← Dirt Talk by BuildWitt
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Dirt Talk podcast. This is building build with number 50. Number 50 titled Throwing Bones and new feature testing. As always, this is the weekly account of how our sausage is made. It's an attempt to explain what the heck buildwit does and how we are making it happen. People see what I do. Travel around the world checking out Dirt world operations to preach the gospel of the dirt world. To build the next generation, to build pride in the existing generation. To build a sense of appreciation with the people that rely on the dirt world every day of the week. But there is a much bigger picture at Build Wit nowadays. A much bigger team, a much bigger company operation, software, product. And this is the inside scoop. So first off, I have written a lot about the multi year ass whooping that we've endured up until this point. Our first few years of pain were largely due to inexperience. Last year's ass whipping was a little bit different. That was, it was just as miserable, if not more miserable, but it was at least intentional. We said we could just cruise or we could plunge ourselves back into darkness with the intention of getting to somewhere better. We have a plan this time and it wasn't fun. I don't want to do it ever again. But for the first time we were able to choose short term pain for long term gain, which was pretty neat. And fortunately, fortunately, our bet is bearing fruit. We are winning for the first time as a business financially in a long time, which is really, really exciting. And while the leaders at Build With Me, Randy and the executive leadership team, we're not the best at celebrating, I'm certainly not. We felt our team deserved a bone in recognition for their effort. And to further further momentum, we as a business, the goal, especially over the next few months, is to build confidence to leverage momentum. It's good to recognize everybody's contribution. There's always that double edge to it, like, hey, this is by no means an invitation to get comfy. This is an invitation to go even harder because we have to. We've got some big goals to make this work for everybody. But great job. It's a, it's important to pat everybody on the back and you know, it's hard as leaders. We don't need that. Like I don't need somebody to tell me I'm doing a good job, I'm self motivated and I'm playing a different game. Like the stakes here are higher for me and what I want is greater than most people here and I'm the only one at the business that can say, this is the most important thing in my life, which is, it's a crazy statement, but it's an acknowledgement that I'm just, I'm just playing a different game. And so I see a lot of leaders mistakenly assume because they don't need a pat on the back that they don't need to give other people a pat on the back. And that's just not right. And in reality, everybody likes a pat on the back. Everybody likes when they hear, good job, I'm proud of you. I again, not the best at doing it, but trying to do better in that regard. And since we're a remote team, honestly gathering everybody together is tough. It's really, really expensive to get everybody together. It's a lot of plane tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars, etc. We haven't been able to do it for a few years now, which really sucks. Hopefully the end of this year that will change. But thanks to some clever brainstorming from Jennifer on our team and others, we issued a delivery, food delivery gift card for lunch of everybody's choosing. And then we had a virtual all hands meeting where the sales team facilitated a fun activity. It was, it was actually quite clever. Really, really enjoyable. So it wasn't, you know, work related or anything like that. It was just like, hey, let's all come together. Let's just have a moment to breathe, to be together, to remind ourselves that we're, we're a part of a great team and let's have a little bit of fun. So it's a small thing, but it's a really big deal in the grand scheme of things. And we're turning over a new leaf, which is, it's very exciting stuff. So while we're in no position to rest on our laurels. Absolutely not. I'm really grateful we can recognize the team even in, in small ways. So yeah, I, like I said me as a leader, I don't really need the recognition. I don't thrive on that at all. But it's really important to recognize the hard work of people. That is how teams are built. That is how people are driven further and further and further that recognition. So we're doing our best to, to make that happen, especially as we're, we're hitting the numbers that we've put our names next to. Super, super exciting. And honestly, for me it's exciting, but it's just, it's more so relieving than anything. Like, I think you can hear it in my voice. I'm just. Oh man. Okay. Like you do years and years and years of slogging. And I'm sure we're going to have years and years and years and years more of slogging, but it's nice to just see like something from it. It's like, yeah, okay, all right. It makes it a little bit more exciting for me even. It makes it a little bit more not worthwhile. But it's like, ooh, okay, let's do more of this. Let's, let's keep going. So that's a little bit big picture now. Next up, we are big believers in real world tests of potential hires before making formal offers. We, we recently recruited for two creative roles and we used some real world projects to test each candidate in addition to normal interviews. And each test yielded some really relevant information that allowed us to, I think, make the best hires for our needs. Um, everybody we talk to is typically great, but it's about selecting the right person for what exactly we need within the business. And testing people is essential to, I think figuring that out. We don't always get it right. We haven't always done the process in a correct manner. But I don't necessarily feel bad making people jump through hoops to get in the door because it sucks when you bring someone in and they don't work out. 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, God forbid, they're around 180 days, 365 days, we've had that too. It's like we know someone's not right, but ah, they, they've, you know, they're doing well enough and, and then it's not fair for them because it's, it's getting them further from where they need to be. It's getting us further from where we need to be. So the, the more rigorous we can be up front, the better. And again, it's a two way street. It allows them to evaluate us. It allows us to evaluate them. And so for people hiring out there, it's not always applicable. But if you can give somebody a problem to solve, a real world application to work through, if you can observe them doing something, boy is it a lot more revealing than a conversation. Anybody can kind of have a conversation and I know some people are still incapable of talking, which there is some information that you can glean from a conversation from an interview process and we do. But watching somebody work, allowing them to solve a problem and see what they have to say and share, it's way more revealing and it helps us hire better every time. So I included this in here because I couldn't recommend testing people in various ways more before they come in the door. From a system standpoint, credit card authorization for Build with Improve software customers with 50 people or fewer is now live. We've put this into place because five of six unpaid invoices this year have been within those category. Within that category. And this is a small systems tweak that will hopefully resolve that issue. Not getting paid sucks. I think anybody in business knows the feeling. It just kind of sucks. But what sucks even more is having to spend your time and energy trying to chase money down. That sucks even more because we've got a lot going on. We've got a business to run. We've got a team to lead. We've got problems to solve. Everybody has that as well. And I know it's part of business, unfortunately, chasing money down. And sure, we've been guilty of not paying people because at the time, we didn't have the money to pay them. We've always paid people. We haven't just not paid somebody. But we have been in those positions as well. It's like, all right, who do we pay this week? And who do we not pay this week? It's a shit place to be, but we've always paid. I understand. That said, there are systems you can put in place to avoid some of these scenarios to begin with, and this is one of those systems. So very grateful for the systems team making it happen on the back end. As we scale, as we grow, these systems will be only more and more valuable and allow us to then get to that next level. But you've gotta. You've got to build that foundation before you can build a topic. Everybody knows that. But in business, it's a little bit more gray. The more black and white you can make it, the better. Finally, our entire team uses Build with Improve every day. Now, BuildWit Improve is our main offering at BuildWit. Nowadays. It is a daily development product allowing people in the field who execute the work, who lead the work to not just be better at their jobs, but better human beings overall. There are some major issues in the dirt world. If we were the best place ever to work, we would not have a recruiting problem right now. Every company I talk to would not be saying, you know, people, that's our biggest struggle. That should be the biggest opportunity. It is the biggest opportunity. And Build with Improve allows civil contractors in the United States of America to seize that opportunity, to tap into that opportunity by expanding, growing their people in a very deliberate fashion. There's nothing else like it, it does not compare to any other type of software, any other company. It is built exclusively for this problem for this industry. Now, not only do civil contractors use it, but of course, again, our team uses it. And this doesn't just give our team a chance to grow and learn every day, but it also allows us to roll out new features internally for testing before we start to hand them to customers. And one new feature dropped this week and it is sick. And over the coming months, our customers will have access to it as well. But again, it's really fun to be able to test those new features with software development. It's not about getting it perfect. It's about getting it to a great spot, getting it out there, using it, trying it, and then iterating. And so that's part of the process internally. It's, we get the update on our phone, we go to the product, software product, the app, and click through it. Hey, I have this issue. You report it in the product channel, they get it resolved. Then the subsequent releases are the ones that go out to our beta customers. They play with it, they submit feedback, and then down the road, all of our customers have access to those new features. It's really cool. I am not a software guy. I've had to learn all of this, but I love it more and more because of how quickly we can iterate and how fast we can play with it nowadays. It's awesome. We have the best product team, we've got the best customer success team, We've got the best damn team. It's a really exciting time here at buildwit. So that is everything. I appreciate you all listening. If you have questions, comments, feel free to email me aaronildwit.com when people do email me or call me, they're like, I didn't actually expect you to respond. I will respond. I will respond. Or if you call me, I will call you back. If you text me, I will text you. I've got nothing better to do, everybody. This is all I do. Hobbies? No. Family? No. It's just build it. It's just build it. It's just me and you. So if you want to drop a line, drop me a line. Reach out anytime. I appreciate you listening as always. We'll see you on the next one. Stay D.