Blue Collar Business Podcast
Welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast with Sy Kirby. Dive deep into the world of hands-on entrepreneurship and the gritty side of making things happen. Join us for actionable tips on scaling your blue-collar business, managing teams, and staying ahead in an ever-evolving market. We'll also discuss the latest industry trends and innovations that could impact your bottom line. If you're passionate about the blue-collar world and eager to learn from those who've thrived in it, this podcast is a must-listen. Stay tuned for engaging conversations and real-world advice that can take your blue-collar business to new heights.
Blue Collar Business Podcast
Ep. 10 - Construction Profits Exposed: Secrets From a Pro
Unlock the secrets of running a profitable construction business with the latest episode of the Blue Collar Business Podcast, where industry insights meet practical application. Our guest, Heath from Sy-Con Excavation and Utilities, shines a light on the transformative power of organized equipment management and data-driven decision-making. His previous experience at RiggsCat provides a rich backdrop to our discussion on maximizing bid capture rates and understanding the nuanced costs of operating heavy machinery. We'll guide you through the intricacies of equipment leasing versus owning and share our battle-tested strategies for enhancing business efficiency.
Our conversations unravel the complexities of project management, with a focus on leveraging CRM tools like Buildertrend and Procore to streamline operations. Learn how implementing a go-no-go matrix can revolutionize your decision-making process, prioritizing profitability over sheer volume. Hear firsthand how mastering tools like Excel has exponentially increased team productivity and why aligning sales strategies with real-world customer needs is more crucial than ever. Heath's journey is a testament to the power of teamwork, effective communication, and strategic planning in navigating challenging market terrains.
Finally, we delve into the art of building and nurturing key relationships within the construction industry. Discover how aligning with client visions and maintaining transparency in leadership can drive not only project success but also sustainable growth. This episode offers a candid exploration of the lessons learned from personal experiences and equips you with actionable insights to bolster resilience and foster business growth. Whether you're keen on enhancing operational efficiency or building a robust network, this episode serves as your roadmap to thriving in the construction sector.
Sy-Con is a family-owned civil contractor specializing in water, sewer, storm drains, & earthwork.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Follow and stay connected:
Website: bluecollarbusinesspodcast.com
YouTube: youtube.com/@BlueCollarBusinessPodcast
Instagram: @bluecollarbusinesspodcast
TikTok: @bluecollarbusinesspod
Facebook: Blue Collar Business Podcast
LinkedIn: Blue Collar Business Podcast
Never miss an update—follow, subscribe, and join the conversation!
Hey guys, welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast, where we discuss the realest, rawest, most relevant stories and strategies behind building every corner of a blue collar business. I'm your host, cy Kirby, and I want to help you in what it took me trial and error and a whole lot of money to learn the information that no one in this industry is willing to share. Whether you're under that shade tree or have your hard hat on, let's expand your toolbox. Welcome back, guys. I appreciate you joining me again here on the Blue Collar Business Podcast. Today I'm joined with a guy that I normally sit in the evenings with about four o'clock in the evening, hey, how'd the day wind up?
Speaker 1:Heath has joined the force this year. I couldn't be any more excited to have him, and has been such a catalyst in an area that we needed it so unbelievably badly, so unbelievably badly, just not to come in and throw a bunch of fire or fuel on something, but to organize, to alleviate time in roles and positions. And it's been an adapting game in the first seven, eight months, for sure, but we have been literally restructuring everything we're doing at Cyclone and he works now here at Cyclone Excavation and Utilities. You guys may know what that is. I don't know if you do or not, but shameless plug. Check out our YouTube Coming in on 22,000 subscribers there. But we're going to be talking a few things today Equipment management essentials, strategies for tracking opportunities and bid capture rates. It's probably one of the favorite topics I've done so far on this podcast. It's going to be a good interaction with me and Heath, because me and Heath literally built a system over the last six months Probably 25%, me, 75, heath figuring it out, more or less my feedback and and weighing in. So, uh, stay tuned for that.
Speaker 1:Um, leveraging data and construction um, this is something that you guys may or may not know, but heath was previously with rigs cat, uh, for almost a little over 10 years in total. Um, he's on to bigger and better things now for sure. But truly, while he was there at RiggsCat, was on a rental counter, did a plethora of things. But the major item that I was so excited about is you sat behind the counter at SciTech. As funny as that is no relation to SciCon, it's just funny and that's S-I-T-E-C-H. We'll shout out there for Caterpillar, but that's their GPS, for their Trimble support. I knew I'd get a phone call, no matter what? Sorry, editor, but basically PsyTech covered all of the Trimble Grade control, grade control, grade control, machine control, basin rovers, anything GPS related, yes. And then you moved into drones, I would assume just as you were leaving there.
Speaker 1:But I scooped Heath up when I've known Heath being in the business. I met him at Riggs. I'll be straight up and honest with you guys. It was one of the only people at Riggs that I could stand to talk to for longer than five minutes. He actually cared about what my business was doing rather than hey, what can I sell you today? And that may or may not be a little tone of why I don't run as much Caterpillar equipment as most people do. But furthermore, you guys, if you love this kind of topic conversation, make sure you guys hit our website, wwwbluecollarbusinesspodcastcom. You'll find all our episodes on there.
Speaker 1:Previous episodes Every single Wednesday early on in the morning, 5 am. You can find a new episode. I'm filming one in the afternoon on Wednesdays every single week. So you guys, I'm scheduled out right now at the end of the year, almost so got a pretty action-packed schedule coming at you guys and furthermore I couldn't be any more excited.
Speaker 1:Heath, seriously thank you so much for joining me. You bet I've been looking forward to this because every single, just about every single day he sits in his office, chills out, that's enough. Yeah, may or may not shut the eyes there at the end of the day and get a little peace before he goes home, but I may or may not just hold on him just a little bit. I knew you were going to the days that I don't come in there and go. So how was your day? What did we do here? What happened here and ramrod right there at the end of the day? Because here, as of late, man, I haven't even hardly been in the office and you've kind of been helping fill the gap, especially on the front house side of things, selling a lot of stinking work.
Speaker 1:We are covered up, man Dude, it's crazy Phone's ringing off the hook and we couldn't be any more blessed with the situation. We couldn't be any more prepared for the situation sales-wise. I'm trying to get the production side. We're producing, by God, we're freaking producing. There's no doubt they're killing it and it's nice because they're working on work they like to work on. It's not crap work. That boss had to run up to the front of the house and get as much work as you can. So they got stuff to go do. You guys are now you're probably going to hear me on this podcast speak a little differently than most excavation contractors. I'm just going to pre-warn you Is it kind of crazy that I have an estimator and a salesman for the size of company that we are? Some would say, yes, you're absolutely crazy. You can get to work on your own. The other flip side of the coin is from a plethora of different businesses that I've learned through this podcast and in various relationships sales is absolutely everything. Sales is everything.
Speaker 2:Cut to the multitude of seniors.
Speaker 1:Money fixes a lot of things, don't it? But capital, and how do you get that? Well, you sell profitable work and in 2024, it's been pretty rough. I mean, you got to experience a crazy lull in the market this year, as you heard from Dylan multiple times. Like this isn't freaking normal. We normally have our year figured out by now and here we are, in October, finally talking like we're covered up, like it should be March. So to you guys out there that are feeling any way about 2024, breathe a little bit. Everybody's just waiting for that election to be over next month. And now that they've seen interest points come down Jerome Powell and the feds, they knocked it in half a point or half a percent, or whatever they say. It's a signal that it's not going to go up again. That's all they want to know. That's all they want to know. But with your time at Riggs, you, you got to know equipment very well.
Speaker 2:Oh, sure, yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, you didn't have a choice. Obviously the whole business was equipment. That's right. Um, so I asked, kind of asked Heath to wear a couple of different hats. He number one job, sales, and what I mean by that. And I just want to describe that before we get a plethora of 47 questions which, by the way, hit bluecollarbusinesspodcastcom. I would love to hear from you guys. Send me some questions and topics and maybe I'll just do a Q&A from topics and questions you guys send in.
Speaker 1:But through your time at Riggs man, you've learned equipment to the level of ownership. You know what contractors you've dealt with. A plethora of big deals, from sales to rental, whatever. You know what a contractor is expecting. So he's kind of not only does sales, kind of covers our rentals and take care of that, because that was eating us alive. When you first showed up and you were like throwing your hat at me, you're like bro, we've got to get this under control and I'm like I know I'm just trying it. He's like, okay, I see it, okay, and so you've done a great job there.
Speaker 1:Um, and dude, if you guys aren't on the software platforms with the rental houses, heath has got us in with it and I knew it was there, I just didn't have the time Right. But now we know where everything is. Everything gets updated on my agenda, we talk about it in our leadership meetings and what piece needs to go where to really crank down on those rentals. But the other side of that is it comes with a bunch of GPS knowledge and we, as you guys know if you've been a fan of the YouTube side of things or you've listened to me on the podcast before to speak about our GPS program we went full TopCon, which you didn't have as much experience in.
Speaker 1:You had to tremble, but the things that we needed were the generalistic things that were embedded in your brain, that were like no brainers to you that we had no clue about, sure, like no brainers to you that we had no clue about Sure. So there was the three prime things that he is basically covering over the last 10 months here at PsyCon. And you've done it, dude. I really appreciate you. Seriously, it has been. It's been a wild ride this year. It has been fun, dude, for the guys that have seen the whole picture yeah it's.
Speaker 1:It's really cool man. Um, but before we get too far, dude, let's talk about our first topic here equipment management, essentials and I don't I feel like you are the guy to bring on here and talk about it from the rental standpoint. Um, you know what we struggle with as an owner, so I don't have to go too far off in the weeds.
Speaker 2:You can, uh, get going there, but go ahead so I mean, you know really we're, when we're talking about equipment management, that's something that's a thread that's wove through every part of our business. Yes, you have to, but I think honestly you could probably boil it down to the most simplest form of knowing your cost. Hmm, my God, it's in my brain forever. Got to know your cost. That's so funny. But I mean, you have things like your fuel, your maintenance, your your burn rates.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your burn rate. How much are you what are you spending?
Speaker 1:Labor burden.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all that stuff. But you know a lot of things that you don't consider, or maybe you do, maybe you don't, but you know, when you're figuring in your equipment costs, you have to figure in what is the total cost of the loan. You know, when you're figuring in your equipment costs, you have to figure in what is the total cost of the loan. You know the whole.
Speaker 1:Is there a blue note?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. So that has to kind of weigh into. You're going to use this factor to plug into your estimating. So, yes, you don't want to be prematurely replacing parts because you didn't do your maintenance properly. That's all cool stuff, but man, I just my brain automatically goes back to knowing the cost. Um, so you know, essentially you're there are a few factors that are going to go into that um that you might not think about resale value. It's huge bro. Yeah, it's huge and that's I mean, I think that's-.
Speaker 1:Well, it's huge for the guys that have a little bit of money in the bank that can start off in a positive equity position. Right, it's huge for them. You bet For me, I just want a machine that ain't going to go down, machine that ain't going to go down, and what's the monthly payment? You bet, dude, a hundred percent, and is this interest rate going to absolutely kill me? But at the same time, it's better than rent. Yeah, if I've got enough work for it, if I got six months worth of work for it, I'm buying it. Yep, if I can. Right Before you go too far, dude, know your.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to put a little background as to why we laughed and jiggled. So this year I can honestly 100% sit here and tell you I do know my costs better than I have ever done. 100%, I got to say partially due to Heath and Shea and Dylan really diving in, especially in the last three months. Yeah, and really buttoning this thing up of knowing our exact costs and fighting with me where I'm like are you sure we're going to charge? We can't charge him, dude. You're telling us to know our costs. We estimated it just like you told us to, and it's that and I'm wanting to sell it for $15,000, and you're hitting me at $23,000, and I'm like sell it for 15 grand, and you're hitting me at 23 and I'm like there's no way. But you know what? Know your cost, and it will tell you put that profit margin depending on what profit margin you're trying to achieve on the base of that and stick to it and don't do cheap work and and we're going to get around to that in the next part yeah, of course.
Speaker 1:How do you make that work? Know your cost. I, if you pick up anything out of this podcast everybody struggles with, well, I don't know what the price is and I don't know what's my value, and da-da-da-da, figure out everything. Sit and write it out, every single cost you have attached to a project, every single time. Button that up. Figure it out. What's it costing you per machine, per hour, per man hour, et cetera. Know your freaking cost.
Speaker 1:And in equipment sense, dude bruh, it can get so expensive. And that reminds me the two tens down with a loose track. Got to get somebody out there. I should have called Les Riddle back. I'll call Les Riddle back, shout out to him.
Speaker 1:But equipment man, you were like, hey, man, I remember you coming to me and it was such a big deal for me because you came to me and you're like hey, I can get all the fuel burn rates for these machines if you want me to. And I'm like, oh, like, oh, my god, you can. Like you had enough interest in hey, you really. And then you were pretty, we weren't, you weren't here six, 60 days and you were like you weren't trying to question my ignorance, but you were. You were trying to find that help line of hey, I want to help here and I think this is the direction where you're trying to head and I just want. I'm not trying to tell you that we should do this or not, but and I'm like dude, I was mind blown. I was like here we go, we're going to the next level, and I know that sounds crazy to some of y'all. Oh, what do you mean? Your fuel burn rate? I know that my 360 costs me 4.7 gallons per hour that it runs.
Speaker 1:How many trucks did I load out? With those five gallons of fuel? I want to know, because that equals your production rate. And so, did I have the time before to figure it out? Yeah, I probably did if I got more discipline about it, but man, I honestly didn't. It's just just what's the biggest fire? Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1:And now, time dude, and that's the other thing of all dylan does and if you guys haven't seen the episode, I think he's episode three go check it out bluecollarbusinesspodcastcom. Um, but dylan basically does our takeoffs, our estimating, our, and especially Dylan knows the utility side of things more than Heath does, because that wasn't really Heath's expertise. That's where Dylan kind of brings that to the table and it's such a great mesh. Dylan was literally there since day one laying pipe with me and he knows exactly all the situations that we can walk into and we'll go out there and look at them and knows what's the expectations of what the guys are going to get into. So it's like this perfect storm, although it's not.
Speaker 1:I need you guys to understand if you do build a system like this, to sell this amount of work. I know we're getting a little far off here, but I'm just trying to cover all bases because people are going to question like man, you've got two guys up front. But yes, the biggest thing is you're not going to get all the freaking work that you're bidding and you don't want to, and that was a big thing for me. All the freaking work that you're bidding and you don't want to, and that was a big thing for me. I had to. I had to unplug myself so hard. I needed to go in, set expectations, set standards.
Speaker 1:This is what we're doing and let you guys run with it. Let you have the conversations and follow-ups until and I'll inject when I need to, um, but other than that, you go sell it. You do the follow-ups, dylan, dylan, you're the mushroom in the closet and you pump out takeoffs and, by god, does he the stuff that that guy is freaking doing with magnet so cool, but it is to explain that a little bit more and go off there in the weeds. But knowing your cost on equipment, it will eat you alive. If you're thinking like myself, I can't tell you how many years I sold skids to your work for $75 an hour. Yeah, it's not $75 an hour anymore and you guys proved that to me, that I was losing money. If we're plugging that in the spreadsheet, yeah, and you just get to hang on to it and on the way through.
Speaker 2:It's just for a second.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I know all about that turn money. I know how to not make money, I can tell you that. But I think maintenance is another big thing, would you agree?
Speaker 2:oh, I agree totally yeah, keeping keeping these machines running and getting that production rate that you're, that you're bidding.
Speaker 1:You're not going to meet those numbers if your machine's down downtime's the biggest thing I'm trying to eliminate, and what he's, I don't know. I've never even asked you, but I don't know if you like how we do our, our maintenance with our big gear. I know you love it, I would assume, because we don't have to worry about it. We don't have these guys show up, it's in the deal, it's financed. It's in the deal, it's financed. It's in the payment. They show up. No trip, travel time, no mileage, no surprise. Oh well, we went and worked on your piece of equipment. Give me $1,800. Not that crap, it is. Hey, sir, we're at 1,000 hours on your dozer, sam was it? Looks like your GPS is over here. Called Sam the other day, your dirt super, and I really want to get this thing in before you click over 1,000 hours. But I also don't want to kill you of a day of production. When can we do it? Yep, man, this is everything to a contractor our size it has to be. I try to prove the point, so much man.
Speaker 2:I mean, you really have got to have an enormous fleet to justify having that on staff oh my god, when we screwed up doing that eh because, because, not only are those guys out there doing the maintenance that they're already, that's already contracted in, they're also gonna go look over your machine. They're going to. And man, this was when I was at Riggs. This was one of my favorite things to talk about was maintenance programs. It just you have to have a lot of freaking iron to do that in-house.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as we found out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so these guys are going to be looking over its power equipment, the Doze irons found out. Yeah, and so these guys are going to be looking over it's power equipment that does ours. Yep, they look over and see if there's anything that is needed with the machine. I could call tim at any point and he's. He's like already, is man, what's going on? Like it's cool. Um, yeah, I mean that's. That's really where it's at with the maintenance programs.
Speaker 1:I couldn't agree more, dude, that, yeah, and especially on your on. So like would I recommend? Here's the thing. I don't recommend buying mini x's because they're too damn small. I'm gonna put that on the lease. That's their maintenance to worry about.
Speaker 1:Anyways, it's a support piece, but something utility piece, right, something like the size of a 210 excavator. Yeah, you still see John Deere 210s and Case 210s on the side of the highway, 40 years old, yeah, dinosaurs, but they still operate. So if you truly take care of the machine and you put all the maintenance in, you got 4,000 hours to go until your warranty is smoke-pulled. Why would you not have the services up to that point of warranty and completely taken care of and then at that point of 4 000 hours and machine slapped out? Yeah, hey guys, can we trade it in. You guys have taken care of it the whole time may help that resale value like you were talking about. So, um, I promise you at any machine that I'm going to buy that has two sheets of paperwork uh, probably I'm. I okay, yeah, I don't. Yeah, that that's a lot easier conversation to sign to a 300 000 machine.
Speaker 1:500 000 machine, that's, that's nothing on the back end of that, dude. It's bad that I machine. When we bought that thing I didn't, I told Sam we would and we went and did it. I mean it was freaking crazy. It was totally a God blessing. But an iMachine has been a completely new thing. But let's move on here to the main topic I think of today Go ahead, oh.
Speaker 2:I've got a couple things. Oh, I'm sorry, no, you just got me kind of wound up on this whole thing. So when he said about not buying many X's and skid steers guys, don't buy those things, I'm telling you I'm trying to tell you.
Speaker 2:There's equipment houses out there that are financing guys for 84 months and 72 months on a skid steer, they ought to be locked up and put in jail. Oh my God, because months on a skid steer. They ought to be locked up and put in jail. Oh my god, because that is criminal man. They're never gonna make it. The, the machine's not gonna make it that far with interest rates.
Speaker 2:Yeah no, it's insane, and so you know, I don't care what skid steer maniacs it is, I mean it's gonna be slapped out in eight more minutes, four thousand hours. I mean you better get rid of it before it gets to that point.
Speaker 1:So our first gear I've said this on the podcast before, but our first set of gear. We bought the skid steer for fifty two thousand dollars, and we leased the mini X. It was on a five year lease I do not recommend five year leases whatsoever and we leased the mini-axe, and it was on a five-year lease. I do not recommend five-year leases whatsoever on a mini-axe. You let me say it again, okay, I'm a point. That thing was so clapped out. The way it was sold to me, though, was basically hey, man, you bring this thing back with new tracks and the glasses in it, we don't care. Yeah, really. Well, that was a selling point. I'm like, man, this is my first machine. If I'm going to make it, this thing's going to be put that first machine. If you're really really going to do this dang thing, you're going to beat it to piss.
Speaker 2:You're going to be using it for things. It should be twice as big for.
Speaker 1:And beat it to piss. You're gonna be using it for things it should be twice as big for. And that's what and that's my point a lot of times is, if you're we put smaller machines in bigger applications than we need to every single day, oh yeah, and we require that. So that bobcat e45, let me tell you, dude, that thing did a lot of things it probably shouldn't have. Yeah, it lifted a lot of things, but you know what? I've had new tracks on it. It had a couple of door dings, but it wasn't bad. It cost us $11,000 at the end of that lease. I didn't even know on that stupid machine. It was a bad deal. Fine print, fine prints man. Deal um, fine print, fine prints, man.
Speaker 1:So if, if you guys are three-year leases on minis, get a maintenance package, let them worry about it. Drop it off, you're gonna be profitable. Guess what? The machine goes down on lease. They give you a new one, not a new one they'll give you, they'll give you a replacement. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you, they're gonna give you a brand new one off the shelf. This will be motivated to get on and fix it. You know Exactly. And if you're renting, they'll have you a new one out there pretty quick, I promise you. They love you boys renting, let me tell you. But that's such a Nate. You're right, I shouldn't have skipped over that so fast, because I say that repetitively on here.
Speaker 1:Yeah 84 months you kind of like clicked my brain there on a skid steer. It's not gonna make it to 48. There's no way, bob, like if you're the amount of things that I know, that that 595 bob caddy did, bob kitty did there should have never, uh, probably made it out of their lives. And we but we kept kept that machine. I think she had almost 5,000 hours on it when we sold her and the guy uses it every day. Yeah, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 2:Hey, send it to the farm, man.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what he's doing. Yeah, and I would have loved to keep it, but being a nine-year-old company, we're always going to have to be trading, and that's the other thing on this topic. If you're really wanting to build a business and a company in the excavation or anything to do with equipment, you're always going to have payments or repairs. Those are your two options. And whether, when you're fighting the one word of downtime, why, in my opinion, would you want repairs? I mean, that's the biggest thing. I can't fix the dang thing. That's my problem. Now there's guys out there that may be way more mechanically inclined can go buy an older machine, throw it on maybe even debt free after working an awesome summer and throw that machine on the back of the truck and go.
Speaker 2:I know guys that do that you bet, but they're very talented and fixing stuff and they actually like it. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1:oh, absolutely you know people like that. What's that?
Speaker 2:uh, the guy's over at tri-star, mitch man. He's a hell of a mechanic yeah sorry, I don't know if I can say yeah, you're good, you're good. Oh, he's a hell of a guy yeah, um, but yeah, that's the way and they have they that's the way, and you may have some replacement iron sitting there that you can swap out if you need to 100%. It's just a different way of doing it for different guys, but I think for us, man, you know we're not there.
Speaker 1:No, I tried, it Failed miserably. Yeah. I tried, it failed miserably. And that's not just the guy himself, but my systems and my procedures weren't there ready for that yet, and it was such a cluster. But, I would have expected a little bit more effort than we received. But moving on, you good, anything else up there buddy.
Speaker 1:Nothing else really. Dude, you're right, it is criminal. We can talk about that all day long. But the one thing, probably, that I'm most excited to talk about with you is the strategies for tracking opportunities and understanding bid capture rates. I got to tell you, man, because beforehand, before you got here, this was how we tracked opportunities. Right here, we weighed opportunities. The go no-go matrix was up here. All the things that we have started, created, channeled, progressed over the last six, eight months was all right here.
Speaker 1:And you came to me in the first 30 days and you're like give me all that crap in your head. We're going to put it in this Excel sheet and I'm not very good at Excel, but we're going to figure this out because this, I, we can't have this, and you're, you're exactly right. And and sales being everything. Here's the thing. As an owner ops manager, especially with some of the damage that happened through this year, like with everything that went on, I was a little bit more reserved to give things up. But, man, every single time that you came to me hey, dude, how many opportunities are we talking about? If you're going to handle these, I need to at least know about them, what we're doing with them and we built a system. We were going to do a CRM system. Basically we've been using builders trend. That's the system we moved to. If you guys were wondering now, for pro core saved us a bunch of money and actually has a scheduling tool. It's way easier, by god. The guys love it anyways, we can go off on that.
Speaker 1:But, um, once we basically started putting all the opportunities in a basket, we started organizing those opportunities in value and ease, bonding requirements, all these different categories, to really start giving us a go no go matrix of yeah, that's the one, that's the one, or we should probably just send numbers to be in the conversation here, or whatever that may be. But then we started. I looked at channels like you two got to bid everything and y'all have you know, oh my God, the opportunities we've had this year. The good Lord's been blessing us. There is no doubt about it. But capturing on those opportunities is a much different conversation. We've got a unique capture rate and we can help discuss.
Speaker 1:A lot of people would say our capture rate is low, under 20%. They're going to say it's low. But at the same time I know for a fact if I'm under 20% capture rate. I'm probably making money at that point, because if my capture rate is above that 20% mark, say 40%, 50%, that's cool, man. You're doing a lot of work and you're probably doing it for a little bit cheaper than I am. That's why you're getting so many jobs. But are you really building your profit? Do you know your cost to be able to build this opportunity in this sales opportunity chart? Track it and then actually track your profit. And it's not a dirty word.
Speaker 2:No, it is okay to be profitable. It is not an immoral thing to be profitable.
Speaker 1:The more money me and Sarah and the company can make, the more money I'm going to share the love. Now, there's a lot of people out there that's not quite like that and that's totally fine, not judging them one way or the other but, man, the more we can do as a team, the more I want to bless the team, because I want this team to improve. I want this thing to be an absolute machine, and I think everybody here at PsyCon is at this gel point. Dude, it's so cool. Everybody is just running together. Man, it's crazy, so cool.
Speaker 1:Talk about what you, not only the importance of the generalities of it. Talk about what you did here, because I think a lot of contractors are going to be sitting here listening, not just in the excavation side of things. I'm talking about HVAC guys, concrete guys, electrical guys. How the hell do they sell work and not be the one doing it? That's right and that's the transition that you helped me do, that I could thank God for what was coming the rest of the year so I could step over and do production, take 45 days, clean up that mess and then move forward, and it's been better than ever on the profit standpoint.
Speaker 2:Terrible for my time right, but talk a little bit about what you did here and overall it's super weird because I think if anybody out there that's listening and that knows me, they're going to hear me talk using the word Excel and they're going to say nah, that's a lie. No, guys, really.
Speaker 2:I actually freaking came in. Don't know where it come from, but I got this passion for microsoft, excel or whatever it's excel. It helps to have a few wizards in the office it does. I mean, the girls taught me some things, man and I I kind of ran with it and, um yeah, I mean really the whole deal was, we started tracking Every time we got in an opportunity and at first we weren't really using the go-no-go matrix.
Speaker 2:We were just putting things, and I think really what I would say that is is there's this principle of seed time and harvest 100%. If you plant enough seeds, you're gonna get a harvest, doesn't matter what the weather's doing, doesn't matter the circumstances, that's right, you're gonna get work, and and that was how we were functioning initially. It was like man sent as many, and we were, so we were sending um between two and a half and three million out the door a week that's crazy, bro.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I loved it and and it was super fun. You know what I mean. It was high intensity. It was you want to talk about those four o'clock evening meetings when I'd run in the office and they'd run me through everything they went through in the day and I'm like, oh my god, four different projects, super in-depth, from contour lines to modeling, to takeoffs, to uh, 5 000 yard conversations to 50 000 yardage conversations, to all these different conversations and trying to keep you guys on track.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we were literally there was no go, no go matrix, let's bid everything. So we started doing that. And then, as we, as I, kind of took on this passion for Excel man and I'm like, oh my gosh, we can see what percentage of these we're getting, Yep. And so that's when we started looking at this capture rate 10% to 12% we kind of saw that's where we were landing at. And so I did sort of initially I didn't really tell anybody what I was doing, but I did kind of sort of figure base that goal off of a much higher revenue goal than what we were.
Speaker 2:But hey, you know, I knew it was going to come out at some point. Here's where it's at. Okay, I don't know what we was talking about, but here's what I'm fired up about right now 10X Whatever your revenue goal is, you need to be in the conversation on 10 times that amount of work. That's about right. I'd agree with that. You're not going to get them all, don't worry, it's fine. You're wanting to be profitable. You're not going to get them all.
Speaker 1:We found out we were getting between 10 and 12 percent, yeah, of what we were bidding and that worked um after the 180 days of looking at that 10, 12 percent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we started looking at our price per yard, we started looking at our footage numbers, we started looking at our production rates and we went how do we approve that? And bump that up, yeah, up to that 20 percent mark and capture a little bit more, where we have a little bit more control over schedule, but at the same time, I don't want to be getting above that 20% mark. I want to make that clear. We're always going to be tugging back and forth. Yes, 10 to 20%. And you know what? I have the opportunity to sit here and say that to you guys because, because of the system we've built up from between you and Dylan, you guys can get in all those conversations. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:So we can talk about it, because, I mean, think about it. How many times do we get in a situation where an engineer or whatever some kind of conflict and we're like, oh crap, we've got to move the guys somewhere else. That's right. If you don't have anywhere else to move them, what are you going to do?
Speaker 1:That's the deal.
Speaker 2:You've got to keep those guys busy and billing for their work. That's billable work. Billable work that's the hard part, and we're just all pushing brooms around the shop. Keep them in a billable position and that's why you have to bid. You cannot let that low capture rate or conversion rate whenever everybody's probably got a different term you cannot let that make you feel down in the dumps. You can't no.
Speaker 1:It did me. I'll be straight up with you guys. It did me. I'm like what are we doing wrong? Because when I tell you guys, when I've sat here on this podcast and said we have spent the year restructuring, I cannot tell you Heath, can he sat there and watched me and Sarah go through and lead the charge and let other people lead charge when they need to. In what we've done this year, man, it's been pretty crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you're going to. I mean, this was kind of what we saw. Honestly, as we was doing this, we started to watch and I don't think you're going to, even you're not even going to. If you're keeping up with this data, in three months you're going to feel a little better about it. Yeah, 90-day cycle Yep, yep, you're not going see, you're not gonna see money. So if you're doing something today, you might see the money come in the door six months after 180 days 100%. That's everything, man. That's everything in business.
Speaker 1:I don't care what business I don't? I can't get that through anybody's head fast enough because I always thought, oh, 30 days, care what business I don't? I can't get that through anybody's head fast enough because I always thought, oh, 30 days, I can change everything. 30 days I can change everything. No, you can't. You're having to change it every month. I'm telling you, and during through this restructure, me and sarah have lived 30 days, 30 days, friday to friday, figuring everything out and getting us to this position of we're tired of living in this old position. How do we get ourselves to this new position? How do we carry ourselves to this new position? Number one is sales. Number two is processes and procedures. Well, I'm taking care of the processes and procedures.
Speaker 1:Now that we've got a sales, I'm not turning you guys off. I want I'm so mad that I want to build another pipe crew, but at the same time, we're knocking two big projects out mainlining, keeping production going and knocking a little guy out. Uh, punching into a core of a manhole or whatever the case may be. Uh, picking little things up here and there. That's going to take them two or three days, breaking off from the production crews, to come over and knock that out Like I think we're much profitable stance running the two larger pipe crews where we can, you know just like we're doing tonight at the night work at All in Nature, we're splitting into three crews. I think in my head I was like, oh, we'll just keep adding crews, we'll just keep adding crews, we'll just keep adding crews. But you don't understand. 10x the your revenue is the conversation you need to be in and each crew needs to revenue an amount of money to put you in a profitable standpoint. And if you have them at four people or if you have them at five people and the front of house and boys are bidding at three people, there's going to be your you're. You're literally screwed to the red before you even start. Yeah, and if you don't know your cost and you don't know what, like we've been able to go back and look and go, what do we do here? Yep, why did we equal that number? This project looks extremely similar, but we're getting this number instead of that number. Oh well, it's only a two-foot undercut, not a four-foot undercut. Or, oh, we're in a totally different site condition or totally different spec conversation. I mean, so many things change between the same commercial retail in Centerton compared to the commercial retail in Fayetteville.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, as we found out today going through projects, but I can't tell you guys how important it is. I'm telling you from going through the 180-day investment well, almost the entire year investment, with it being 2024. Honestly, I think it gave us some time. I think it gave us some time. I think it gave us some time to build systems and procedures so you guys could sell what you're selling and feel confident about what you are selling before it ever gets over to here where I can watch quality. And basically, after Heath gets it to contract, heath and Dylan get it to contract, they hand it over to me. Now don't get me wrong with the systems we've got running right now. They're still a little bit involved, more than I would like and they would like, I would assume.
Speaker 1:But at the same time everybody's doing what they've got to do to get the project done profitably and everybody dude office, even with Shea being out, like I feel like you know, sarah's stepping up big time and I'm not putting the star on my wife there, but she's six months pregnant and she's now carrying a load of two ladies again that we barely got a broken off into two ladies where it's manageable. So everybody's meeting the table and it's because you guys are selling and you're selling good, profitable work. Now here's the other thing. The other major implication that nobody tells you about is you've got to get off the survival work that you've been living on for years. You've got to fund to finish the survival work and then you've got to fund this new profitable work and see the recycle on the end. Well, we ain't quite to the end of the recycle Now. The next couple of months we'll be in a different position, for sure, but we've got to get there Again.
Speaker 1:And this year has been full of guys 30, 60 days away. We're 30, 60 days away, we're 30, 60 days away, we're 30, 60 days away. But it's been, uh, us telling you guys that as you, you may, you would probably agree with that. I'm probably more open than most owners, exactly I. But I want, dude, I want you to be able to see what I'm seeing and understand why I'm moving the way I'm moving, so you can move better, and the more you guys are in tune and the office is in tune, and the leadership meetings and the more meetings that we do. It's crazy how many meetings we do, honestly, fixing to do a couple more, but at the same time it's just bringing everybody together, getting them on the same surface, same level playing field, and then moving forward.
Speaker 1:And it's taken us dude. It's taken us some time just to get us to this level playing field. And now that I almost I don't want to use the word comfortable, because I've been living in the mundane of uncomfortableness of this year I don't like being comfortable, I don't either, and it kills growth. And so we have been really uncomfortable. But it's almost getting to a point of now I see sales flowing very well, we've picked up multitude of things, but I think that's not only from the sales front. I also think it's a big change in the production world 100%.
Speaker 1:And we are putting quality work out that we used to. And, man guys, my vision got a little lost when I was working on the business more, I had a PM working in the business and lost connection. I just straight up lost connection to my roots. And now that I've injected myself back, working in the business as a PM and controlling the production side of things, dude, I said, like you guys say, I got a production rate of 60. I'm trying to hit a buck 20. Yeah, and I'm setting the guys up to hit them at a buck 20, because, if I know, if they have a terrible day and they only get 40, 60 foot in, we're all right, that's fine, we're all right, that's right. But I want my money.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so do they. And if I'm open with them, not only I had to be open with you on the sales front side of things, how I move, why I move the way I move with the people, et cetera. And again a good old R word relationships. And these processes and procedures I've been writing. You know long-term relationships are a big.
Speaker 1:that's everything. It is everything. And I sit in here on this podcast every single week talking about freaking relationships and nurturing those relationships and having somebody in the sales world to nurture those. Okay, you get some big level client, your skids to your maniacs and got a couple of crews, think you're making a million bucks but you're not making nothing. Well then this guy does come along and you're like all right, man, this is my guy, what do you do? You start? You start clinging to him Anything he needs. We're bad as back and call I was there, been there.
Speaker 1:That was what I was doing was nurturing that relationship for future work, and that can be. That can be presented differently as you grow right. And now, what I didn't realize is I'm just looking through a blue collar lens, the white collar lens. They want updates, they want to know what the hell is going on, whether it's information they can understand or not. Yeah, they want snapshots, they want nat charts, they, they want this stuff and you're like it takes a little while to really understand their receiving. End of the nurturing of the relationship.
Speaker 1:We have to change our nurture of how we're nurturing that relationship, because they respond differently, right, sure, what's important to them Exactly?
Speaker 2:Same with any other business what's important to your customer Dude? I want to provide that.
Speaker 1:That should be at the front end of your. I guess not everybody and I guess I need to do a whole video on processes and procedures now, but that should be one of the number one items and it is in ours and in the sales division is what motivates the customer, and I know that sounds silly in the blue collar world, but is it the project vision? Is it project time?
Speaker 1:Is it the cost. They don't want to spend an extra dollar, but is it scheduling time? And they don't care what it costs to get it done in that amount of time. The quicker you realize that on the front end of the sales, the easier that conversation and that contract is going to be to ink, because you know they want yeah, quit worrying about what you want. They're going to give you what you want as long as you get the signature. That's the way it works. So it took me years to figure that out, man. It took me probably not as long as others, obviously to where we're at within the short amount of time, but at the same time, man, I wish I'd have known it sooner. Yeah, you know what I mean. I bet it, yeah. Um, what else you got for us, man?
Speaker 2:well, uh, you know, shoot, I was kind of, I just kind of really it's been my hot button on that 10x thing. Man, I just, you know we run into so many things. I would say this year, you know, we we saw a lot of projects get shelved.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, 2024, man. So that's why I'm circling back to this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we saw that happen. We saw projects get delayed because somebody put freaking creek gravel in the utility ditch. I mean of all the things like Inns, vallejo, yeah, and so there's so many things that are outside of your control. The real thing that you have control over is how many opportunities are you bringing in and how many people are you talking to, and that rolls right into you know, how are you expressing interest in that person's objectives? You know we deal with so many people. That's good, dude.
Speaker 2:We deal with so many people like you know, some people we deal with and and I'm not talking to the ownership side, I'm just talking to just in the general construction world that their, their interest is maybe not aligned with what the owner or the GC's interest is right, they're going to be right, or they're one of whatever it's like. You know, I don't know, man, that just kind of goes all over me. It does. The first job I ever had was I worked at a restaurant and and you know, and it was like this, orders get messed up right. Short order cook, you know and people.
Speaker 1:I bet she slapped some fried eggs, didn't you bud?
Speaker 2:so the thing that always got me mad was you would have you know there was ultimately on the ticket there would be um, and I can relate this to anything, man, honestly, in the business world. But the waitress would say, oh well, when I write it this way, it means this. And the cook would say, no, that's not how it's written. And they would sit there and argue, argue, argue. I would say, guys, the customer out there doesn't care about all that. If you want to hash out whose fault it is is, let's do it in the back when you guys are smoking. Yeah, let's not hash it out right here, right now.
Speaker 2:We've got this situation out front trying to sell it just went all over me, and so that I mean that today is like that's like my thing, like what, what, what are we doing? It's so, dude, Do you guys really want to be right more than anything, yeah, or do you want to be profitable? Do you want to have repeat business? I mean, dude, I think if we can work for the same people yes, we're interested in new people, of course, always. But, man, repeat business is everything. We want to work for the same people as many times as we can, because that's a long-term relationship and that focus it keeps you from arguing about silly stuff.
Speaker 1:If you guys want to get in touch with Heath, you can do that. I know he's on LinkedIn, but also hit our website, psychonexccom. If you've got some questions for our team. We're more than willing to help in any type of conversation where it's leading. So go ahead and check out psyconexccom and hit the Contact Us button and let us know what that question might be or what parameter you're coming up to, what that question might be or what parameter you're coming up to.
Speaker 1:But, dude, this topic. I've been kind of waiting to hear your opinion on man, because you've been in the data side of construction, not just from the selling standpoint, but also truly like recording stakes, things that you would be like bruh, that's. That's an absolute no brainer. What do you mean? You didn't do that, yeah, but I had no clue about. And so what can construction companies and I may be spinning this a little bit from where we were initially taking it, but man being a next gen contractor and when I say that, guys, I'm not trying to be any way, but I, when I mean next gen contractor, I mean I'm embracing change. Yeah, I'm willing to step outside the mold of an excavation and dirt contractor and find out what this new technology can offer us. Can it offer the efficiency that they're actually advertising? Can it eliminate labor? Can it whatever Eliminate go-backs, the data side of it, the GPS world completely swallowed us up at Sycon.
Speaker 1:There's no doubt about it, from the front of house things to the base of Rover, to file exchange, to file transfer to that man just in the experience of PsyCon. But you can reference back to anything. You've seen a lot of different companies jump into the GPS side of platform, helps. Them jump into it. Exactly. Maybe for the guy that's sitting there on the fence about it, what can we as PsyCon leverage that? Maybe that guy can't as of right now that you see in a day-to-day basis, that may be a little bit basic to you. Does that make sense? Not exactly? Okay, fair enough, but what can we leverage by having? No, you got to keep that in there. What can we leverage having the data that we do as a contractor when we put it in the ground and we record where that line went per that engineer's plans? I got you. Yeah, that's kind of what I mean. Okay, so I'm going to reach way back where that line went. Yeah, per that engineer's plans.
Speaker 2:I got you yeah, that's kind of what I'm okay, so I'm gonna reach. I'm gonna reach way back. So, when I was doing rental rep, um, and this was started in like 2015, you, you know, you're walking into these construction sites and it's like, how do I get these guys to even talk to me? You know what I mean and so I I I found myself involved in a lot of conversations that had nothing to do with me. You know what I mean, but, but I have for years of doing that. You find out what is important to the people that you're trying to service, 100 right, what's important to your customer, which keep going back to it? But so, you know, I found myself asking people like, what's the biggest problem out here? What well?
Speaker 2:you know so and so, and this guy and that guy, and they said this was that way and it wasn't. And you know, and I'm like man, it sounds like there's a lot of conflict down on these job sites everyday buddy yeah, which is fine, but the only way to resolve a contract, a conflict, is have the truth, documentation the truth that about yeah, it's not about my truth, that's a whole nother deal. Yeah, and your truth?
Speaker 1:no, there is the truth yeah right, where's the pipe at in the ground right now, right now, uh?
Speaker 2:not somebody's interpretation of where the pipe is. That's right, um so anyways, the only way you're gonna find that is with technology, yep, and, and everybody being on the same page but, but, but heath, what about?
Speaker 1:what about my grade rod in my laser? Can't that be just as concrete in that conversation? Because I went off of so-and-so's benchmark, if you know how to use it, right. But in my case I don't think a grade rod and transferring elevations is as dead dick as a GPS is. Now, don't get me wrong, gps has its faults of exactly where it's it is. But we're talking thousand seven inch here, guys, we're not talking a tenth. Yeah, you know what I mean. So I was trying to throw that at you because there's, I was that guy. I'm like, I know the grade rod yeah whenever I know exactly where it's at.
Speaker 1:You can, but it's not scalable. You bet there's only one or two guys nowadays that actually out of the 10 that actually know how to run a grade rod. That's a thing we have to teach here, that's right. And we've got dual-slope lasers that make it a little bit easier on our guys, so it's not as hard. But grabbing the concept of the grade rod is not something that's just easily done.
Speaker 2:That's right. Not everybody has that gift. No, they don't.
Speaker 1:But it's pretty easy to read a set of prints on this little iPad in front of you and go boop, I'm right here. That's where my waterline needs to go. It's dead center and I'm level. Yeah, there is no mistake, that's right.
Speaker 2:Now, past that, you can get more precise, which is kind of my thing. You know there are conflicts still yet with GPS. Oh, we're at one right now To go off into the weeds, because I like to go into the weeds, maybe just a little, maybe just a little, maybe just a little. Um, you know where I see the future of all this coming is is going on right now on project neo and bit middle. Everybody out there is working off of the same base station, everybody is working off of the same uh control. Everybody is working off of the same model. Yep, there is no, I'm not gonna say I'm not. Maybe you guys know there is okay, if you're so about you might run into something, whatever, but but, dude, that's where the future of construction is going.
Speaker 1:100 so it's like somebody's like everybody's working off the same print, everybody's pulling off the same print, everybody's pulling on the same. It's crazy, man. And all the engineer changes on the flies and the ownership changes on the flies and oh you, well, that was part of the price. We changed it, you know, but we didn't really change it that much. Dude it's, it's over and over, but the the it's, it's over and over, but yeah, that the it's. I need to get a point across here. It's not about work you can do, it's about work you can document.
Speaker 2:You've done exactly right and there was a.
Speaker 1:If you guys follow me on linkedin, I did a post not too long ago, um, about jesus's crew. He was in the ditch. He had almost 200 foot of sewer line ditch open and the pipe was the straightest arrowed pipe I think I've ever seen. I was so proud that day and Jesus got a shot on every single bell that was laid. It was laid with a pipe laser from the previous manhole while his guys were shooting grade with a dual-slope laser establishing ditch grade. There's three different documentation points that I can grab. I know he's got a picture of the target board on every stick. He's got a GPS shot and I know my ditch grade was probably established by him with a gps as well on that grade rod. But if you for arguments, conversation here, we could have done that with, uh, just a dual slope laser and just established our grade. But there's more confidence that I have with that pipe being 15 feet, 12 feet, 20 feet in the ground yeah I know exactly where it's at right now.
Speaker 1:With thousand yards dirt on it, I don't care, I know exactly where that pipe is. I can send it in an email format, yeah, to an engineer to read on his cat file and go pipes there. Sure lines here. Tell me what to do. Yep, the guys are going elsewhere. We're gonna go get them on some other billable work and you tell us what to do with that information? There's not. Oh, I've got to wait on the survey team. I've got to get a surveyor out there. Can you just blah, blah, blah? Here's the information. I already have it.
Speaker 1:I've done your freaking job for you, like we do every single day, and we've been talking more in the civil sense, but architects the same way more civil GPS, but you can put the documentation in their hands. The one thing in our world that is obviously becoming more of a thing is time is more valuable than money, and I believe having the GPS capabilities after you implement and onboard them takes some time and hopefully your dealer has a really good guy and we've got a good guy now. He's definitely stepping up, for sure. But there were some big holes. As you came on, you were like dude, you got this package and you're getting this service and you were definitely the connecting point that helped a lot of things. Hell, we've got a gps dead zone out there at the airport on our I machine right now. That you've been going back and forth hurts.
Speaker 1:On radio there's 415 and 935 and there's this and there's that, and I probably said that wrong and I do not know about it. That's all right, but that's why I went and got you. That's why I've sent dylan for training. That's why I went and got you. That's why I've sent Dylan for training. That's why these superintendents have had it in their hands since day one. And I lean on you guys, but I know if the civil installers are using that recording. Not only that, guys. Think about the time delay. Think about this one for you guys that are still listening. You get a phone call. It's Thursday. You told so-and-so the pipe was going to be in the ground. It's Wednesday or Thursday afternoon. You get a phone call and it's hey, man, I ain't got no stakes, billy Joel, I just hired him on Tuesday and he ran all over my stakes. Yeah, what are you going to do? Yeah, you ain't got nowhere else to send your boys. This is just an example. Yeah, and you're sitting there thumb straight, straight up the whole bum, you know on that operator seat going, well what
Speaker 1:do we do now? Yeah, we just put it in, hope it's right. Well, you're gonna be digging it up. Let me just. That is not the thing you do. You wait for the surveyor or you take your handy handy dandy god wand, because how I have set this up and how psycon prefers to do it not saying this is every case or every scenario, but what I prefer to do with having the gps capabilities don't just go waving that wand everywhere. It's cool that you have it to check your work doesn't mean that the engineer gets to push all their freaking surveying and everything else on you every single time. Now, if you're working out there at the airport, you're working on a uh, a ardot road or something like that they're gonna push everything off on you yeah that's.
Speaker 1:That's just part of the game and part of those size of contracts. But I'm talking in these lower, little bit lower realms and maybe under $2 million and below I'm still going to require the engineer to come out, stake every single service, stake the main line valves on the water, stake manholes and give me offsets. Then I want to take my handy dandy Godwan, which would be my rover and my data collector, screw my little base on a nice concrete base pole that I've had there since day one and I'm localized to my control and now I'm going to go around and record every one of his stakes so that when Billy Joel runs over them freaking stupid stakes that you asked him 97 times not to touch Now you can just run over and go boop, nope, boop, boop. There we go. Guys, let's finish up the day Like what was I doing before? Well, I didn't make enough revenue to support it, just like we were talking mechanic earlier on the equipment. Man, 100% like you gotta. You gotta be doing enough work to support it.
Speaker 1:But there's such a funny line I wish we'd have done it sooner yeah being a you not not from the dirt sense, right I mean, but from the utility guy sense as many utilities as we were running. I can tell you it would have paid for itself. Year two in the fire game, yeah, 100. But at the same time we were jumping so many projects a year, almost you know, I can tell you it would have paid for itself. Year two in the fire game, yeah, a hundred percent. But at the same time we were jumping so many projects a year, almost you know, one plus a week, yeah, you really going to set up control model and everything else on that.
Speaker 2:No, you need to be running off with somebody else's. Exactly that's what I was talking about earlier.
Speaker 1:I'm telling you we're doing that down there at Park Meadows right now. We're working with another contractor here in town. Shout out, I'll give him a shout out Golex for sure. They've been around here for 30 plus years. They're a generational type outfit. Me and Ryan have gone on really good. I probably need to get him on here. That'd be a good idea, coming from the other end of the spectrum. Either way, um, he called me up. Like I told you guys, 2024 was hard. It wasn't just hard for psycon, it was hard for everyone, with the private sector and the private market being really tight-lipped and shelving every deal that didn't have funding procured a year ago. Um, but we're in a bunch of conversations for 2025 for sure. Um, I just absolutely blanked. Where was I going with that ryan goal?
Speaker 1:ryan goal editor, help me out, make me look crisp. But um, ryan called me up and he said hey, man, we're struggling to get anything converted and captured in here if we're not turning in total site work. Yeah, really not confident in my utility guys right now. Well, I don't think he really has a utility crew, other than a very small utility crew looking at some bigger projects. Would you think about teaming up?
Speaker 1:yeah you guys brought it to me and I was like you know, I was a little on the fence about it, because I'm sitting there going, man, I'm doing all these things, and then I'm just going to go and show somebody else and team up and like 2024 is hard enough. And I really started thinking about it, like how could this be bad for us? Yeah, unless they don't hold up to their end of the bargain. Yeah, but we do what we know how to do. We go in there, bang that water line out, do some sewer, tap into some manholes, cut cones off. Whatever we go get to do what we get to do, working under somebody else's parameters, teaming up. They look good, we look good, everybody looks good.
Speaker 1:What's wrong in that? We didn't get the dirt on that one particular contract? Well, our dirt boys are not a hell of busy. They're busy enough, that's right. So what I'm maybe trying to get at is don't be so greedy that you won't lean on your competition a little bit, especially in when times get tough, relationships are everything, absolutely, and I think that work, working relationship is going to move and it's only going to benefit us, because there's a lot of times um, I haven't made as much money on the church side as I have on the utility side, because I know how to make money on the utility side.
Speaker 1:It's taken this two year basic dirt operations and trying to get structure on it and learning from our mistakes. Man, education is so expensive. Our experience is priceless. I knew that. I knew on the utility side and dylan's trained, the team is trained. I've got enough people in in. We know utilities, that's right. But the dirt side of things I would. I built this business taking people's visions, just like the driveway res driveway situation. It had a set of prints but it really wasn't his vision Taking people's visions. I want this for my yard and I want this and I'm like, okay, it's going to take me about two weeks of time, I can do it. Here's the amount of money for the two weeks of time. I think I can get it done in and hopefully I can get it done in a week. But what I'm getting at is I had this eye for shaping property and I enjoyed it. Man, I just freaking enjoyed seeing that customer smile at the end and go holy crap, you made what was in my brain.
Speaker 1:And they don't even know how to speak my language. You have to learn to interpret several different types of languages. You have to learn to interpret several different types of languages. When I'm meaning, I'm meaning like maybe some from somebody from California or somebody from New York just moved here, which was a lot of times the case. Out there on the lake or Bella Vista, I want to build me a golf cart path, yeah, and that's what I built a business on. So I knew we were going to come back to dirt operations, but I also knew that jumping in the commercial side of it, yeah wasn't gonna do it without gps dude.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I knew from day one for jumping into dirt I had to take on the gps. It's gonna suck right up front. Do it all right here fast, in a hurry, yeah, but now we're on the other side of it and man, the benefits we've got. Gemini dude, absolutely. If you guys have enjoyed this episode, please stop by our website, bluecollarbusinesspodcastcom. Every Wednesday 5 am on your way into work. Catch a new episode and I film them in the afternoon. So it's a recycling effort here.
Speaker 1:Heath, I got one more question for you. Yeah, is the earth flat? Don't answer that. What's a takeaway for the blue-collar worker who is sick of being stuck in the mud? And when I ask this question, I need you to realize I'm not talking about the ditch hand that's stuck in the mud. I'm talking about the HVAC guy that's tired of crawling in attics. I'm talking about the guy, the sparky, out there, that's tired of roping houses, the plumber that's tired of topping out houses. I'm talking about those guys that just feel stuck, have no motivation, whether mentally, emotionally, they're dealing with. As you know, being just a man in the blue collar world is not easy. Yeah, and carrying the family and the husband and the babies and being a daddy, but then also trying to excel at work. Man, talk, talk a little bit about that guy being just absolutely stuck.
Speaker 2:Man, I think you you know, if we're talking just business in entrepreneur, yep, you hear everybody say scale, scale, scale. Nobody really tells you what that is, they just say it a bunch. Right, it's the truth on the head, buddy. Yeah. So, but I think, like what we're doing at psycon, two things that I think will help that, um, as far as what's relative to what we're talking about, okay, processes and procedures, project coordination yeah, 100.
Speaker 1:I think these guys. You're right. It's not a lot of times to take off on your point here. A lot of times it's not so much the guy being stuck in the mud, it's the environment and the position that he's put himself in, sure, and it's the leadership going. Okay, we've got to hear. But how do we grow? How do we scale? How do we position ourselves a little bit differently? How do we bring the team up?
Speaker 1:Like talking to BuildWit and talking about how what they provide for our team is pretty much invaluable. I mean, didn't even know that something like that was out there. But I don't. I could not stand sitting here thinking that one of our guys is just stuck mentally. I want him to come talk to me and go hey, man, life really sucks right now. And okay, let's talk. Number one I'm. First thing I'm going to think is okay, where's he out in the professional sense, where's he out in the business? Okay, get that past it. It's not what he wants to talk about. He wants to talk about you know, him and his wife been struggling and they got a baby on the way and life's just freaking hard yeah and sometimes you know being a leader for those people isn't the easiest thing.
Speaker 1:You got to care and you got to show them you care in your actions, not just in your words. So no, dude, that's a really good point. And project coordination, just that makes everything go easier.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like 100%, as we have found out, and I'm building our project coordination as we literally speak. Yeah, I wish he was here tomorrow, but I can't wait to see what 180 days from now looks like. Man dude, it's going to be sick. It's going to be dumb dude.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, I mean, I think that you know, everybody wants to talk about scale and everybody wants to talk about delegation. Nobody wants to talk about what does that. Wants to talk about delegation. Nobody wants to talk about what does that even look like? Accountability yeah, no, well, nobody, just everybody is like a, you know, I'm a guru, internet website guru or whatever, and they say all that stuff but, nobody really gives you.
Speaker 2:What does that look like? How do I do do that? How do I build these processes? It was like what you're working on with the sales Bible and the accounting Bible and the project manager Bible and the ditch hand Bible. Everybody's getting a manual. Ain't nobody getting out of it? So Si has been working an hour a day At the end of the day sometime I see some emails go out in the middle of the night, but that's what he's been doing, and so it's going to be pretty cool to you know, for everybody to kind of have that. I mean, I feel like our guys, everybody wants you know what I mean? Yeah, they do. And there's a lot of other teams out there that want to be productive. They want to be the team, they want to be the team man.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think having that and some people are just blocking tacklers right, they're going to find something they're going to get. You're not stopping me. I me, I'm gonna get over that hurdle, whatever that thing is right, but some people may not be that guy and I think having that road out for everybody is gonna be helpful. You know, dude, I do. I think I think it's gonna be awesome I can't wait.
Speaker 1:I uh been buried up here as of late and finding an hour a day to work on that is discipline, and I can't tell you I haven't. Um, my birthday was yesterday and uh didn't do it yesterday and I've been definitely slack and I I've got some computer work that I've really got to get a hold of, but man, I spent all day running, running again, and I haven't been in the office much. But I think it's funny when I'm out, out and about man, how uh, production levels increased, didn't it? Yeah, it's kind of crazy, but man, I really, I really enjoyed this man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too, it was so much, basically like just talking like normal, but with a freaking microphone.
Speaker 1:Right here it is. It's. I told you guys when we were getting started this is basically an end-of-day conversation for us, talking about how we can get better, and I've really enjoyed those conversations. Some days I come in, throw my trash in the dumpster and leave at 4.30, or sometimes I go peck on the window and hey, man, what are we doing? And let me vent for just a minute. And some of those days, and but, man, I really appreciate the insight, um, from you know, psycon's perspective, but your perspective at psycon and what we're doing to change things. And I think we're going to help a lot of people over the years with what we are procuring and what we're doing right now behind the scenes. And that is 100 to go. Man, I want to help people through this podcast basically avoid some hurdles and obstacles that I had to face getting to where I'm at and not saying I've learned, I've got it all figured out, because I ain't got nothing figured out and I've still got hurdles to jump myself and the whole company does, but I'm doing everything I can, putting my boots on, trusting my people and learning how to guide them better every day to get us there. So, man, truly appreciate you.
Speaker 1:If you guys love this episode, whatever streaming platform you are on, give it a like, give it a follow and, if you're this far along, if you wouldn't mind giving it a rating. Um, once the podcast is over. Uh, if not, check out wwwbluecollarbusinesspodcastcom. You can listen to it completely free on there. You don't need any streaming platform, you don't need any subscription. You can watch it right there, the YouTube video, or just listen to it audioly. So I really appreciate you guys and until next time. You guys be safe and be kind and we'll check you on the next one. If you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to give it a like, share it with the fellers. Check out our website to send us any questions and comments about your experience in the blue card business. Who do you want to hear from? Send them our way and we'll do our best to answer any questions you may have. Till next time, guys.