So on today's episode, we had Ron Nessbaum, the founder of Builtable Labs. Ron established Builtable Labs, a construction native system engineering company focused on creating custom operational systems that help construction companies scale effectively. What was something that you took from this episode? The biggest thing I noticed was he had a compelling why. So that was what was really inspiring for me. And he really has a passion for helping companies get better, really. Like have you ever been stuck before? Uh Yes. So he helps people get unstuck, right? Company Yeah, like at one time I was this was not long ago, this year. I was going to a job site in my Honda Pilot, okay, which I know that sounds crazy for some of you contractors out there that are driving F Ford three fifties, uh Ford F three fifties, but I've got a Honda pilot and um I've got a Dodge Ram too, but anyway, I was driving the pilot and I decided to try to go through a mud puddle but it was a big puddle and I got stuck. So the owner of the company, a multimillionaire guy, had to pull me out of the mud. So that's what Ron does. He helps pull people out of the mud. Really? So to speak. So they're companies that are in trouble. He helps them figure out like through data, through tools. He's got these different tools he has. So but he has a passion for what he does. He has a passion to help people. So that was that was one of the things that I felt was was interesting. He he brought a good a lot of good ideas as well in terms of if you're a business owner and you're looking for ways to improve, so he br he brought a lot of good ideas on that front. That's awesome. I'm glad you enjoyed the episode. Um, I thought that that was really cool when he made the statement of I don't need to be the entire change, I just want to help start it. I thought that was really cool.'Cause a lot of times you have, you know, two types of people. You usually have like the idea person, then you have like a follow through person for a lot of things. I have a tendency to be the idea person for a lot of things and not follow through on most of them. But um compelling other people to start those things and in being the inspiration and giving The basis for how they can change and do things better is such an inspiring way to just live your life in general, not just in the the business world. Yeah. Sounds like a really good lesson for us all. Yeah. Well, my name's Andy Richardson, and this is our producer, Madeline, and this is the Enhanced Podcast, where we speak with professionals in the AEC industry and find out what their why is and what their story is. Let's jump to the intro. Mm-hmm. Welcome to Enhance, an AEC podcast. We learn why behind AEC professionals so that you can learn your why. Hey Ron, welcome to the Enhanced Podcast. Hey Andy, it is fantastic to be here. Thank you for having me. Definitely, definitely. And this is the first time we've met today, so good to meet you as well. Hey, it's great to meet you as well. I think that always creates some of the best conversations is when you get to record. There's so many times I've had a first interaction with somebody and I was like, Man, I should've recorded that 'cause more people should hear it. Yeah. And that's why I just I started record right out of the gate too, 'cause you never know what what fun things come up. Um, which I feel like I'm excited about this. Um, just getting to know your I did review, you know, a little bit about your bio and I'm excited about it. Uh if you've got a Marine Corps background, so I'm excited to hear about that and just really everything that's that's in your bio. So we have a lot to cover today. But With the with the Marine Corps as a background, I wanted to just start off with just a s a starter question, which is what's a memorable or humorous thing that happened in your time in the Marines that really has helped you with leadership in the construction industry? I think most of the humorous stuff we can't talk about. Uh you know what really helped me with the the leadership is the principles of the training. Like I was in the infantry and like all we did was train so we could then be very efficient at what we needed to go do. And it didn't matter what happened. How crazy, especially in construction. Like we deal with stuff that comes off the wall. Stuff just you don't see it coming. But if you have a foundation of solid training, you just react. You respond. You just do what you know is that foundation is and you continue moving forward. You process it and you figure out what the best net solution is to continue to move forward. And I would say that from my time in the Marine Corps and the training is like that's what I brought into. my marine uh to my constructionist. I just gotta train and I gotta continue to get better and I gotta be highly proficient at what we do because when the job throws a curveball, I can't become responsive to that curveball. What I need to do is I need to fall back on my training and then from there be able to evaluate and figure out how do we Fix this. Right. So second nature responses b th come through the training is what I'm hearing. absolutely. You know, and and it's i if if you're preparing for it at on the fly, that's too late, right?'Cause you can't you can't really figure it out. I mean it might be a field issue, it might be a conversation with a customer, right? can you give me an example of where that's really helped out and in Yeah, so I yeah, I think one of the most impactful things that I've maybe ever done in my construction career. We had a bunch of foremen. And you know, I got when I was a foreman, I got really, really good at having conversations. But like that didn't happen by accident. Like I got I would practice that. I would understand what exactly could happen and like how should I handle that. And what we started doing was we actually started doing role playing with our foreman of customer interactions. From everything from when you originally show up to the job site to when you're doing a walkthrough, hey, something just went sideways and this customer is PO'd. Like how let's have that conversation. Because the last thing I wanted was one of my guys to be the first time they were ever having one of these conversations was when it really meant. So you hear a lot about role playing outside, like in sales and all of the stuff. But when it comes to operation, the production, the field guides, we just kind of always was hanging them out there to dry. And then next thing they get in one of these conversations and they don't have no foundation. They've never even thought about it most of the time. So we would spend our uh a good portion of our production meetings doing customer role playing on what does this look like? A great customer. A bet how do we introduce ourselves? So then when something does go sideways, they now at least have been through it before. It's not their first time. Like I would have to say, like Ron Newsbaum role-playing with me, like I'm going to be worse than any homeowner you could probably ever interact with. So now they are interacting with that homeowner and it's like, oh, see, this isn't I I've been through this before. It it allows them to mentally reset and be like, okay, so this isn't my first time. Maybe my first time wasn't live, but at least I have mentally worked through this. Because once you mentally work through that conversation, what happens? Is you go home and you're thinking, Well, I could have said that so much better, or I should have said this. So instead of putting people in a position where that's happening after the fact, is like, let's role play this, let's train on this. And then when you go home and you're like, I should have reacted this way. Well, now you have that in your pocket. the next time this actually happens on a job site. So I think that is one of the most impactful things that I was able to take from Marine Corps training and bring that into an application that worked within the construction. Is this Right. Okay. Yeah, that sounds i important because dealing with people is a big part of what we do, even though a lot of people go into construction 'cause it's sticks and bricks, right? Like, hey, I'm I'm just dealing with stuff, but really you're dealing with people, right? So um and that's I think that's probably a lot of what you're doing with your business is training and helping people with that. Is that a big part of what you're doing with your work? So, you know, with what we're doing now at Ask a Shop Owner is like the objective of that is to give people that information immediately. So it's like one thing to talk to me all the time, but what if you had access to that at any point in time? Like I'm trying to separate the person from the knowledge because there's this huge knowledge gap that's out there and everybody believes like s A person has that, but it's not necessarily a person that has that. You just have to have access to it and then you have to be willing to do the hard work to implement that. So that is what how I see the future of my life continuing to go on here is we make an environment where people don't need to necessarily be with Ron in order to continue to advance. Okay, so how d how would that work exactly? So what we have created is a closed loop program so it does not pull from the internet or anything. It's purely business owner operators, all the knowledge base put into one place where people can go in and ask questions, understand how to run their business and then from that create checklist and all of that to where boom, it's just laid clearly out. It's Basically I tell people that I know it's like having me in your pocket twenty four hours a day. Okay. Now is this the is this the new product that that you were mentioning or is this uh Yeah. This is a brand new product that we just launched a few months ago. Okay. But it's I guess with obviously we have a little bit of a backlog on our our podcast here, but it'll be available once this this airs to the Yes. Okay. Yep. So this is for con contractors that are looking and they're they're owners of a construction business or and they're looking for this type of support for their business. it it's for construction, trades. I mean that's my word, that's the word that I live in. home services, businesses, all of that. Uh and it's designed to just to be a support item. It's you know, we say, you know, bring your problem and leave with the solution. Like that's what we believe in is creating uh an environment where that can happen and it becomes very practical to then move forward with that. Yeah. But I mean, um What what are the challenges that contractors are seeing in these businesses? I mean, you just have to get work, do work, get paid. I mean, what's the big deal, right? It's easy. Yeah. I love that. Love that. Because uh I'm being a devil's advocate, of course, but Yeah, no, no. So I've been around the construction industry for the last fifteen years. I have been blessed to be around some amazing operators, to to grow a company to over twenty five million dollars a year in revenue, a couple hundred employees. The problems are never ending. No matter if you're doing a million or you're doing thirty million a year. The problems we always think like revenue will get us out of problems, but actually what it does is it gets us into more bigger ones. But what we're facing is operational problems, sales problems, marketing, uh, hiring, all of the the main fundamentals that people don't think about when they think about construction. Because one of the problems is is people don't look at this as being a big in my fifteen years I've run into so many great people out there that use the excuse that I run a construction business so the rules and fundamentals of business does not apply to me because of this construction. And I my devil's advocate to that is here's the thing, man. You run a business in construction is the so the same rules that apply for that bank, that automotive shop, that So it's whatever that other business is, like those same rules apply for you. That foundation has to be solid for you to then go out and run a construction. But we we we turn a blind eye to them because for some reason in the construction industry, a lot of times we think we're different because the industry is different. But the most successful can business owners in construction I have ever met are the ones that look at it as a business first in construction as the service. Instead of saying I run a construction business. So the problems are always changing depending where you and most of the time, what we believe to be the main problem is actually the symptom of a problem. And it's really about how do we drive down and understand this is only a symptom of a problem that runs even deeper in our so. when we look at say sales, a lot of times it's not necessarily the the closing percentage that's the problem, like that's the symptom, but we look at it and say, Oh, well we're just not closing high. We need to figure out how to close higher. Well, it could be your sales product. It could be your marketing and what leads are actually coming in. Like you gotta dive deeper down into each one of these issues to actually find out what is the root cause of this problem. Is it that we just suck at closing? Or do we have an issue leading up to that? And that right there is how I look at this and I look at construction companies. Yeah. And you know, I think there's some truth 'cause this is a this is an architecture this is an AEC podcast, right? Architecture, engineering, and construction. So but the the reason I mention that is I believe it's actually similar in all three, right? Meaning, um if you talk to engineers or architects, I think you're gonna get some of the same type of thought process, which is we're just an architecture firm. We don't ha you know, need to follow those rules. Like One of the things that it that I hear you talking about is the sales and marketing, which none of us went to marketing school or sales school. We went to engineering school, we went to architecture school, we went we we grew up in construction, say, for example. So and if you talk to contractors, they might think that's a s that's like a that's for somebody else to deal with, right? That's sales, that's marketing, this is construction. If I do a good job. People are gonna hire me. I mean, i th am I is this a something that you're hearing or is this one of the headaches Think you're hitting the nail? Like that's just what people believe. Like there's no the the days of if I just do a good job and this were continue rolling, uh those days I'm not saying that there's not any merit to that because I believe we should be doing a good job. But like that shouldn't be a marketing or sales plan. Like if that is what you've laid out To me, that's table stakes. Like that's the standard. Like we're gonna do a great job. We're gonna make great great happy customers, but like that is not my marketing plan. That is one of the mentalities that has to change around the the the entire industry from not just construction, but like you said, all of these things that touch construction and that believe because we operate in this world, that's just how it works. I don't have to And I don't have to understand that or I don't have to invest in it. And then what I see a lot of times, I literally just had this conversation with a cohort that I'm running right now. Uh, is that marketing is something you can just turn on and off and like to like I need leads, let's get some marketing going. Well, like that works once you've established yourself as the leader in your area. Marketing is a long term investment and it's very strategic over. Fine. It's not just something you're like one day, boom, bada bang, And I think that goes back to like most of us are not we didn't go to school for this stuff. Like everything I have learned has literally been blood, sweat, and tears in the trenches and doing it wrong most of the time. And then figuring out, oh, hold on. Like I should actually be like, you know, trying to create a reputation And building brand recognition around our company locally and then maybe like short-term marketing efforts would then work out. And we get this stuff backwards where we think like we don't have to invest in that infrastructure and we can just invest in like a two to three month campaign and it's going to fix our business. But that's not true. True. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I thought it would be so easy, you know, like, okay, I'm I mean, I'm if you're an entrepreneur you think highly th that you can do the work, right? I mean, hopefully. So I felt like, man, if I open my business, everybody's just gonna hire me. Um, it wasn't quite as easy as I thought, you know. Like everyb everybody already has their guy. They have somebody they like working with. So Um it was more challenging than I anticipated. So um just that's just that's just one facet though is this is you gotta get work. You then you gotta do the work and you gotta get paid for the work, right? I mean, so which one of those are you finding to be people having the biggest headache and the biggest struggle that you I think a lot of times it depends where people are at in that business cycle because I think it's something that's constantly revolving for most people. Is one month it's leads, one month it's operations, another month it's getting paid. And it's because we don't ever try to figure out how to permanently solve these problems. Like I said, we look at a lot of things as a symptom. And then we try to fix that symptom, but we never fix the root cause of the the problem. That's why it's so cyclic where you see the same problems coming up every quar like every quarter, a repetition of a problem that you saw two quarters ago. And it was because we never actually dove down in and fixed that core problem. And that is what I see is it's not just one specific thing. that is troubling businesses, it's that we're never really fixing the actual root cause of the problem. Like I'm one of the things that has allowed me to be a great operator in the construction world is I'm naturally a problem. I literally love it. Like I just like let's figure out a pro like let's solve this problem and that's why I'm talking about like going in depth. Like when you look at the what you think the problem is, it's typically a few below that. Like you gotta really dig in there. But once you find out what that true bottleneck is, and you fix that, that's when that cycle starts to break. And you start so like when you find what that really core problem down in your marketing and you finally fix it. then marketing doesn't come up every other quarter. It doesn't it doesn't you s it's you start to see it farther apart, but what you actually start to see is more nuanced problems in that that become easier to fix because now you've actually drilled down in. So we tend to fix these issues that are just like boom boom boom boom boom. And we fix that problem with problem fix. Well That problem was a symptom of something else that was happening and it's going to literally spew up another problem, or that band-aid's going to rip off the one you just thought you fixed. So that's what I see is business owners don't dive down into fix what truly needs to be fixed because it's hard. And that just creates a cycle of the same problems over and over, every quarter, year after year. And it just feels like we're always stuck in this rat race. Like we're never making any headway. And it's because we're just not drilling down and saying, hey, this is a big problem. It comes up every other quarter. So like we're going to take a quarter to fix it. And by fix it, I mean we're going to take a quarter to actually analyze this. Figure out what is actually causing this problem. How many problems are actually being created? What is the ripple effect? of this product. Is this even as big as I think it is? Or is this just something like there's a lot of things that annoy Ron Newsbaum that most people could care less about. So is this like a personal Ron Newsbaum issue? I'm just overemphasizing because it bothers me, but it literally has no ripple effect throughout the company. And actually if I try to fix this, I'm going to actually create more problems for the people that work with us. Like so we want to make sure we analyze it and actually figure out What is that r problem? Is this a problem that is rippling throughout the company and then causing other issues? And what's great when you start to s to start at the top of the pipeline, you start to fix stuff down the pipeline. When you really dive down into when you're looking at marketing and sales and lead generation, like how stuff comes into your business, it starts to fix operational stuff. It starts to fix finance side of stuff, how you collect payment. Because we got clearer on what the problem up here was, which then allowed us to streamline everything across the board. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, I mean it it's the it's like um one of my colleagues t calls those opportunities for improvement, right? It's you know, it's it's an opportunity to get better. But um can you share an example in your business or maybe one of your customers that you've helped them with one of these problems? Yeah, so throughout the years, like I said, I've had the great privilege of dealing with this stuff firsthand and then also helping others do this and you know First hand experience to me it's so valuable. And when I look back and I think about we were trying to move our closed percentage and trying to figure all of this out on how could we just be a little bit better. But our clo what we found when we evaluate like we okay, to be honest, like we thought we sucked. And then we dug into it and then we realized we have a really, really good close percentage when you look at national averages. So that led us back down the road of well, what do these leads look like? Because we always felt like we could be closing better. And then we got into some nuances around our leads, and what does that look like? And then we started comparing like what are guys that close leads higher than everybody, what are they doing? And what we started to realize was as these leads were coming in, we had some sales reps that were doing some things differently and how they would block their calendar off and what exactly they were doing with their time that would close higher. And a lot of them were spending more time with the customer. Yeah. So, what we actually realized was there was an education gap that some of our sales reps were not getting through to the customers because we were jamming it up too much. They needed more time. So our guys at Close Hire were personally, because they were experienced sales reps, they understood they're going to need more time. So they need to block their calendar out in a way that doesn't allow us to stack some appointments on them. Even though we're talking two to three appointments a day. But some of these guys that were closing at a high rate were spending three, four hours at a house. So they were in inherently doing that. So what we realized was sales appointments need to be longer to change our closing percentage that was already good, but like we had this perception that it wasn't because we had people doing better. And it wasn't the the closing percentage wasn't the problem. It was that we were actually handicapping sales reps that didn't have the knowledge to understand, I need to be in here educating our homeowners. I need more time with them to close at a higher percentage. So as a business, we had to shift that and understand now we're gonna have to spread spread spread these appointments out more to allow these people to have more time in the house. That right there is taking something that you feel is the problem and then realizing, I'm actually the problem. Like, I have guys that have already fixed this problem themselves. They're all high performers, but we're literally the ones that are causing the closing percentage to be in an area where we believe it could be better. Yeah. But that would have never happened if I if I would have just went in and been like, everybody just needs to close higher. Like we need to close more deals. It instead of actually diving down into it and looking at all the different scenarios around it, why are people doing bad? Why do we have people really performing high? And actually looking at the entire picture to be able to solve that problem. So that that right there is what I'm talking about is when we look at a problem, don't just look at it from one perspective or one source of truth. Figure out the outliers around that. And then look at Now, was that something that you looked at from just talking to your team or was it like a data point that you looked at and you saw some data that it was like, hmm, that's weird. So was there a conversation or was this more analytical? So analytic to begin with, from a numbers perspective, to understand the numbers, but then once we started finding some of these nuances, that led to conversations with people. And I always believe like if you have a problem and somebody's outpacing that problem, they probably already solved it. And if they're on your team, you need to be having a conversation with them. So once we looked at these numbers and then found out, hey, we have a handful of people that are beating this. What here's the nuances we think we see, but like we should have a conversation individually with each one of them to understand why they're beating. Because who am I to just try to figure it out when I have people that are actually and then that through so we took the analytics of what we understood, data. I love data. I think everybody needs to do the best job they possibly can at getting data in something so you can understand it. But we can never pull the human element out of it. The data just validates the human element. So I can take that data and then go have conversations with people that are beating the average data and figure out what they're doing differently. And then how does that implement into the rest of the company? So then we give everybody in the company the opportunity to do better than the people that already beat. By taking what they're doing, it's a constant learning thing. Like you have to constantly be willing to say, Hey, I'm wrong. We set this up wrong. We're doing this wrong because here's the reason why and here's why we're tr changing. Yeah, awesome. I mean that's that's a big one right there. Um that you just I mean that's a big tip right there. um couple really good nuggets so far, but that's a good one as far as look at the people that are outpacing the system, talk to them. I love that because that sounds like something you picked up in the Marine Corps, by the way. Uh perhaps. uh I'm making it more. In the Marine Corps every everything's a competition. So you go train and you take a town and like you watch the team that can take the town the fastest and see what they're doing to be able to shave time off of how you operate through there. So I I I think that's just inherently how I operate. These days. Yeah, yeah. So speaking of Marine Corps, I wanna go back to that a little bit because um I'm down here in I don't know if you knew this, but I'm down here in Buford, South Carolina. I love it, man. I just drove through that on the way back to Orlando. I'm on up in Emmeredon, North Carolina, so I'm not far from you. So were you were you a East Coast Marine or a Hollywood Marine? So um so I'm sure you've heard of the the term Hollywood Marine, right? One hundred percent. I am not one. Which I'm not. I didn't train there, but we did raise a Marine. Uh so my son uh went through boot camp at right down the road here as Paras Island as well. So we've had a few Marines on this podcast. Um so but this is probably the first that um I I didn't know originally p fr from my inner circle. But um so yeah, that's exciting. so I I just wanted to talk bring that up. Um but you obviously uh left the Marine Corps and um decided to go into construction, but when you left the Marine Corps, what was your decision to leave the Marine Corps and and then go into construction? Absolutely. Uh but before I answer that, congratulations on raising a Marine. That's absolutely amazing. Tell your son simplify for me. I I love it. I I love the Marine Corps. And I wanted to be a Marine so bad. And my transition out of the Marine Corps was not what my plan was. My plan was to be a Marine. And we got back from Iraq, we were on our Afghanistan workup. And I ended up blowing my knee out on a training operation. And at that point in time, the Marine Corps was done with me. So it wasn't necessarily my decision to leave. And I had gotten married to my wife while I was in the Marine Corps, who we're still married today, coming up on eighteen years, got an amazing eight year old son. And she was from Michigan. I'm originally from Ohio. I no plans on Going anywhere other than where the Marine Corps sent me for the rest of my life. So when I got out, she wanted to go back to Michigan. And I ended up in Michigan trying to figure out what my life look like now. Like I had this whole dream of becoming a Marine. I checked that box and then that was poured away. And I was on it, I was just figuring trying figure out what do I do next. I found this ad on Craigslist for a foreman and training role. And I was like, uh, I've never done anything in construction. I don't know. And finally one day I was looking in the mirror and just something said I just said to myself, you know, if you want you're United States Marine. Like if you want to construct you're working in construction. Like what what do you what what what does any of this have to do with it? And I applied for the job. The guy had owned the company. You he was uh A hundred and first airborne and loved Marines. And everybody he was hiring had construction management degrees, but he looked at me and said, No, I've never had a Marine let me down, and I've had Marines get me out of some very bad situations. And he's like, I'm gonna give you a shot. And I ended up on a job site running a jackhammer, and I looked back at that and it probably saved my life because I found the camaraderie. I found the Brotherhood. I found everything I was missing from the Marine Corps on a job site. And from there I was sowed and I just dove into the construction industry and knowledge because I knew I was so far behind everybody from a knowledge perspective. Is where I just read every leadership book, every book on construct anything I could get my hands on that had to do with construction. in leadership over the next few years and I just went all in and said this is what I'm going to do. and I felt I just fell in love with the industry and I fell in love with the people in it. And I still to this day serve this industry because I I believe it is truly underserved. The construction industry does not get the respect that it should get mainly because we allow it. We allow the bad eggs of the industry to dictate our reputation. And I believe that should change. We are the people building America. We are the people building the entire word. We need to be in the same conversations as doctors and lawyers. And I will fight for the rest of my life to to get that message out there and to raise up everybody in the construction industry from The person running the jackhammer to the person running a multi billion dollar company. Man, I just you just gave me my LinkedIn post for July fourth right there. That's killer, man. I love it. Cause uh I mean we're building America. That's what I heard out of that. I mean, that was one of the things, a lot of things. Um, and it just sounds like you have a drive. Um, I mean, I love your drive, but what what's the ba what's the source of that drive? I mean, we gotta spread that somehow. What what's causing that? I you know, I I'm an operator, I'm a problem solver, I'm a I'm a very type A personality. I just go. I I believe we should just be getting things done and not just waiting. The time is never going to be right, it'll probably always be wrong, but we all have the same twenty-four hours in a day. I like to spend a lot of mine with my family, but the rest of it is I just spend Grinding it out. I am not afraid of the grind. I am, you know, I don't need glory. I don't need all of this stuff. What I need to do is just do what has been put on me. The vision that has been outlined by God for me to go to go do, I feel like that's my responsibility is to every day get up and move forward towards that. And if you're not excited, if you're not passionate. about like you need to find something else to do, I guess. Because like for me, the I this stuff like it causes me not to sleep because I am literally so excited about the stuff that is happening and the the ripple effects I have seen created in just the last five years that I have been involved in and like that's what keeps this going. And it's what uh just excites me. So I don't it's it's Because I'm doing what I'm meant to do. I guess would be the best Answer to that. I love it. Yeah, I mean, and that's really that's really what we're why I'm here today interviewing you because I'm looking for these stories t to inspire. I mean, I wanna educate, entertain, and inspire with this podcast. I mean, that's why I started it, is I I it's called Enhance. I mean I wanted to Kinda like what you're saying, we're building America. We you know, we have a love for this industry. I mean we have the opportunity in this industry to enhance the world around us, right? Which, you know, I always joke, like it sounds a little bit like a Miss America pageant, right? But it's it is I mean, you put it a lot more cool than I did. Like we're building America, we're doing some awesome things here. But you s you sound like you really have your your vision. Um and is that uh would would you say that the the idea that we're building America is that vision mostly, or is it is it helping these other contractors, you're kinda giving back, or is it like a combination thereof of of these things? My my vision is to empower the people that are building a to be part of them being successful doing that. I want to put them in a position where they can go have great success doing that every day. And that is my vi like that is where I am headed. That is the pl the the all-encompassing of everything I do. How do we drive every day business owners to go out and have the best business they possibly for their employees, for their families, for the United States, for all of that. How do we get Them there. That right there is what drives me is I want to just be a ripple along the way. I want to be the reason why something happens. Need to be the entire reason why. I need it everything I do is to create a moment where somebody looks at theirself in the mirror and says, That right there's what I need to fix. And they fix it and it changes their business and it allows them to go on a completely different trajectory. And that that that's all encompassing for me. Like that's what drives me. It's the opportunity to do this, to have this conversation here and to know like this will live as unless they delete the internet, this will be around forever. Ten years from now, somebody could listen to this and we completely change their life and business. And that's that excites me is the fact that we have the opportunity to have That kind of impact on an industry that I love so much. Mm-hmm. Yeah, awesome. And um so you're doing that in a ton of ways, which I want to get to, but really one of the things I want to talk about is so you you have this incredible drive, it sounds like, and um but the people that you're working with, they're struggling and um imagine, right? That's why they're talking to you. But they're struggling. They want to get better. And I think what happens sometimes is frankly, you lose your drive because you get stuck in the weeds and you get you get stuck. Because you don't you're trying to meet payroll. You're trying to get new jobs. The clients are yelling at you. Your people are quitting. I mean, and so how do you find that drive when all these crazy things are happening around you? So to me that pours gasoline on my phone because that means I'm not doing until that stuff starts to go away. When I get on car, when I have these conversations. The barrier to entry to information is one of the biggest problems. Like having structure to business operating systems and plans, and like that is one of the biggest issues that I have found is that everybody I talk to is a grown. It's why they get in those situations that you're talking about where they're beat down because they're just trying to get through it. But they need The knowledge knowledge. And that's typically where I can come in and help, but I'm only one person. And that is what has led to the release of Ask a Shop Owner. Is like how do we demonetize this knowledge and actually just get it in people's hands so they can go run their business and in real time understand I have this problem. Here are the four things you need to do. And here's the checklist and go do it. And then move on to the next ones and be able to dive deeper into that stuff. So for me, when I'm in that word to me, is like I said, I'm a net I just want to solve the problem. And I don't want to see my people be that way. And it's like, how do we solve this problem? Well, no, most people can't afford a ten thousand dollar or five thousand dollar a month consultant or coach. to get them over that hump because they're b like you said, struggling to make payrolls. How do we create an environment where they can that you get the same the same knowledge to be able to go build your business and without that? And so for me, that that like I said, it actually pours gasoline on when I have guys that are just stuck and there's burn and they're beating the wall. It's like, well how do I solve that problem? So they don't get that. way. And that is just what I continue to do. And I don't let that stuff personally get to me. I let it be the reason why. Like I tell everybody about when I speak to veterans, or I I go to a veteran con and I speak to veterans or I'm on a veteran podcast. And one of the biggest problems that we have is veterans is that we allow our service to be the reason why. Because this happened, I'm not going to do that. Or because of this, I'm not. And instead of using our service as the reason why. Because for me, being a Marine should be the reason why I do anything. It should be the cataport to why. It should never be the reason why I don't do something. It should be the reason why. And that's how I look at it when I am on. cause or I'm talking to people that are struggling and like it that is it should be my reason why to do something about. It should not be my reason why not. Because if all of these guys are burnt out, well I don't why even try? Like it's it's it's a it's an uphill batter. It's it's going to be a fight that you're you're just going to constantly be fighting. Instead of saying that this is a fight worth fighting, because of that, because these guys are burnt out. Because they're struggling to make payroll, they they're struggling to make a profit on their jobs, that should be the reason why we're excited to go out and fix that. It shouldn't be a reason why not to. And I think a lot of people do that too much where they you they take their reason why and they turn it into the reason why not. Two. Yeah, it's giving us yeah. We just can't be afraid to go be great and just say, This is my reason why and I am going to go be great. I love that. Yeah, thank you. so we've talked a lot about um ask a shop owner and it sounds like that's a big initiative. but you do have some other things going on as well. you got a lot you got a lot of things going on. So you got builtable labs, is that still going on as well? Yeah, yeah, we it's uh we we build custom software and architecture for it's more or less not building custom software as understanding what software you should use in your construction. I take my years in software and SaaS and then all my years of operations and running a construction business to be able to have an educated conversation on what does software implementation look like in Yeah. And like that came from BuilderComs and running a SaaS company and kind of realizing like the last thing everybody needs is another piece of software in their business. What they really need to do is understand how the software works in the business that they have and is it something that we can have off the shelf or do we need to start custom development on stuff? So That that's one of my ways to just continue to evolve how we think about stuff in the construction industry and challenge the status quo around Mm-hmm. Which I mean you know, would you say that most construction businesses can just grab something off the shelf in this day and age or do they And that's what makes it really hard is like every construction business is different. So every piece of software you buy off the shelf is going to do stuff a little bit different. I'm a huge component that everybody should try everything out there. That's they have free triers, demo software. The the goal with software should be to try, not try. Is how you operate your business should flow directly into that piece of software. You should not have to completely change unless your business is completely broken operationally, you should not have to change how your business operates to implement a piece of software. You need to find something that fits into how your business operates. And a lot of times you can do that. But sometimes you you get to the point where off-the-shelf solutions are just not the fit, and custom development, all of that becomes an option. The barrier to entry of that has come down so much. At the same time, big platforms and project management softwares have gone through the roof in pricing of what it costs to even run that software. A lot of people can build what they need for what they're spending on an annual basis. Yeah. we actually break down what do you need. Because a lot of people are only using about half of any piece of software they're using. They're not even using it to the full capacity. So you don't you don't need to build out some big project management software. You just need to build out what you need. And then you can always expand and grow on that as you continue to go. So it really depends on the business and I tell people don't just buy the first piece of software that you get in front of you. Yeah. Figure out understand understand what your systems in your business and how it operates and how that relates to software. And get something that has the correct overlap. Which I mean now in twenty twenty six, I mean the the options are just e exponentially growing with AI and these code things that we have. I mean, what are what are you seeing as options and trends for uh software moving forward? I mean I think we're a couple years o so I have a very distorted view, I guess, on this. Like I've run a SAS company for five years. And so this is kinda kicking myself in my own bars when I say this is like I think we're a couple of years at most away from SaaS being pretty much obsolete. Uh I think the barrier to entry to have your own software is So quickly getting better. Like I have talked to guys that own development companies that are trying to now exit them because they do not see how they can exist in two years. You'll be able to hire somebody that's like an entry love or coder that understands coding and build pretty much anything you could possibly want that's specific to your company. And that is what I see as the future. And that's what at like Buildable Labs, we try to help people understand. My goal isn't necessarily for me to build your software. My goal is to help lay out the roadmap for you so you understand what this looks like. And then you can either have it built in-house, we can build it, you can go shop it at other developers. I want to take what I understand from software and construction and have a conversation with you on what this would look like for your company to allow you to have a roadmap. And that is what I see the future being. I think it's going to be any software plays in the future are going to have to be stuff that is. basically embedded in the background of companies through different APIs, different things. It might not even be stuff that we interact with, but it just makes stuff happen. Uh from like a project management, a scheduling, an inventory, all of that kind of stuff, I see that moving in-house. And I'm watching that happen now. Because like I said, the cost on a lot of this software has skyrocketed. why the price to develop your own or bring it in-house has come down. And there is no reason for a company to not build what they actually need instead of paying I mean, get people pay twenty, thirty thousand dollars a month to have some of these project management softwares. Like you can have your own in-house and not pay that. Yeah, so that's a a lot of good things to consider. It sounds like things are just sh shifting quickly and um I mean how do people keep up with all that right now in terms of these options in in the technology in construction. think You you need to be doing what you need to do for your business. Yes. uh It's the shiny object scene. Like AI is super popular. Everybody's trying to figure out how to get AI in their business, but I hate to be the one to burst everybody's bubble. But I estimate between and not just me, there's multiple sources out there that were estimate between eighty to ninety percent of construction businesses have no business putting AI in their business because they do not have the data. They do not have the infrastructure. For it to actually matter. And it will actually make you worse. Because you put bad information in, it's going to give you bad information out. So like if you are not at that point where you have made the investment to to start getting all your information in one place, getting this data in, making sure this is good information coming in, like the last thing you want to do is then run out and buy the newest shiny object and plug it into a broken system. Like that that is how you keep up with this is by not keeping up with it. It's about focusing on where you're at as a business and just understanding like we aren't playing keeping up with the Joneses here. What we're doing is we're playing how do we build a successful, sustainable business that can continue to scale over time. So we do that in and you don't just jump a step because this is the newest, hottest thing that has evolved. You gotta continue to work through that. So that is what I would say is like don't pay attention to that stuff. Work through it how you need to work through it. Yeah, yeah. Sounds like you're you're more cautious right now on that front. I think I and on technology, I just don't think most business owners are ready. And I know this from the conversations that I've had with them. It's like if I would truly give them what they think they want, they would break their business. Because their business is not ready for it. It is not like if I give you a piece of software that helps you run your business but all the data and everything you put into your project management software is garbage. the direction that that business like what it's going to is going to be wrong. It's going to literally take you the wrong way because it has the wrong information. So I think People need to be more proactive in making sure that they're set up right. Because the last thing I would do is put somebody in a position to fail. I would rather say, you know, hey, this is hard to understand, but like you're not there and ready for that. I know you really want it, but I mean, this is what makes me the worst salesman for anything I've ever done. Is like if I get on a car and I'm so like they're not like I don't think something that I'm doing is actually going to help them and there's other things they need to do to get to that point, I would say that. I would be like, you need to do this before we have this conversation. And as much as I want to sell you something, it would be it would like that wouldn't sit right with me. And that's how I do business is I it's I just do stuff clean and like if this is going to move the needle for them, this is what they should do. If not, here are the steps to get there. Right, right. That makes sense. I mean yeah, if you automate a process that's flawed, then really all you've done is uh automate a f you've you've e exponentially increased that process which was already flawed. You know, you've sped up that you've sped up something that was bad. So you just have something really fast and bad. Yeah, one hundred percent. Yeah, so that's my simple way of saying it, I suppose. But um yeah, I just had that happen today. uh matter of fact, somebody called me and and asked for help with something and I said, you know, I don't I don't think you need an engineer for this. I mean you just have a small crack in your spa and I said, you know, you just had it repaired, why don't you call I mean take a look at it, keep an eye on it for six months and and and call me if you have a problem, but otherwise just go enjoy your spa for a while. Um so uh you had mentioned BuilderComs, Ron, also uh what what is BuilderComs exactly? Yeah, so BuilderComms was my first endeavor into the software word and it's I built it for myself to solve a problem. And the problem was communication, both internally and externally. We had everything's scattered across emails, text messages, slack channels, all this different stuff. We thought we communicated great. Our customers would say different and then I would get on the phone and it would take me two hours to even figure out if I have the appropriate information. So I built a communicate a pretty much just a messaging platform that the team, the client, everybody communicates on this. We streamlined it off so within five minutes, I could know what was happening on any project. What did we say? What did the customer say? Any of that. I ended up bringing that product to market. It's BuilderCom's today. And like that was my first endeavor into software. Like I'm a Marine that Like I said, I spent thirteen years in construction, over fifteen however many years now it is. I mean we're coming up on twenty since I stepped on the yellow pro yellow footprints. I've been around the construction industry forever and this moved me into serving the entire construction industry. Cause I what I really saw was like why would I just solve this problem for myself when this cost construction industry over thirty billion dollars a year? And nobody wants to go fix it because it's hard. And that's what that product does is we are a very simple, easy to use piece of software that gets all of your communication out of the emails, out of the text messages, gets it in one platform, and then everybody's on the same page. So everybody I mean, you you just tell the client, Hey, this is where you talk about the job. Yep, yep. We route everything through builders. Homeowners are my easiest sale. Homeowners are absolutely one hundred percent bought in. It took me a few years to really break down the walls in the construction industry. Uh in twenty twenty four we were the inner an international builder show top fifteen startup, which was an amazing accomplishment to have. Uh but homeowners got it right away. It took me a little bit to get through to everybody in the construction industry that communication truly is one of the root causes of every problem you have. Hmm. I mean that's that's uh I can agree with that one. So did this solve a lot of those problems with this software? One hundred percent. Because once we get everything in a single place, there be there becomes clarity, people know where to go. You no longer miss phone calls, you don't miss text messages, and emails don't end up just in spam or unread. And that's what we allow to happen with BuilderCon is everybody knows this is where everything happens for the communication for the project. Yeah. Okay. And um I guess you gotta get everybody on board with that though, right? As far as the homeowner, the project manager, or whom you know, in your team and everybody involved. Is that a a challenge to get everybody on board with that or they Well what I find nowadays is that most people out in the field who in the past has always said that's the biggest barrier to entry is to get field guys to use software. Well, we're seeing a lot of younger software or a lot of younger generation out in the field, they want software. But though they want is stuff that works and actually makes their life easier easier. So getting the buy-in from the field people, the homeowners are the easiest part because that's what they want. One of the greatest pieces of feedback I ever got was I had one of our builders was telling me, he's like, You understand this is the greatest sales closing tool I've ever had?'Cause he's like, I now look at clients and I'm like, Hey, I know you're concerned about communication. We use builder comms, all of our communication will go through there. So you don't have to worry about how are we communicating, where are these conversations living? And I was like, I didn't even think about it from the perspective. He's like homeowners love it because it's like what they're thinking in their mind is like, Am I writing you a check and how are we ever communicating again? You're now saying I have a proactive solution to this. Uh so the buy-in from the homeowner, 100%, they're always in. Most of the time, what we're finding from field people is they love it because it makes their life easier. Because they can just go in there, do whatever their updates is, say what has been done, talk to the other team members. understand where they're at and what does that look like really quickly. It they don't have to do a hundred and fifty different things or try to figure it out. It's just right there and owners love it. I was at a golf tournament, we were sponsoring one of the hoes and this builder came up to me and was like, Man, I wish I knew about you forty five minutes ago. And I was like, well what do you mean? He's like I literally just spent an hour out in my truck. Trying to find the email between me and this homeowner on what kind of outlets we were installing. Not only did it take me that long to find it, is I had a guy sitting on the job site waiting for me to get this information to him that I was paying. And he said, if I had your software now, he could have just went in there and would have been able to see the conversation of what we were actually doing, and it would have gotten me an hour back of my life. And we would have been an hour ahead, or actually on schedule is what he said. We would have been on schedule with this project and I would have been out here golfing so I was like, That is one of the best use cases I have ever heard is how do you get to the golf course faster? There go. Use builder comms, it'll help you go. Um so yeah, could could that program help engineers by the way? So anybody, so we have anybody from engineers to interior designers to home to construction businesses, all realms of construction, roofing, general contracting, and we have actually moved outside of the construction industry at well as well. What we have found is anybody that operates on a project basis, because that's how we organize everything within the software, is everything's its own project, and all the communication for that project lives within that. And that is really what makes our software special. Is it's just it's super organized that way. So if you run a business that runs offer projects, builder comms can solve your communication. Breakdowns. Yeah. Okay. And so I wanna ask you about this software because like on a on a a different angle, which is when you have a killer idea or an idea, so one day you were maybe I don't know, in the shower or something and you said, Hey, I need to come up with this this idea but um may maybe it's uh a contractor, architect, engineer and and they have this idea for something that might help improve the construction industry or their business. So what what are some tips you have to help facilitate that idea to completion. Don't take no as an answer. Literally. When I first had 90, so I was laying in bed one night when Night D for BuilderComs came to me. And I got up, and I still have it today. I call it a haphazard at best, like little put together of like a PowerPoint presentation of what I thought this would look like. It it ended up looking nothing like that, but it was the concept. And then I literally went out and tried to get people to build this for me. And people weren't interested because like here I I have no software experience at the time. I'm just this construction guy that wants to build this communication like this messaging platform. And they're like, ah, no, we have plenty of business. We don't so I just kept grinding it out, grinding it out. Finally I made some pathways in, I was able to t make a couple partnerships and I was able to get this built. And I just never stopped because I knew this was the solution. And then nowadays the barrier to entry to this stuff becomes so much low lower the more knowledge you have, the the more people out there. I would say just don't accept no. And anybody that you're working with within the software world or have a lot of conversations with them to have clarity on what exactly is being built. How is this going to turn out? Way too often I find people getting software developed and you don't even 100% know what you want. And the developer doesn't know what you want, but they want to build software and charge you for that. So they just stop building and whatever comes out of it, and then there's always a bunch of revisions and everything. So get clear on that technology today from All the different stuff out there can really help you get clarity on that. It can start to build some of the stuff out for you. Uh, but I would say just don't accept no and don't be afraid to go build it. Like everything's hard in life. You might as well do something that excites you. Yeah, awesome. Good good advice. Well, Ron, wanna be respectful of your time. It's been a great conversation with you today. Just um we've hit a lot of different topics, but I wanna open it up if there's anything else that I missed that you wanted to make sure you talked about today. No, I think we d we touched on everything. This has been a fantastic conversation today. Yeah, awesome. Well, um hopefully we can we can continue our our new friendship and continue to talk together. Uh was uh how do ever how does everybody reach out to you and find you? Absolutely. The best way to get in contact with me is gonna be on LinkedIn. Ron Newsbaum on LinkedIn. Okay, awesome. So you heard it there. Find him on LinkedIn and the all the different resources he has. So Ron, take care, God bless, and uh go go build America. Absolutely, man. Thank you. Okay, take care, man. Hey everybody, thanks for listening to today's episode of Enhance. And please leave a like, a subscribe, or a follow, and we'll see you next time.