460: Ryan Fink and Ty Frackiewicz—Can AI Build My House?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe

Episode 460: Ryan Fink and Ty Frackiewicz—Can AI Build My House?

Release Date: November 25, 2025
Guests: Ryan Fink & Ty Frackiewicz (Co-founders, Diggs)
Main Theme:
Exploring how AI is revolutionizing the home-building industry through the “digital twin” concept, streamlining construction, improving transparency for homeowners, and addressing industry workforce challenges.

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Episode Overview

Mike Rowe hosts entrepreneurs Ryan Fink and Ty Frackiewicz, co-founders of Diggs, to discuss how artificial intelligence is transforming home construction and ownership. The conversation covers how AI can make the building process more efficient, reduce errors, empower tradespeople, attract the next generation of workers, and create digital “user manuals” for homes. Insights are also shared about overcoming resistance to tech adoption in construction, the future of skilled trades, and the unique journey of the Diggs founders.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Genesis of Diggs and AI in Home Building

• [00:03] Mike shares his initial skepticism about AI companies promising to revolutionize home building, only to watch Diggs gain traction.
• [04:26] Ty and Ryan discuss their backgrounds and entrepreneurial journey, including a lighthearted exchange about being the “most famous Ryan Fink.”

“It seems you've taken artificial intelligence. You've applied it to something near and dear to my foundation...and it's really been fun to watch and see how this is playing out in real time.” —Mike Rowe [04:29]

2. What is Diggs? The Digital Twin Explained

• [06:58] Diggs offers pre-construction software to help builders collaborate and plan, but its main innovation is integrating diverse building documents into a 3D digital twin for each home, documenting everything from floorplans to paint colors.
• [08:52] This digital twin acts as a “Carfax for your home,” tracking all materials, appliances, and even maintenance or repairs, vastly increasing transparency for homeowners and future buyers.

“Now you're getting a 2600% increase on information on your home...you can better maintain it, understand it.” —Ryan Fink [06:58]

3. Real-life Impact—For Builders, Homeowners, and Trades

• [06:05] Diggs is being adopted in educational programs (e.g., Copper Country School District), giving students hands-on building experience before graduation.
• [11:00] AI can reduce the stress and confusion for homeowners making countless decisions during a build, potentially even helping couples avoid marital strife.

“When I was building houses for married couples, building a house was so stressful. It was the top three reasons of getting a divorce.” —Ty Frank Skivich [11:00]

4. Communication Breakdowns & “Game of Telephone”

• [12:23] The traditional construction process is described as a game of telephone—every handoff increases the chance of costly miscommunications. Diggs centralizes all information, mitigating this.

“The odds of a miscommunication are 100%. It's absolutely gonna get screwed up.” —Mike Rowe [12:31]

5. Will AI Replace Architects? Limits & Opportunities

• [15:46] AI’s ability to suggest and design based on user input is growing, but the consensus is that human creativity and site-specific insights keep architects relevant.

“The thing that AI can't do, it can't go to the lot. ...Architects—why they're so creative—they're artists...AI can't replace that.” —Ty Frank Skivich [16:42]

6. Speed of AI Change & Industry Adoption

• [20:20] The podcast discusses recent leaps in AI adoption (citing Oracle’s earnings) and the obsolescence risk for those slow to adapt.
• [33:30] Slow tech adoption in construction is attributed to developers' lack of hands-on industry insight and generational resistance among tradespeople.

“These larger companies, every company needs to get on board.” —Ryan Fink [21:06]

7. AI, Efficiency, and Skilled Trades—Friend or Foe?

• [35:10] AI could take over monotonous tasks, letting skilled tradespeople focus on craft and user experience.
• [38:28] Ultimately, Diggs’ primary customer is the homeowner; the goal is a seamless experience and digital record—whether you’re building or buying an existing home.
• [40:17] AI makes construction roles appealing to younger generations accustomed to digital workflows and can amplify the impact of a shrinking workforce.

“AI can be their copilot. As they're onboarding...they can be an expert in takeoffs, whereas before it would take months and months.” —Ryan Fink [41:00]

8. Overcoming Tech Reluctance and Scaling Up

• [55:19] The biggest challenge is convincing large builders to upgrade to cloud-based solutions, enabling AI integration, and proving ROI through “lighthouse” early adopters.

“How do you get a multibillion dollar national builder to change course to that degree?” —Mike Rowe [56:19]

9. Founders’ Journey & Vision

• [23:28] Ryan and Ty describe their early forays into computer vision, AR, and consumer tech—leading to multiple startups and successful exits before Diggs.
• [43:12] Their aspiration is to build a generational company impacting every aspect of homebuilding and maintenance, akin to “Zillow or Airbnb” in scale.

“We want to take this company all the way. So we think it'd be a big, big public company.” —Ryan Fink [37:53]

10. The Skilled Trades Shortage—Can AI Help?

• [52:01] Despite a demographic crisis (more retirees than entrants), AI can entice digital-native workers and make existing staff more effective, but the industry must reinvest in vocational training.

“It's a really high job satisfaction...90% job satisfaction for the trades.” —Ryan Fink [54:05]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Home Ownership Experience

“Wouldn’t it be great if [your house] came with a user’s manual?” —Chuck [02:16]

• On AI in All Areas

“Is AI going to touch every single daggone thing there is? ...Absolutely.” —Mike Rowe & Ryan Fink [05:18]

• On Dark Secrets of Real Estate

“There are certain states you're not forced to tell the buyer that a murder occurred.” —Ty Frank Skivich [09:38]

• On Decision Fatigue in Building

“I've seen people just check out, almost collapse under the weight of having to decide an endless list of things.” —Mike Rowe [10:32]

• On the Relentless Pace of Change

“My only hesitation in having this conversation with you guys is it's going to be obsolete in about 48 hours.” —Mike Rowe [19:54]

• On Stubborn Builders

“A lot of them are on prem...printing things out.” —Ryan Fink [56:02]

• On Their Founding Dynamic

“We've been friends since fifth grade...Our first company idea was to open a Baskin Robbins.” —Ryan Fink & Ty Frank Skivich [43:47]

• On Their Inspiration

“All of it’s for the ice cream, at the end of the day.” —Ryan Fink [51:40]

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Important Timestamps

• [06:05] — AI and vocational education: students build homes using Diggs.
• [06:58] — What is Diggs? Digital twin explained.
• [11:00] — Stress of building homes, decision fatigue, and AI’s role.
• [15:46] — Will AI replace architects?
• [20:20] — Speed of AI progress and industry adaptation.
• [35:10] — Can AI “bring back” craftsmanship?
• [37:29] — Tangible time and money savings from Diggs.
• [40:17] — AI and the next-gen trades workforce.
• [56:02] — Big builders resisting cloud-based AI solutions.
• [57:19] — Partnering with a top 10 builder as a “lighthouse” case.

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Tone and Atmosphere

• Conversational, curious, and humorous—Mike’s irreverence and the guests’ down-to-earth stories balance the technical talk.
• Pragmatic skepticism meets authentic optimism—the guests don’t oversell AI, acknowledging limitations and the need for human expertise.
• A “box of chocolates”—frequent asides, jokes, and references to previous careers/life events keep the discussion lively.

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Conclusion

This episode demystifies AI’s role in homebuilding, showing how “digital twins” and process automation can save time, reduce errors, and create enduring, transparent records for homeowners. While there are barriers—cultural and technological—to industry-wide adoption, Diggs’ founders are optimistic, positioning their solution as both a tool for modern efficiency and a bridge for the future of skilled trades. AI, for them, doesn’t replace the artistry or people in the process; it empowers everyone involved—from the classroom, to the jobsite, to the homeowner.

“Everybody should have a digital twin or homefax. On their home.” —Ryan Fink [51:32]

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Transcript

[Mike Rowe]

Well, here we go again. It's me, Mike Rowe. This is the way I heard it. And, Chuck, I'm at one of these home builders conventions a couple years ago, right? And a couple entrepreneurs pull me aside after my speech, and they tell me a story about a company called Diggs that they were determined to start. And it was going to be a company that used AI to make the home building process easier. And I asked them if it was gonna have any impact on the number of homes that were behind schedule with construction and over budget. And maybe, you know, could this AI thing, remember this is over two years ago, have some sort of impact on hiring? And they were like, yes, yes, yes, yes. It's gonna change. It's gonna change everything. And I'm like, mm, mm. You know, I mean, how many entrepreneurs, you know, pitch me on these things? But this company has more than a toehold. It's working, it's growing. They reached out later and started advertising on this podcast, Full Disclosure. So I just thought, with AI in the headlines and with you impersonating a general contractor all those years ago, these guys might be fun to talk to. And as it turns out, they are. I think I might have actually learned something.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah.

[Chuck (Mike Rowe's friend, former general contractor)]

I'll tell you, you really hit the nail on the head with me being able to use this. If this had been around when I built the house that I built, I might still be married. Who knows?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, Chuck did get the house built, but maybe next week. This is called Can AI Build My House? If it goes well, if it's well received, we'll follow it up with Can AI Save My Marriage? And I'll let you host that one. Perfect. Regardless. And in all seriousness, if you're getting your home built and if you're thinking about buying a home, this is software with AI on it that's probably gonna change the entire experience for everyone forever. I mean, my thing was, I'm already in the house. I bought it. I didn't have it built. But, like, where's my magical guide to every single thing? Behind the wall or under the floor?

[Chuck (Mike Rowe's friend, former general contractor)]

It didn't come with a user's manual.

[Mike Rowe]

No.

[Chuck (Mike Rowe's friend, former general contractor)]

Wouldn't it be great if it did?

[Mike Rowe]

And that's kind of what this thing is. I think it could be transformational. I don't know. I might run it by my buddies over at this old house as well. They would probably dig it.

[Chuck (Mike Rowe's friend, former general contractor)]

But I would imagine.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, for now, I just thought it would be fun to see. What in the wide world of sports is AI going to do in the home? Building industry turns out quite a bit. The show's called Can AI Build My House? The answer, right after this. Dumb. So a lot of people have seen me in the current ad for PureTalk, and every day somebody stops me to see if the offer is legit. The deal in question is called Unlimited for life, and people think it's too good to be true. And frankly, I don't blame them. Because PureTalk is offering unlimited talk, unlimited text, and unlimited data for just $29.95 a month for life. Not your phone's life, your life. People are having a hard time believing they can lock in their wireless rate for unlimited talk, text and data for just $29.95 a month. But it's true. And I tell them it's true. Unlimited for Life includes a 30 gig hotspot on a crazy fast 5G network. This is PureTalk's top tier plan. It's normally $65 a month, which means at $29.95 a month, you'll save 50% every single month from now until the day you cease to be. Go to PureTalk.com ro lock in the best rate ever for unlimited talk, text and data for as long as you live. You can switch in as little as 10 minutes. You can keep your phone, you can keep your number, and you can start saving today. Taxes and fees not included. Some restrictions do apply. See PureTalk.com for details. Because the offer ends 12 hours. 25 PureTalk.com Roe it's the real deal. You might even say it's the deal of your lifetime. Pure Talk. Hello, geniuses. Hello.

[Ryan Fink]

Hello, Mike. That's the best entrance I've got.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, it goes downhill from here. No, I mean it, man. The headlines have caught up to your thesis. It seems you've taken artificial intelligence. You've applied it to something near and dear to my foundation. Full disclosure, you've advertised on this podcast in the past. I appreciate that, and it's really been fun to watch and see how this is playing out in real time. Ty, your last name is Frank Skivich?

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Yep.

[Ryan Fink]

I nailed it.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Nailed it.

[Mike Rowe]

Ty, Frank Skivich and Ryan Fink. Yeah. Isn't there pardon me, but a more famous Ryan Fink than you out there?

[Ryan Fink]

Not that.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, shoot.

[Ryan Fink]

Not what? Me and my family. Yeah.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

I thought you were the most famous.

[Chuck (Mike Rowe's friend, former general contractor)]

Yeah, like a baseball player.

[Mike Rowe]

Baseball player.

[Ryan Fink]

Okay.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. You think AI is going to impact baseball in some way?

[Ryan Fink]

Oh, absolutely. Baseball is all about math these days, right?

[Mike Rowe]

It's all. Well, it always has been about math. I mean, is AI going to touch every single daggone thing there is absolutely.

[Ryan Fink]

Everything except, you know, what you can physically do with your hands for the foreseeable future.

[Mike Rowe]

See, that's where I feel like I look a little bit smarter than I am. You know, I mean, not a day goes by where somebody doesn't ask me to talk about job security in the trades, which is something nobody ever asked about. In fact, it was the opposite. Right, Ty, you built houses, what, up north somewhere? Was it Montana?

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Montana, yeah.

[Chuck (Mike Rowe's friend, former general contractor)]

Yep.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Started in Washington, back home.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. Yeah. So let's start there then. Let's start with the trades and workforce and how the Diggs product is impacting careers and the trades.

[Ryan Fink]

Absolutely. Yeah. So there's actually a company or a school district. We're working with Copper Country School District and we're working with Corey Sumas, who's the program director, and they've partnered up with Moyle Construction and they've adopted Diggs. So their students are actually using our software with Moyle Construction to build two homes this year. So before they even graduate high school, they're going to have two homes under their belt, which is pretty cool.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay. Yeah, well, obviously I started in the middle. It's hard to know where to start with a conversation like this, but let's assume the listener is not up to speed with Diggs and let's also assume that as a default position, they're bored by software or sentences with software in it. Like most people are. Like, they know it's out there, they know it matters, but make it relevant. Ryan. Yeah. What is the product? Why is it relevant to people who otherwise would just kind of check out of the whole conversation?

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah. So if you're a builder, Diggs has a pre construction software that helps you be more efficient on the collaboration through selections through the takeoff. So understanding how much quantities go into the home, all the way to diagramming where those quantities belong. And then if you're a homeowner, Diggs is really relevant because if you're working with a custom home builder, for instance, or you're just purchasing a production home, digs through the build process, our AI takes all of that unstructured build documents, think the floor plan, the selection documents, etc. And it structures it into a 3D digital twin all the way down to your paint colors. So now as a homeowner, instead of getting, you know, a physical binder with about 30 documents relevant to the home, you're getting a 2600% increase on information on your home. So now you can better maintain it, understand it. Hopefully you don't have a leaky pipe that's going to burst because you have a cold front coming on. That's something AI can start to predict and say, hey, there is this cold front coming on. You should probably go around and maintain your home and winterize your hose bibs, for instance.

[Mike Rowe]

The thing that I thought was ingenious about the product actually was like a click down from that. So it's. I get the builders need to implement it and I get the person having the house built will benefit hugely from improved levels of communication. I get with the builder, the vendors, with everything that touches the home. But what about when they sell the house? And because most people who move into a new home aren't moving into a home they just had built, they're moving to a pre existing home. What the hell is behind the wall Total?

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Exactly.

[Mike Rowe]

What's up in the attic, what's in the crawl space, what's in the basement, what's like, where are the pipes? Where. Yeah, it's like a minefield. And so this digital twin you're talking about essentially is a, is a schematic that goes all the way down to where you got your wallpaper.

[Ryan Fink]

Exactly. Yeah, all the way down to your wallpaper, your paint colors, your tile, your grout, the make and model of your appliances. And not only that, once you have the digital twin, it becomes the, the home facts of the home. So we have Carfax. So if you get an accident, etc, you legally have to report any type of maintenance on your car. And that's tracked in a single database. We have nothing for the home. So you go into, you know, purchasing a home and if there's water damage, you have no idea that there's ever water damage or there was mold.

[Mike Rowe]

And there's no, I mean, aren't there disclosures though, through real estate?

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Certain states have certain disclosures all the way down to some dark things you don't have to tell people, but certain states you are forced to tell people.

[Mike Rowe]

You mean like murders and stuff?

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Yeah, yeah. There are certain states that you're, you don't have to tell the buyer that that occurred. But then there are states that you have to. It's pretty crazy.

[Mike Rowe]

This took a dark day.

[Ryan Fink]

I know, I know.

[Mike Rowe]

Talk about paint colors and wallpapers and.

[Ryan Fink]

I'm trying to get a light bodies.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, I mean that's so interesting then. Okay, so if there's no obligation to disclose the, that something, you know, calamitous happened in the home. What, what if you're asked directly, are you compelled to answer honestly?

[Ty Frank Skivich]

I think that's up to the person themselves.

[Ryan Fink]

It comes up to their morals.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ryan Fink]

If they want to hide it or get a. Get a higher sales price or if they want to be, you know, open and disclose it.

[Mike Rowe]

But to be clear, Diggs in no way refers to the getting rid of the body in an efficacious way.

[Ryan Fink]

It's not about digging. It's not about graves or anything slang for the home. Just to be clear.

[Mike Rowe]

Hi. You build homes? Yeah, obviously. So, like, this will sound obvious to you and to anybody who's ever built a house. Chuck, I remember you impersonated a general contractor, what, 25 years ago or something?

[Chuck (Mike Rowe's friend, former general contractor)]

Yes, a little bit longer than that.

[Mike Rowe]

But yeah, so, so, like, the details. Yeah, I. I've seen people just check out, almost collapse under the weight of having to decide an endless list of things. Is that. That's. That's not going to go away ever, right?

[Ty Frank Skivich]

No, but I mean, hopefully it'll get easier. That's the. That's. That's one of our goals with Diggs. But. Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. When I was building houses for married couples, building a house was so stressful. It was the top three reasons of getting a divorce. Like, that's how powerful that is of making decisions.

[Mike Rowe]

Sorry, Chuck.

[Chuck (Mike Rowe's friend, former general contractor)]

Well, as it turns out, it didn't work out, so.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, it was a nice house, though.

[Chuck (Mike Rowe's friend, former general contractor)]

Yeah, great.

[Mike Rowe]

It's a great house.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Sorry.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

No, you're good. But with all of the decisions that are made, I mean, it's. Yeah, it's pretty. It's daunting. You go in and you have to pick out lighting, but it's. You think you're going to just pick out some ceiling light? No, you have to pick out your garage lighting, your powder, bathroom lighting, everything that's going in the house. That's just one aspect of it. Then depending on the size of the house, just gets bigger.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah. Tracking all those decisions and do things work together or not? Right now, you're just getting all this, you know, paper. You're taking pictures of the physical products in the showroom, kind of all laid out, and then you're pulling up all these different pictures. It's just very. It's a very broken process today.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

And there's. There's only normally one person that's doing that, which is either the site super, the project manager on the job.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

But they're working with all the vendors and the subs. And the vendors and subs. They only care about what their line of work is. So it's up to that one individual to capture all that information, document that information, have it in one spot, and make sure that it's all accurate.

[Mike Rowe]

And pass it on.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

And pass it on.

[Ryan Fink]

Exactly.

[Mike Rowe]

Because what's easy to forget is that this is a game of telephone.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Absolutely.

[Ryan Fink]

Literally.

[Mike Rowe]

And the more people you have between you and your basic decision and the ultimate implementation, I mean, it's math. Right. People have done studies like the odds of a miscommunication are 100%.

[Ryan Fink]

Absolutely. 100%.

[Mike Rowe]

It's absolutely gonna get screwed up.

[Ryan Fink]

Yep.

[Mike Rowe]

One of my first thoughts when I looked at the implications, and just so people understand, you guys formed Diggs. When was it, three years now?

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah, about three years. 20. 22.

[Mike Rowe]

Yep.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And I. I sat down with you guys in Vegas somewhere, like two years ago.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah. So I don't want to say we were fanboying out when we saw you were the keynote speaker.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, right, right, right. At Likes or something. To build a show.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah, at the Builder show and K Biz, which is the kitchen and bath show. So there's, I don't know, like, six or seven thousand people in the audience, and you just. Like, we were watching you, and you're just commanding the audience. And I went over to Ty and I was like, we're going to work with him someday.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

I chuckled a little bit and I.

[Ryan Fink]

Was like, okay, then persistence paid off. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

All right, so this is just took another weird. It's a big day for everybody. Right. This is where Chuck gets up quietly and locks the door. Well, yeah, I mean, those events are really interesting for me because I usually come in kind of hot, and I'm a fan of your industry, but I don't know much other than there's a giant gathering of entrepreneurs and people in all different strata of business. You know, they're all there for basically the same reason, but with a thousand different variations on a theme. So it's impossible really to know what to. What to say to a group like that. So I just get up there and. And essentially try and say, look, I'm a fan of. I'm a fan of building things and making things, and. And I'm a fan of doing those things in this country. And more recently, I've become a fan of doing them more effectively. Efficiency, that word gives me the creeps a little bit because it just kind of feels like the human component just gets completely rubbed out of the equation. But, yeah, you reached out, and I thought if your product does what I Think you're saying it's going to do a. What the hell is going to happen to architects? Because can't a home buyer sit down and essentially, in an animated way, create their home with the tech? Just tell it now, I want this room a little bigger, this one a little smaller. I want. I want this porch. No, I want it bigger and essentially create, like rough it out and then give it to the program and then build the damn thing.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of architects that are building kind of the engineering plans and then ingesting them into digs. That's kind of where we start when you have the construction docs of the floor plan and then the collaboration on the floor plan happens as well. So if you want to move walls and whatnot, that's where the collaboration with the architect happens. But I think, and Ty knows better than me, but AutoCAD's probably not going to go anywhere anytime soon where you actually create the structure documents.

[Mike Rowe]

Now, when you say you create, you mean the architect.

[Ryan Fink]

The architect, yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I'm wondering when the end user has the rudimentary tools to allow him or her to credibly impersonate the architect. Like, is the architectural field one of the ones that feels a little exposed right now?

[Ryan Fink]

I mean, absolutely. Good. I mean, again, Ty knows better than me, but that's one of the areas where kind of AGI, artificial general intelligence can really make an impact for architects in general. Just because training off of, you know, thousands or millions of floor plans, a smarter AI system could theoretically start to suggest, based on your style, just have a conversation with the AI. This is the type of floor plan like, as built, it could output it.

[Mike Rowe]

It's like, Ty, the AI is going to be. Are you sure you want to put the solarium there?

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Are you sure?

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Yeah. It's a weird. That's a weird area. I don't think it'll ever replace an architect. The reason why I think AI will be used to. I know I don't want to say make them more efficient, but it absolutely will make them more efficient. The thing that AI can't do, it can't go to the lot. It can't go and look at the view. It doesn't know that there's a river like a hundred feet away from the property line. So that's one of the things that architects and why they're so creative, they're artists, especially from a custom home standpoint. They go to that location, they take pictures, they look at it and they dream of what this Layout and this floor plan can be based on their clients. AI can't replace that.

[Mike Rowe]

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[Ty Frank Skivich]

We do.

[Mike Rowe]

And we got drones. Yeah, we do and we throw it. We fly a drone with a pretty great camera and we map the site and I'm pretty sure the tech can identify the river at some point. That's fair, right? So I mean look, I, I don't know where, where the relative singularity exist in your world, but I'm really interested in this idea that it's. Things are moving so fast. I mean last night in real time, Larry Ellison may have become wealthier than Elon Musk. He just made $300 billion because Oracle reported unbelievable earnings with AI. Not from AI, you know. And it just seems like now a lot of, a lot of companies have been making a lot of money because they've been spending a of time lot on AI. Now Oracle made a bunch of money and I mean my only hesitation in having this conversation with you guys is it's going to be obsolete in about 48 hours. Yeah, but I mean isn't that the world you're in? Aren't you constantly waking up and Looking around and going, you know, what's new?

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah. I mean, We've been building AI for about 15 years, so we're excited that now the rest of the market has caught up. Essentially, I think what we're seeing with Oracle is that it's a really major proof point that xai, that OpenAI, all these large companies are investing in the infrastructure which is needed to accelerate the development of AI. So I think with these investments into the infrastructure, we're going to see AI just accelerate faster than it already has over the past two years. So things are going to get pretty interesting, I think. Impact for the smaller kind of vertical. Specific software companies like us that are using AI for construction, for instance, what it means for us is just people, they have to get on board. These larger companies, Every company needs to get on board.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. I mean, you're talking about National Home Builders.

[Ryan Fink]

National. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Are you worried at all, either of you, about, you know, the Terminator? Are you worried? I mean, it just seems like the average person is really being asked to, you know, ignore the implications of efficiency. Taken to Huxley's logical end, who said the enemy of freedom is total anarchy, but the second biggest enemy is total efficiency. Right. Like, so. So you either ignore that or you're just 100% on board with this is just going to dramatically improve everything. There's.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Not a lot of nuance.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah. I don't think I could be that certain about anything. You can use anything for. For evil, of course. I think. Did you see Elon Musk's new pay package that they're contemplating?

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, it had a T in it.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Yeah.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah. So trillion dollar pay package, part of that was to sell a million robots, these humanoids. So if you were to ask me before that, I would be like Terminator, that's not going to happen. Now we're pushing a million robots out into the world and we reach AGI, where the robots can think as well or better than a human. It's pretty scary. Um, so I, I think at that point, yeah, we need to have a lot of regulations in place. We need to. We can't centralize AI to any one company. It really needs to be more open source so that there could be more general oversight over it. But any one company having controlling AGI, I think that's where things could get a little scary.

[Mike Rowe]

And the robot thing too, I don't know how to think about that because I have no idea. What, what, what's the dexterity? What's the. I mean, what's the real Facility of these things. Is it a Roomba with. With arms, or is it a thing that can actually walk up your stairs and start turning a wrench on your toilet? Like, at some point, I think Musk said he thought there would be more humanoid robots than Americans in, like, 10 years or something. Whoa.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, like, everybody's gonna have one now. I don't know what that means. I don't know what they actually do, really, what they're capable of. But, I mean, you're. You said 15 years ago, you started playing around with this. What did that even look like 15 years ago? How did you even talk about it in a boardroom?

[Ryan Fink]

Well, we didn't. Most people didn't understand it. It wasn't really dubbed as AI back then, either. It was more on the techniques to build AI. So it's computer vision, machine learning, and we kind of fell backwards into it to try to solve a problem. Computer vision, machine learning, AI seemed to be the thing to solve it. Our first product that we built, I've been.

[Mike Rowe]

Define the problem just a little more.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Before we solve it. So I know what it is.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah. So I was an avid runner at the time, and I'd run the same route every single day, and I wanted to know, you know, where I sped up and slowed down in my route. And so I wanted to see a visual representation of my old ghost to race against it. So as I did some research around. Well, is this even possible? Computer vision and machine learning, like, kept coming up as a way to not only create a 3D digital person, but then how do you anchor that 3D digital person to the real world so it stays on the ground?

[Mike Rowe]

Where do you experience it? Like, are you wearing glasses?

[Ryan Fink]

Wearing glasses, yeah. So I had these big, bulky glasses on up at the time, looking like a madman who's, like, wired down to my phone. And I was running around all these parks, and people were just giving me, like, the most weird looks.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, you can't blame them.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Yeah.

[Ryan Fink]

No, that's fair.

[Mike Rowe]

But it's worth pointing out, too, that if you run. And I. I used to run every morning, and I. I guess I probably fell into the same rut, now that I think about it, which is why homeostasis kind of kicks in. And pretty soon the benefits of running the same speed and the same distance diminish. And so if you're running with someone. Exactly right. You can be pushed, but if you're running alone, you have to push yourself, and that's hard. So you want to create a ghost of yourself to run with you and what a little faster in areas where you slow down.

[Ryan Fink]

Exactly. So you would see your old self start to push you. Be like, hey, this is where you're slowing down or this is where you're, you know, speeding up. You could even set times around like, okay, I ran a 6 minute mile yesterday, I want to run a 5,45. And then your ghost would run that pace and you could pace with your ghost. We were going to take that. All different types of places where you race with your. It worked. Yeah. I think the one hold back there where we had to pivot is the hardware, which today I don't think you see too many smart glasses around. We're still waiting for the hardware to catch up. Groups like Apple have released heads up displays since then, but it's still in a pretty bulky form factor. So I think yeah, once, once we get the hardware to catch up, that type of use case is going to be phenomenal.

[Mike Rowe]

What did it do to your times? I'm curious.

[Ryan Fink]

Well, with the bulky glasses, it didn't really help my times too much. But yeah, I mean I was able to bring bring down my times by 10, 15 seconds, which is significant. Which is huge.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, yeah. So this was a different company. This wasn't Diggs. What was this company called?

[Ryan Fink]

So on the go platforms, or OTG as we dubbed it. And we built that out, I would say we kind of just failed forward with that company. I remember when we, we went through an accelerator called the Portland Seed Fund and on the first day they basically put you through a three month class around how to be an entrepreneur. And on the first day they had this list of like, here's 10 or 12 things don't do. And I picked up that list and I was like, I've made every mistake on this list.

[Mike Rowe]

Cautionary, great.

[Ryan Fink]

But you know, perseverance, you know, picked up. I always played sports when I was younger and grew a kind of a big chip. I didn't want to fail. And so we ended up kind of struggling to get that one to an exit. And we pitched the or, we pivoted the technology to a gesture interface because one of the issues is it was connected with your phone so it broke the experience. You couldn't reach out and touch the virtual information.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Ryan Fink]

So we took some computer vision machine learning experience we had gained and we said, okay, well let's interact with that virtual content with your hands. And a company came along and acquired, acquired that technology.

[Mike Rowe]

Were you partners at the time?

[Ryan Fink]

Yep.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Yeah. And the one Thing with that gesture technology is we did it with a single RGB camera. So where before you would need a dual camera set to even try to capture that.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I don't know what that means. Rgb, red, green, blue.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay. Where's the camera located?

[Ryan Fink]

Is it in your heads up display?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. So it's all okay? Yeah, yeah. That must have been clunky. Very. But you still built it and you sold it.

[Ryan Fink]

Yep. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

So you made a little money.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Got a little taste of like, oh.

[Ryan Fink]

That was kind of cool.

[Mike Rowe]

What'd you do after otg?

[Ryan Fink]

So we stayed at the acquiring company for about two years.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Yeah.

[Ryan Fink]

And we helped build and launch a remote collaboration software for them. So think GE and Porsche were two of our earliest customers. So you'd send a pair of heads up displays with the software, remote collaboration software, instead of flying a human around to service these large machines. So now you could remote call somebody, an expert back at HQ who can walk you through a fix. But we saw that technology and the adoption of the enterprise and we thought there was an opportunity to bring that to consumers. And this was right before Apple released ARKit, their AR platform. And so we jumped out and we started building our second company, Stream and applying the remote collaboration learnings to connect homeowners to brands and our AI experience to take a camera feed and understand what's in that feed and start to structure it. So Stream connected homeowners to like Lowe's and Best Buy and Traeger and Ikea, all of our customers of our last company, for things like remote estimates and quoting. Because if you think like a matterport scan, you use the phone to scan a place and you get a 3D model. Now think of that on like steroids. We were running it through optical character recognition to recognize serial number and model numbers. As you're on this video call, we're creating a 3D digital twin in the background in real time so that the remote expert can take measurements to capture dimensions of the job. So that that company too was acquired in 2019 by Front Door, who owns a bunch of home warranty brands. So we scaled that company to tens of millions of users through these great brands. And then our ultimate goal is to create that digital twin. But it wasn't in a very scalable way because you could imagine if you're calling Lowe's for a flooring estimate, that's for one room, not your whole house. So we had all these micro video calls and we're piecing together the home for the homeowner. Because they got to keep that digital imprint.

[Mike Rowe]

How is it AI driven? I mean, it sounds like it's just a lot of communication. Yeah, but how did the AI impact stream?

[Ryan Fink]

So we weren't only taking the video feed in, we were running it through our algorithm. So using computer vision to understand the spatial information. So to actually create a 3D model of what the camera was seeing, and then our machine learning model to recognize the different appliances and how they're oriented in 3D space. So it's actually really hard for the camera to understand what it's seeing. So we're training the camera to basically have a brain and understand everything.

[Mike Rowe]

Is this happening because you see a need? Are you responding to the market saying, hey, I really wish we had this and we don't. Like, I'm just curious to know where the inspiration comes from to actually launch something like that.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah, no, I mean, we saw it play out in the enterprise and how much ROI that these companies were getting remotely solving issues and not rolling trucks. And we thought it'd be really applicable as, you know, a homeowner, instead of going into the store to get new flooring, for instance, I would have to bring in, like, I think my dimensions are 10 by 20. Then they would give me a quote, and then it turns out my dimensions were wrong most of the time. So how do you pull the context of the home and bring it into the retail store remotely so that they could have a curated experience and provide you with exactly what you need? So it's born out of a need and just some experience from seeing an enterprise really work and trying to bring that into the consumer space.

[Mike Rowe]

So you sold that one too?

[Ryan Fink]

Yes.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. You really can't hold a job.

[Ryan Fink]

I know. Yeah. And if you. If you realize. So after everyone we sell, Ty always leaves too. I don't know. So he'll, like, he'll go and. He worked at Amazon after the last one and after the first one is LexisNexis. So it's like he's trying to get away. It's a little weird.

[Mike Rowe]

We've been friends since fifth grade, back in.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

I enjoy it.

[Mike Rowe]

Why has tech been so historically slow to get integrated into building? At least on a comparative analysis?

[Ryan Fink]

Dumb.

[Mike Rowe]

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[Ty Frank Skivich]

I don't know if it's just the tech in general, but I do think like, when it comes to tech, it's being built by folks who have never really been in. Like, if I'm speaking for a residential home perspective, they've never really done it, so they don't quite know what problems they're solving for. Exactly. It's also built in a non user friendly way. So it's very robust, which takes a lot of time for training and setting up, which can be very cumbersome. Yeah.

[Ryan Fink]

You have a technologist trying to build software for an industry where they haven't felt the pain point.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Yeah, exactly. So I think that's one aspect. But then also the other aspect is in like construction in general, the generations that have gone into it have so much knowledge and they've been doing it their way and it works for them, it works well for them. And so introducing something of a technology or a new software, it might scare them or they're like, nope, I'm doing it. Find my way, I'm good. So there's kind of that hesitancy to make that leap into change.

[Mike Rowe]

That's what I think is most interesting. If you think about, you know, shows like this Old House and they kind of remind you that the craftsmanship has been on the decline in a general way for generations. And so on the one hand, there's this idea that what we need to do is get back to the time when homes were built to last. And so in order to go back, you know, like, that's. That's a. That's a directional metaphor. AI is clearly going forward. So do we go back to go forward? Do we go forward to go backwards? Right. And so, I mean, how does this old house think about AI?

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Is really the question.

[Ryan Fink]

I think AI allows you to go back because now AI takes a lot of the, like, monotonous. Monotonous tasks that you have to do as a builder. Tracking all of the information, like Ty said, organizing it, the communication, the collaboration. It does that for you so that you can focus on the user experience and the finer details.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

You touched on something you just mentioned. I just had this conversation with somebody.

[Mike Rowe]

The other day about.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Because I walked into an older house, it's probably 20, 30 years old. Just you walk in to that house and you just. It just feels sturdy.

[Mike Rowe]

Tight.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Yeah, it's tight. It just. And then you walk into a new house and it's like. It's light.

[Mike Rowe]

It's. It's.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

I don't want to say it feels cheap, but it feels cheap. But I think going back to your. Your question or point about how do we bring craftsmen back, I think, or the craftsmanship back, I think that really comes down to the builder themselves and what their goal is like. Are they in it to make money? Are they in it to build a beautiful portfolio of homes, make customers happy, or build a beautiful, sturdy product?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

And that also flows all the way down to the subs and vendors, because if everybody's looking at it just to make quick money and speed, speed, speed, you're not going to build a sturdy home that's going to last for 30, 40, 50 years.

[Mike Rowe]

That's appealing and interesting.

[Ryan Fink]

Yep.

[Mike Rowe]

Is your product ultimately saving people money?

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah, it's saving people money, money and time. So we're finding that builders that are using a software like Diggs are eliminating five to seven critical errors on a project. So each project that are really costly, they're eliminating 90% of truck rolls. Truck rolls, Truck rolls. So think in, you know, warranty, you have to roll a truck to go see what's wrong, and then you come back, you capture all the product information, you come back, you see if it's in warranty, roll another truck with the material. On average, they're rolling two to three trucks for each warranty. Issue. So we're able to eliminate 90% of that just because they have all the information on the home and what's potentially wrong out of the gate. That's something we provide with that digital twin. And we're seeing during the construction process that builders are saving 5 to 10 hours per person on each project each week. So each employee and tradesperson that they have is just more efficient because now they have the information on what's going to be installed, what changes were made, what change orders happened. It's immediately accessible through Diggs and through our AI. You could ask Diggs, which is our AI chat, what's the new faucet that's supposed to be installed in bath 1? And immediately get the answer instead of trying to go back and look through all your texts or look through all the documents or emails to try to find that information.

[Mike Rowe]

How big is this company going to get?

[Ryan Fink]

I mean, selfishly, we're hoping this is the last thing, you know, we do. And this is a generational type of brand, so we, we want to take this company all the way. So we think it'd be a big, big public company.

[Mike Rowe]

So how do you get there? I mean, I know when we first talked, the idea was big builders need to understand this tech exists because it can dramatically impact their bottom line. But in the end, like, who's your real end user? Who's your real customer in this? Is it the builder or is it the homeowner?

[Ryan Fink]

I mean, at the end of the day, it's the homeowner. If the homeowner is involved during the build, it's them, it's the client experience, it's enhancing that. But ultimately it's getting that digital twin to the homeowner to power the home facts of the home for them, to give them that digital record on how to maintain their life's largest asset. That's absolutely our end goal.

[Mike Rowe]

How much time do you spend explaining to people how this works and just kind of petting them on the head and say, it's going to be okay.

[Ryan Fink]

It'S going to be all right? I would say three years ago, when we first started, a lot more than we do today. I think it's just. I don't know what has shifted. I think just the amount of companies that have adopted AI, it's kind of become. It's coming out of the hype cycle, so I think that helps. But I think today most of the builders ask us, they say, look, we know we need to adopt AI. We know it's going to have A positive impact on our business. We just don't know how. So help us figure out how we can implement AI in meaningful ways in our business. And it's not always the same. Yeah, but that's probably the. The main question we get. There's less fear today. Maybe when you go down more to the trades, there's a little bit. And we always assure them, like you're working with your hands, you're not going anywhere.

[Mike Rowe]

What is the current state of play? I think I know the answer. I just filmed with Dr. Horton in Texas on really what amounts to a recruiting campaign. And they're all in. It's like there's an alarm bell ringing throughout the industry to get more skilled workers in this thing. What's the impact of AI? Which is the first question I ask you stupidly, because it's obviously on my mind. But let's talk about it now. How is this going to help close the skills gap in construction?

[Ryan Fink]

I think that's a really great and big question. I think initially there's only so many trades today. So how do you amplify your existing workforce? I think AI can help do that, make them more efficient. Beyond that, the up and coming generation, they live in their phone, they live in a digital world. And then when you try to get them to come work for a builder who works off of pen and paper or works with some really antiquated technology, that's a really hard ask for the younger generation to come in and just have kind of a bucket of cold water splash on them.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Ryan Fink]

So AI is going to not only be enticing for them to come. Come into these different organizations, it's not only going to make them more efficient, but it's. Yeah, it's just going to make them so much more productive. They're going to be not an expert, but nearly an expert when they come in because they're going to have a copilot. AI can be their copilot. As they're onboarding. We're working on a new product. I'll give you an example. Takeoffs. So today, takeoffs are a very manual process for builders. What a takeoff essentially is they take the floor plan and they redraw it digitally so that they can get all the dimensions. And once they have all the dimensions, then they can understand how much flooring they need for each room. For instance, countertop vertical surfaces, et cetera. You need an expert to do that, to understand how to draw it out, where to start, where to pull the flooring up to the cabinet or under the cabinet and so on. AI we can train on all of those floor plans and rules essentially. And within a few seconds, not weeks, we can create a takeoff. So now you can have somebody come in out of high school and they can be an expert in takeoffs, whereas before it take them, you know, months and months to spin up to understand how to provide a valuable takeoff.

[Mike Rowe]

I'm just thinking about the way people adapt, you know, I mean, for a kid coming out of high school today, it's. The expectation is different, the attention span is different, they're wired for a digital.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Absolutely.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Right. I guess maybe that's great news for your business when you think about who your customers are going to be in the next 10 years. And it's not going to be manila.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Folders and a bunch of spreadsheets.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, there's just no way.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah. And because we're starting with, you know, the homeowner experience. So it has to be a really easy to use experience. And we're pulling that back to builders because as we mentioned, our end goal is the homeowner. Now it makes it really easy for any builder, no matter your age, to come in and use our software because it's really meant to be a consumer grade experience for an enterprise.

[Mike Rowe]

So there's probably a bunch of stuff you're not allowed to talk about at this point, right?

[Ryan Fink]

There's a few, yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean it's. Is the, is the plan to get bought, is the plan to go public like you say, and just, and just Diggs is going to be like, who do you hope to become? Or is it utterly unique?

[Ryan Fink]

I think it's pretty unique. I mean, if you look at the scale of someone like a Zillow or an Airbnb, I think that's the scale of what we are talking about here. Not only just impacting, there's a, there's a really big business to impact how homes are built. I think there's an even bigger opportunity and how you own, maintain a home. So I think the scale here is infinite. I mean, some people call me optimistic, but.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I mean, look, you've kind of done it twice before, you know. How did you guys actually meet?

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Yeah, fifth grade.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah, we were in fifth grade school. Yeah. And then we went to school all through high school and yeah, we were just friends. Yeah, just friends. I think the first we wanted to. His dad was a bit of an entrepreneur and yes, the first company we wanted to start is who wanted to open up a Baskin Robbins together. So we've diverted a bit we'll eventually. All roads lead back to Baskin Robins.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

We will get it one day.

[Mike Rowe]

So, I mean, that's interesting. I went to high school with Chuck. We've known each other, I don't know, 45 years? Yeah, something like that. Wow. Well, he likes ice cream.

[Ryan Fink]

Our first customer. We're coming up on our 30th.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

We are?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I mean, I keep thinking about Chuck building this house 30 years ago and wondering, if you'd had this thing, how different might your life be like? I mean, really, who knows?

[Chuck (Mike Rowe's friend, former general contractor)]

It would have been vastly different. I'm sure of it. I mean, when I first heard about what Diggs does, that's the first thing I thought, is that this would have come in handy in. I think it was like 1992 or 93. It was done in 93 and it took about a year.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. Well, I remember calling you when you were in the midst of it and saying things like, how's it going? And then just listening to five minutes of sentences that never ended and just. You developed a facial tick. You know, that's gone away. But I know. I mean, it was an overwhelming thing and I've never done it. I've never built a house from the ground up. So I don't really know, you know, how transformational it could be. But you must be overwhelmed with letters, feedback.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah. Yeah. And just back to that point, it's. Me and my wife actually went through a home build ourselves. We built a custom home. And that was part of the inspiration for Diggs is I wanted this as a homeowner. Not only through the process, but then I was left. We actually burst a pipe. We had a cold freeze and the sink in our outdoor barbecue burst, and they're like, oh, yeah, you need to winterize that. I was like, I've never owned a home. I had no idea.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Ryan Fink]

So, yeah, I got together with Ty and was like, there's gotta be something. Something here and applicable to our background.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

No feedback. I mean, that's one of the things I love, especially with. I call our Diggs community, because our customers and partners, they. They have no problem telling us the good, the bad, the ugly of the product, which is amazing. You want that?

[Mike Rowe]

Sure. Warts and all.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Absolutely. Because you want to build the best product that you can build for them. But, yeah, we hear feedback on the daily. I was actually. I just called an H Vac company for the H Vac at our house yesterday, and we got started talking and having some issues with it. And then he goes, well, you're you're Diggs, right? I was like, yeah. And he's like, oh, yeah, I use it all the time. And he's like, I got some feedback for you. And I was like, let's hear it. He's like, I'm sure this is what you want to hear. And I'm like, no, I absolutely want to hear it.

[Mike Rowe]

What was it?

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Just like some small things about providing more information on a project, like the address and who's the site.

[Ryan Fink]

Super.

[Mike Rowe]

And.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

And things like that. But that's the type of stuff where hearing it directly from them and how they would use it and why it would make them better at their job all the time. We get that on the daily.

[Mike Rowe]

I can't think of any organization who has done more to reinvigorate the skilled trades in this country than SkillsUSA, which is why I'm going to ask you to get involved with them. This is the number one workforce development organization for students in the country. They've got 440,000 members today. I'm working with them to double their membership over the next five years. Because SkillsUSA really is the best hope, our best hope of closing the skills gap, which we have to do. They're in all 50 states. They're in middle schools, high schools, and post secondary institutions. They don't just focus on technical skills. They focus on workplace and personal skills that employers are downright desperate for. I've been to their national competitions. I featured them on various shows I've worked on because I've seen just how transformational the program is. And when you see these kids compete for gold in dozens of separate vocations, it's intense. And when you see them get hired right off the competition floor by some of the biggest employers in the country, you can see the link between a skill that's in demand and a job. It's extraordinary. Get involved. Join the skilled trades movement. Start a chapter at your school. Partner Volunteer Skills USA. They're easy to find. SkillsUSA.org Mike, check it out. I'm talking Skills US, Skills US Skills USA.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah, yeah. We have. Right now, I think we have like double the amount of homeowners that want digs. Right now, our only way to really get in is through a builder. But we are starting to see some demand start to build from homeowners saying, hey, I want this thing. Either I'm about to build or I already have a house. So for them we're like, cool, let's learn why. And so we try to hop on, you know, regular calls every week. With them to say, okay, if you are a homeowner and you weren't to come through a builder, what would you want the experience to be? So it's been really cool just to see that kind of pull demand.

[Mike Rowe]

Hey, man, well, look, take this for what it's worth. I don't know anything about AI and I can't build a house myself, that's for sure. But it seems like there's a lesson in the marketing world at least. Were like, what did big pharma do? Big pharma went on TV and created a demand for drugs that most people can't even pronounce. And the people went to the doctors and said, I would like this. I'm not comparing your product to ED medication or something like that, but thank you. I mean, people need to know that it's out there. And, you know, back to Chuck, if he knew there was a software that used AI that could have turned that job into something far less. What did you call it? Pain point driven. Yeah, eliminate the pain points. He would have gone to the builder and said, hey, do you guys have this? And they would have said, no, we don't. And he would have said, well, I get it. I insist 100%.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah.

[Chuck (Mike Rowe's friend, former general contractor)]

And like. Like they were saying before, there's just a thousand different things you have to think of. The builder will come to you and say, what do you want in this bathroom? You know, what faucets, what door knobs, what door stops, what crown molding, what trim? Just everything. The color, the appliances. There's just an endless list of things. And the more rooms you have, the bigger those these lists get.

[Mike Rowe]

And there are only two kinds of people. They're the kinds who. Who love those questions and love to think about it. Those are called wives. And then there's me, who you would eventually get worn down. You would just abdicate, say, I don't know, a crew. Beige eggshell.

[Chuck (Mike Rowe's friend, former general contractor)]

I got into a lot of. A lot of fights with my builder.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, look, man, I think you got a tiger by the tail.

[Ryan Fink]

It definitely feels like it. And we're excited to eventually pull that switch too, to turn it on for homeowners. So I think everything that we learned today through the builders, through the collaboration with their end customer, through the handoff and warranty experience with the homeowner, that's all just building towards this ground swell to eventually where we do open it up to. You have an existing home or you're building a home, come get diggs. Because everybody should have a digital twin or homefax. On their home.

[Mike Rowe]

And this basically all started because you just wanted to run a little faster. Yeah. And you wanted more ice cream.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Absolutely.

[Ryan Fink]

All of it's for the ice cream. At the end of the day.

[Mike Rowe]

I got to come back though to the, to the labor force because I really, I am starting to think that it's been underreported. The Horton guy, I said to him it looks like for every five who retire to come in in your industry.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

And he said it was about two years ago. Now it's more like one and a half. You know, everybody's aging out the basic demographic, people are having less kids, boomers are retiring. And when you go on some of these sites, especially with the custom guys, you know, you just see 55, 60 year old dudes and they all just say the same thing. Nobody's standing in line to learn my trade. Do you worry about that at all? And I'm sorry to keep coming back to it, but I just don't know. I don't know that I understand how tech can help that really, or what the industry is going to do, if anything, to make a more persuasive case for the jobs that exist in it.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah, I mean it comes down to getting it back in high school. I mean not to kind of say your talking line, but it really does. I mean getting construction tech and programs like Copper country is doing for their school district, that's where it begins. You need to re educate the high school students that having a job in the trades sometimes can be a lot more fruitful than going into tech or going into other industries. And it's more future proof in a lot of cases. So I think more programs like that, more funding that goes into re educating kids, that there is a really great career that you can have in the trades. I think that's step one. I think where AI comes into that, I'll steal it from you, is two sides of the same coin for what you're doing. I think we can make those kids that are coming into the trades more efficient immediately and have a bigger impact on those companies. I also think it's a really good carrot to dangle for kids as well because it's a really cool technology. At the end of the day, it's a really cool experience and it's going to be fun to use. How many industries do you go into where you have such a high job satisfaction? I just read an article in Forbes that said the trades, I think it was a 90% job satisfaction for the trades. Yeah, like that's Huge.

[Mike Rowe]

It's enormous.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

People will hear that. And by and large their first reaction is, I don't believe it. They don't believe it. You know, in the same way I remember the first time I shared a story about a welder who was making $130,000 a year. I mean, a photo, a story. It was in the Wall Street Journal. Interviewed the guy and still people just are like, nope, I was told that. No, nope, not gonna. So the resistance to accepting the reality of a career in the trades might have something to do with the resistance of believing that the tech that you're talking about is truly going to be accessible.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Because it just, it just still feels like. You've got to be kidding me. Yeah, I just, it's another magic trick. So I don't know, it's. What is the biggest challenge then that you guys are facing? Is it just the misunderstanding or the ignorance around what AI is or what it can do, or is it something more practical about just taking a startup and turning it into a public company that I don't really understand?

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah, I mean, some of it comes back to the infrastructure. A lot of these especially larger builders, they have been fairly technology adverse. I think that's pretty, you know, everyone's pretty aware of that. And so they've built their software stack in a way where it's. A lot of them are on prem on premise, which means it's not in the cloud, so which means it's not accessible to any type of AI experience. So for a lot of the builders that we talk to, we just start at square one and we say, okay, what's your technology stack? Are you on prem, Are you in the cloud? If they're in the cloud, that's a huge step forward. But still there's a lot of work for them to structure their backend software to be accessible. For third party AI software.

[Mike Rowe]

We don't need to name names. But I know some of the biggest builders in the world are not in the cloud. They're still what PDFs doing everything on, on site.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah. Like printing things out. Yeah. Yes.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, I'm, I'm not appalled by it because, you know, I'm older than I've ever been and I grew up with that, but I don't. How do you get a multibillion dollar national builder to change course to that degree? How will you do it?

[Ryan Fink]

I mean, it. I think it starts with a lighthouse builder. So we've recently, we can't say who, but we've recently partnered long Term with a top 10 build, who sees the benefits and the ROI of actually implementing AI and going through all the work of restructuring their software stack to make it accessible and possible. So we're working directly with them around. Okay, well, how do we structure your software system to unlock AI? And then in parallel, we're also building out some of our new functionality with them. And then I think taking that Lighthouse customer and the success story and the ROI that they're going to have, which we're talking massive roi is what we're.

[Mike Rowe]

Projecting a return on investment so people understand. So we're talking about a top 10 builder who's going to spend a chunk of money so you can help drag them into the future.

[Ryan Fink]

Exactly.

[Mike Rowe]

And if you do that successfully, then nine other top 10 builders are going to go, what?

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah. 100%. Yeah. They all hurry up to follow in this industry. So getting that, you know, getting a really great brand to go, prove it out. I think step one is the biggest. Step one through 10, essentially.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Ryan Fink]

And then everyone else will follow and they should. Or they're just going to get drastically left behind.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Ryan's absolutely right with everything that he just said. And we. They all talk to one another. They're all competitors, but they all talk, they all partner.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, they were all at the event where you and I met.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Exactly.

[Mike Rowe]

They go to these conventions. Most people have no idea really how these industries work. But it's so true to have. I mean, it's Vegas, it's booze, it's debauchery, it's business. Everybody's jammed together and so competitors have a chance to get. I'm just really amazed by the whole dynamic and what you can learn in that scenario.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Absolutely. I mean, we sat at a keynote a couple years ago for one of the conferences that we go to down here in California, and we got to listen to a CEO of a top 10 builder. And one of the things that she said that kind of stuck with us was to this other group of execs and CEOs of, of top 100 builders, that they're all behind the times. They're 20 years behind the times, and they need to innovate now. And part of that innovation is creating these wow moment experiences. So I think for. For her to. To get up and say that and be like, let's, let's do something here, because we all know that we're behind the times and we need to change that.

[Mike Rowe]

It's scary to be first.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Mike Rowe]

As entrepreneurs, do you get. I mean, you're On a roller coaster, big time. Do you just get used to it? I mean.

[Ryan Fink]

Well, the noble whiskey helps level them out.

[Mike Rowe]

Help yourself, there's plenty around. No, but I mean it's, it's really the, the stakes are impossibly high for you guys.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Must be exciting.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah, no, it is. I think for the first two companies it was really interesting. We were, it always felt like we're expected to fail because you know, we're one time, two time entrepreneurs. Now being three time, it's almost flipped, it's almost more stressful when people expect you to succeed. So we're just trying to take like every little win, remember to celebrate them because when you're working towards that big, you know, long term goal, the little wins is what gets you there. Yeah, because it, it is ebbs and flows and you know, it's the toughest thing I've ever done in my life is build a company so.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, you know, I think for me the, some ideas are so good that you can't screw them up. I mean you can, but you got to work really hard to do it. And I think of like qvc, they did a lot of things wrong in my view from a production standpoint and they made a lot of mistakes. But the fundamental idea was so good, you know, take the mall to people in rural America who can't get to the mall. Yeah, just take it to them. And that was ingenious. I was going to do a quick sidebar when we were talking about this old house because I did a show before Dirty Jobs and the idea was so good that it was on the air for 15 years. It was called you'd New Home. And I might have talked about it at that convention. Did I? Do you remember anything about this?

[Ty Frank Skivich]

I feel like you did.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

This thing was so ridiculous that it was all based on the fact that if you're a residential builder. Well, if you're a big builder and you're building a community, you're going to be working for seven, eight years putting this community in. And that means you need to market it right, you need to sell it. And selling a community that's under construction is totally different than selling a single standalone residential home. Like opposite really. And these communities, they had something that I just never really thought about before and it was a model home. You have to have model homes. But what is a model home? It's a decorated set and there were a bunch of them, you know, because you might have seven different models in a community that's going to have 3,000. Anyway, the idea was, let's just sit in this set that's already decorated and interview sales agents who are in charge of selling the community. And I'll just ask them simple questions and they'll tell me their stories. And then we'll have B roll of all of the amenities in the community. Everything that's coming. Long story short, the show was on the air for 15 years. It sold over a billion dollars in real estate. Wow. And I didn't get any of it because I was so interested and I thought I was so clever in figuring out a production model that I got paid for. I wasn't unhappy with it. But a few years in, I realized people are sitting home, they're getting decorating ideas, and then they come out later that Sunday and they've already had a tour, a virtual tour of the place, and they've already met the sales agent on the premises. So all that exposition is done. And now these people are what you guys would call qualified buyers. Right. And so the sales in these communities, they sold out two, three years earlier than they had planned. Moral of the story is it was a really good idea, unfortunately implemented by a guy who wasn't a real smart entrepreneur. I could see that part of it. I couldn't see the whole thing, you know, and my defense, had I gone in with a plan and explained to these builders how you're going to be able to sell out of your communities years in advance, and all I want is a small percentage, they never would have agreed to it. They never would have given away the equity. Right. So for a lot of people who are just clever enough to figure out a new way to do a thing, they don't get the ball over the line because they didn't see how it truly ends. I hope you're smarter than me. I hope you've seen the end game in this.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah, I think we have. And I think, you know, the flip side of that is having a big vision without any execution.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

Yes.

[Ryan Fink]

You had a lot of execution, it sounds like, without that larger vision. And I think that's something that we. We balance here really well, is we started with, okay, where do we want to end up? And then how do we get there? We got really fortunate with the team too. Is over the past 15 years, we've just collected the most talent dense people we've ever worked with.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Ryan Fink]

And brought them along with us. And so we have a team march into the same drum beat.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah. Well, that's smart. I'll tell you, now that I think about It. And this is a good place to land the plane because it goes back to efficiency. I out foxed myself with this thing. I was so impressed by the fact that I could come to like I would go down to Baltimore and this was just on the east coast. It was in three states and we only shot eight episodes a year. But in other words, every eighth Sunday was a repeat because these communities are under construction. For years it didn't matter. So I wore the same khakis, right. And the same button down blue shirt. And it said your new home on the little pocket there. And I was so delighted by the fact that I could be on the air every Sunday after. Charles Kuralt is doing this Morning. CBS this morning. We had a huge. This show had so many views. It was an infomercial and it had so many viewers that we were selling commercials into the infomercial. That's amazing. It was ridiculous, right? So it's a home run and then it's so efficient that I can go once a year for maybe two and a half weeks and shoot the entire year's worth and then go away. And that's what I did. I went back to Pennsylvania where I was living, or up to New York. And this show aired every single Sunday. And I wasn't there to see it. I can't stand to watch my stuff anyway. But. But that's the moral of the story. I took my victory lap too early. I wasn't there to see that the real benefit of the show was going back to the builders and we were moving crazy amounts of real estate and I just wasn't there to see it and connect the dots. I was too proud of myself for wearing the same stupid shirt for 15 years doing the show. So I mean, whatever, you know, you live and you learn and AI wasn't even a thing. Well, artificial insemination was. Artificial intelligence was not at least to my knowledge. So I get, you know, I wanted you guys on here because you're young and you're smart and if this works, I need to be able to tell people that I, I know him when. So make it work.

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah, that's the goal.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, it's a good goal. Maybe I'll start running again too. Is it. Does that exist that that earlier tech, has it evolved to the point now?

[Ryan Fink]

So we had a patent on it and everything, but the acquiring company now owns it and I think they've sold it since then. I've tried to buy it back.

[Mike Rowe]

Really?

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah, to no avail yet.

[Mike Rowe]

But because I know the glasses have Evolved. Yeah, you can probably. I mean, at some point you're gonna do it with contact lenses.

[Ryan Fink]

Probably. Yeah. Yeah. There's a company, Vuzix, that's made tons of progress in the glasses.

[Mike Rowe]

What are they called?

[Ryan Fink]

Vuzix.

[Mike Rowe]

Vuzix, yeah.

[Ryan Fink]

They've been around for like 30 years. They were the bulky glasses I was originally using. They've got some that look like sunglasses now, so they're getting close.

[Mike Rowe]

What's with all the fake names, man? I mean, Diggs is at least a word I understand. It's. It's a verb, it can be a noun. It can be any number of things. Vivzix and Akimbo and, you know, trying to be catchy. Yeah, it's a thing. Diggs. What is it?.com digs.com?

[Ryan Fink]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

One G or two?

[Ryan Fink]

Just one.

[Mike Rowe]

So some not getting cute. Don't get cute. No extra letters.

[Ryan Fink]

No.

[Mike Rowe]

Ty Ryan. Thanks, man. Good luck. I'm rooting for you.

[Ryan Fink]

Thanks, Mike. Thank you.

[Mike Rowe]

A happy AI story.

[Ryan Fink]

I love it.

[Mike Rowe]

All right, guys, see you next week. When you leave a review, only five stars will do. Not just one or just two or just three. We were hoping for more.

[Ty Frank Skivich]

As in.

[Mike Rowe]

A one more than a four. Oh, please. One more than four. Just a quick review with five stars too. For all my you five stars will do. With stays under $250 a night, VRBO.

[Ryan Fink]

Makes it easy to celebrate. Sweater weather, book a cabin with leaf.

[Mike Rowe]

Views or a home with a fire pit for nights with friends with stays.

[Ryan Fink]

Under $250 a night, find a home for your exact needs book [e-mail].

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