Mass Timber Group Show: Sustainable Building Experts

Game-Changing Software for Mass Timber Engineering w/Adam and Ringo of CLT Toolbox

• Brady & Nic

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This software is empowering designers to bring mass timber into the mainstream.

Adam Jones and Ringo Thomas, co-founders of CLT Toolbox, are transforming mass timber design for engineers worldwide.

We unpack the innovative tools they’ve developed to save engineers hundreds of hours, how their software is making the leap from traditional spreadsheets to streamlined user-friendly solutions, their focus on automating design processes plus tackling the biggest challenges in mass timber engineering, including connection design.

We also get a look inside their expansion plans for the European & US markets.

Connect with Adam Jones on LinkedIn

Connect with Ringo Thomas on LinkedIn

Learn more about CLT Toolbox

Looking for your mass timber community? Attend the 2025 Mass Timber Group Summit in Denver Co - Aug 20-22nd!

Speaker 1:

Rebuilding the whole software and essentially in this iteration we're going to have USA, canada, eurocodes with National Annexes, the Australian code and New Zealand code. All in all, member design calculators.

Speaker 2:

This is the Mass Timber Group show. I'm Nick.

Speaker 3:

And I'm Brady, and we talk to mass timber experts. Today we caught up with Adam Jones and Ringo Thomas, the co-founders of CLT Toolbox, a structural design software making mass timber simple and accessible.

Speaker 2:

CLT Toolbox is solving a major bottleneck to the adoption of mass timber by building tools to enable traditional engineers to become timber specialists.

Speaker 3:

But before we jump in, if you want the tools, resources and connections to get mass timber into more projects, we're hosting the second annual Mass Timber Group Summit this August in Denver to help you do just that. We've got 30-plus sessions, three amazing networking parties, eight masterminds and building tours of the coolest projects in Denver all to give you the tools needed to use Masked Timber with confidence, have client conversations and make more projects happen. Check out the link in the show notes below for more info and, if you like these podcasts, subscribing to the channel is the biggest compliment you can give us. So with that, let's get into it. Clt.

Speaker 1:

Toolbox. What do you guys do and who are you helping? Well, thanks so much for having us on the podcast, brady and Nick. So CLT Toolbox we provide design infrastructure for the design of mass timber buildings to make it as easy as possible, basically, for everyone out there. So right now our product is for structural engineers with structural engineering software to automate their design processes. So we sell licensed sales to the engineers to automate the design, but also to the supply chain as well who are looking to get in front of those structural engineers and also make it as easy for them to actually and frictionless as possible for them to sell their products.

Speaker 1:

So at the very high level, that's what we've got right now and we've built the product ready for the AN high level. That's what we've got right now. And we've built the product ready for the ANZ market Australia, new Zealand At the moment. We're in the process right now of about to launch in Europe actually. So there's a funny thing called national annexes and all these nuances you actually need to build for the European context. So we're about to launch that and in parallel we've got exciting launches coming on Connections, because pretty much after launching our first version, which was member design. Everyone's like, yeah, cool member design, it's fantastic, you've got the best software out there for that. But my problem for sure is around connection design. That's the hardest thing when it comes to mass timber design.

Speaker 3:

So we've essentially had a lot of the team dedicated there, so we're about to launch connections um, and later we can talk a bit about what we're doing with the usa and canadian market got it and you guys, uh, came out of the gate about six months ago, if I'm, if I remember that right, and then you guys have got a pretty good team, pretty guy, pretty good size team as well as a very talented team. But like, how did you guys meet? I heard there's a story, a story behind that.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, that's a good origin story. So, yeah, we go here, obviously, and thanks again for having us guys. So I'm a New Zealander Originally, I grew up in New Zealand. I moved to Australia, we moved to Melbourne specifically in my early 20s, maybe when I was 20. And a few years into that I found myself somehow giving a talk. I'm not an engineer, I'm a salesperson, entrepreneur, like I bring the software side into the business. But I was at Engineers Australia event and I'd somehow found myself giving a talk to a room full of engineers with this other guy and the talk was on tech and the future of the workforce, so the way that tech is improving over time. And so I prepped, I got up there, I gave them some. You know what I thought was a great talk. I was really happy with myself and I came out the back of it and I had a message on LinkedIn from this guy called Adam Jones. He goes hey, man, like you know, loved what you were talking about. I'm about to start a podcast. Do you want to be on the podcast? I'm, yeah, man, I got asked to be on a podcast off a talk. That's awesome.

Speaker 4:

So I organize a time with adam. I'm like this sounds great. I think we're meeting on a saturday or a sunday during the day, adam and you know, maybe, maybe like three hours before we're due to meet, I get a call from adam. He's just like hey, so, um, I'm on my way up now to meet you. I'm calling the library to see if they have a room we can record in, but I can't really find one, so maybe we'll just meet at the park. I'm like, yeah, all right, man, like sounds good, and I never turns out. Adam didn't actually have a podcast yet and I was his first ever podcast guest, and so we went and sat down in the park, we had a mic next to us in the computer and recorded what undoubtedly is the worst podcast of all time. I'm like 23, talking about urbanization trends that I Googled like three hours before that podcast meeting and so, funnily enough, adam ended up deleting that. But we just ended up staying friends. So you know those sort of friends are like got on pretty well. So you know you give a call every now and then you catch up every month or so and then, as the years evolved, you know, particularly during COVID, we'd go on walks around the lake in our local area to sort of catch up and just shoot the shit really, as two guys are trying to build their career in a certain direction.

Speaker 4:

And then when Adam, you know, sort of started building CLT Toolbox, he founded it and he started bringing it to life, I was sort of helping. You know, I was just coming to some meetings, helping with some sales and thinking, yeah, maybe raising some money could be a good idea from investors. And I go, oh, I'll help you do that, man, I've never done that before. Like I'm sure we can figure that out, like I'm sure we can figure that out. And we went out and started talking to some early investors and really early on realized that A for me, I went to interviews with Adam, with some engineers we were showing the software, and I was just astounded by how positive their response was.

Speaker 4:

To be honest, for engineers, you know, normally I'm seeing them kind of look at that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong. But they looked at Adam's thing and went it's amazing and wrong, that's wrong. But they looked at adam's thing when it's amazing. And then, um, so it was that combined with, as we spoke to some of our early investors, they they felt that the combination of the two of us was kind of important for, you know, the growth of a venture-backed business, and so the um, and we call it the damon right like the, the sort of spirit of the business, got a hold of me and uh, I you know. So I gave long sort of four months notice to where I was previously working and spent that time transitioning to June last year to come in full time.

Speaker 3:

I love the scrappy beginnings, origin stories that we're hearing around. It's like guys have great ideas, they meet great partners and then they do great things together. And that's very similar to how Nick and I met. So we met on the board of a local nonprofit a million miles from the mass timber market and then fast forward what seven years or something like that in our friendship, nick, yeah, something like that and then Nick calls me. He's like hey, man, let's go build a project. And I was like that's cool, but I'm only building new stuff. And he's like have you heard about this stuff called mass timber? And I was like and he's like well, we're going to Portland, man, we're going to go to the IMTC and you're going to learn all about it. And we did so.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it was a. It was a great kind of like partner thing, just kind of like you guys had talked about. But teams make the make everything better, right. And I mean I couldn't ask for a better partner and team on my end. And I don't know, nick, do you have a different opinion?

Speaker 2:

We're rocking and rolling. Honestly, I couldn't be happier with anything. It matters, and I know that you guys talked about having an incredibly well-balanced just team that's carrying you. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, 100%. So you know, me and Ringo, we're sort of market-facing a little bit, but really the heroes of our business are the ones in product development, who are the ones innovating, doing things that I don't think has ever been done before in the world and actually just making everything a reality. So we've got, in terms of our leadership team I'll start with Ixan Agustin. So he's the leader of our software team. We've got 15 software developers. Luckily enough, he's spent his whole life basically automating spreadsheets to become JavaScript and not needing to know what the hell is in a spreadsheet. And if you think about our business model is, you know, engineers right now are spending all their time building spreadsheets, and every time someone's building a spreadsheet they're reinventing the wheel, building the same spreadsheets at WSP and Arup and oracle, and they're doing the same thing. So you know, one of our company values is solve a problem once, use it many times, and that's what software is essentially. So ixan um, his brilliance and his skill is is unlocked, the way we set up the business to actually get, you know, build what engineers would build as spreadsheets and actually turn it into software. And Ari as well, on his side, on the software side, is leading the team there. But on the other side, we've got, you know, the people building the initial forms of the spreadsheet. So that's led by Lalisi. And, yeah, she's also got 15 instructional engineers.

Speaker 1:

And how that all started was like I put a job up online. I'm like, hey, I'm the only one doing doing these, these engineering I'm not my attention to detail is not great, admittedly and uh, she put the you know, 50 people around the world applied for the work and I chose lalisi. And then I didn't think much, I was just like just sent her a beam penetration, like highly technical work. And uh, after a week, what she sent back, I'm like what the hell is? What the hell is this? Like? It's better than what I could do, and she doesn't even know what a glue lamb is like two weeks ago. Right, so it's like you got any mates. She brought her best mate, wender, out along and then, you know, once we were able to raise the capital, like her dream was to open an office, essentially, and run her own team. So she's done that, so she's grown the team to 15.

Speaker 1:

And the world-class engineers, essentially, another one of our values is equal opportunity, because there are, in some of these countries, people who are incredibly talented one out of 100 talent. But if they're not just given any opportunity to the region, it's just sort of like it just dies in the world and the world isn't a better place for it. So you know, having having an office there in Addis Ababa, we've got, like you know, 600 people applied for six spots just to show what the opportunities are there in that city. So we're getting one out of 100 talent. We've got lots of stories.

Speaker 1:

But you know one guy on the team, ghirom, like he. He started in ethiopia, uh, initially as a kid, right without electricity, and he was starting agriculture and stuff like that. But when he applied to university they said his dream was to become an engineer. But they said, no, we're going to give you agriculture, we're not going to choose engineering. And then ghirom, like the man he is, he rocked up to the dean of the university's front yard on a saturday morning and knocked on the door and said, hey, I want to be an engineer, can you give me this opportunity? You're not going to regret it. And the dean of university's like, what the hell? Who is this guy like? All right, let's just give it to him anyway. So, giram, he gets into the university. Five years later, the same same dean of the university is shaking his hand on stage because he won the ducks of the university right. So that's Guillaume. That's where he started, without electricity reading one hand.

Speaker 3:

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Speaker 2:

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Speaker 4:

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Speaker 3:

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Speaker 4:

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Speaker 1:

Learn more about Cornerstone Timber Frames by clicking the link in the show notes below. Burning cattle with the other.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, during the day.

Speaker 4:

He didn't have electricity, so he's doing those too, so he could study during the day.

Speaker 1:

He's just born for it, uh, and now he's, you know, one of many in the team yeah, and you know, what he's solving right now is like engineers would understand it's, it's, it's, you know, the timoshenko beam theory method which works out sheer deformation, and literally in fp innovations it says timoshenko beam theory is excellent but too cumbersome to solve or something.

Speaker 1:

So you know, we got, we got like absolute world-class talent on the team and they're the ones who basically unlock what we're doing and basically the ones who we think can be building infrastructure for mass timber buildings and really going to change the industry. Because, you know, concrete and steel is the competitor a lot of the time, or concrete, especially, is the competitor for mass timber, and the reason it gets specified a lot of the time is just because it's easy. Engineers can wake up and do it in their sleep. They can pump out a design for a client, even if the client wants a sustainable option. It's just too hard to design sustainably. So, you know, with infrastructure, and if you can make it as easy as concrete and steel, then we think that's going to be the thing that moves the dial for the industry and really unlocks these buildings. So, um, you know, that's the team we're super proud of, who they are and, uh, and what they're doing.

Speaker 4:

There's also, um, there's also marco too in serbia. Uh, so so he's he's part market facing with us and then part product development. He's a product manager technically, and Marco's output is so incredible. It humbles me literally, because he works with me a lot on the customer facing site. We do a lot of demos together. We'll go meet with people and just kind of show them the software as it's evolving. And after sort of like two or three weeks of working directly with Marco, I'm going to myself man, his output is crazy. I can't believe how much he's getting through.

Speaker 4:

I was talking to Adam about it and then Adam goes. You know that he has the same output with the technical teams and I'm like what? I couldn't believe it because he was like what he was doing with me was more than enough anyway. And so we have this really hilarious mix of personalities and cultures. You know, you've got serbia, you've got ethiopia, you've indonesia, you have australia. It's kind of like the the core mix in there and you have these different cultural and religious and language-based things. But you know, we're in this really magical moment right now as a business with the culture. It's just no one's mean to each other, everyone's's really supportive, inquisitive, curious. You know and it's a I've been in successful and failed growing businesses most of my life, but this is a real magic moment, like the Goldilocks moment for a business, so we're just trying to savor it and use it to create these just like really impactful software.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I love that story and as fun as I really impactful software. Yeah, I love that story and as much fun as I'm having talking to you guys. It sounds like I need to talk to Marcos and Garrett more Pretty crazy stories for those guys On the team side of things you talked about. These are your engineers I think you said you had 15 or so that are actually putting in the inputs in the software. I work in spreadsheet land 24-7, Like I live in spreadsheets, but I'm not an engineer, so unpack for me what you guys are doing. How are you taking engineers out of spreadsheet land and putting them into software land and how does that make their life easier?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, great. So at the moment, if you're a structural engineer looking to design, you'd basically like, get a design guide might be you know FB Innovations as a popular example in North America You'd read the design methods and then you'd start building a spreadsheet and in that spreadsheet you'd read the design routine. So it might be like how do you calculate the effective stiffness of a CLT panel, as an example? Build the spreadsheet that's one side and then you also get the design data from the supplier as well. So you contact the supplier or you read their design guides, work out their effective, their stiffness properties, their bending strength, their shear strength all these things you put into your spreadsheet and then you do a design. You know and embedded in that is a lot, of, lot of hours essentially, and like we did a white paper and it's about like 500 unpaid hours across floor design, beam design, column design, fire, vibration, the whole lot, and that's like if they're starting from scratch. So you know we'll, we'll do all of that and we'll build a spreadsheet and spend maybe 10 times as much effort and time at that stage, because like that's our business essentially. And then we turn that into software and at the software stage you can actually start inputting things that you can't do in spreadsheets. So you raise the level of what would be that calculation routine. So what was initially done right now with spreadsheets by engineers, most of the time ends up being a much better software solution.

Speaker 1:

Admittedly, there are other software solutions sometimes out there. So what is the existing model um of of software? Basically, a lot of the time is building free software as a single supplier solution, so an engineer can use the software but you're locked into one supplier, um, and for that one supplier to build that software it's really expensive. So there's, if every supplier was to build their own software themselves, again there's reinvention of the wheel on the supplier side, there's reinvention of the wheel on the engineering side. So you know what we're doing is to have something that grows the pie and rather than suppliers compete, compete with each other on building software, you can actually have a solution, you know, that is built together.

Speaker 1:

The whole industry can jump on. And for a supplier, you know for us it would be like 1% of the cost of partnering with us compared to what they'd go with if they had to go on themselves. So that's, that's our, our model essentially, and, um, when it's in software it's like highly leverageable, because you can literally solve it once and there's infinite leverage. It costs us nothing to once it's built, once to fulfill it and get it into the hands of engineers. And that's really the power of software. It's infinite leverage, essentially. What do you reckon, ringo, you got more to add to all that?

Speaker 4:

yeah, yeah, I think, um, uh, I think, from my perspective, like we've heard the um, we've heard the values pop up a couple of times during this conversation. So you heard us nick at the beginning. We said uh, uh, build it once, use it many times, is one of the one of the values that we have. We also have equal opportunity. That relates to the team and having them involved. We also have grow the pie. You've spoken to grow the pie and that's what Adam was just speaking to them.

Speaker 4:

Fundamentally, our vision is that by building the infrastructure, that every supplier may have a line item in their strategy that says software, and that software line item can be anything from a small project to a large project, to a program of work. And if we can replace all of those line items by coming on board to our software, then we can become infrastructure for the industry. And that's the sort of grow the pie mentality Everyone's welcome for the industry. And that's to sort of grow the pie mentality, everyone's welcome. And then the fourth. The fourth value is um, I think this is a fun one because I heard adam say it while we were talking. Once we're trying to plan after we raise money, we're like okay, like what is responsible way to use in investor money? You know the first one is like don't waste it. So you know, don't have any line item in your in your. Don't have any line item in your in your, don't have any line item in your. Zero that you know could be questionable is like did you really need to have that 250 000 mass timber influence the party in the payments? You know you should probably probably try to avoid that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's that's like number one.

Speaker 4:

But then we're like cool, how do we actually invest across the business? Like what's the right way to think about doing that? And that's when don't be frugal on bottlenecks came up as a key principle, which the origins of it is around from the book, the goal, theory of Constraints and then a whole bunch of other sort of principles in general. But for us it was just like it wasn't just a call when adam and I are sitting there thinking where should we invest? Where should we invest.

Speaker 4:

It was more saying to the teams hey, if you are a bottleneck, if you feel like you're the reason why the whole system is going slow, like it doesn't matter if we've said we can't invest more. It doesn't matter if we've said no, you know, we've just raised money. We have to be careful. You need to tell us that you're a bottleneck. Or adam in particular, because he helps facilitate the running of these teams. It's like that that is the right moment to call for help, uh, and so we've found that that's been both important because people have unblocked themselves, but also funny at times, adam, because it means that we've had to wait a little bit longer for things to come through because they've been built properly. But for me, as a sales growth guy sometimes I'm sitting there, just like you know maybe we could have been frugal on that bottleneck, or maybe we could have built it once and not used it many times because we could get something out sooner.

Speaker 4:

And I think that's the core tension of sales and delivery really is that like I obviously want everything now and delivery obviously wants to build. I obviously want everything now and delivery obviously wants to build things properly, and we both kind of want the same thing. But the, you know, our adjacent tension and the nature of our role always sort of overlaps with the priorities of the other, and so that's been. That's where the values are so useful, because it's not a matter of you know, adam, the product development teams are withholding from me. It's no, we're working aligned with our values, you know, and that's the that's teams are withholding from me. It's no, we're working in line with our values, you know, and that's kind of the core thing there. You want to add on that, joe?

Speaker 1:

Well, it's just like. It's a powerful analogy, is like the theory of constraints. So if you think about it, the whole mass timber delivery it's the exact analogy of how a business operates, or sort of learning. It's the idea of the theory of constraints investing in bottlenecks. So it's like if you've got a CLT factory or something and the bottleneck is the CNC machine, there's no point investing in your feedstock or the press or the QA or a new gantry crane or something like that, if your bottleneck is always a CNC machine. So it's like you identify the things blocking, blocking development and throughput of the business and, um, for us it's product development and we're so we've got what we call the infrastructure factory as well and, and as we've been developing our processes as a business, the the nature of where the bottleneck changes, and we invest in that.

Speaker 1:

And so it started off in the Ethiopian team and the software team and then now the product development team because it's, and so the product management team with Marco, because the worst thing you can do is build a product that no one wants, like you can spend all this time popping it through the factory and then it pops out, and then we actually had that happen once. But what the hell is like? Who is this for? What is that for? You know what I mean. And the same when it comes to QA. If you pump out a CLT panel and there's a defect on site or anything like that, you need always your mechanisms to turn into standard operating procedures to improve your QA, to actually get it better. And I think it's the analogy of starting a factory. Running a factory is the same as basically any business operation. That's my learning so far.

Speaker 4:

And that's what Jonesy like from an outside point of view, that's what Jonesy does so well as a technical leader and as a leader in general of the business is that you know, if there are blockages in the system, people are like, oh, there's a blockage in the system, it's about the system, not the people.

Speaker 4:

And that's kind of what I was referring to before about how good our culture is right now. People aren't running into blockages and going. Well, you said, and you said it's nothing like that. It's literally people just solving through problems together and finding solutions and unblocking things. And that's why we've able to been able to grow quite quickly, so I'd be able to get products to market reasonably quickly. That's why we're expanding different geographies pretty quickly, because they're working as a team to unlock the system, not holding on to their piece of the, the machine and saying no, no, but I, I built this, I worked overtime to build this like how dare we throw this away? That's just not the energy in the business and and you know, I think I find that really impressive to watch from, you know, sort of the outside of product core product development and now it sounds like the us market is right on the horizon.

Speaker 2:

Are you able to kind of foreshadow what your plans are for that?

Speaker 1:

yeah, absolutely so. You know, in terms of our product releases, we released an initial product. It was a lot geared to the ANZ market. We had euro codes built in on. That was a bit. There's a few issues in. It was a bit of bugs.

Speaker 1:

So rather than just continuously improve that, we're in the process now of rebuilding the whole software and essentially in this iteration we're going to have USA, canada euro codes with national annexes, uh, the australian code and new zealand code, all in all member design calculators. So for an engineer to be able to actually change between the code and have your different k factors, we're gonna have the prg 320, everything like that, the nuances. With that vibration methods you'll be able to choose between the new Eurocode, modified Eurocode, fb Innovations as well. You know, for charred models you can change between Eurocodes and USA, because a lot of the time what you'll find is the local codes don't cover everything and you'd want to do a deemed to satisfy. There's different language for what deemed to satisfy solution is, but essentially the cookbook approach of your building code. There's always gaps and sometimes you do need to borrow from standards around the world and and not everything does it perfectly in that region.

Speaker 1:

So when we launch in usa and canada. Uh, we're going to start with a beta program in. I want to say the date, but it's like the second half of the year at some point.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, q3 this year in 2024, and the first step is going to be our member design calculators. So from what we understand, it'll be that there's a big gap in the usa and canadian market there for for this software essentially. So what that means for engineers is they can jump on. Uh, you'll have automated design for beams, columns, floors, fire point loads, shear walls, diaphragms, everything like that in step one and then, uh, following that will be connections. So screw design, dow design, beam column connections, everything like that. And you know, with that, if you go and we think it's going to be one of the first times like a true concrete engineer with very little context can actually jump in and actually have everything they need to do.

Speaker 1:

A mass timber design. Um, there's another one of our core product principles and you know when you're building software that's generalist. First, specific to mass timber. You know the specific mass timber problem isn't like that is it's anisotropic, so it's got properties in three different directions. We've got that in.

Speaker 1:

But the biggest one out of everything is the education side of things like concrete and steel. It's very well covered at the undergraduate level, but when it comes to mass timber it varies around the world. Some parts of europe are, you know, quite developed here. Some parts are not, but broadly speaking, mass timber is just not there at the university level, especially at undergraduate. So everything in our software is not a black box, so it's an educational design tool.

Speaker 1:

You click the dropdown, you fully learn the context around this vibration method, this stiffness method, and everyone can learn as they go. So again, from what the concrete engineer needs to actually design, they need to know how to design it. They need the design automation, but they need it not to be a black box and just like run the numbers. They need to build trust in it. They need to learn timber. So that's what's coming for the USA and Canadian market and I guess, at the time of speaking, we're open to partnerships with suppliers as well as a first step, and then, on the back of that as well, the beta engineers, who are the first engineers going to crash test what we're building.

Speaker 4:

Essentially, I will build quickly on the Nodder Black Box thing. I had a really hilarious moment laughing already because this just cracked me up for ages. It was a timber off-site conference last year here in Australia which is kind of like a small version of the IMTC. You know we went to the International Mass Timber Conference a couple of months ago as well and I'll sort of speak to that in a second. But we were at this timber off-site conference last year and I didn't really understand the term not a black box. I can sort of understand it from the idea of like the I've more heard the term black box on like the plane's cockpit or something like that they review after something's happened. I don't really understand in the context we're talking about, but I was standing there at our booth maybe September last year, pretty green to it all, and as people come by I say hey, how are you going Nice to meet you? And this engineer came by. We had our poster on the side and on the side it said you know education features, you know third party reviewed, you know supplier information and like not a black box. And when we were there I was like it's kind of weird just to write not a black box about our software, surely, like I don't really know what that means. And then I was standing there talking to this engineer and he's like, yeah, well, you know, I've just been looking at all of the options out there and they're just all black boxes and I'm like, I'm like what? And so I just gotta turn comically and point at a side that just literally says like not a black box. He's like, oh cool, I'm like, yeah, man, I got you. Like it just cracked me up. I don't know how much sales you guys have done, but it's. It's literally like you're offering being not a lemon and someone coming along and say I'll buy anything but a lemon. You know, I've got you. So I couldn't really believe that and you know the way that that then translated.

Speaker 4:

So we came to portland I think you guys, nick and brady, you mentioned the international master conference at the beginning. We, we went in march uh, shout out to the whole team there. Arnie and craig was super, super inviting and inclusive as well. You know, come around and say hello and everything. And we were there. And again, I've kind of been saying it's funny because before we went was talking to adam and I'm like man, you know I'm an introvert. I can't wait to man the booth. This is gonna be awesome. I'm gonna be charged up by energy by the end of the week. I didn't go to a single after day drinks because 4 pm every day I was just completely fried, but that that was the general fit. But basically this was the feedback we got.

Speaker 4:

As well, as you know, we had engineers after engineers after engineers come by our booth, see, and they would catch the formulas. I'd go oh, that's kind of interesting, we want to learn more about that. And their whole thing was like um, they're expected, particularly engineers that don't know mass timber, they're expected to advocate for this material. How on earth are they meant to advocate for the material if they don't know what the software is doing? It just it seems so obvious in retrospect, but that's what all of them came by. They're just so excited to see all the formulas, the breadth and depth across all of the calculators, and kind of understand like, oh, you guys are taking this really, really seriously.

Speaker 4:

Uh, and so that the feedback there has been really encouraging as well, that it's the exposure of the formulas, the embedding of the education that make people trust the platform and want to learn it and the thesis thesis on that. Like Adam said, before he kind of brushed over it. He went oh, we did a white paper. What he means is Adam interviewed like 30 to 40 people and wrote a 30 to 40-page white paper on the specific topic of using software to advance mass timber. You know, I think, the actual thesis. What was it? Removing the bottlenecks, adam? What was it?

Speaker 1:

Unleashing the bottlenecks for the adoption of mass timber?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, exactly right, and so there was this thesis on this business principle. It wasn't just a casual white paper. He went out and he spoke to everyone about what the things were, and the key thing was not a black box. Was there anything else in there, jonesy, that you haven't spoken to? That was a key findings.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that one and supply I mentioned before in supplier agnostic, like from an engineering point of view, you know the client at the start is looking for competitive tension basically. So they need to be able to swap between the suppliers and choose what's most appropriate, basically, and then that's best for the clients because if you lock in one supplier on the drawings too early you lose that competitive tensions. So that was the other major gap which I mentioned earlier. Even though there's single supplier free solutions out there, it's great for that supplier individually, but you know as an industry, what's best is best for that competitive tension at the start of projects. So that was that.

Speaker 1:

There was a bunch of other things, but I think changing your material grades as well, timber being, you know the actual grades themselves need to be updated Codes and standards. Being a young industry that's actually going to keep on changing, essentially, like that's probably going to be embedded in, and every time you change it means if everyone's using spreadsheets it makes them all obsolete and the maintenance costs, as an industry you know, can be pulled into one spot. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, and I'd sort of also say that the supply chain have been, you know, despite having some of them having their own software solutions, they have still been really receptive. You know, this idea of growing the pie, you know everyone in the mass timber industry, to be honest, seems to be pretty down with, and so it's been a really really pleasant kind of coming out saying, hey, we're trying to do something useful. And you know, even people who have that leverage already seeing what we're doing and saying, cool, I can see the industry needs us, I can see what you're trying to do and we want to work with you and support you, either now or later anyway.

Speaker 3:

So you know, shout out to the entire mass industry, mass timber industry. In that sense too, yeah, I can definitely echo that sentiment. I think when, as complete newbies to you know barely even knowing what an architect or an engineer does when we first heard about mass timber, it's like the industry itself is just full of a bunch of people that want to move the whole pie right up. Instead of trying to like compete for a little tiny slice, they're trying to grow the entire pie. Uh, and like you guys have kind of hinted or talked around this a lot, it's like you're not competing against other mass timber professionals or suppliers or whatever. Like you're competing against the concrete and steel industry, like that's where you're going to grow your market share, and I think what you guys are doing is you're democratizing the information that makes it easy for that to happen.

Speaker 3:

Right, and so kudos to you guys, because that's a, as you know, it's a very, very big lift, right, and so, if you guys are, you guys are kind of like that fulcrum where you're kind of amplifying force to lift up all the manufacturers and all the engineers, rather than trying to create these single point connections, right, like you, instead of, instead of like cranking out a two by four. You guys are building a glulam beam right that you can lever the whole industry with, and so I love that. And so, on that note, like you guys talked a little bit about your backgrounds, you know, coming from engineering and manufacturing and software, but like, where are you guys going to inform you and your team members on the industry? Like, where do you guys go to get information?

Speaker 1:

Oh gotcha, there's heaps of different places. I mean, my information personally is not always specifically on mass timber, I think I get that just through previous experiences from previous roles. But, like in terms of leadership and strategy and everything like that, I definitely books, like I'm a big. I'm a big book reader. Before this I used to do a podcast where we read a book a week, interviewed authors, all that sort of stuff. And I still read, read heaps of books, and you know there's there's probably like 10 books I can point to that inspired, you know, starting, starting this business, and probably if I had to choose one, it'd be like the almanac of naval and that was just like a book where I don't know if you've heard that one, but it's um, you know, talks about if you want to make a change or want to make a big move or anything like that.

Speaker 1:

But there's three things you need essentially, and one is is leverage, and leverage is software. It's solved the problem once, use it many times and not tie everything to an hourly um actions, basically on what you do. So you know, tick software makes sense, being a mass timber industry guy before. And then the second one is accountability. You need to get skin in the game, actually put some risk behind what you're doing, and because you know there's like there's a peter teal, I think I heard recently said intellect's not in short supply, it's courage. So it's actually going out there and putting your body behind the ball and trying something. And number three was specific knowledge, right, so it's sort of like going deep and detailed into something that you can do and you actually know the one thing in one area or one niche, whatever it might be, more than others. And if you combine those three things, then that's probably a good move. So that's the Almanac and Naval, and so I was like that was sort of inspired me at the time to go, hey, what are those three things? And it just sort of led to the idea that the industry needs software essentially.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, I'm still reading a lot of books. A lot of them are pretty kooky and woo-woo that are. One of them is recently I was told to bring it out, which I don't need to get into. But yeah, books are everywhere. Man, it's like the idea that someone dedicates their whole life and puts a lot of effort into editing it down and does stories and puts a narrative structure around it that's easiest to consume for a reader, essentially, and you can buy it for $30. It's like it's a crazy deal. So you know the light bulbs off.

Speaker 1:

I think there's leverage man. It's like the best investment you can do, I think, is that. So books is my jam. What about you, ringo? Yeah?

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I mean again, like I think you've read at least a book a week. For what? Seven, eight years, something like that. Yeah, yeah, it's madness, man. So, so, impressive, and and and you know that that level of discipline and focus translates into joseph's work as well like the level of focus and attention on on tasks is impressive.

Speaker 4:

I've read a fair bit in my life as well and I unfortunately I find it quite challenging to read during a working period. There's just something about the way that time molds, when my attention is split across, like social contracts and meetings and work they need to do, and just trying to keep my physical energy flowing, that I tend to just not read for most of the year and then rip, you know, five to ten out over the course of the year, either like really long flights, or I get a holiday and I just need to turn my phone off and I just read like two books in a week or something like that, and that that's kind of how I do it. The the way that I consume knowledge generally is, um, I'll listen to podcasts to do with the books that adam's reading, so so that we can kind of get on the same page about things, and then, uh, you know, I sort of I listen and read pretty broadly, to be honest, you know, because a lot of my, a lot of my work is about building on who I am as a person, so I can relate with people better, so I can have more humility, so I can walk into a room you know I'm totally new to the mass timber industry so I can kind of walk in and just be like calm and secure within myself and just gravitate in the right people. And so you know I spend a lot of time, to be honest, reading probably more books around or content around emotions. You know that's something that I've spent a lot of time is learning to get my emotions into check. You know Brene Brown is someone who's a massive emotions researcher in the US, obviously Adam Grant, those sorts of people. So that's about like potential and just trying to maximize, you know, you as a human being. And then for learning about, you know, mass timber, because I'm a fly on the wall. In so many meetings now with with adam and with marco, I get to see what we're presenting. Things aren't confusing to me anymore. And also, you know, when we were raising capital the first couple of times, you know, I had to try and act as a, I know as a translator a fair word between the teams and the investors and we'd sort of say like, look, convince me first and then I'll figure out how to get the language that's right for investors. And then over time it sort of molds in because there is a real value of having someone who's totally fresh and doesn't know anything about the space, because I can sort of bridge, bridge the gap well enough.

Speaker 4:

Um, after a few months there was a funny period. What was that thing? I was saying, adam? Um, there was a, the extended gamma method. I had it in my head. It was the extended gamma rate method, because gamma ray sounds sick. And so, you know, I said it probably two or three times to investors and one day jonesy grabbed me. He's like, look, you know the investors aren't going to know, but just so you know, it's not extended gamma ray and I don't know what you're saying and you probably shouldn't say that in front of engineers or suppliers.

Speaker 4:

I go like, yeah, man, that's he taught me.

Speaker 4:

So you know that.

Speaker 4:

That's again.

Speaker 4:

That's part of the humility.

Speaker 4:

It's like enjoying stumbling and I think like a lot of the learning I do is about figuring out like how do you develop a mindset that embraces chaos and failure and sees it as tools to be better?

Speaker 4:

And I think that I would probably shout out one of my favorite things about working with Adam is that we both have a kind of stoic-like point of view towards drastic change. So if we arrive on a Monday and something arrives and says look, that thing you thought was maybe that investor you thought was in is now out, or that release is maybe not going to happen in the same time, we both stop, take a big breath and go well, you know what? Maybe this is what was meant to happen through like gritting teeth and like a tense fist, and then within an hour you're back to normal again. So you know, kind of being in an environment where everyone can be like level-headed through change. I spend most of my time consuming content to be better at doing that, because it's a. It's a energy that is just so useful to a business and to people trying to learn and grow those are solid shout outs.

Speaker 2:

I brené brown. I look up to her. Well she is. She is wickedly smart and just a really cool person. And Stoicism, have you gotten on? You got to check out Seneca, the Shortness of Life. It's like 40 pages and it's yeah, like sit down over a cup of tea. I love that book. You're talking about Stoicism and I'm sure you've checked out like Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. That's a game changer too. Well, guys, this was incredible. I hope it's not the last one. You have industries to overtake and you have people to change in the sense of how to push this forward into the mass timber industry. We're excited to watch it happen. Thank you so much for being on the podcast with us.

Speaker 1:

Before we ask our last question, though, where can people find you and connect with you? Yeah, go to our website, clttoolboxcom, or reach out on LinkedIn. Just send us a message through there on LinkedIn and that's probably the best way to get in touch. So, adam Jones, ringo Thomas, I'd say that's the way to go. It's been awesome to chat to you guys. You guys are amazing. I've done a bunch of podcasts and I was just saying before we got on, like the standard you guys bring, I've never. It's probably the highest standard of just like just prep work and stuff like that.

Speaker 1:

So well done on taking this to that level in terms of professionalism. It's awesome.

Speaker 2:

That means a lot. Yeah, seriously, I level in terms of professionalism. It's awesome. That means a lot. Yeah, seriously appreciate that. Well, we're going to give you the fun question. If you have a magic wand, you can change anything in the world. It doesn't matter what it is about the mass timber industry. What would you change and why? You know?

Speaker 4:

first ring I've got a really boring one uh, I think it'll give me time to come up with something more interesting, okay, well my one's super boring.

Speaker 1:

It's just like you know you've got design for manufacturing and assembly at the surface level, but like, just like the data from what manufacturing throughput is being magically at the hands of designers at the concept, I think that just one thing will drive down the cost of the timber building and like, the more you drive down the cost in terms of triple bottom line sustainability's tick we know that biophilia, human health's a tick but, like, if you can get costs, the third one done, then it's just like that'll change everything. I think so. Anything that reduces costs. We're doing a part of it, obviously, but that specifically, I think would drive the needle yeah, I, I don't think that's a boring answer, man, I think that's a good answer.

Speaker 4:

Um, magically wave a wand, it's, it's. It's like the rebel on me wants to take that so literally and just say something ridiculous like every building is used for mass stimulus. So I think I'll just double down on on adam's answer. It's just like continued driving of transparency through every stage of the life cycle of these buildings to create optimization and good decision making. That means that the mass timber industry never gets in the way of itself when trying to win projects. You know, I think that would, and everyone loving each other all the time. I'm always about that, saying the good vibes. I'm into that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, but both wonderful answers, love them a lot. Had a great time talking with you guys and, like Nick said, like this isn't going to be the last one, we'll circle up with you guys when the time is right. When you guys are pushing and full go in the US, I think would be an awesome time to touch base again. But until then, thanks for coming on.

Speaker 1:

And.

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Brady Potts

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Nic Wilson

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