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Dirt Talk by BuildWitt
Skunk Works, 3 Year Deals, and Resignations (Building BuildWitt #41) – DT 419
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Foreign. Welcome back to the Building Build Wit weekly podcast series. This is number 41, titled Skunk Works, Three Year Deals and resignations. Yeah, fun stuff. This is my weekly attempt to answer what the heck Buildwith does. Everybody sees me running around on the YouTube influencing Mr. Influencer over here. According to other people. Not me, but other people. I know, mom, you're so proud. Your son's an influencer, a YouTuber. Believe it or not, there's more than that going on. That is what I do. Part of what I do is growing the bill with brand, growing the dirt world message, preaching the gospel of how important this industry is to develop the next generation. But we've got a business then making it happen behind me or next to me or on top of me, across from me. Any and all of those things to train and develop with our Build Improve software platform and then to build leaders with our annual Ariat Dirt World Summit. A lot of fun stuff going on. And this is what the heck's happening or what happened this past week to get into it. First up, as you know, transparency wins. We talk about it a lot here. That's the whole reason of this podcast. However, there's an advantage that I've come to appreciate of the cloak of darkness. Now, I say this because I've written a few things in our weekly investor email update that I have omitted from these more public updates. I do something very similar for our team and for our investors. We have 15, 20 shareholders within the business. They are all either civil construction business owners or Caterpillar dealer leaders. I publish and I have for years now, since we brought on shareholders to begin with, just kept them up to date as far as what the heck's happening within the business. Then I use that to report to our team via a video, typically between four and eight minutes, I would say, on average every week, recorded on my phone, shared out by email with the team. Full, full, full company as to what the heck's going on. And then I use that to build these newsletters in the podcast that you're listening to right now. And right now we have some sick stuff cooking. I, I'll be honest, we've. We've got some sick stuff cooking. Last year was a, was an ass whooping. But we, it was a necessary ass whooping. It was a productive ass whooping. We, we, we paid for past transgressions, but in a very positive way. We weren't just getting abused. We were working through really hard stuff, enduring pain to get our, get ourselves to a more focused, better place. Which is where we are as a result. It's really, really damn exciting. But while we have some really cool stuff cooking, it's just that it's cooking. It's not done yet. And rather than telling everybody that we're working on some tasty stuff, I'd rather just show you the tasty stuff when the time is right now. I get that I'm doing the opposite of that right now, but I feel like I had to say something about it. I'm really excited we've got some cool stuff coming. We even. Something I've been thinking about is we have a saying within the company that we've had from the very beginning. Me and Dan, we'd always say this might work when something good would happen. You know, this might actually work out. We even have a conference room in our office labeled this might work. We've always said it, but this year I'm trying to be more careful with my language and my words. And I've always believed it would work. I've always believed we would become the dirt world's most influential business. But now it's starting to really materialize and it's no longer this might work. This, this will work. I will do everything I can to make this work. Everything I can. And we've got a killer team as well that is willing to go above and beyond to make it happen. So really exciting stuff. Can't wait to report on all of that for now. Well, in the future. But for now, that's that on that point on the influence front, my realm within Bill Whip, our latest video with Rio Tinto, one of the world's largest mining companies, featuring their bauxite operation in Northern Queensland, is killing it on YouTube, which is awesome. In the first week, got about a hundred thousand hours of watch time, which is sick. A really, really nice metric for us. So we're very happy about that. It's almost like we know what we're doing. We have been grinding on YouTube, and YouTube has been a, I would say more of a battleground than anything else. We've done the podcast. I have a format that works, that I enjoy, that's consistent. We can just keep those that train on the tracks. Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, frankly, they're all pretty easy. Pretty consistently can get, you know, a hundred million plus views a month at this point. Pretty consistently with me just posting off of my phone, which is incredible. I don't take that for granted. But it's not all that complicated. And I've done it for so long now. It's it's second nature. But long form video on YouTube, man, boy, it is tricky. And I really appreciate anybody that's done anything substantial from a channel standpoint and then not only done something substantial but, but leveraged it to create a bigger impact than just views. Because I think a lot of people, they, they get caught up in the vanity metrics, the vanity of metrics and they see the views and they see the reach and this and that and even they talk to me about what we have, like, oh wow, how many followers do you have? And it's like, I, it's fine, it's cool. I appreciate it, I really do. It's incredible. But that's never been the goal. The goal has been to create an impact in the world and if I can leverage a following, if I can leverage reach via social media to create that real world impact, I'm going to go all in on that which I have. But that's the purpose is to create real world impact. If it's just numbers on a screen, it doesn't do anything. It doesn't matter. So that's what we're trying to do is make really impactful content that does entertain, that does inspire, that does educate and it's a lot easier said than done. I have, I have been the roadblock in making it happen more than anything else, more than any other issue. There's been a lot of issues that we've overcome. There's still issues that we're overcoming currently. I have definitely been the roadblock in the process, but I think we're, we're rounding a corner right now, which is really fun to see. It's like, oh, I see it, it's right over there. It's actually not that far away. And our videos should only become better and better and better and better. And I'm, I think they're great right now, but I, my job is to be the number one critic here. And that's also the fun thing about creative work. I feel bad for anybody that doesn't have creative work or creative outlet because the work is never done. There's no finish line. There's no, you've made it. That's the cool thing about creativity. You can, you just get to continue to create. How cool is that? It's never done. It's maddening, but that's also why it's so magical. So that's it. On the influence front. On the new Billwhit.com homepage, an overall website approach. We should be live within the next few weeks, which is awesome. The goal of our new approach, we're tossing the old website out. This is probably like the 10th website we've had over the years, maybe more. The goal of this one though is to, for people to explore, bill it and prove the training and development platform, the content, the pricing at their own pace with, without our involvement. And this is a big, big thing we've learned from Marcus Sheridan. They ask, you answer, give potential customers, potential buyers as much information as possible, don't gate anything. And that's what we're doing. We're not getting anything anymore. So right now the process is somebody has to book a demo to see the product in its, in its entirety. We have pricing on the website, but to really get in you have to, you have to book a demo, which is, which is tough. I don't really want to have a demo with somebody. And so I don't expect especially contractors to really be engaged all that much because they've got stuff going on and so on and so forth and they're not even sitting behind a computer all that much. You can go down the list of reasons why now they can just go to the website, the new website coming soon and explore the whole product and then educate themselves, test it out, see it in its fullest and then talk to us which will then be a much, much more productive conversation. So really happy about that. The cool thing is as well we're doing this in a way more cost effective manner than ever before. So it's awesome. We're really lean but we're getting a better product than ever. Very happy about that new website coming soon which will allow us to sell bill improve more effectively then the next point here, thanks to our new dashboard, we can measure some trends across the business more regularly for the first time, which is really cool. And an exciting data point that Kara brought up recently in a meeting was that 29% of our customers who have renewed since September have opted for three year deals. So we have one year contracts and three year contracts right now, which signals because a third are using these three year deals now, which is way up from what it was this time last year. This signals the confidence in our business and improve. I don't think a company would be signing a three year deal if they didn't believe in the product and the value it could create for them. And in our business and in our brand and in our, our mission and in our ability to survive, that's been in question in the past. Are they even gonna be around next year? Yeah, it's Definitely been a question with customers, with the industry, with the haters. Nah, I don't even give a shit what the haters thing. Within our business though, families, it's been a big deal and business is not certain, it never is. But we're a lot, we're a lot stronger than we have been in a very long time and we have a very well defined roadmap for our product. Our product is being used today successfully by infrastructure teams across America. We have the most capable team we've ever had. It's, it's really shaping up and you can say all of that stuff, but when you start to see it reflected in the numbers and in the business itself now it gets exciting and that's a number that gets me really damn excited. And I'm very appreciative for every company that has committed to a three year deal because it's really big for a company like us and we're not new, we're not small anymore, but it still goes a long way. Every sale is a really big deal, every customer is a really big deal, every user is a really big deal. So really exciting. And then finally that is the good. But what about the not so good and that is that we've had three team members on the media team, which is the one I lead, so I'm the guy at the end of the day here resign over the past month. We have experienced a lot of change over the past year and over the past five years when it comes to media, the media we're doing now is, it could not be more different from what we began with down, you know, years and years and years ago. And so there have been fair criticisms along the way from people within the team for people leaving the team. There have been people we've brought in that just no longer, their skill set no longer applies or you know, the challenge they signed up to attack doesn't necessarily, it's not necessarily there anymore or it is chaotic here and it's like, you know, I'm just going to go take a break or I'm going to go hang out somewhere that's not as chaotic, which I, I understand. So this was not on the bingo card. It's not ideal when people leave unexpectedly when you have that voluntary turnover. But one, it's an opportunity to just appreciate everybody leaving. So I'm very appreciative for, for, for those that, that have been here, not just these three, but, but everybody that's been here in any capacity whatsoever, whether they've left voluntarily or involuntarily I'm appreciative of everybody, that everybody has mattered and everybody's contributed in some small ways and in some huge ways. So it is a moment to be like, yeah, no, we're just super appreciative for people that have been here for any amount of time. But then it's also a phenomenal opportunity to stop, to step back and to evaluate, where are we going, what do we need, who do we need, who do we have, what's the best structure, who are we missing? And then go about hiring. And that's exactly what we're doing right now. We're having a lot of conversations. We are leaning into transparency wins on the media team, unlike we ever have before, which is a really good feeling. And we're talking through where we need to go and how we need to get there, and then we're making decisions on who else we need to hire. We're not just jumping in, though, and saying, well, this person left. This person was doing this, so now we need to hire another person to do that. It's not a good way to do things. It's not a good way to grow. And it hurts the team ultimately as well. So that's where we are right now. Three resignations, not expected. But it's, I think, in the grand scheme of things, a great opportunity for us to reevaluate where we are, where we're going, and then to ensure we're hiring the right people and to ensure we have the existing people in the best seats possible for the business and for them as individuals, which is a lot of fun, because we've got a damn good team. We've got a damn good team. And then we get to bring in new people with new experiences, new ideas, and create more, more, more energy within the team as well, which is always awesome when you lose somebody. It's always sad or hurtful or whatever it is. There's all kinds of emotions that it brings upon, but then the excitement kicks in of, like, well, that means someone new is coming in, and that's a whole new opportunity. How cool is that? So that's where we are from a team standpoint, Turnover standpoint, resignation standpoint. We are like every other business, and that is. We're not immune to people leaving. Go figure. We're not. We're not immune to people underperforming. We're not immune to letting people down. We're not immune to any of the people challenges that all the other businesses I know talk about in private. They don't talk about in public, though, and that makes people like me seem like, whoa, am I the only one screwing up here? Maybe I am. But no, I know I'm not. So that's a little bit on the people front. That is everything. Building bill wit number 41. I appreciate you all listening. Thank you so much. We'll see you on the next one. If you have feedback questions in the interim, send me an email anytime. Aaronbillwood.com we'll see you next week. Stay dirty, everybody.