heard that's a pretty big deal. That changes life a lot. The other thing that I've experienced over and over is travel. You know, two weeks abroad in two very different places, Korea and India. It's like compressing six months into two weeks. It is so much life. Life, so much thought, so much presence. It's just so rich. And it bums me out that people don't have that. They live in the same neighborhood, they go to the same place every day. They talk to the same people. And that's why I'm so appreciative for these opportunities, because, oh, man, I know everybody doesn't get this. And even cooler is that I get to share it with people with this podcast, with social media, with YouTube. How good is that? I couldn't have planned it this way. It's just unbelievable. So, all right, let's get off the soapbox. Let's get into the nuts and bolts of our visit following the Taj Mahal. It. It was time for business. So we flew from Delhi to Udaipur, which served as our home base for the next few days as we traveled deep into rural India, exploring granite and sandstone quarries. So we would stay in Udaipur, and then each day we would drive, you know, four or five hours one way out into the middle of nowhere and go to these mines. Everybody was. Was amazing. Everybody was. Was more than welcoming. The Hyundai crew there was just fantastic. And on these sites, we got to catch Hyundai's most popular excavator models in India. Handling big stone blocks, moving dirt, just making it happen. And I got to run a machine as well, kick somebody out, loaded a few trucks, had some fun. It was a blast. And then once we finished up there, we flew from Udaipur through Delhi again to Pune, where we visited HD Construction Equipment's India manufacturing facility, which fabricates and assembles excavators and loaders. So we started our visit. You know, you start at one side of the plant, which is just stacks of raw steel, stacks of sheets of different thicknesses of steel. And then the steel goes to different cutting tables. There's torches, there's plasma, there's lasers. And each one of these tables is cutting all different parts and pieces, kind of like making a Lego set. You need your different pieces to make your excavator. And then from there, they go to the fabrication the welding. So they're put onto these jigs and they're tacked together and then they're passed to the robots. And then the robots do the main structural welding and then there's some hand work and some inspection and then they're put through paint and then they roll to the other side of the plant where the assembly takes place. So they manufacture a lot of the components there. They do the, the, the undercarriage, the lower part of the frame. Hold on here. Yeah. So they do the, all the structural components. The excavator. Sorry, a lot has happened in the past few weeks. All the structural components of the excavator and then the engine, the hoses, the radiator, the valve block, et cetera, that comes in from other facilities. They do some prep there as well, but then from there on it's just adding bits and pieces. It starts as that bottom frame. It then moves through the plant. You get your tracks, put on your rollers, your, your idlers, your, your drive motors. It's then married with the top part which gets the. Again the, the different fluid tanks, the, the engine, the, the, the, the turn swing motor, the valve block, the hoses, the cab, the electrical systems. And then as it's married together, it starts to get the bigger components. It gets a counterweight, it gets a boom, a stick, a bucket. And at the end of the factory emerges your excavator. It then goes through a rigorous testing process. It then goes through a finishing process and, and finally they're put into a yard, put onto trucks and sent not to just India, but from there they export to over 40 countries, thousands of excavators every year. It was spectacular to see. The quality was just unbelievable. We had a blast and they were really, really kind to us. They let us go wherever we needed to go to make sure we were capturing the shots we wanted. So that'll also be some fantastic content. India, it's coming soon. Keep a Lookout on our YouTube channel and on our social media channels overall. Now back home again, everybody's just making it happen, which is awesome. Our development team pushed a few several product releases, most notably allowing for new feed logic. So a cornerstone of the Bill Whit and prove product is our feed, which automatically delivers one video lesson for every user every day. So the concept is not big blocks of training and development. It's little by little learn something every day. And I'm a big believer in this. I have structured my whole life around a little bit. Every day I practice a little language. Every day I read the Bible every day I eat well. Every day I don't drink alcohol, I read every day I write every day I of course use Bill Whitten prove every day. That's the premise. But before, when we rolled the product out, it was hard because an administrator had to choose what they wanted their people to see. And so we rolled out this, this new feed which based on somebody's position, experienced in company, populated that feed automatically with various courses to, to give them that, that relevant training and development. But with this logic improvement now the content that every user is seeing daily should hopefully be more, even more relevant and prioritize what they want to learn alongside what their company needs them to learn. So it's not just here, do this because I say so. They can also go in and they can say, well, I want to learn more about how a 401k works so they can sign up for the finance course or I want to communicate better, maybe at work, maybe at home. Let me go get this jocko course. You know, I need to eat better, I need to live a little healthier. I don't really understand how food works all that much. Let me get this nutrition course that's all available right now. And it's not just the whole course. It'll then populate. You know, here's your three minutes today on healthy fats and a little bit on how they work and what you need to be thinking about. That's what it's about. That's how we build the dirt world's next generation. We make every human being within the dirt world coming into the dirt world better every day. That's the whole point of Bill Whit and Prove. And the team is making it better and better. Every week in the business, we wrapped up another round of internal feedback. We structured it in start, stop, continue format. As always, a survey goes out to the team and it's not anonymous. And I'm sure there's plenty. I. I'm not sure. I know there's plenty of improvements we can make in future rounds of feedback, but gathering feedback from the team is hugely valuable from a leadership standpoint. We're a remote business. So in an ideal world, you'd be soliciting this feedback naturally as you see people, but you just don't see people. And everybody doesn't have that opportunity quarterly or every six months to be like, let me stop and think what we need to do better as a business. And then all of that feedback is compiled. It goes to our leadership team, it goes to me, and I can sit There and read through everything. Okay, that's a great idea. Okay. Heard on that. Okay. You know, yeah, we can do better there. Yeah. And then the nice thing about it not being anonymous is that I know who submitted the feedback and we're not a shitty place to work. So I'm not gonna be like, hey, Jake, the hell, like, why'd you say that, dude? Or ice them out or whatever. I can then go to Jake and be like, hey, you said this. Can you elaborate? Elaborate a little bit more. Like there was an example, someone said we're, you know, we just got focused and now we're starting to get a little distracted again. And it's like, great, I can go to that person or we can go to that person, be like, what'd you mean by that? Can you elaborate? And you have a conversation which then makes everything so much more valuable. So if you as a company leadership team are not or do not have a structure to solicit feedback from your people, I highly recommend it. It's one of the more valuable things we've done over time and I think it's more valuable than ever for us. So really, really good stuff there. Finally, Randy, he's been getting crafty with AI and he developed a simple model to estimate how many people are struggling at companies of various sizes based on well documented statistics. So for a construction company of 500 people, 500 people, which is a large civil construction company, I would say 310 are under financial stress, 340 are experiencing relationship issues at home, 77 are experiencing anxiety, depression, and 72 have a diagnosable substance abuse order out of 500. That is eye opening to say the least. Now we're doing this, we're digging in here because everybody in the civil construction industry, if I was to ask you what is your most valuable asset, you're not going to say your equipment, you're not going to say your technology, you're not going to say your proprietary methodology, because there isn't any. I've seen it all. There isn't any. I hope you're not going to say those things. You're probably going to say your people, of course. But how are you tapping into that resource? How are you developing that resource every day? That's the question. And that's hard. That's hard. It's hard for this industry because it's hard to quantify. I can quantify fuel burn, I can quantify concrete poured dirt, moved machines, I can quantify it all. People, I don't know, I don't know, but we all know that that is our biggest asset. And we all know, hopefully that that's our biggest opportunity. We just don't quite know how to get that opportunity. And so one of the opportunities within that is how do we train our people to be more effective out in the field? You know, I worked for five civil construction companies. I didn't get a single minute of training on how to do my job. Now, I didn't have any background experience. I had to learn as I went, and I couldn't make a single mistake or else I'd get killed or fired or someone else killed. But I didn't get any training. Just have at it. Good luck. How do you know your people know what the heck they're doing? How do you know somebody coming to your company day one knows what the heck they're doing? How do you know? And maybe you know when you've got 25 people, but what about when you've got a hundred 150, 250, 500, 1000? You don't know. This is a way to ensure that you at least have people moving on a similar path and not just know what the heck is going on, but know how your business operates. Everybody says, well, we do things a little bit differently. How are you teaching your people how you do things? Are you just expecting them to figure it out? That's kind of frustrating for everybody. This is an opportunity to teach people how to do things right. Move dirt basics, spec to machine, put pipe in the ground, how to do the things that you do and why you do it a certain way. And then it's an opportunity to help people become better people. This is where, again, the industry struggles with it. I struggle with it. Everybody struggles with it. We can't necessarily see what it's costing us. What somebody's struggling mentally is costing the business, costing themselves from a productivity standpoint, a potential rework standpoint, a potential safety standpoint. But we know that we probably should do something to help them take care of themselves better. You know, the construction industry. Go walk out on a job site and is everybody healthy? No. Why not? Oftentimes they just don't know any better. Let's give them some tools to live healthier. Let's give them some tools on how to communicate. We're elevating people from pipe layer to crew leader, from excavator operator to crew leader, from crew leader to superintendent. And then we're frustrated when they don't know what the heck they're doing because it's a different skill set that we're not giving them. This is an opportunity to make that happen for them, to give them that skill set in leadership, in communication, in problem solving. There is no other tool available in the dirt world that offers construction companies to do this more effectively. I've been to more job sites. I've seen more companies in America than anybody in the past five years, I would say than anybody. There's nothing that comes close to elevating people doing the work, not just from a skills based standpoint, but from a human based standpoint. And if you want to know how we go ensure this industry is good for the future, that's how we do it. It's not equipment. I went to Conexpo. It's fine. Okay? Machines, new machines. Technology. Okay. It's people. The answer is right in front of us. It's right there. And I'm not saying it because I'm the smart guy. I'm saying it because. All right, what are the best companies in the industry doing right now? They're all focused on developing their people. Cool. Okay, let's help them do that. And that's exactly what we're doing. And we're only getting started in that regard. It's really exciting stuff. So that's everything for this week. Boy, have I done a lot of talking. I hope you've enjoyed it. I really appreciate you listening. I appreciate you following along. Consuming, being here with. With anything that we do, a podcast, a video, a social post, it all makes a huge difference. We're all in this together. We are all part of building the dirt world's next generation, which will then build the world's next generation. And if our intent is to make. If our intent is anything but to make the future better for the next generations, the future that we'll never see, better than the life we're living right now, than the reality we know now. What's the point? And there have been generations before us that have thought all about what's in it for me. We can't do that anymore. Look around you. It's not working. We've got to build a better future. I believe it starts with the dirt world. It starts with infrastructure. And building a better future in the dirt world starts with building better people. That's what we're doing here. That's what you're a part of. And we're going to keep doing it until. I'm going to keep doing it until I'm in the ground. So thanks again. See you on the next one. Stay dirty.