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As you know, Ariat is the official Dirt Talk podcast sponsor and at this point we've talked plenty about their footwear, their workwear. But now it is winter and boy is it cold. It was 17 degrees this morning. I had to warm the truck up. But just because it's cold does not mean the work stops. So to get the job done, you need the best, warmest workwear possible. And Ariat has a long list of outerwear, amazing jackets, pants and other goods available now. You can shop at their website, ariat.com Dirttalk that is ariat.com Dirtttalk hello everybody. Welcome back to the Dirt Talk Podcast Monday edition. Today we are gonna do some question and answer before we get into it. Thanks everybody that shares the podcast with those they think would enjoy the episode or the podcast in general. I sincerely appreciate that. And if you have questions, you can send them anytime to dirttalkillwood.com we would love to hear from you. These were a few questions that were submitted via Instagram this time around. So with that, let's dig right in. Question number one. What do you shoot photos with? Well, I have never had formal photography training. I do not still consider myself all that much of a photographer. I am not passionate about photography and gear. I'm passionate about photographing the dirt world, but beyond that, just not at all stoked about it. If I go on a trip, I'm actually excited to leave my camera at home because then I can just be present and don't have to worry about carrying a camera around. I only bring it on work trips. I when I started out photographing stuff when I was in construction while in college, I first used my phone, camera phone. That's my recommendation to everybody. Just use your camera phone. It's phenomenal. It's good enough. A majority of the videos I publish to this day on Instagram, on social media are from my phone. Highly, highly, highly recommend just using your phone. But then I wanted something a little bit more. So I went to a GoPro, which was fun. I was using it for adventure stuff at the time, but then started to bring it to work and mount it on stuff which, which worked out okay. Then I wanted something a little bit more professional. So I bought a Canon 70D with like a maybe like an 18135 lens, something like that. Just the lens that comes with the camera and I started bringing that to work and messing around with it. Mostly just the automatic function, nothing fancy. The pictures weren't that great, but I enjoyed having something that took a little bit crispier photos at different focal lengths. I used that primarily my last summer with Kiwit. And then while I was also with the Black and Yellow company, my friend had a DJI Phantom 4 right when they came out. And this was before drones were a big deal. So I would take that to the quarry and I would shoot our PC 2000, our 990 loader, D10 dozer, our rock trucks, the 988 loading rocks onto transport trucks, and then shoot every blast photo and video with the drone. And I couldn't get enough of the damn drone. So my senior year of college, the DJI Mavic came out, which was spectacular. And I ordered this thing right away. It was like a grand, twelve hundred bucks. A little expensive. So I, I was a little nervous about spending that much money on a camera, but I knew it was gonna give me this whole new world that I didn't quite understand at the time, but I knew there was something there, so I bought it. I had to wait like four, four months, I think, to get the damn drone. Cause they were so backordered. The demand was so great because these drones were so much smaller than anything that that was ever made before. Way easier to handle than the Phantom four. And I started then photographing different stuff around town that had nothing to do with construction. And then the Loop 202 project started to pop off in Phoenix, which was the biggest construction project in the history of Arizona by dollars. Around the South Mountain, through Ahwatukee and up into Phoenix and Glendale. And I would go out there with my Mavic and take pictures and also with my 70D and take pictures out there. And those were the first official construction pict that I used to start the build with. Social presence. And from then on I, I, I leveraged my, my Mavic like crazy. When I went out to Texas to work in road construction, then in Houston to work for hcss. I worked that little drone as much as I could. That was my best friend. Then HCSS had a, a marketing department and I was part of that marketing department. And they had a bunch of Sony cameras. So I borrowed one of their Sony A7R2s to go take pictures with. And it had a prime 85 millimeter 1.8 lens. So I go out and start using that and I just fall in love with this camera. I don't know what it was about it, but the mirrorless setup made a lot of sense to me. The prime lens, just one focal length. There was no zooming in and out. It was just what you See through the camera is what you get. That made a lot of sense to me. And ultimately, when I started BuildWit in 2018, that was the camera I bought. So I went out. My first few business, big business purchases were one, an Apple MacBook, then a Sony, a 7RII, then a Zeiss 85 millimeter 1.8 lens. And that's what I used for a long time. I also got some other lenses early on, but the 85 is what I absolutely fell in love with and shot almost exclusively on when I started out. And since then, I've been Sony. So I've had a 7R2s, a 7R3s, a 7R4s. Now the a 7R5. I'm gonna go buy another a 7R V here at the end of the year to replace my current one. I like to replace my cameras every year. Ideally, I always carry two of them. So I always have two cameras in my bag. I have a primary one and a backup camera. Cause if I fly halfway around the world and smash my camera, which can happen, I don't want to be cameraless. I shoot on two lenses, typically. I have a 35 prime and an 85 prime. The guys that travel with me, Jack and TJ, they also have a 70 to 200, a 18 to 35, 24 to 70. So they have a bunch of different focal lengths for video. But for me, what's worked for me is I liked just a fixed focal length. And while I probably miss out on a lot of opportunities with that fixed length, the fixed length is interesting because instead of just zooming with my hand, I have to zoom with my feet. So where I am matters. And I think having to work harder for the photographs that I take makes better photographs than if I were to have a lens that could capture any, any focal length, be it 28 to 70. I have a lot of range within that length. Capture whatever I want, but allow me to be a little lazier. So because I have to work harder, I think I get better photos. I could be wrong on that, but that's the fun with photography, is you can't be wrong at the same time. It's up to you. And I think I understand photography enough now to know what rules I want to stick with and know what rules I want to break. So that's what I shoot with. I've smashed many cameras. I've broken a lot of lenses. We have ran through I don't know how many drones. Now we've run the bigger drones. The DJI Inspire we exclusively shoot with Mavics now. We just don't need a bigger drone. It's just not worth the hassle that a bigger drone entails for what we need. The production quality on the smaller drones is completely, completely adequate. And then we shoot on Sony cameras for all of our video stuff too. We, we just don't need higher quality. You can get much higher quality. We shot on red for a little bit. We've shot on bigger Sonys for a while, but ultimately we've just gone with the smaller, less expensive cameras because that's just what fits our style. When we show up to a mine site in the middle of Western Australia, for example, they'll be surprised because we won't have a bunch of with us. We just show up with three backpacks, three duffel bags. Anywhere in the world I have a backpack, I have a duffel bag. Doesn't fit in either one of those. It doesn't go. I don't check bags. Our training crews, they will have a bunch of stuff with them, but that's different shooting. What we do out in the field is just a different ballpark and so we travel light. We might be missing some things, but I like to have less gear and move faster than more gear and have it slow me down. So that is a to z camera stuff. 2 question 2 should company owners be on social media in addition to their company? Talked a little bit about this maybe on the podcast. I don't know where I've talked about this. We, as a business that's been largely built upon social media, decided as a business to stop posting on social media this year to focus our resources on my social presence, other people's social presence. I think the biggest brands in the industry right now that are not the name brands that have been around for 120 years, Keywit, Granite, whoever that is, are the companies brands that have a leader or leaders that are online with a substantial social presence. I cannot think of an exception to that rule. I'm not saying company social and presence is not important, but people buy people. People work for people. Companies are made up of people. If I'm somebody going to work for a company, honestly, the company social media probably doesn't tell me a lot. The CEO Social Media President's Social Media Vice President, Social media that is a lot more interesting to me because it shows me who I'm going to work for, what they believe in. If I'm getting on your ship, I'll do my job, but I want to know where we're going and if I don't know who you are as a leader, I don't know where we're going as a company. I can't get completely bought in. I think that has been one of our biggest advantages, is I've been very vocal online as an individual. This podcast, for example, Dan is online, Randy, Jason, other people within our business. That's been a huge part of our company and will be a huge part of our company going forward. So we have prioritized individual presences over our company presence because based on the numbers, the data, it is so much more powerful. Will we post as a company at some point? Again, probably, but until we have the adequate bandwidth and resources to do so, I don't see going back. We have not been doing it for many months now, and it has not given us a reason to, to, to start, do it abruptly anymore. We haven't lost anything as a business. Our business has actually grown this year as we've stopped doing social media, which is probably not what you expected me to say, but it's because we've gotten more focused and more deliberate on our personal social presences. So I would say if you're a company owner, a company leader, not on social media, you are leaving so much on the table and you don't need to be everywhere. Uh, all you really need to be on to start is LinkedIn. I would be on LinkedIn if you said, choose one social platform. I would say, okay, I'll chase, I'll choose LinkedIn. I'd give up Instagram tomorrow if I could keep LinkedIn. It's a, it's a really powerful weapon. Um, everybody we hire comes from LinkedIn. Everybody knows who I am when we hire them because of LinkedIn. It's allowed us to build our brand to, to build the area Dirt World Summit, to build the software to, to get all the creative work we have. That is the weapon and we are using it as much as we can. And the company owners that are as well are making are growing by leaps and bounds as a result. So that is what I would say to social media as an individual. 3. Can you speak to the unspoken struggles of starting a business from scratch? I struggle talking about this one. I've talked about it openly. I don't struggle talking about it in general. I've talked about how we've run out of money, uh, early on. I, I got the credit cards cut off at one point. I've talked about how we've nearly missed payroll multiple times, which has not been fun. I've talked about laying people off, which has not been fun. I've talked about the darkest shit relationship problems I've had anxiety. I've had my father, my father's relationship, me and my father's relationship disintegrating over the past few years because largely of the business, it's really, it's, it's brutal. But I also struggle talking about this all that much because I don't want it to come off like, oh, I'm, I'm a business owner, poor me. Cause I think there's a lot of that and a lot of it's complete dog shit. In the business world. Online, there's a lot of dog shit. And the further I get into business, the more I realize that a lot of it's dog shit. And there's a lot of people talking about how hard it is. It's hard. It's supposed to be hard. I want to go build something really significant. I want to go do something that no one else has done before. It's supposed to be hard. Jesse Itzler, he put it so well when he was talking about running a hundred mile race, which I've done as well. If you think you're going to go run a hundred miles and it's going to be comfortable and it's not going to really hurt and you're not going to have times where you want to quit, so on and so forth, you're out to fucking lunch. That's the point. It's supposed to be really hard. It's supposed to hurt, it's supposed to be uncomfortable. You're supposed to be sleep deprived. It. You're supposed to mess yourself up a little bit. You're supposed to get those blisters. You're supposed to just go to a dark place that you've never been before. That's the point. Because then you get something that you've never had before, which is this confidence that is so, so immense or these achievements that you never thought possible before. I think business is the exact same thing. It's supposed to be hard. If it's not hard, you're doing something wrong. If it's not punching you in the gut every day, you're doing something wrong. Or yeah, you're probably not pushing as hard as you can. I don't know what it is. And there's different tiers within business too. Building a business that's a great business with five people is completely different than building a business with 500 people or a public business, or an employee owned business, or a business with, with Investors or a business that's a family business. There's so many different variables that it's ridiculous to sit here and say, here's just the common thread between business and this is what I think. Successful business people, the trap they fall into is they get successful in one kind of business. So then they assume they're going to be successful in any kind of business, which is not true at all either. I don't assume that. I know how a construction business works. I've never run a construction business. I can't tell you. I've been around a lot of construction business owners, so I have a good idea. But I don't know. I don't know how to run a construction business. And if I were to go start a construction business tomorrow, I would have to go learn all a lot of the same bullshit lessons that everybody else has had to learn. I would have to go touch the stove and learn that it's hot too, because I just haven't been there before. And maybe I can learn a little faster because again, I have those key people that I could talk to. But it's hard. It's hard. It's hard. And I'm not gonna sit here and say, poor me. Cause it's what I signed up for. I don't regret it at all. It's been 100% worth it. This is what I should be doing. I don't ever go home, no matter how hard it's gotten, and wonder, is this really for me? It's for me. This is the game I want to play. And I don't necessarily encourage other people to go start a business because it's not for everybody. I think the online entrepreneurship movement's actually been a really bad thing for a lot of people because I think there's a lot of people in business that should not be in business. They'd be much better off working for a great company. They'd have a better quality of life. They'd probably make more money doing that. Honestly, I've seen it a lot of times over now. I would just encourage people to find the path for them. The path for me, yes, was building a business. Is building a business and building a business in the dirt world and doing what we're doing. I fucking love it. I love it, love it, love it, love it, love it, love it. But it is insane. I've had to give up a lot. I will have to give up a lot. There's a lot of destruction as a result. But I'm okay. I'm okay with that, that price, and I don't try to explain it to people because a lot of people just, they're just playing a different game. It's not better or worse. It's just different. So I would, if nothing else, I would just say find the game for you and play it however you can to the best of your abilities. If it's business, awesome. And if it is business, it's. It's supposed to be hard. It's supposed to be hard. That's why I don't talk about, oh, it's so hard. Because it's supposed to be hard. Cool. Yeah, it is hard. The further we get, the harder it gets. It has not gone any easier. It will never get any easier. I'm under no illusion it will. The, the, the further we go, the bigger we get. The different challenges we have, the, the bigger the problems. But I know I'm supposed to be here, so I, I love, I love that it's hard. And there's the Billie Jean quote within the U.S. open Court. That is Arthur Ashe. That is. Pressure is a privilege. It's a privilege to be here. I'm grateful to be here every day. I remind myself of that even in those really shitty days. And I'm immensely, immensely grateful for the pain and suffering. So that's what I'd say. And also there's a lot to say for building a business from scratch. That's what I've been doing. That's the path I'm on. But there's also a lot to say for growing a business that's multi generational. I do not envy people that are multi generational stepping into a business that their father started, grandfather started, whoever it is. I don't envy that at all. I would say that's harder. In a lot of. In a lot of cases, that's a hard, hard, hard, hard gig. And people give them shit because they didn't do it from scratch. Man. It is not easy. Let me tell you. I've been around enough family businesses to know and a generational businesses to know that is a hard deal. So anybody that has successfully taken over a multi generational business, an old business, and has. Has really turned it into something extraordinary, helped it get to that next level, has my absolute respect and admiration because that is a very, very hard job too. In a lot of ways, I have it easier than they do because I get to just pivot and squirrel around as much as. As much as I want. And also I'm gonna keep. I'm gonna just keep shooting the shit. Here I will say that building a business from scratch is supposed to be hard, but there's also things you can do to make it less hard, like you're going to have to suffer. I think suffering is essential, but suffering just for the sake of suffering is stupid. And so it's choosing your right kind of suffering. And one of the best things I've done to eliminate a lot of the suffering I see other business owners do is have a great, great team of people that I wholly trust. That I wholly trust a lot of people. And a lot of business owners, leaders will say that they have a great team of people. I think everybody will say they have a great team of people around them, but very rarely do I see them absolutely trust those around them. I absolutely trust those around me. And it is an amazing feeling. That's why I'm able to do what I do. That's why I'm able to travel the world. That's why I'm able to speak, do this podcast. That's why I can come in here, talk for a few hours and not have to worry about my phone at all. And when I get my phone, I probably don't have a missed call, I probably don't have voicemail, I probably don't have missed text messages. I don't need to have those things. I'm the guy, quote unquote. But there's this amazing team that's executing while I'm doing this and that has made it a hundred times more enjoyable and a hundred times more effective. If I had just tried to control everything until this, up until this point, we would have gone out of business a lot of times over. I was even talking with somebody the other day, she's in our accounting department and she was talking about how it was really surprising to her because she's worked at other companies before, how it was really surprising to her that we share our sales information, we share money internally. So you can see when we sign new deals as a full time person here, we talk about monthly sales goals, we talk about revenue every year, profit, we talk about it all. And it got really tight for a two year period. And it was interesting because we were as transparent as we could have been. Probably looking back on it, more transparent than we should have been through that whole process. But I was talking to her about it and we, I came to the realization that we would probably be out of business had we not been wholly transparent with our finances. But how unusual that is within businesses to even share finances. I just couldn't imagine doing it any other way. I couldn't imagine being the guy that has the finances, the ledger that no one else has because then people wouldn't be able to make adequate decisions and execute properly. And again then I would have to be the guy having to hold everybody's hand. But because we're, it's just one example. But because we're open financially, I did it because it just seemed like the right thing to do. Early on I didn't know any better. That was me being naive and ignorant. It's not me being this brilliant businessman. But it's worked out to be a brilliant business move because it's allowed people to get on board, to row in the same direction and to get us to where we are now, which is a hundred times better than we've been in the past. So that was a very unclear answer as to starting a business from scratch and some of the struggles I've experienced. But that is my two cents on that. Finally, what is the biggest blocker in adding technology to the job site? I struggle with some of the trade shows and industry technology, so on and so forth, because it talks. The focus is all on the technology, equipment, whatever it is. And I think it all leaves out the most important piece. You can go get all of the top technology, hardware, software, you can get the best in class equipment, you can get tilt rotators and work tools and all kinds of shit, you can get it all. But if you don't have the right leadership, the right communication, the right culture, it's not worth very much. And I think that's where a lot of companies fall is they, they get these things in the door. Well, we need gps so we're going to go buy gps. But they don't think through how to really implement it and how to really work it through the organization. We're up against this with our training software. Build with training. How do we help companies build a training culture which is. It turns out to be a very complex process that, that takes years to accomplish, which is why we're at, we're at it three years now and just starting to I think pick up some serious momentum because it's taken us some time to figure out how to approach this. We can have the best software, we can have the best training, but if it's not used, it's not good to anybody. And it's used when people are bought in, when people are communicating effectively, leading effectively, when they understand how it benefits them and those around them. So I would say the number one, the number one blocker in adding technology or just changing anything on a job site or a company in general is communication and leadership, explaining the why and having people bought in so that they can help you execute it. Without it just hey, we bought, we got new gps, you go figure it out. It's not going to be successful if that's the, if that's the case. So that is why we focus so much on leadership. That's why there's hundreds of leadership training videos on Build with training for that reason. That's why we have Build with Connect talking about leadership and change management every week. That is why we have an entire event now, the Ariat Dirt World Summit dedicated to leadership is because that is the single biggest thing that I think a company, a team, the industry can do is develop leaders. Because if you can develop leaders, then you can implement that change. You can, you can bring that company, that crew, that project, whatever it is into that next generation, overcome that, that skills gap that we're seeing right now and ensure that we can build that infrastructure for society long term. So communication, leadership, I say it a hundred times over because it's been said a hundred times to me over. That is the number one thing I focused on as a leader, as a business owner, as a man over the past 10 years, especially over the past five years and thank God I have because I am so much better off for it. So I would focus less on the technology, less on the equipment and more on the leadership, the communication, explaining the why, getting buy in. If you get that, you will get everybody on board and be able to implement that technology effectively. I by no means have this figured out. We struggle with this internally, non stop. Like any company, this is a struggle for any team, any company, anywhere but leadership. Communication is by far the most effective antidote to the problem that I have seen. So that is today's question and answer session. I appreciate these questions. Hopefully you found some of that valuable. Again. If you have questions to submit, send them to dirttalkillwood.com if you want to support us, you can shop our store dirtworldstore.com all of the money goes to making the store better. It does not go to buying me a new boat. We've got stickers, hats, shirts, calendars before the end of the year, even into the beginning of next year. Stock up now. Dirtroll store.com and with that, see you in the next episode. Stay dirty.