← Dirt Talk Podcast
Dirt Talk Podcast
Power Users, Booked Meetings, and Staying Scrappy (BuildWitt Update #18) – DT 373
00:16:51
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign welcome back to the Dirk Talk Podcast Monday Edition. This is Bill wit update number 18 called power users Booked Meetings and Staying Scrappy of my favorite buildwit values. For those that don't know, this is the weekly update as far as what the heck is happening at BuildWit, a lot of people ask me what is BuildWit? I've done a terrible job explaining what it is. This is an attempt to shed some light as far as what the heck is happening here. Another one of my favorite buildwit values is Transparency wins. I have always tried to share what the heck's going on in the company. Uh, I've done a great job of that in some seasons. Other seasons not so much. The past few years I feel like I've retreated a little bit because of where we've been as a business. Uh, it's been a lot of getting our asses whooped in in different ways learning how to be a software company. Uh, but we are starting to find our stride and I with that want to do a more want to share more about what's going on here, want to be more intentional with that. And so this is good, better and different stuff that's going on at the company. I have no idea if this is of value to anybody, but I'm sharing it nonetheless. So with that, let's get into what the heck happened this past week. First, up until now we have submitted each training video for dubbing individually. But this week we have a bulk dubbing feature enabled allowing us to dub the remaining 1300 videos in our our library. So once we QC it all, we'll have our training video library in English and Spanish by the end of August, which is very exciting. This is big for a lot of our customers, especially big customers. When I started out in construction, it was me and a bunch of Mexican guys in Phoenix, Arizona. And boy were those guys hard to keep up with because they are. I I can't say enough good things about them. And every crew I went to I would have a blast with. So it wasn't just one crew. I worked with a bunch of different crews over a few years in Phoenix and some still some of my fondest memories of of my professional career. And that was over 10 years ago now, 12 years, which is wild. But as is is quite obvious, English is the second language, Spanish first. So if we can offer training in both languages for them, I think that's a big win. It's a big win for the industry. So this has been a priority with some of the new features and new product, improved product, getting everything dubbed to Spanish and within the next few weeks that'll be done. And then as we add videos to the platform, we can then dub at a more leisurely pace. So this was really the only time we'll have to do this in bulk. But it's great that we have a tool to make that happen quickly. Next up, our customer success team met with a group of fantastic bill it improve customers to discuss how they've done so well with their teams using the product and what we can do better. Beyond this group, we're also going to meet with users from the field who have really succeeded with the product to get their feedback as well. We have rolled up our sleeves on making the build it improve product far better. It's good right now. We're happy, we're, we're, we're, we're proud of what we have, but we need to get better and better and better and better and better. That's just the name of the game and we can only do so much in a vacuum. So we're trying to do better with understanding what customers want to see and then again, understanding what's made them successful. Because daily training within the construction industry is still a pretty new concept. It requires substantial cultural change. And so we're trying to understand what they've done culturally beyond just the product, to work it into their teams, into the field, to get their people trained up every day. So it's a great learning experience. We're able to show them what's coming, we're able to get their feedback and hopefully meetings like this will make the product much more substantially, much more substantial over the coming months. And we hope to have these meetings more regularly from here on out. So really, really excited about that. And if you ever have feedback, just let me know directly. Aaronilwood.com no matter who you are, if you're using the product, I would love to hear from you. If you're looking for another industry event that is a snooze fest, this is definitely not for you. But if you're a leader looking to elevate yourself, your team, looking for like minded individuals that are hungry, then look no further than the AR Dirt World Summit, November 5th through the 7th in Dallas, Texas. In our third year, we'll have about 1500 hungry industry leaders from about 500 companies looking to learn, grow, teach. It's going to be fantastic. We also have a world class lineup. We've got Jesse Cole from the Savannah Bananas, James Clear, Atomic Habits, Kim Scott, Radical Candor, Mark Miller, Chick Fil A leadership Tim Grover who is Michael Jordan's trainer. You will not hear from a lineup like this anywhere else. So check out details now. Dirtworld.com you can use code AARON10 for 10% off any registrations and we'll see you November 5th through the 7th in Dallas, Texas. Next up, I have alluded to booked meetings but I haven't fully explained their importance in prior weeks. So booked meetings are a leading indicator for our build it improve software sales. The more booked meetings we have with civil construction companies that could benefit from daily training, the more training will work into the market. So meetings are introductory calls, demos, us getting to know a civil construction company, walking them through the product and seeing if it's a good fit for them, which most civil construction companies, especially under 300 people, it's a great fit for. So the more we can have these meetings the more you know we have a win rate on. We have a win rate now. And you can apply, you can multiply that win rate, say it's you know, 30%, I'm making that up. But apply 30% to 100 book meetings, you're going to get 33 deals in a month. If you have Those hundred meetings, 33 deals, multiply that by an average deal size and now you have your monthly revenue and then it's recurring revenue if the product is strong and companies are seeing value year after year. And so that revenue then stacks every year given your churn which should be very low. So that's a little bit of the math on how the business works. Very simplified. But in 2025 our number of booked meetings has been far too low which has resulted in lower sales. Go figure. Now this has been partially self inflicted, I think substantially self inflicted honestly. We just didn't have the right team and structure in place and we didn't solve the problem fast enough. We knew it was a problem for a long time and for various reasons we dragged our feet to solving it. But we dug in. Last month we began solving it. We got a new business development team in place and they are rocking and rolling. So our goal monthly is 100 booked meetings which means 25 booked meetings per week. And the BDR team their still getting up to speed but this past week they booked over 20 meetings which is a fantastic indicator, a relieving indicator for, for me honestly. But we know the industry needs training, we know our product is delivering results for civil construction companies. It's really an awareness problem now. So it's about connecting with the right civil construction companies and there's thousands, tens of thousands potentially across the United States to get in touch with, corner them into sitting down, which is tough for civil construction teams, especially in the summer when everybody's busy. But then once we can get them sat down, once we can have that conversation, it starts to work out pretty well. And then once we make that sale, we hand the team off to our customer success team and they're in charge of getting that customer up to speed and implementing the product with those out in the field. So again, that's a little bit of background on our sales process strategy. It's pretty basic software stuff, but I've had to learn this since this is the first software company I've been at. Well, I, I worked at hcss, but I was in a very different part of the company. So I'm going to say this is my first software experience. It's been a great experience, oftentimes painful, but that's a little bit behind the curtain there. Going to Ariat Dirt World Summit. The ticket sales for the 2025 event are in the final stretch. We are almost two months out. The hotel's filling up fast, which is helping, getting the last minute planners over the edge, which I'm very happy about. We've also met extensively about our 2026 strategy. And like I've said, like I said last week, the overall strategy this year was to grow it and to have a great experience. Next year it's going to be to intentionally dial it back to give us more bandwidth to focus on the details on the experience. Overall, we don't want it to be another event. We want to create a new category of events. But we're kidding ourselves if we're not giving ourselves the time and energy to make that happen. It's going to be very difficult to go from a really great industry event to a new category of event. And that's what we're focused on next year. So this year, I mean this, the speaker lineup is stacked, the people coming, unbelievable leaders from across the industry, my favorite people, a lot of people that have been on this podcast will be there, a lot of them actually. And so it's going to be a fantastic time. But with events, you've got a plan way ahead. So we're not just planning 26, but we're planning 27 currently. And that's behind, honestly, we need to be 28, 29 for, for proper event space. But it's, it's been fun to, you know, I just said we're learning how to do software we're also learning how to do events. This is our third event which is great. We have two others under our belts. We have some experience. We have a great events team with a lot of experience. We have people on our team as well, like Kara, Nikki, others that do have great events experience but as a company, as a team, it's new to us and there's not that many new events in the construction industry as well. So lots of learning. But we are serious about making this world class. And that's the goal for next year is, you know, the first three years is establish the event, grow it and create a great industry event. Now going forward, it's to create an event that is, is in a different class that, that charts a no course which yeah, I, I, that's what I live for. That's what I get excited about. So that's a little bit about where we're going. Future State with the Area Dirt World Summit and Ariat will be the title sponsor for next year's event as well, which is awesome. Support is unbelievable. And then we have a long list of sponsors too for these events that have been nothing but good to us. Nothing but good to us. They don't have a reason to go sponsor a new event. There's a lot of existing events out there, but they have anyway, which is really cool. That shows there's an appetite for something different. And we plan to keep bringing that for, for not just them but, but everybody that's involved in the summit going forward. And then finally we're making solid progress in reducing the costs of services and software that we can live without. So our value, as I alluded to at the title of Stay Scrappy is no joke. And it's incredible how fast dollars can flow out of a business when you're not diligent. It is wild how fast spending can occur. Wild. So we this year have been looking under every couch cushion, every corner, nook and cranny to find money going out that we can't afford to have going out. And we've had some recent, some, some recent wins there that help with the budget. We're, we're significantly under what we budgeted for this year for spending, which is great. We want to stay there. If we don't need to be spending it, we don't want to be spending it. And we have had a problem with this in the past. We've spent way more than we should have in the past. Now that's, that's long gone. But it's, it's, it's Discipline. It's a muscle. You've got to work it or else it starts to atrophy. And we're as diligent as ever, I think with, with cost and spending. So we're staying scrappy. The team is doing a great job. We don't want to be too scrappy because then that starts to cost you money in the grand scheme of things. So it's, it's a constant push and pull. It's never static. The goal posts are always moving based on where the business is and what needs are any given day, week, month, year. But it's a, it's a team effort. The team's doing a great job at it. We, we try to talk about it as much as possible with the company. We try to be as transparent as we can with, with finances, which I think has been good. We can be better but we know it's a team effort and so that's why we share this information with everybody so everybody knows where we are. That's a little bit on reducing costs. Still a little bit more to go but like I said, we're well on our way. So that is what happened this week. Some of the high level stuff. I appreciate you all listening. We're. We work a few weeks ahead on this because I travel quite a bit. I go to Australia tomorrow. So by the time you listen to this, I'll be back from Australia. But we try to keep this weekly so that everybody can stay up to date but it's delayed so that I have that wiggle room to go out and explore the world. But the newsletter goes out every week at, on Tuesday so that is up to date. I write those weekly no matter where I am in the world. So if you're getting that to your email that is up to date. But if not, really appreciate you listening here. I hope it's valuable. I hope you, if nothing else, have a better understanding of what the heck Bill was up to. It's online, it looks a lot like me and it is in a lot of ways. But back home from a business standpoint, I'm a very, very small piece of the equation. We've got a lot of really great people back home working as hard as any group I've been around to build a great business software business that's, that's backed by a great world class event and a great world class brand that ultimately helps build the dirt world's next generation and get the dirt world in general to that next generation into the future. So that's what I'm trying to shed some light on here. I appreciate you listening, and we'll see you on the next one. Stay dirty, everybody.