Shared Principles Make Big Decisions Easy (Building BuildWitt 65) DT 468

Summary

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Dirt Talk Podcast: “Shared Principles Make Big Decisions Easy” (Building BuildWitt 65)

Date: August 10, 2026
Host: Aaron Witt (Founder, BuildWitt)
Co-Host: Adam

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Episode Overview

In this inside-look episode, Aaron Witt and Adam dive into the heart of BuildWitt’s leadership values and decision-making philosophy. The core theme: When your team is grounded in shared principles—especially transparency—big, pivotal decisions become straightforward and collaborative. The conversation also gives listeners a candid update on BuildWitt’s leadership meetings, product evolution, and how the team handles operational challenges.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Intentional Transparency at BuildWitt

• Openness is a differentiator: Aaron and Adam both agree that sharing internal updates—even accounting and business logic—is rare for businesses but central to BuildWitt’s ethos.
  • “It's a simple principle. Just be transparent. But it is in very short supply in business.” — Aaron Witt [02:30]
• Transparency as a core value: The entire BuildWitt team ranked “Transparency Wins” as the unshakable value in a recent company survey.
  • “Everybody was like, don’t touch it. It’s good. And I agree.” — Aaron Witt [03:24]
• Community-minded business: Aaron emphasizes that BuildWitt is being built “alongside the Dirt World,” sharing learnings so others can benefit.
  • “If you're keeping everything to you and your business, it's almost selfish in a way.” — Aaron Witt [04:06]

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2. Leadership Meetings: The L10 Format

• Meeting structure: BuildWitt’s weekly Friday L10 (EOS-style) meetings start with good news, proceed to quarterly/annual priorities (“rocks”), customer/team headlines, and culminate in “Identify, Discuss, Solve” (IDS) problem-solving sessions.
  • “We start with good news... then move to quarterly Rock Review... and then IDS: identify, discuss, solve.” — Aaron Witt [06:18]
• Value of diverse voices: Aaron notes the team consists of highly trusted individuals, each bringing unique viewpoints.
  • “It’s high trust. Everybody is really smart. Everybody’s in a different seat doing their different part.” — Aaron Witt [05:07]

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3. Decision-Making Through Shared Principles

• Case study: Product pricing model
  • The biggest topic of the week: Should BuildWitt’s software follow industry-standard high-profit pricing or offer a more accessible model favoring civil construction clients?
  • The group’s unanimous answer: Align pricing with their mission to help contractors become more profitable, even if it means BuildWitt sacrificing some potential profit.
    • “Based on the industry that we’re serving, the dirt world, the lower cost model is the play here.” — Aaron Witt [11:41]
  • This alignment led to consensus and avoided friction during what might otherwise be a tense debate.
    • “It wasn’t really a discussion. Everybody was like, yep.” — Aaron Witt [12:01]

Memorable Moment:
Adam points out that many companies have combative leadership teams, but shared principles at BuildWitt make debate efficient and drama-free:

• “I've met a lot of leaders that are just like, I have to go into this leadership meeting and go sell this to everybody. And it's just this friction all the time... conflict for conflict is not good.” — Aaron Witt [12:46]

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4. Lessons in Alignment

• Minimizing conflict: Unity at the leadership level removes drama, improves decision-making, and accelerates progress.
  • “The more alignment you can create at the leadership level, the better. Because then it just, it makes everything easier. Everything easier.” — Aaron Witt [13:58]
• Contrast with traditional hierarchies: They discuss how ego or unclear priorities can stall progress elsewhere.

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5. Product Updates & Process Challenges

• Bottleneck management: Rapid development up front leads to new bottlenecks downstream; the team is actively addressing quality assurance to keep progress smooth.
  • “As you free up the bottlenecks up here, then they come down here... move faster, create bottlenecks.” — Aaron Witt [14:46]
• Importance of eliminating small frictions: The team is focusing on fixing small but aggravating issues that affect users—“the little things”—not just shiny new features.
  • “Eliminating the really small frustrations is key... the more we can get rid of those, the better.” — Aaron Witt [15:28]
• Dogfooding and rapid internal feedback: Most BuildWitt employees use “Improve,” their own software, daily. Issues are spotted and addressed promptly.
  • “By five or six in the morning, we had people in Slack saying, I had this problem... the development team was working on it as everybody was having a cup of coffee this morning.” — Aaron Witt [16:34]

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Notable Quotes

• “Transparency Wins—that's one that has served us very well since the beginning of the business and will, I think, only serve us better as time goes on.” — Aaron Witt [03:29]
• “We’re building the company alongside the dirt world, and we’re helping the dirt world figure out how to be more efficient, effective, to develop this next generation, to elevate their leadership.” — Aaron Witt [04:17]
• “Conflict is good; it allows you to actually figure out what the best solution is. But conflict for conflict is not good.” — Aaron Witt [13:03]
• “When people are aligned in the leadership... everything is easier. Everything easier.” — Aaron Witt [13:58]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Transparency & Company Values: 02:09–04:43
• Leadership Meeting Structure & Philosophy: 05:07–08:45
• Pricing Model & Decision-Making Example: 08:45–12:12
• On Leadership Alignment & Avoiding Friction: 12:33–14:00
• Product Development Updates & Eliminating Friction: 14:36–16:34

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Closing

Aaron and Adam close with an invitation for listeners to send questions or feedback, promising greater interaction and transparency going forward.

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Want to Join the Conversation?

Send questions to: [e-mail] or chime in on YouTube, Spotify, or any platform where Dirt Talk is available.

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Summary by Podcast Summarizer

Transcript

[Adam]

Foreign.

[Host]

Welcome back, everybody, to the Monday episode, the Building Build with podcast. This is number 65 titled Share Principles Make Big Decisions Easy. I'm joined by my Monday co host, Adam here.

[Adam]

Hello. How are you?

[Host]

Howdy. Howdy. Good to see you. It's been a week.

[Adam]

I know you've been gone.

[Host]

Yep. You've been cleaning up. Podcast studio, which looks really nice. Thank you.

[Adam]

I've been trying. Yeah. And I got a couple things ready to order.

[Host]

Yeah. So we can level this thing up.

[Adam]

Level it up. Y. Ready to go.

[Host]

Legitimate operation here. It's been a long time coming. No, we're happy to have you and I'm really happy to. We're excited to. To keep leveling up the podcast.

[Adam]

Yeah. I think we're just going to keep growing.

[Host]

Yeah, I think so. It's. It's. Yeah, we just. We're learning a lot. I want to keep people with these episodes. I want them to follow along with the business and then with the Thursday episodes. Killer people in here.

[Adam]

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. The last two guests you've had were so good.

[Host]

That's been a blast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been. I've been having a great time and we just. The. The schedule who we've had on this year has been phenomenal. And then the schedule just gets better and better and better and better. It's just awesome.

[Adam]

Matt was so funny. I mean.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Adam]

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I could not stop laughing in there. So I'm excited for that one to come out.

[Host]

I'm excited to listen to that episode.

[Adam]

Yeah.

[Host]

But this week we're talking about our leadership meetings. So on the. The updates, they used to be more of an accounting. Just here's what has gone on, which I think is fine to me though, I guess. I don't know, to the outside, maybe people find that interesting. I think they do. But I'm trying to make these episodes and these. The newsletter to be a little bit more lesson based as well. Like, here's what I'm learning. Here's what we're learning as a business.

[Adam]

Yeah.

[Host]

Because I feel like that's more helpful than just here's what we're doing.

[Adam]

Sure. But I do like the trans. Like, you guys are so transparent with all that stuff. Like the fact that you get on here and tell the world the accounting stuff is pretty.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Adam]

Different than most businesses do.

[Host]

It is, it is, it is. And I. That's. I think one of the things that makes us different.

[Adam]

It's a very. Yeah.

[Host]

It's a simple principle. Just Be transparent. But it is in very short supply in business.

[Adam]

Yeah. A lot of people want to keep that close to the chest. They don't want to let everyone know what's going. Even people within their own company don't even know what's going on.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Adam]

Just show up and hope that they have a job the next day.

[Host]

Exactly. Yeah. But since. Since the begin, we just. We're updating our values as we speak. They're updated. I just haven't rolled it out to the team yet, but the one value. So I sent out a. And we'll talk a little bit more about this in a future episode one. I sent out a survey to everybody and had everybody rank the values. Which ones do you believe in? Which ones don't really fit the company right now. Where we're going. Is there anything missing? What do you think about our mission? It was killer feed. Phenomenal feedback.

[Adam]

That's awesome.

[Host]

We have awesome. Just really smart people. And the one that was like the sacred cow was transparency wins.

[Adam]

Really?

[Host]

Everybody was like, don't touch it. It's good. And I'm like, I agree.

[Adam]

Yeah.

[Host]

That's one that has served us very well since the beginning of the business and will, I think, only serve us better as time goes on, you know, 100%.

[Adam]

And that falls back to this Monday episode is just you talking openly about everything.

[Host]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Adam]

Even before I worked here, I was watching a film. Like, wow, he is very transparent about everything that's going on in the company.

[Host]

It's not. I mean, what we're doing is not, as they say, rocket surgery.

[Adam]

No. But it's also. This isn't like an internal podcast. Like anyone from the whole. Anywhere in the world could just turn on and find out exactly what you're doing, what's going on, and.

[Host]

Yeah, but maybe it's. Maybe it's stupid. Like, maybe some business sensei would be like, wow, this kid's an idiot, and he's yet to learn his lesson. But I. I like, we're building this business not just for us. I feel like if you're keeping everything to you and your business, it's almost selfish in a way. It's like we're building the company alongside the dirt world, and we're helping the dirt world figure out how to be more efficient, effective, to develop this next generation, to elevate their leadership. And it's a. It's not. It's not something that we have the solution to, that we just bring everybody. It's. It's. We're developing the solution Together with everybody.

[Adam]

Yeah. Well, you're practicing what you're preaching. Right. And if you go out and tell everyone to do a certain thing and then you're not doing it yourself, it's

[Host]

like, well, that would.

[Adam]

I trust this guy?

[Host]

Yeah, that's part of it. But part of it is I, I want people to feel like they're a part of what we're building, because they are. That totally. They're in the dirt world. Yeah, you're. You're a part of what we're doing here at Build With. It's, it's, it's not, we're not operating here in a vacuum.

[Adam]

Right.

[Host]

So going to. This week specifically, we have our Friday leadership meetings, our L10 meetings on Friday mornings, 10am right now, Central Time, because Randy's out in Phoenix two hours behind. And they're my favorite meetings of the week. I love this meeting. It's an hour and a half meeting. It's with our leadership team. And we just have a phenomenal, phenomenal group, the leaders within our company. It's, it's high trust. Everybody is really smart. Everybody's in a different seat doing their different part. So I really enjoy it for that reason. Discussing what's going on with the business with people I really admire. Trust, respect. And then I also run during these meetings, which is really nice.

[Adam]

Oh, you're. Oh, you're running while the.

[Host]

So it's, it's, it's pretty nice to get my steps in while having the meeting. Sure.

[Adam]

Are you out and about in the city?

[Host]

Yeah, when it's warm like this, that's awesome. And then when it's really cold, I'll bike inside.

[Adam]

Oh, there you go.

[Host]

But I'm always doing something, keeping your

[Adam]

mind going or active.

[Host]

An hour and a half on a meeting. Can't do it. Can't do it. The meetings, they are format, formatted in, in an EOS fashion. So we start with good news. We go around the table. Hey, does anybody have good news, personal or professional? Here's something that happened great this week in the business or my kids are back in school and I have the house to myself again. You know, it's, it's stuff like that. I don't have kids. It's everybody else.

[Adam]

Everyone.

[Host]

And then we move from there to quarterly Rock Review, where we go through our rocks, which are our few priorities for, for the quarter that we establish once every quarter. And then we have annual rocks as well. And then we go through from there, team customer headlines. If we're having trouble with somebody or if we're hiring somebody or if we need to hire somebody or there's this new customer coming on and we need to be aware of it or whatever it is. And then we finally get to the, the end which is ids, identify, discuss, solve. So the first bit takes about a half an hour and then the remainder of the time about an hour, sometimes we go over is the bulk of the meeting, which is a discussion. So some of these things it still is like, hey, for general awareness. I don't expect this to be much of a discussion, but this is something we're working on. And then other things are like, let's, let's dig in here, break this down. It's gonna, yeah. Be a 45 minute discussion and a debate on, on what's going on here so that we can make a decision accordingly. And one of those discussions happened this, this past week, which is why I wrote about this. This is happening every week. But, but I was really thinking about the one discussion we were having. Randy, he came to the meeting and group and him and the product team are making some core decisions right now on how we, how we guide our business for the next many years. Some of these decisions, they're, they're really big decisions, foundational decisions. And the question is how do we make those decisions and how do we ensure those decisions are right for us Future state. And so the issue he brought up this week was about pricing and our economic model for software, which is increasingly the economic model of the company.

[Adam]

Sure. Yeah.

[Host]

And the question was, do we follow traditional software company logic? Because we can or do we do we chart our own course based on what's best for the dirt world and what's best for our business and our customers, not just traditional software logic.

[Adam]

Right. Instead of having just like a standard. It's this much money for this. Yeah, a little bit.

[Host]

We can get this percentage for this reason or. Yeah, this, these are the, these are the numbers we should be, we should be targeting. And software is very profitable when you do it. Right. Because you, you build the platform. Like if you're dealing in car washes, it doesn't scale. It's, it's the profit. Well, until private equity came in and destroyed the whole car wash model and destroyed the family car wash in the United States of America and put it on a renewal basis.

[Adam]

Yeah. Now you can get unlimited for washes for X amount of money or whatever. Yeah.

[Host]

Not the best example, but if I'm a car wash, if I'm a local car wash guy, one of the few Left in America standing, the evil empire gets me. If I want to go double my business and go get another car wash, I have to go build another car wash. Sure. I have to staff another car wash. I need to pay property tax on another car wash. Environmental, like, there's all these costs associated with growing my business. But a software platform, If I take this software and go apply it one company and then I want to go apply it to another company, it's just. It's bits, it's not atoms.

[Adam]

Right, right, right.

[Host]

So I can do that very cost effectively, making software companies very profitable.

[Adam]

Yeah.

[Host]

And the question was, do we really want to pursue that traditional software profit model or is there a different model that is more so in the civil construction company's best interests? Which is a little less money for us.

[Adam]

Right.

[Host]

And a little more money for them.

[Adam]

Yeah, and more. But then you're your brands getting out and your products getting out to more people that way. Yeah.

[Host]

And it's better for the industry because one of our core beliefs is that civil contractors need to be more profitable. And if we're one of the other, you know, one of the vendors there. Hey, possible. It doesn't really align. It doesn't really align. And so it's not like it's. It's. It's. I'm not saying this to be like the holier than thou business. I think we want to make as much money as anybody else, because I have plans for that money. I think we can do a lot of cool shit for the industry with that money. But I want to do it in the right way, in the way that aligns with the dirt world. And the coolest thing about this whole conversation was that it wasn't really a discussion.

[Adam]

Yeah. Everyone was on board. It sounds like Randy was like, wait a minute, we need to be making more money. It's like, no, let's.

[Host]

Yeah. He was like, all of my training says the lower cost model is not the play here. But based on the industry that we're serving, the dirt world, the lower cost model is the play here. So is that what we're gonna aim to build? And everybody was like, yep.

[Adam]

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. Because you're not shooting just for the people at the biggest name companies. I mean, if there's a smaller company that maybe has 40 or 50 people, they can still utilize the.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Adam]

Software. Right.

[Host]

For right now, improve is best between 100 and a thousand. A few thousand people within a civil construction company.

[Adam]

Yeah.

[Host]

But there's still a lot.

[Adam]

Got to be a Lot of companies that have 100 people. That's not that many people. If you looked at like a major construction company.

[Host]

Thousands of civil construction companies in our market.

[Adam]

Yeah, thousands.

[Host]

So it was just, it's less about what we were talking about and more so just the alignment. It makes everything so much easier. I've, I've met a lot of leaders that are just like,

[Adam]

I have to

[Host]

go into this leadership meeting and go sell this to everybody. And it's just this friction all the time. I, I. Conflict is good. It allows you to actually figure out what the best solution is. But conflict for conflict is not good.

[Adam]

No.

[Host]

And that happens in a lot of leadership teams at a lot of companies. And I'm just, I am so grateful that we don't have to do that.

[Adam]

Or there's one guy that everyone's afraid to, that they're, they're gonna, their, their idea is holier than everyone else's. And it's like, well, I guess we all have to just.

[Host]

There's ego at play.

[Adam]

Or.

[Host]

Yeah. It's like, yeah, guys, you know, it's dad's company. Sure, I can speak up, but dad wants this. Dad gets this. And I get it. I understand. There's different dynamics everywhere. I'm just, it's. I think business is so much easier when people are aligned in the leadership.

[Adam]

Grateful that you don't have to deal with that. Exactly.

[Host]

Because we've had to deal with it. And not that, not that it's been bad people. It's just that sometimes we've had too many people involved or there's been conflicting priorities, or the foundation's not clear enough so that we could come up with good decisions.

[Adam]

Sure.

[Host]

And yeah, I'm really grateful we have that alignment. So the lesson here is the more alignment you can create at the leadership level, the better. Because then it just, it makes everything easier. Everything easier. So that was the, the big lesson for this week. There was some more blocking and tackling type stuff on the development front. So I've talked about us accelerating our development by quite a wide margin. But then when you accelerate on the front end, you start to see bottlenecks on the back end. And that's what we've seen. So now the team is working downstream to alleviate bottlenecks.

[Adam]

Okay.

[Host]

Further down. It's not a, it's not a problem. It's just as you free up the bottlenecks up here, then they come down here.

[Adam]

You just gotta keep.

[Host]

And then if you figure it them out down here, then it allows you to move Faster again. And so you kind of just bounce through the process, and then once you're through the process, you start again. Move faster, create bottlenecks. Move faster, create bottlenecks. So that's what they're working through right now, to work through our QA process on software side of things, which is. Is really exciting. And then we've talked a lot of big changes on the software. Product side of things for Bill would improve. But the product team right now, especially this month, is. Is working through a lot of small friction points. It's tempting to focus on the big, sexy stuff all the time.

[Adam]

Sure.

[Host]

And we always have big, sexy stuff in the works. But eliminating the really small frustrations is key, and we've had issues with that, as does every company. There's these friction points that spawn in every place imaginable, and the more we can get rid of those, the better, because it just makes for a far better experience. Yeah. But using the plan.

[Adam]

Yeah. Yeah. You get. There could be one little thing that's irritating, maybe more than one person that you don't even know about, but once you fix it.

[Host]

Yes.

[Adam]

Everyone's happy and forward.

[Host]

You all have those products or experiences that just drive you nuts, just piss you off. I have so many of them, which makes you think about your. When you're creating a product like, wow, this. This really matters. And we use the product every day at Build with.

[Adam]

Yeah. We. I watch the video every day.

[Host]

Yeah. And part of that is a question or to spot prop. Like today we had a problem, and by 5 or 6 in the morning, we had people in the. In Slack saying, I had this problem. And then people like, yep, I had that problem too.

[Adam]

Fix it.

[Host]

And the development team was working on it as everybody was having a cup of coffee this morning.

[Adam]

That's awesome.

[Host]

So. So that's everything for this week.

[Adam]

Love it. We need to get some questions, so.

[Host]

Questions.

[Adam]

Yeah. Dirt [e-mail] for the questions or on even. You can comment on Spotify or YouTube or whatever. They're all. It's all over now. So.

[Host]

And it's. It's. Yeah. Shows on YouTube now.

[Adam]

Shows up on YouTube.

[Host]

Full episodes.

[Adam]

Full episodes.

[Host]

So drop us a comment or write us@dirt talkillwood.com.

[Adam]

yep. And we'll answer those questions.

[Host]

Goes to Adam. We'll answer those questions. We'll start to have conversations with people again like we did in the good old days, and it should be quite a bit of fun. So thanks as always, for being here with us, and we'll see you everybody on the next one. On the next one, Stay dirty.