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Foreign hello everybody. Monday edition the Dirt Talk podcast bill wit update number 17. This one's titled Tunneling Agendas and Code. This is the weekly account of some of the things that happen at BuildWit. Every week I garner these from we have a internal debrief with our leadership team every week. It is wins lessons learned. So write down a few things that went well this week and then write down a few things that you learned. We do it every Friday by Friday afternoon. And then I typically put all the information together. I love reading through it all. It gives me great situational awareness. And then I put together an update for our investors. Typically Saturday morning send that out and then I write newsletter here. So if you want to stay up to date within your email. All of this is within the newsletter. I wish I could tell you how to sign up for that. Maybe in the description if we know what we're doing. If not, good luck. But you're here. This is number 17. So here we go. Our latest YouTube video covering Barnard and Northern waters. Chimney Hollow reservoir project in Colorado popped off, which I am very happy about. Clocking over 70,000 hours, which is eight years of watch time in the first 24 hours. It is an absolute privilege to tell the stories of such projects and contractors. The audience we're reaching has never been bigger and we're only getting going. So if you haven't watched the video yet, you can go to our YouTube channel. Just search my name. Aaron Witt. A A R O N W I T T We'll probably be switching the channel title or overall channel name to Build Wit pretty soon if it's not changed already by the time you're listening to this. But one of our, our biggest videos, actually our biggest video to date when it comes to watch time. YouTube has been tough. I've talked about it. I'll continue talking about it. It's a really tough nut to crack. It's a very humbling, just a. A humbling medium. I am pretty good at social media, pretty good at Instagram, podcasting, gotten the hang of it. LinkedIn, Facebook, you know, I TikTok's one I just haven't really figured out but haven't spent the time on it as much honestly. But YouTube, it's a powerhouse. It's a long form. It's only getting more and more powerful as time goes on, especially with AI because AI is starting to train algorithms using video based content, using YouTube, which is wild. So it's, it's only becoming more and more valuable. And funny enough, everybody that doesn't know what they're talking about, says long forms, dead so on and so forth. Even though the biggest YouTube channels are long form and the biggest podcasts are all long form, so I don't know exactly what they're talking about. They must just not have good content. But long form, it is a different animal. You do have to respect long form. You can't just fill voids with with nonsense. It doesn't work. I have been the biggest blocker in us figuring this out over the past few years. I did not approach YouTube with the right degree of humility and understanding and desire to learn. I thought I knew what I was doing from a storytelling standpoint that that got in our way for a very long time, which I'm not super happy to admit. But now we've got a good thing going. We've got a great team with Jack and tj. We're supported by our overall production team. We've got a lot of editors now helping us, internal editors. They're usually working on training videos, but they're helping us with to keep up with editing because we can shoot pretty quick but editing is tough. And then we've just got great companies and projects that are willing to have us out. There are still so many, like a lot of big ones recently, honestly that have told us to to kick rocks, which sucks and is very misguided on their part I think because we're just there to make them look good. We're not asking for anything other than their willingness to have us. But I'm pretty tired of asking and begging so not doing that a lot anymore, honestly. We're just then instead running to those who want us, which has been great. Videos are getting approved. We've got a great backlog and a lot of really good stuff. I tomorrow leave for Australia again with Jack and TJ to go produce a bunch of cool stuff out there. So we're just going to keep the show on the road. Our watch time, which is the golden metric views are not as important on YouTube. It's really watch time that is the the end all be all has never been higher across the channel. We have more watch time this year than all of last year and we still have many months to go so we're getting the hang of it. I don't want to say we have it all figured out, but we're there. I appreciate you all watching. Check it out if you haven't because we've got a lot more coming. 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 Ariat 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. While I was planning to spend the whole week in Nashville, I travel a lot. So when I have a week at home, it's really valuable, really valuable. However, my friend Jason Miller at Midwest Mole, a company that we worked with in the early days of build with 2018, 2019, gave me a call and said they had a hand tunneling project going on in Indianapolis. So after a few phone calls, I packed a bag, I roped Jack and Drew into this one. We drove up to Indianapolis Friday afternoon. Evening we got there and then we checked out the project. Saturday morning they were hand mining a 72 inch tunnel underneath railroad tracks that needed to be done over the weekend. Once they started, they couldn't stop. It was the first time I'd seen hand mining up close. I've always heard about it. I've seen pictures, some clips of, of what it looks like. It's exactly as it sounds. It's two guys in a pipe with shovels advancing the tunnel by hand. If you want to learn more about it, the video by the time you're listening to this is also out on our YouTube channel. It was a great time, great crew. They were really happy to have us out. We were happy to be there. It was, it was an absolute blast and we appreciate people like that that keep our world moving. So that was the weekend. Next point. In past financial pinches, we've created some now harebrained ideas. They've always, we've always had the best of intentions. We, we have. But their effectiveness was questionable because they didn't align with our core offering. While some of these ideas might succeed into the future, we currently cannot afford to have anything but just build a great software product that's used by the field, supported by the Erie Dirt World Summit in our brand. However, we recently discovered two additional offerings that we don't plan to publicize, so I'm not going to explain what they are, but that serve the Dirt World and further our core offering while we're at it. So this is key because anybody in business knows that cash is king. If you can generate additional revenue, especially using things you've already invested in, that's really great because that's oxygen for the business to keep going and we need all the oxygen we can get. So this was an exciting development. You know, I was watching a. A documentary series on quarterbacks. It's called Quarterback on Netflix, highly recommend it. And one of the guys was talking about rushing the game and trying to make plays in the game happen rather than being patient and allowing the game come to you. And I think this was a great example of the game coming to us a little bit. We've. We've tried to rush things quite a bit because we have that pressure, that financial pressure. In past. I mean, the past five years we've done that. Whereas this was a great example of us being a little bit more patient and just letting the game come to us, which I think will really benefit us. And it's just another extension of our focus starting to mature a little bit. As a software company, we have a lot to figure out, but we're well on our way. And being able to focus, I think, is really, really benefiting us currently onto the area dirt World Summit 2026. The 2026 Agenda for next year is coming together by leveraging our experience with almost three events now, we're making the next better than ever. And our competition isn't any other event, really. It's our last event. And so by locking in 2026 before the 2025 event, which is November 5th through the 7th, we can keep the ball rolling with everybody attending. And our goal for next year is to sell it out potentially before the end of this year. We are likely to hint at some things. Likely reducing the. Likely reducing the size of the event to focus on overall quality. We've been growing it for three years now, and I think next year we're actually going to dial it back a little bit to focus really on just who wants to be there and focus on the overall experience. We've done a really nice job, but the problem is, again, people aren't comparing us to any other event. They're comparing us to our last event. So we have to keep way Stepping over the bar we've set and jumping over the bar we've sent now and it's, it's starting to become a hell of a bar. So we've, we've got to get serious. We can't, we can't at all get complacent here or else we're going to get our asses kicked. So that's the goal for next year. But the agenda is looking really good. It'll be in the Southwest, which I'm really excited about. Being somebody from the Southwest, totally different region. We've had it in Texas for three years. Finally leaving Texas, going elsewhere. And it should be just a phenomenal time. This year is going to be phenomenal next year even better. So that's almost done and it'll be ready for the 2025 event to, to talk about it at the event towards the end. And then finally as I've talked about the build and improve code base, the foundation for the software product has partially been ours, partially been development partners but now we have ownership of the entire code base. So that means the destiny's in our hands. That means we have no more excuses. So it's really exciting because we own where we're going, but it's also scary because we own where we're going, but that's where we want to be. That's a great place to be. That's the only place you can be when you're trying to do something significant. So we finally this week took ownership of the entire code base. Speaking of being a software company, I think that's a great step is owning whole product. Our developers have been within the code base for, for months now getting to, to know it and now they can take it and mold it and build upon it. However we need to to build the right product for the companies that are working with us, 250 plus civil construction companies and then most importantly those end users, typically the, the foreman crew leader level and then those out in the field doing the work, laborer, operator, etc level. So we're working really hard to make the product much better. We know what we need to do now it's just executing upon it and having the code helps us do that. So that is everything on core happenings this week. As always, really appreciate you listening. I appreciate you having interest in what we're doing as a business. Sometimes I, I get caught up in the same stuff everybody else is of like, well this isn't that exciting. Why share it? Or even worse, who the hell am I to share anything about business because I don't have anything figured out. But a lot of people seem to enjoy this and so I really appreciate you all just engaged and curious as to what we're doing as a company. Hopefully it also serves as a as a good example for others. The dirt world. The industry needs to share more and I think business needs to share more. There's a lot of bullshit in business right now, especially within language. There's just so much content. You go on LinkedIn, everybody has something to say and every business has a podcast, so on and so forth. But a lot of it's a gimmick, a lot of it's bullshit, A lot of it is this, this weird business speak that has no meaning. And so hopefully you can come here and find maybe a little bit of meeting. But if nothing else, this is just what's happening good, bad or indifferent at Build With. So thanks again. You can message me anytime. Aaron buildwith.com drop me an email and we'll see you on the next one. Stay dirty.