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Foreign. Welcome back to the Building Buildwit podcast Monday. This is number 33, titled thank you support and announcements. The brief introduction for every week, all sorts of people ask, what do you do? And this is a attempt at clarifying what it is that we do. I run around the world doing what we call influence. Growing awareness for the dirt world and for the BuildWit brand, which grows the company. But the company is much bigger than me. It is our training and development software, Build with Improve and our annual leadership event, the Ariat Dirt World Summit, happening November 11th or 9th through 11th in Phoenix, Arizona in 2026. Let's go. So first off this week, because this was written during Thanksgiving, thank you. It's huge to have you following along. If you're listening to this episode, thank you. If you're reading the newsletters, thank you. If you're liking or even watching stuff on social media, if you're listening to the longer guest episodes, if you're watching the YouTube videos every week, I really wholeheartedly appreciate goes a long ways. And that's why we do it. We don't do it. I joke saying I'm the world's worst influencer because it's not self serving. I don't really like the influencing thing. I never got onto social media. Well, funny enough, I did get onto social media to serve myself with my employment prospects. But it quickly changed thanks to I Build America. So since 2018, since starting the business at least, our intent has always been to make the dirt world a better place, to build the dirt world's next generation. And we can't do it alone. I certainly can't. I am a drop in the bucket that is the dirt world. And without you all following along, engaging with what we do, it would all be for naught. So that's the first thank you. The second thank you is to those who are actively making the dirt world a better place and who are actively building the dirt world's next generation. Again, I can only do so much. Build, witness. We can only do so much. We're not the dirt world. Your odds are those listening to this podcast are the dirt world and it's on you to build the dirt world's next generation and to make the future better than today. Our future is ultimately on the shoulders of the leaders of the dirt world. And I have the utmost respect for those striving to make the dirt world better. Every day a better future starts with us. Again, it's on our shoulders. It's an immense responsibility. I unfortunately see a lot of People checking out. A lot of people are just defeated, throwing their hands up in the air like, well, it is what it is. I'm gonna coast, make it to retirement, get out of here. I'm just gonna survive and, you know, make a good wage and take care of my family, but that's that. I can only do so much here. But there's other people, again, most of them probably listening to this podcast. Certainly the people I have on the podcast that are saying, no, no, no, no. This is an immense responsibility. We can make the future better. We have to make the future better. I'll never see that better future, but my kids will see it. And if they don't see it, their kids will see it. And if we're not striving to make the future better again, what's the point of all of this? So thank you to those that are. It goes a long ways. And then finally, if you are, you know, that's for leaders in the dirt world. But if you are somebody building day to day, thank you. Without you, there would be no food, water and shelter. And without food, water and shelter, there's no society, there's no nothing. There's no United States of America. There's no world without people being able to flush the toilet and drive places and turn the lights on, et cetera. And that's what you do day to day. And yes, it is mundane. Yes, it's often a grind, it's often miserable. But it's essential. And if you stop, everybody else stops. So a huge thank you to those building our world, because again, without you, I wouldn't be here. Life wouldn't exist. Which is a. It's a sobering thought. The top question I'm asked is, what does Bill Witt do? Our purpose is to build the dirt world's next generation. The dirt world is the companies and people building the critical infrastructure and supporting those who build our critical infrastructure that we need to live the lives that we do. Our business is much bigger than me. I run around the world building our brand. But the business itself does two things. One, we help develop the next generation through our product called billwhit Improve. It's a daily training and development platform at about 300 civil construction companies are using to not just make their people better workers, but better people. And of course, we have the 2026 ARIAT dirtworld summit. The best opportunity to develop yourself and your teams and as leaders. So check us out. Billwhit.com, book a meeting with us and we'll talk to you Soon. Now to get into this week's update. It was a short week, three days, so not a ton going on, but I've explained it to some of you before. We offer our people two weeks off during the holidays just before Christmas into just after New Year's. And I first heard this term separation season from Ed Milet years ago, and I loved it because I saw it as true. You know, I would go into December, like, ready to finish the year strong, but then post Thanksgiving, everybody just takes their foot off the gas and just coasts into the new year. And then, okay, January is coming around. All right, we'll get after it again. And it would just drive me nuts. It still drives me nuts. But instead of beating my head against the wall, I then thought, why don't we just give our team. And at the time when I made the decision, it was a small team, just a few of us, but we've done it every year since. Why don't I just give the team this year off or this time off, these two weeks off? Because nothing happens anyway. No one is really getting anything done. Especially in between Christmas and New Year's, there's nothing happening. Nothing. And so, to me, it's just good business. But it also really cares, takes care of our people because it gives them, you know, a week is not enough off. Two, you really need two to totally get away. I feel like. And. And to just take in life and the fact that everybody isn't working. I mean, there'll be a few people here or there to take care of customers, because our customers still are. But the fact that everybody isn't working also allows you to get away and to detach. And it's one of the best things we do. But at this time of year, I always remind everybody that, hey, it's a privilege that we have those two weeks off. And that's on top of. Typically, most everybody averages between two to three weeks off additionally throughout the year. So most everybody, I think, on average, is off five weeks, plus holidays, which is. Which is awesome. It's something I love to do for our people, but it's a privilege. It's not something that's automatic. And to ensure that we earn the privilege, we don't take our foot off the gas in December. We're not just hanging out. We're here to get after it. And we go flat out, give it all we have into the break. So run into it full speed. Enjoy time with everybody's family, enjoy time traveling, whatever. And then coming out of it, we're not Just hanging out that first week. We're not getting warmed up Monday. We're getting after it, man. We're running out of it as well. And the speed in which we run out of it because everybody is recharged is awesome. So that was my reminder to everybody, especially going into Thanksgiving week. You know, it's just a few days, but. No, no, no, it's not just a few days. We've got to get after it. For each one of those days, have Thanksgiving come back and then we've got three more weeks. It's a short month. We've got to get after it. We have a lot to do in December to earn that break and then to go into January and position our company as extraordinary as ever in, in, in, in. In a. In. In the best position we have been in going into a new year. It's really exciting stuff. But that. So for you all, that's, that's the background of the conversations going on here. So, yes, short week, but there's a lot going on nonetheless. First up, from a traditional update standpoint, we are about to be making two additional hires for the customer success team. We've had that hiring process going on for about a month now. We've identified a few brilliant, brilliant folks, and this will double our support capacity, which is a really, really big deal. Helping civil construction companies train and develop their people is half product, which is the bill would improve platform. But the other half is support to drive cultural change and to build entirely new habits that are not present in most construction companies today. And that's not their fault. The dirt world has been able to traditionally train on the job, which has worked pretty well for a very long time now because most everybody entering the industry has had a basic skill set. They've grown up around a trade. They've done chores around the house, maybe a farm, maybe their parents had a construction company. If you ask most everybody in construction, they had a background in it growing up, which means they learned the basics growing up, how to use tools and how to work on machines, et cetera. So by the time they're of working age, legally 18 years old for construction, they're not starting at square one. They can already get up and go, which has allowed construction companies to give them more of the nuances of construction, whatever they're doing, but they've gotten away with not really training on those basics. However, life is much different nowadays. It is much more urbanized. There's a lot less of a rural population today. It's more dense, and so more kids are growing up in suburbs and apartments in dense areas. And it has removed the next generation from work and from building that skill set early on in life, which is me. I didn't grow up around work. My dad was a lawyer and I wish I had, but I didn't. I got it fortunately, when I was about 14 years old in Montana. But had I not got it by almost accident, had I not worked for a summer, my first summer working ever, I would have gotten into construction. Maybe I wouldn't have even tried to get into construction, but I would have gotten in and I would have washed out. I would have had my my ass kicked. It would not have been welcoming and I wouldn't be here today. And so this dramatic change in our society that's happened within just one generation, it's happened very quickly. It calls for a corresponding change in training and development within the construction industry and the trades, which is happening across the board now. But we can also appreciate that this dramatic of a change doesn't happen overnight, which is okay. And that's where our support team works alongside our civil construction customers to marry their existing training programs with our daily training approach to give their teams access to training every day to build a daily training habit. And this not only trains up their new people like me on how to inspect a machine or how to start a demo saw or how to be safe with rigging, etc. But it also levels up their leadership because that is what the construction industry needs as well. The most influential position within the construction industry is the crew leader. And right now the crew leader is wildly under trained and unequipped for that role. They've been oftentimes elevated sometimes recently because of people aging out to that role because they're a top performer. Oh well, they're the best track ho operator, so they're going to be the best grading foreman or they're the best pipe player, so they're going to be the best pipe foreman. But that's a totally different skill set. Now you're not doing your managing and hopefully you're leading. But leading is a skill set like running a tracko, like laying pipe. But they're not trained on that at all. And that's what our program can do for them as well, is train them up on leadership principles so that they can serve their teams more effectively, do more effective work. Bingo bango. We've got the next generation taken over, which is awesome. So that's a little bit of background of why we're investing in customer success. We will continue to invest in customer success in 2026. As we continue to develop our bill whit and proof product, we need both parts to make it successful with our now hundreds of customers using it every day out in the field. Speaking of product, the team is heads down on making the existing training product world class, but we do have some projects to add additional features to make the product more and more valuable. And one of those features that is in testing as we speak is called the announcements feature. And this will allow leaders, typically those in the office, to create custom video messages for their team, which should enable a totally new level of communication between the office and field. I every weekend record a weekly video update that then goes out to our team every Monday. I use it, just send it through Google, but now I'll be able to send it through the BuildWit Improve platform so then our team, I can upload it, you know, five minutes, eight minutes on, here's what happened this week and then our team automatically will get it assigned. They'll see it at the top of their feed when they go into their build with improve app. They can hit it, they can watch it and then I can ensure that the team has watched it. So not only is it allowing me to communicate with our team, fill them in, but I can see who's actively participating and I think this is a solution to a huge problem. The communication gap between field and office I think is ironically, with as many digital tools as we have, I think it's bigger than ever. And breaking that down is essential to building the next generation, making the dirt world better and more effective. And it's simple stuff. People, they just want to be in the know. They just want to know what the heck is going on. Simple stuff. Hey, what, what jobs have we recently won? What jobs have finished up? Who is, where have we got new equipment? Oh, there's a, a new office. People want to know what the heck's going on. Simple stuff. When I'm, you know, laborer or an operator, I'm on a job I'm in, that's my world. I don't know what's going on outside of that. Only leaders get to see the company overall, but everybody wants to be a part of the overall company story. And it's simple communication like this that makes a big, big impact in doing just that. So the announcements feature is coming soon to build and improve. Very exciting. And then finally, on the dirt World summit front, we closed our final Platinum ariat Dirt World 2026 SP with Devlon. And this is very exciting because we now have almost every major equipment OEM involved. We have Devon, we have John Deere, Hyundai, Komatsu. We had Lugong there this year, Hitachi. Except for, you know, there's one in particular that's a certain color that rhymes with mellow. They paint everything a certain color rhymes of mellow. And they don't need us anyway. So it's really exciting, though, to have most major US Manufacturers involved in Dirt World now. That was never the intent. We're not here to recreate Con Expo or any of the traditional trade shows. They'll always be far better from a. An exhibit or standpoint. But we're. We're creating something totally new, and we're happy to have any kind of company that wants to support the Dirt World on board. And to have these manufacturers on board is awesome. So welcome to Devilon and to the other OEMs for being a part of what we've got going. And that's everything. Thank you so much. To those that listen to this. If you want to send me a note, you can send it to me anytime. Aaron@billwood.com and we'll see you on the next one. Stay dirty, everybody.