Ep. 69 - GPS Disruption: EasyNav Changes the Game

You flip the key, the screen lights up, and your machine shows true elevation without a base or a model. That one moment changes everything, no waiting on stakes, no rebenching, no guessing. We brought EasyNav from CHC Navigation into our own excavator and walked through installation, setup, and real-world use with Ryan Deemer, (Skid Steer Nation) and Chuck Harris (Benchmark Tool & Supply) to see how this tech finally meets the blue-collar bar: cost effective, reliable, and easy to use.

We cover the practical wins first. In-field design lets crews cut pads, set slope trenches, crown long driveways, and cast planes with a few taps. Utility and septic teams get safer, faster workflows by setting trench depth from the cab and capturing bottom-of-trench shots for airtight documentation. For owners wrestling with labor, the retention angle is big: once operators see clean visuals and simple tasks, they don’t want to go back, your shop becomes the place they stay.

We also get honest about money and support. Entry-level 3D at the price of old 2D systems means ROI lands fast; fewer hours, fewer bodies, and more jobs finished each month. Financing and strong warranties smooth cash flow, and Benchmark’s nationwide service network, remote screen support, and growing training library remove the fear from onboarding. Need to scale to full 3D modeling later? The path is there without ripping out hardware.

Beyond the gear, we talk culture and systems: define values, fix one fire at a time, and build a hiring process that selects for attitude and teaches skill. Save and reuse designs for franchise pads and long driveways, give clients clean as-builts, and stop bleeding time waiting on stakes. The message is simple, adopt now and lead, or risk losing your best operators to crews that already have.

If this hit home, follow the show, share with a friend who runs iron, and leave a quick review so more blue-collar owners can find it.

Chapters

• 0:00 Studio Welcome And Guest Intros
• 10:11 Skid Steer Nation And Values-Driven Marketing
• 19:21 Introducing CHC Navigation And Benchmark
• 27:01 Early Machine Control History And Lessons
• 35:46 Labor, Retention, And Culture Shifts
• 44:01 EasyNav Walkthrough And Real-Time Elevation
• 52:26 No-Model Workflows And Utility Use Cases
• 1:01:11 Safety, Septic, And As-Built Data
• 1:10:01 Pricing, Financing, And ROI Math
• 1:19:01 Service Network, Remote Support, And Training
• 1:27:31 Roadwork, Driveways, And Skid Steer Setups

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:09

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 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. Guys, welcome back to another episode of the Blue Collar Business Podcast. Uh today I've got two guests live in studio with me. I know we've been coming at you a whole bunch from the remote side of things. It's been busy here wrapping up this end of this year and uh but focusing on next year. Um I was on a I had a chance and an opportunity, and I struck on that uh from one of my guests sitting across the table today, Mr. Ryan Diemer. I know a ton of you guys know that name, so I'm blessed to have him here today. But uh we had we had a great episode uh on the infamous Skidsteer Nation podcast. Over 160 episodes. But uh my guy here is an absolute entrepreneurial head like myself. Uh go check out skidstearnation.com. All the attachments are there. Um he founded it. He's also a marketing complete strategist. We've talked so many different angles in the uh uh 24, 36 hours that we've been here. We've spent a lot of time together. Um he's always been entrepreneurial rooted up there in the freezing tundra of Illinois in December. But thank you so much. And and from that, uh, our other guest, how this all intertwined here, right? Calls me literally a week ago, and he's like, hey guys, dude, I I need to tell you about something. You got 15 minutes? I'm like, dude, any, yeah, of course. I've got a buddy, I've known a long time. Uh he's got something you need to see. And I'm like, oh, I'm all about it. Okay. And then we started uh talking about machine control and basin rovers. And I'm like, oh, buddy, you are in a deep can of worms here. Yes, I need all the information I can get because I still, as you guys know, have struggled um through the GPS implementation at SciCon, and I still don't know everything that I should know. And hell, we've paid them things off, you know. But we've got a friction fighter and a little bit of a uh mass market adoption uh uh market disruptor, and this thing is so exciting to hear about. I spent 15 minutes with Ryan on the phone. Uh he would agree I was all in from the word go. And I said, let's jump on a Zoom call. This was a week ago, guys, and here we are in Northwest Arkansas in the beautiful podcast videos conference room here in Rogers, Arkansas. And Mr. Chuck Harris flew in. He's the founder of Benchmark Tool and Supply. Uh, he brought, I can't tell you guys how impressed I am with his team that came in here, knowledgeable about the product. This isn't just, hey, we've got a we've got this really cool tool that you guys get sold on all the freaking time. He brought everybody that was with him. I could ask any type of question. My estimator asked software questions, file transfer questions. So if you guys have a chance, go check out Benchmark Tool and Supply. They are based out of North Carolina, but anywhere in the North American region, they will absolutely service you and provide remote support directly into your machines. And I can't wait to get more into that. But this gentleman has been in this industry a very long, long time, and from the 36 hours and a couple of Zoom calls, has taught me a few things already, and he's probably forgot more than I'll ever learn about machine control and basin rover and measurements. And um during the install yesterday on our machine, I literally have the product myself, guys. This isn't something I'm just bringing to the show. Uh we spent yesterday, the install was a freaking breeze, and you guys know I'm not mechanically inclined. Um, but I think I truly could have installed it myself. I was so utterly impressed with the simple ease of use, ease of install to get to the point of calibration. Now, I probably couldn't calibrate it myself, but they probably could have helped through remote help. So, what I'm talking about today, guys, is EasyNav, and the company is CHC Nav, correct, sir? Yes, sir. CHC Navigation. Beautiful. Well, number one, gentlemen, thank you for making the trip. Seriously. I hope that intro was worthy. I know it's a little long-winded, but I wanted to definitely make sure the audience understood how number one, guys, putting yourself out there on a podcast or a video where it can lead you into a conversation, into an opportunity, and the power of networking and just the power of what media marketing does. And we can we can go off and and we can start kind of wherever you guys would like to. But Mr. Ryan, 160 episodes. You you're a you're a better host than myself.

SPEAKER_00: 5:39

I gotta say, I've just been doing it longer, right? It's got a little more gray hair in the department than you, my man. Um wisdom. We you know, we launched Skids to Your Nation back in 2020, and I'd listened to a lot of podcasts. I just kept seeing that segment growing, and I can't and I just saw it as a marketing tool for our businesses and a way to provide resources to the industry because nothing can replace giving knowledge, right? Education. Yeah. So, you know, bringing in the guys like I've learned, and I'm sure you've been in the same boat, but business owners, especially in the dirt world, like you know, they're tech typically testosterone-driven men, right? Little ego doing it. They don't do, they don't go look for help. So they sit themselves on a little island and they feel that their problems are specific to them, no one's ever had them. If I got to figure it out on my own, so to bring those guests in on a weekly basis and have them tell their story, like you wouldn't believe how many people reach out going, I needed that because I thought I was alone or I was doing something that no one else had ever gone through. And so it just kind of provides a light for them that there's a way out, there's a different way to do things, and you're not the first one to walk through this path.

SPEAKER_01: 6:46

Impactful, man. And I gotta say, the if I would have had any clue, and you probably would agree, sir, is you know, the impact that we are making through these media ventures and of course podcasting or video, like it's insane the amount of people that you're helping by just putting yourself out there. Yeah. And just opening the opportunity for a conversation to be had is so enlightening to some individuals. And and sometimes we talked about this actually a little in the intro, as we've been going through these episodes. Sometimes you're sitting there going, Man, am I am I really helping anybody? Is anybody really relating to this? And then you get an email later that week or a DM from, hey man, dude, that episode was for me. I have been in the mud with that certain subject.

SPEAKER_00: 7:32

It's funny because I don't get a lot of those emails. Like our audience, I always tell them, like, you you complain your customers don't give you Google reviews. Yeah, you don't ever review or write things for things that are important to you. I'm like, you know, but uh so I actually get more messages from past guests because the people actually reach out directly to the past guest and want a question or mentorship, and then they always shoot me a text message and a screenshot of that. So, but it is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01: 7:58

It's that's unbelievable. But when uh talk about a little bit of Skidsteer Nation and talk a little bit about just marketing in general and kind of how y'all met and however definition there and and how did we get here?

unknown: 9:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 9:10

So I've got like a 10-year background of running a manufacturing company that made Skidsteer attachments, and it was a family-owned smaller business in Illinois. And what I noticed through that time frame is that if you look at the large producers, the Paladins, or even, you know, like let's be honest, Bobcat and John Deere, they don't make attachments, it's all outsourced. But you start looking at the quality of the attachments compared to what the family manufacturers were making, and it's night and day difference. The issue was the family manufacturers weren't getting any visibility, right? They don't have a marketing team, they don't really have a dedicated sales team, and they were just like building a website out, hoping to God somebody finds them and you know, running a Facebook ad from time to time. So I just kind of took the idea when I left that industry from the manufacturing point of view, is like, what if I built a business that was strictly online and we only partnered with these family-owned manufacturers? You know, I've got the background to do the do the checkpoints to make sure that they've got the service, the quality's correct, and I can ask the right questions. So, like our our our tagline is like we've done the research for you. So if it's for sale on skidsteenation.com, it's built for commercial use. That's so like you don't have to wonder if it's got the quality.

SPEAKER_01: 10:17

What a model, dude. What a model. That's in that's so impressive. And thank you for number one for looking out for that guy that just signed up for his 84 month Skid Steer. It's 84 months. You know, I mean, that's what they're signing him up for in these dealers, you know. And I think a lesson.

SPEAKER_00: 10:33

Traditional purchases. I think I think a big lesson that I went through early on in my business that's that transcends e-commerce and it works great for all businesses is you know, I went through because of my past businesses, I went through the process this time, like what makes me happy? What am I good at? What do I want to do? What are my values? Where do they align? And that's where we ended up with Skid Steer Nation. But I had like a mission of like we're only going to work with family-owned American manufacturers.

SPEAKER_01: 10:56

That's too cool.

SPEAKER_00: 10:57

But getting into that whole niching thing, right? Like you talked about it going from you know, pipe work into dirt work. I've been, you know, approached by many manufacturers to be like, I had an opportunity to be the nation distributor for an Italian company. Looked lucrative to me, but it was a very easy no because they weren't an American manufacturer. Good for you. But again, like I think taking that time as a business owner to define who you are, what's important to you, who you serve, it'll save you a lot of headaches down the road.

SPEAKER_01: 11:25

The core values are everything. Yeah. And I actually can tell myself, didn't think that was even a thing, you know, until literally in the past two years, through these systems and trying to define what is important and prioritizing that. No, you do need to sit down, and we've got a meeting. You heard maybe the guys talking about it yesterday. We've got a meeting first day they come back after their, we call it the great reset. You know what I mean? After their two weeks off, we're gonna sit there, we're gonna talk about, you know, what me and Dylan and and and the financial team have talked about maybe goals for the year, whatever that may be, and this department or that department or or whatever it is. But I'm also sending them an email here Monday and going, hey, just like I did last year, give me just about 15 questions, a little questionnaire, but what's your goals for next year? What's your personal goals? What's your professional goals? And maybe we need to change our goals to meet some of the team's goals. You know what I mean? And I did it last year, just on a whim with sitting there as every entrepreneur is sitting here in the middle of the week of Christmas or the holidays, going, Man, I need to do some more stuff. What am I? I'm not doing enough. Hey guys, and I didn't even think about it. It was right before their two weeks reset. I should have done it probably a little bit before, like I'm gonna do this time. But either way, you know, it defines the core values, you set those as at the top level. Hey, these values were not going to step aside outside of those values, and you can't. And as long as you obtain to those, you set those expectations and standards, but it's so freaking important. And I completely miss the mark there. But once you have something to go, hey man, does this situation meet these goals and values right here? Yeah, you tell me because we aligned on this, we signed up for this together as a team. Do you guys agree? Yeah, man. Yeah, we and their self-accountability starts driving, but it's all because the owner took the time to sit down and do core values. So I wanted to highlight that. That's so important.

SPEAKER_00: 13:30

It's yeah, I agree 100%. But then through that, through the podcast, especially, we had a lot of people reaching out saying, How do I do marketing? And then they kept asking me if I would just do marketing. And I would tell them no, because I'm not a marketing company. You bet. And then I finally had an opportunity to partner with my with Clay. Clay's got a master's degree in online digital marketing. He's worked for like hundred million dollar marketing firms, like Semental in Illinois. They handle all of Kat's marketing or majority of it, country financials, Maui Gym. He's had the background, and he, like many business owners in our industry, got corporate burnout. Right. So he went out and started doing his own thing. Then we partnered to build throttled up marketing, where we actually build websites, do all the technical jargon stuff on the back end, help guide strategy, branding, whatever they need. We what we look at ourselves more as a partner, like a I hate to say the term fractional chief marketing operator, but like when you hire throttled up marketing, like we're not you're not hiring us to get 50 leads a month. That's right. You're hiring us to build the cornerstone, help you guide your vision. So we start with our first thing we do is we build a client brief. And our onboarding call, it starts with values. Where do you want to be in five years? And like what issues are you having now? Because why would we want to promote all these services like driveway repair for excavation if your goal in five years is to be doing$2.5 million commercial site work? Right. Right? Let's just build who you want to be now. Because if you start talking that way, you start believing it and you start growing. And then somewhere through all this, Chuck and I met and we just kind of always stayed in contact. Yeah. And uh he reached out with this uh this easy nab stuff, and and you know, just was like, is there anything we can collaborate or how can you help? And all that. And like one of the ideas I had was I was like, he got me side down in Arkansas, and so like literally the three of us jumped on a call last week, and I was like, as you know, me audience, or you if you listen to my show, you'll know I'm like, I want it and I want it now. Very full of salt from in the Charlie chocolate factory. So I was like, how quickly can we do this? I was referred before Christmas, and everyone's like, Oh, let's do it.

SPEAKER_01: 15:40

Yeah, my face was like, Are oh, are we for oh, like next week? I was like, I can't say no to that. Like, this is awesome. Let's if if you guys are really entertaining this, and Chuck, you texted me on Friday. Hey, I'm looking at flights, uh, 17th, 18th work, and I'm like, I was floored. I was absolutely floored. I was, and I'm like, here we are, and and you showed up yesterday. Tell us just a little bit intro of CNC Nav, maybe the company, what is Easy Nav, and maybe talk about a little bit of your machine control experience and and like literally you helped build the industry. Yes, you're uh you're the influence, Bob.

SPEAKER_03: 16:23

Yeah, I appreciate that. First off, I want to you know share thanks for for both SIU and and Ryan. It it's unbelievable that within one week we've accomplished what we have. And I I'll I'll provide a little more detail to the call I made to Ryan. So I'm I call Ryan, yeah. We we met, I I'd say a couple years ago just talking marketing frustrations and how to do things, formed a relationship and have really kept that conversation active over a couple years. So so we're at a point with some new technology that's it's going to change the industry. Like there's no question to that. And I knew the the the biggest obstacle we had is evangelizing it, getting it out. There's literally no competition other than lack of awareness and understanding that it's available. So we don't look at this as selling product, we're actually selling solutions to your problems you're having in the field every day. Your operator, not you. But if if you can keep your operator productive, it helps your business grow, right? So that's that's the that's how we view this. And we have technology put in place that we've helped develop over the course of the last couple years that's that's going to check those boxes. I say check boxes, there's three. Cost effective, reliable, and easy to use, right? So if we can do check those boxes, we have mass market adoption. There's one more thing that we have to do, the evangelizing piece. So I really called Ryan frustrated. I'm like, we have the best thing that I've seen in my career, which spans approximately 28 years in this technology. It's hard to think that you can still get excited, right? Stuff changes rapidly, and you know, for 10, 15 years, it's like just re repackaged of the same thing. So now we truly have different technologies. Yeah, I would agree 1,000% with that. It just and we'll we'll go over more details, but I really called Ryan to vent. Like, you know, how we got something special. How do we get the word out? Because I I personally have the same trait most contractors that have been around for a long time. I like to hold information close to my chest. Yep. And I I'm finding every year that I I age, I'm opening up because I want others to benefit from all this exciting stuff. So that was how that call was made. I'm like, you know, let's do this like now. So yeah, it's correct. We we spoke a week ago, got on a Zoom call, we got the flights together, brought a team in, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 18:56

I kind of laid out like a 12-week idea I have between now through March. And I just looked at Chuck and I'm like, all depends on you know getting enough content, and because of editing and all of this other scheduling, I'm like, that content needs to be done now. 100%.

SPEAKER_01: 19:14

And I want to key on one thing. Uh I've I'm gonna be a con expo. I'm thinking Ryan may be a con expo, maybe in numbers now all day. So um feel like you know, I've got a few, I've got a few things to do out there, but I am definitely gonna be at the CHC NAB. I didn't want to skip over that. You guys are gonna be a con expo.

SPEAKER_03: 19:37

We are, and I I you know, go back to the CHC NAB relationship. It it actually started in 2023 at Con Expo. You know, CHC was new to the US at that time, still new. That's why we're we're evangelizing. Now, this company is is from overseas with with a plan in place and steps already taken, the manufacturing is going to start taking place in in the US within the next 18 months. So it's it really encouraging to have really brand new technology where the complete solutions are manufactured in the US, which you know, you know there's geopolitical stuff going on. We stay away from that. We we have a desire to provide you the best solution, right? Don't really care where it comes from, as long as you get part, service, and support when you need it. I mean, you you it's gonna do the job for you. So that that relationship began in 2023 at a just a small outside tent. But I see, I've been around this stuff for 28 years. I've seen some some things that really caught my attention. And it's taken a few years here to really get it to the user level, and that really ramped up over the last six months. We've had software developers with our team working on, you know, changing the workflows a bit to where As an operator, you literally power this stuff on and go to work. So it's it's taken some work to do that. But um I spent some time at the factory, uh, you know, met the uh CEO and all the leadership team recently, and just I I'm telling you, the roadmap is extremely exciting of the technologies that's coming out that basically benefits the end user. I mean, it it's that is the focus. Make it easier in the field, and and that's what's really driving our excitement.

SPEAKER_00: 21:22

Is it can I interject for just a half a second? Because you mentioned it, but I don't think the listeners really caught it. The CHC team took a good system and dialed it into where it needed to be with Benchmark's team in the United States at Benchmark's facility. So when we talk about the easy use and all of that, like Benchmark isn't just trying to sell this for brother, they literally designed and helped re-revamp the software for this for this system.

SPEAKER_01: 21:48

And yesterday, sitting there with with Benchmark's team, and shout out to Levi, I gotta, I gotta give that guy a shout-out. I was sitting in there, he was showing me through the tablet, and and I will tell you guys on these data collectors that I have, and you guys know the brand name I have, and I'm so scared to death to touch it because I'm not educated enough and I don't want to affect the crew on site. Don't get me wrong, I can record some points, etc., but start offsetting or doing anything like that. I'm like, oh, sorry, guys, got to watch another video, you know, figure this out. And so with sitting in that cab yesterday, Levi was like, hey man, if that button's not there, we can get that button there. And I'm like, what? Like, just to have that developer mindset sitting there with the end user going, hey man, and I think it was about exporting points. I actually, and it wasn't where he thought it was. He's like, man, we should probably do that. And he's just sitting there, and he's not even an install guy. Sitting there, just somebody on your team doing that is just unbelievable. Thinking about the oper. He even cared about hey Sai. Get up in the dang seat. I want you to sit there naturally. And I'm not the operator. I had say that. I can go operate a 210. A lot of these guys give me hate because I'm not in machines every day anymore, but you guys can attest how busy I am. But what I what I'm trying to get at, we got Gage and hey, Gage, hop in there. He scoots a seat up. Is this monitor going to be in your way? Where can we place this? I mean, it's just the little things like that. And yes, guys, you can install it yourself, but to have the benchmark team, I would highly, highly there's actual room left after you purchase the equipment to pay them to come install it. Like, I'm so excited we haven't got to that point yet. But um, CHC NAB is a very big company and they partnered with Benchmark Tool and Supply. Such a great highlight. Thank you for doing that. But it's because of your knowledge, sir, and your dedication to the market for the end user that a lot of this happened. So I wanted to give you a big highlight here, too, man, because what you were talking about from what I would love for you to share a little bit about is literal early days of machine control. Because a lot of these guys listen to this show, a lot of them still don't even have a rover. I mean, we've got maybe a total station or uh or maybe a couple of different fancy dual slope lasers, but they haven't really made the jump. And I I believe I said this yesterday, you're gonna be able to sell this to the older guy on the way out of the market and to the younger guy. Like it's really, really cool. But sorry, I could ask a few things out of you. Yeah, I would like that.

SPEAKER_03: 24:32

That really helps us the experience, the the gray hairs, if you will. But you know, dating back to the late 90s when 3D machine control was really just a talk. At that time, actually, Tremble, one of the big three, had what was called site vision, which was an indicate dual mass system for a bulldozer. And that was really the only 3D system out, no automation, just some guidance. So we had an opportunity at that time to basically help build one. So we we partnered with a software company that was based out of Michigan and you know, took commercially available GPS receiver that was made for surveying, and basically a rugged computer that was inside of a big aluminum housing took enormous amount of power. So it either, you know, a rover consisted of an ATV. So you had something with a battery and a you know, upsized generator powered. Yeah, running real computers. So the software developer, yeah, it was it was incredible. The software developer, I'll try to dig some photos of looking back, you know, three and a half inch floppies on a machine, on floppy desk, which ages us, but it it was incredible looking back, it's like, man, we were way ahead of the time. But it had to be powered, physically powered, no internal batteries. And we literally, the developer had an RV, and we had a lot of good times. We'd pull up at the site, take something that did not work at all, and mount it on machines, and you know, at the end of two or three days, we'd have a system working. I think the first one we did was actually digging a slurry wall around a big uh landfill, 30 foot deep, putting bitonite slurry in it. So we're able to dig this thing with a long-reach excavator, take shots at the bottom of the trench to validate basically an Asbill, and stream that data back to the engineering fund 300 miles away. And this was in the late 90s. So we've seen a lot of progression. You know, we got to the mid-2000s, I'd say, and this the the technology got stagnant. Like there was really not much new development for a period of seven, eight years. And there was a little bit, I'd say, around 20, 2018, 2019 from the traditional suppliers. And, you know, it's just not changed much because it's it's it's just remained in that top 20% of early adopters. And I've mentioned mass market adoption a few times. We knew it was going to take something different, different approach, just everything had to be different. Yeah. Structure. And we're we're there today. Like we're excited. It started. We we started deploying these systems literally a few months ago, and and it's growing by the day. I mean, it's it's it's very exciting to see mass market happen. There, you know, again, there's three things you have to do. It's got to be easy for the operator, but the lack of qualified labors driving it. Yeah, putting this system on your excavator or dozer is not gonna solve all your problems. It will help. Okay. It'll it'll help with your efficiency. So anything, you know, as a business owner with your your construction company that you can do to help with efficiency that won't hinder you, I think it's a smart move. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 27:50

Let's talk about that labor part of it for just a second. Great point. Um, you know, we always talk everyone talks about efficiencies, like, oh, we can make our operators more efficient. We can do a job in you know 90% of the time, 70% of the time, all that. But there's a side benefit to buddy in tech into your equipment that most business owners overlook. And I actually learned this from a friend of mine who did it for efficiencies and then quickly found out that that was the second best benefit. The number one benefit is most businesses don't have this. So once your team gets trained and acclimated to using it, and then somebody approaches them with a$2 more hour job and like they don't leave. Yeah. Because they don't want to go back to doing it the old way. That's a great point, man. They don't want to go back. So if you're a business owner, you know, not only can you look at it as like reducing the amount of labor, because the labor pool currently from the word on the street is terrible.

SPEAKER_01: 28:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 28:41

And then you get to maintain your great relationship with the people you have, improve efficiencies, but now you can actually retain them for a longer period of time.

SPEAKER_01: 28:48

I want to jump on that labor pool thing for a second because I'm going to call out you owners for just a minute. Because, you know, I get asked a lot, don't get me wrong, we've had our own issues, we've had guys leave, etc. Every company does. But I've done pretty well at retaining employees. I had a bad culture time. But I think the adaptation of us as an entrepreneur, say it takes, you know, taking the step to go to GPS or going a different route with an integrated machine control or whatever it may be. But you have to take the steps with your people. You know what I mean? Like it's it's so different when you get these young, I think it's Gen Z, correct me if I'm not wrong. The young guys really don't have a clue, but they're eager to learn. But they don't even know how to display to the 55-year-old man that they're eager to learn. It's a totally different new thing for both ends of the spectrum. The guy that's leaving the market, the guy that's entering. And we have to do a better job at the top level discussing with the 55-year-old foreman or the 35-year-old foreman. Look, this guy don't learn the way we learned. Just get that out of your head. I don't care that, oh, well, it's used to be it. Well, if that mindset just jump on the train of how bad this industry has gotten in so many different ways from collections to training, but we've got to do a better, different job of being able to tie these people that are eager to learn. There's a ton in Labor Pool that are not. They would rather sit on their phone. I deal with those two. But at the same time, we've got to figure out a system, as you gentlemen, know more, way more about than I do, that works. And for us, it's been internal training videos to try and set the culture tone so that when they sit out their day one, they're not totally blind. But I still haven't figured it out either.

SPEAKER_00: 30:47

You know, we could do a whole episode on this separately, right? We talked about core values earlier, right? True. So most business owners hire reactively. Oh my God, I got this project. I need three more bodies, or oh, he just quit. I need to replace him. And their first thing is they get on Facebook or Indeed, looking for an experienced operator, willing to pay this much an hour. And then they get people like, oh, you know how to run the excavator, you're hired. And then two weeks later, like, this guy's shit. He's eroded the whole. Well, yeah, because you didn't actually interview or you know, stick to your core values, because your goal as a business owner is to find people with similar value sets so you can build a tribe, and you can't build a tribe of people that don't share common values. That's so good, dude. So we like we actually, the people we work with, we actually strip their entire interview process down and change all the questioning and what's important. Because anyone can learn how to operate a machine. Yes, sir. Anyone can learn how to run a rover, right? But you can't teach someone to say yes, ma'am, no, ma'am. Like they either got it or they don't.

SPEAKER_01: 31:52

Literally, right?

SPEAKER_00: 31:53

You can't teach somebody to show up at work at 6 30 in the morning. If they're constantly late, they're gonna continually be constantly we can try, but then you're fighting and losing. But how many hours, how many hours a week are you spending nurturing something bad that you could have been finishing an estimate or talking to an engineer, or I mean, time is the most valuable asset you have. So why are we wasting it on silly things? And it's if you just look internally and be like, God, my hiring process was terrible.

SPEAKER_01: 32:18

Uh so I mentioned I did those goals earlier. I asked some hard questions about the business because I wanted insight from everybody. I didn't want it to my face. They and I didn't they won't give it to you to your exactly, and they didn't know a lady that was helping us fractionally project manage, man, more or fractionally built systems. She accepted this information. And the number one complaint was the hiring process. Because I did exactly what you're talking about, a reactionary. I didn't even think it was that big of a deal, to be honest with you. Now I have phone conversations outside of me that actually get vetted to see if they, you know, number one, are they legible human beings or are we dealing with some type of different type of individual? You know what I mean? Are they well spoken? Because uh, and it's not just how we hire, but you you you try to vet out the bads. Everybody, especially right now, it's kind of turning. There's a lot more jobs open right now, in my opinion, I think, than we'll see next year. We'll be all back to, oh, I can't, I can't hire enough guys. It'll it'll be the running theme next year, I would assume. But the hiring process internally for me sucked. And that was directly a shot at me because I'm the guy that does that. Now, there was a time I had a senior project manager kind of take over it for a little bit, but I didn't have the hire slow fire fast mentality. I had the, oh my God, two guys are missing here. They're gonna need them. Okay. Uh, this guy said he can hold a shovel. Here you go. And I've been there, and it's such a struggle. And then you wonder why you're losing money in freaking 90 days or 180 days. Well, you're just setting yourself up for failure. But um, sorry we kind of veered off on you, Chuck, but I wanted to hit that home with you. So, anyways, circling back, you don't have to have the the one thing that I could tie the labor back in with you here. For a utility guy like myself, I think of efficiencies of I'm so excited about that 210 reaching out, digging his ditch, taking a shot at the bottom of his ditch, taking a gravel shot, taking a flow uh flow line shot, top of pipe, and every stick, we're gonna have this on our way out. And I don't have to get somebody because at Cycon, we 100% have a shot of every single bell that we lay. I don't care if you lay 400 feet that day. It doesn't matter if we can't document. It's not about work you can do, it's about work you can document you've done. And when you cover it all up, it's kind of hard when you get in an argument with a GC. And your system, and I'm so excited to dive off more to the rover this afternoon, is is going to change a lot of game with labor, how you set up a crew, like machine control in general is just, or even some of the 2D stuff is making you rethink. Do I really need that fifth guy on a sewer crew? I mean, I got a top guy, bottom guy, uh, safety check boxes, of course. But if I'm not having to drag that box, move that so he can take a shot. I can do this with a machine before I drag the box. And you're like starting to change up a little bit of your process and how we do something that's been so repeatable for so many years. I agree.

SPEAKER_03: 35:27

And it it goes back to being simple, right? We've we've really, as an industry, failed to get technology integrated to the utility side of things. It's been a big focus on great work, right? Yep. So now that we have simple systems that are cost effective that we know the operator will use and rely on, I mean, you know, it touches several things, not just efficiency, but you just hit on it. Like if you take a shot at the bottom of your trench, which is subgrade, it now, and it's accurate, you've dug it accurately because you've got a grade checker setting right in the cab. Now you can maintain your bedding thickness. So you can be more accurate on your quantities for your stone base or whatever you're using for bedding. It's huge. Which is huge because that stuff's going up. It used to be one time a year, but now it might be three times a year. 15% increase coming at the first. So it's, I mean, you know, really maximizing your accuracy for that batting. I mean, I think you know just in a period of 15 minutes it'll pay for itself maybe in a few days, slide out uh definitely within, you know, a month. So in in that application. So we we have already experienced a drastic increase in interest from utility companies for this technology. So it's I mean, it's it's really exciting time. I just I keep going back to that, just seeing the impact and then the ones we've installed going back and talking to the operators and how they're depending on it. Um okay, which brings me to the next topic. Okay. With any kind of technology, any kind of machinery, you're gonna need parts and service and support at some point. This stuff's evolving. So excited to you know, basically announce to the world here on your your podcast that we have officially signed an agreement with a North American service company that we've partnered with so that we can be on any site in any major metropolitan area in you know a matter of a couple hours or less. Wow. So it is it's it's something that you know almost we thought was you really thought it was gonna be impossible. Very good bunch of people. We've already started the training process because we don't want to send unexperienced people out. Again, it's it's all ties to mass market adoption. You have to have this in place. So it's gonna be uniform. Like we we are doing, we've created a university internally with with supporting documentation and videos of each product, workflow. So there's gonna be content that's available to technicians, content that's available to users. Um, there's gonna be free access and paid access, just depending on what you need, how detailed you need to be. Um, so we we're doing all this in a uniform fashion so that every technician is trained the same way. Every install is gonna be done the same way, whether it be an entry-level 3D system, middle-level or fully advanced system. Um, so just totally excited about that because that is the key. I'm gonna go back. 100%. One of the first commitments I've made as an entrepreneur in this industry is try to never outsell your service capability. And that's an extreme challenge. No different than you selling jobs. I mean, yeah, yes, you got you don't sell mulchers. That's funny. So it's uh very important because you we all know if you if you cannot get the support service you need, the likelihood of you adopting more of that solution is very slim, right? So getting all this in place before it's rolled out was really important, and we're we're just excited to announce that. And then, you know, on top of that, you experienced this yesterday with the rover and the system on your 210. You know, you back this thing off a low boy, flip it on, it connects to the network, which is very accurate. Um, and anybody has interest in that and the technical side of that, moving forward, we can, but this is a nationwide network.

SPEAKER_01: 39:22

When I sat in a machine, I gotta I gotta stop you because that is we talked about this earlier just before the show, because that has got to be one of the neatest features for a utility guy. I'm not talking about these dirt movers, there's very specific programs out there that do things really well. Cool. This system could definitely get you there. But, anyways, for a utility guy making the same expense that maybe isn't bolted on, just for a base and rover setup. But if you bolt this onto your machine, when I was sitting in that cab yesterday and I saw real-time elevation without localization, without a base, I was like, how is this possible? I mean, everything I know in your world is okay, go get two bags of cement and a four by four and your three-quarter anchor or whatever it is. We'll get our base pole set up. I mean, that's six hours of somebody, two hours running around getting the materials you can have it, whatever, but getting somebody install it, getting somebody put the base on, go around. Oh, dick with the engineer about control points. Can I get my control points for the love of God? Oh, they're gonna be there Tuesday. You send a crew on Wednesday, control points aren't there, boss man, blah, blah. And it's just all of that. You're eliminating all of that. Now, don't get me wrong, you still probably I will probably still localize with my base and rover and check these systems. You know what I mean? Trust, but verify. That's that's like number one rule of an underground contractor. But at the same time, it was mind-blowing to see elevation sitting there on that machine within you guys just walked through my door at 10 a.m. yesterday and it was two o'clock, 2:30. And here I am sitting in my machine. It was we didn't work hard for four hours. No, we jawjacked.

SPEAKER_00: 41:12

We did a bunch of this. Everyone's like, oh, four hours. I mean, no, it's if you if you take it out, it was probably two and a half.

SPEAKER_01: 41:18

Max. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 41:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 41:20

And we had to do a little modification because of uh the hard line running down the boat. Yes, and throw that in there.

SPEAKER_03: 41:26

Yeah, I think you know we spoke about this earlier, is we we tend to overlook the simple thing. They're very valuable. And and and what you just stated is very valuable to any contractor. Flipping a system on and having the actual position on the earth accurate to within you know a centimeter, centimeter and a half is is I mean, it's very valuable because you've got a set of plans that you bid the job on. So if your grade elevation's a 1300 and your left bucket to 1301, guess what? You're a foot high. So it does the math for you immediately. Just having that information real time in the cabin without worrying about all these models, all these conversations that really seem to be perceived as hard things, um, and can be, depending on the complexity of the site or highway. Um, but there is a way to start your journey with technology in construction without having to deal with all that. So get your feet wet, be plenty productive, it pays for itself fast, and then take the steps to upgrade.

SPEAKER_01: 42:36

So I got I gotta I gotta pick you apart there because I know a bunch of guys would probably be yelling at the radio um right now, going down the road. Uh, did you say we don't have to deal with a model? That's correct.

SPEAKER_03: 42:50

This this system was built that's another$1,500 project savings to do simple in-field design. Right. And I say simple, you can do some rather complex stuff in the field with this. You can do, you can do a pad, building pad. Everybody needs to do it, cut a pad in. So basically, you can just put your bucket wherever you want it, take a shot, it creates a pad to infinity for size at that elevation. Then you can offset it up and down for subgrade if you like. You can do a slope pad. So basically you're taking this 3D system and using it as a, you know, like you do a traditional laser, but you don't have to have the guy running around with a pad with a rod. He can be doing something more productive, like running another machine. So you can do sloping pads, you can do flat pads, you can do a slope trench.

SPEAKER_01: 43:34

Yes, sir. I was waiting for that one, and it is so easy to set up. It's not mind-blowingly hard. You take one shot and it can cast an infinity plane. You know, you guys that are running sewer line, you understand how imperative it is to have your teeth lined up on the center of that stake and the center of that manhole and the pipe in the center of that ditch. This can you can take a shot, put a guideline of that ditch, and be 300 feet away and still be on the center line of that ditch. Like that is game-changing stuff for us without localizing, without having a model, without right off the low boy, guys, you can go take a shot at a stake and cast it. And it's not ridiculously difficult from the user seat. That's what I'm so excited about.

SPEAKER_00: 44:25

Well, and I'm not an operator, right? But there's a couple things like when Levi was talking about with you, to me, I was like, I don't know if the other systems have it or not. But to me, they were game-changing. Like, let's say you get called off in the middle of a job to go do a repair somewhere else, and you come back. Like, he literally just like you name the project. That's a great point. So you can leave, go create a new project, come back, just click the project you were on, and all of your data points are exactly where they were when you were on that job the day before.

SPEAKER_01: 44:52

Literally, he he made a great point. He's like, Look, say, and we're right behind a dollar general. And if you're in Arkansas, shout out to DG because you know they're in every little town. But right behind the Dollar General, he said, Hey, say you built this Dollar General. Say, you know, uh a customer like that builds the same model repetitively over and over again. Say you went over here uh across town, and and it's the exact same. Obviously, just follow along here, guys. It's not gonna be the exact same time every time. But if it's a foot undercut and it's the same measurements of the same box, here you are. Go to your projects, hit your task, and select that same pad that you did across town without localizing directly off the low boy, and you're cutting earth, and you know you're not overcut over overdoing your undercut. Sorry, I was a little tossy turvy there. But that's unbelievable, dude.

SPEAKER_03: 45:46

And in you, I don't want to leave this piece out, but you mentioned you know, for utilities and trench boxes, there's a safety thing here we can touch on. So you can dig your ditch degrade and keep your men inside of the trench box at all times. They're not out checking great shovel handle and a pipe laser. You still use the pipe laser for your alignment, installing the pipe itself, but safety is a big thing. So um, you know, getting the bottom of that trench right where you can keep them guys in there is a big thing. So you're doing that from the cab and a machine, it's just I I don't know, it's uh almost kind of transition over into the salesman side here, but it is solving a lot of problems. And I, you know, I'm here and telling you if you don't believe it, we prove it. Yeah. As a company, we will put it on just like we did for for you, Sai, and prove it that it's going to work for you. We're that confident, right?

SPEAKER_00: 46:42

I actually, that was one of the things I asked. I wanted to ask today, too, is like, let's be honest, we installed it yesterday. You got a 30-minute tutorial from Levi, and just moving the bucket in the air on top of a concrete pad, would you today, if I said, hey, we're taking that off, would you let them take it? No, it's staying.

SPEAKER_01: 47:04

It's staying. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00: 47:07

I am all in, dude. We haven't even dug a hole with it yet. Nope. But you saw it.

SPEAKER_01: 47:10

I and it was, and I said it yesterday coming off the tracks, guys. This is all gonna be on uh YouTube channel for Skids to your Nation, correct? It's gonna be on SciCon. I'm I'm pretty sure. Yeah, okay, of course. So everything we're talking about, we ain't lying. We said it all yesterday, and we're not gonna be hiding a whole lot from you because I really wanted to be careful how we brought this to you guys, especially how high I'm hyping it up. But I'm telling you guys, I come out of that cab yesterday, those tracks yesterday, and I stood on that track and I was holding that grab bar, and I said to you guys, I'm like, hey, I am touching the tablet already. That was what was mind-blowing to me. I was I'm petrified to touch my own data collector, either either one of them or the machine controlling that dose, any of it, because I'm gonna screw something up. Here I am, understanding what he's telling me as he's showing me. It's so simple from the user ability. And the other, another cool thing, you septic guys, let's talk about you real quick. Yes, this is affordable for guys that are in a septic operation, a pool operation. Hell, you guys that are building fence out there in the middle of nowhere. Uh, shout out to Jeremy Rowe. You'll love that. He's uh he's a feed law guy everywhere. I could see him being able to afford this tool and go lay out, he builds feedlots, right? And so go out, lay his corner post to the exact design provided by the engineer without doing a whole bunch of like things like that, down to people to utility guys like myself. It is so across the board of endless possibilities and having that broadband, I don't know, don't let me say the wrong term here, but literally cell phone pinging wherever you're at to be able go ahead.

SPEAKER_03: 48:57

Yeah, no, it's it's it back to septic guys. You know, there's a uh there's a foundation little routine in in the system as well, which is meant for your your tank holes. So you can actually just put the dimensions and depth of that tank hole in and dig it without here. We're back to safety again. Yep. You know, a tank hole might be 60 inches, 70 inches deep. You need protection there. Um I mean if it caved in, you got problems. So not having to put a guy in the hole or gal, very important. And it's fast, right? You can do it. Place your gravel and then check your grade after as well. And then, you know, it's a simple each trench, you know, if you're in a flat area, yeah, they're all straight. But in in in situations where you've got terrain change, elevation change, all your lines are on contour. So basically, you know, you can do your layout with a rover or actually the machine because it's got elevations. So on a curved line that follows a contour, you can, you know, you set your starting point. You just put your bucket on top of the ground where you're starting that line. So, okay, my tree, my bottom trench depth's 24 inches. And you can dig that trench depth 24 inches from for for miles.

SPEAKER_01: 50:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 50:10

So you dig at your 100 feet or whatever it is, and then you okay, the trenches are typically nine foot on center in our region. So you move over to your next contour and repeat the same thing. And as you're doing it, you're taking the shots that you mentioned earlier. Yep. So for future needs, like you might have a repair. So then you go right back to that spot without having to probe ride a whole yard or dig it up. Yeah. So you've got each asset recorded for life, you know, distribution boxes, valves, everything that's critical to that system. It's going to need repair. So it's just one person's doing that. So if you got another labor person that was typically checking grade, they can be bringing your materials to the trench, you know, your chambers or your you know, panel blocks or whatever system you're using, pipe, any kind of cargated pipe to the ditch, it's just much more efficient. So it's and it's easy and it's cost effective for that for that industry. It's it's built for it, quite frankly. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00: 51:09

We've said cost effective, and you can afford it way too many times.

SPEAKER_01: 51:12

And like that, their engine.

SPEAKER_00: 51:14

Yeah. Because it's I mean, let's be honest, the moment we bring the price up, everyone on everyone's gonna be like bullshit.

SPEAKER_01: 51:21

Yeah, it's exactly what they're gonna say because that's what I said.

SPEAKER_00: 51:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 51:24

When you told me you were like, uh, and I'll I'll let you describe pricing here, but when you told me pricing, I was like, no, there's no way because I felt this tall after spending the amount of money I spent with one of the major three. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 51:37

So see on the pricing, this this entry level, the easy nav system by CHC, on your machine, you working is roughly$13,000 out the door. You mean and you're working, so it's unheard of, right?

SPEAKER_01: 51:51

It's with yeah, there's some things I want to highlight here. Y'all brought the brackets, everything that was there to install, the unboxing, or go check the channels out. But the unboxing is there. They bring everything, and I would assume if the install team comes, they're gonna have everything ready to install, just like they did for us yesterday. It was a seamless process on the install. They shipped everything to me. It was there a couple of days before. They checked with me, confirmed I had everything. I said, I I believe uh these couple of boxes are here. They showed up, bam, bam, bam, tools were in the box. And for$13,000,$13,000. iPad, data. I call them a data collector, but in your machine, couple of sensors, your wires are there. Uh, do you guys call them domes or pucks? I don't quite know what you're doing. Oh, the GPS antenna. Uh antenna, okay. And and and that goes up your boom, and there is one antenna on top of your CAD that looks like a radio antenna. It's just so different. Like, I can't wait for them to check it out compared to the TRAD model, you know? Exactly.

SPEAKER_03: 52:59

It's um it's impressive. And I'll touch on it again. It's it's it is the entry level and it is 3D. So it's limited to in-field design that we've been talking about. So I don't want to get too too deep into weeds here, but there's there's two other levels of systems above this one. And I I feel like, you know, in a short period of time, we'll be, you know, discussing the details of those through this channel because it's so exciting. But if you if you want to start middleways thinking you want to go full 3D with models and stuff in the future, there's one step up, which is still economical, that you can get to do this in field task, but with the push of a button, we could or a monthly subscription, we can make it full 3D without touching the machine. So once you have that hardware, you're good for life. And there's no software upgrade fees and all that good stuff. So there's multiple steps, but this particular system is is for the mass market. Yep. I mean, even if you have systems today that you've purchased that are full 3D, there's a place for this on your site. Yes. To do certain tasks. I mean, you've always got if it's excavation, there's mass dirt to be moved for building pads to load trucks, for for pipe work, if you just cut in a pond slope, there's tasks that it can be used for without having to spend a lot of extra money on systems with more features that you you won't use, you know, that are harder to use, really. So it's just they are.

SPEAKER_00: 54:29

Yeah. And it's for me, one of the things that you brought up just there a second ago, but if you've already invested in a bunch of machine control and you've got it on a whole bunch of stuff and you've spent hundreds of thousands, maybe a million plus, this is still an amazing system to put on the smaller excavators. Oh. So the guys that's been with you for two, three months. Because he can't mess it up. That's right.

SPEAKER_01: 54:49

Like, what do you spend 10 minutes in there and help them get set up and then say go dig? And let's talk about that labor pool conversation. This is exactly why I talked about it earlier. This can be a good bridge for that 18, 19-year-old guy that's getting in a machine. You may not want him in a machine yet, but that younger generation guy, he can see what the 55-year-old foreman is wanting to do. Literally see it real time in front of him. Hey, son, I literally just took some shots of this. You're gonna match this ditch line three to one for a mile. Get the going. And he all he's got to do is follow his line. We play video games. Like anybody under the age of 35 grew up playing video games at this point. Like it's so easy to correlate and it can be used as an adaptation tool to help train this younger generation. Does it replace anybody? No, guys, we're not talking about replacing, but we've got to figure out how we use this younger generation and maximize on their strengths, do a SWOT analysis, right? They've got a ton of weaknesses. We can point those out because they're all our strengths. And so it's just so different. And we have to find a tool or tools to help us navigate better 30, 40-year-old men that know exactly, or a guy that wants, say a guy, I'm not gonna go too down this rabbit hole, but AI's coming. What about all these people that you know get replaced by AI and they're gonna be looking to jump in the trades? How do we navigate some of these white-collar positions into blue-collar trades? How do we navigate them seamless? Because we're dying for people on our side. I think there's going to be a whole bunch of people that unfortunately, I absolutely hate that. No, I truly do, but it's here and it's not going away. So maybe we can capture some of these folks that have navigated computer engineering and all this other stuff and turn them into operators. I know that may sound absolutely asining to some folks that are listening, but you got to change your mind a little bit.

SPEAKER_03: 56:51

Absolutely. It's uh you mentioned AI and such, and it's making its way into these systems. And um, you know, the first step is, you know, they've the rover that you've seen uh for just a couple minutes. We'll we'll be diving into more details. But before I'm so excited. But cameras integrate it, INUs integrate it. There's even one now that's going to be hitting the market with a LIDAR sensor integrated to doing stockpile volumes instantly. This is all through CHC. I want to go back and shout them out. Yeah. Make it clear you're dealing with a very large manufacturer that was, you know, started in 2003. Today, today, for years, they sell over 100,000 GPS units a year. So you're not dealing with a startup company here. Uh, I mean, from the CEO George down, the culture is extremely strong. The vision is to be partners with the end user and provide them tools that help them in everyday life. And I mean, I you know, we we've got great relationships with again from the CEO down, the you know, we spend more time with the software developers on the sites, listening to people like you, say, look, we need it to do this. You know, the next morning we have we have that capability, rewrite the software. So proactive, bringing new things, you know, just helping the operator, critical to our success. Yeah. Uh for scaling the business. But it's uh it's is yeah, the cameras, you're gonna see that. So staking out, looking at that line where you see distances now. So in the near future, you'll see on the machine where it's using cameras. So it's more like playing that video game. Yeah, if you want to call it that. But it it just resonates with newer people. Yeah. Uh all this stuff is like a basic app. It is the they are ruggedized control boxes that are waterproof, dust proof, that are built for machine control systems. You know, I like it because it's got the traditional big toggle switch on and off. It's so simple. Like you're not having to fight to hold a button for 30 seconds, potentially reset the system.

SPEAKER_01: 58:57

For the love of God, the button sticks because you have to hold it for 10 seconds, and then it's going through and you got to update and calibrate, and then you got to send it off, get a new battery. Oh, it's user error, here's a bill. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 59:09

So sorry. All Android operating systems. So, I mean, it's just okay, you click on the app and you're running. So it's training time. Yeah, I I was gonna go back to that 20, you know, when we were integrating 28 years ago. We would literally, for a rover unit now, then that you've seen me take out of the box yesterday and have your elevation in less than two minutes. Literally. I we were training people for one week on how to do that 28 years ago. Now, in our our maximum training, probably four hours you could be efficient with any of these systems. Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, it is incredible how how easy it is to implement now if you have the right personnel trading you in the right content, right? So, you know, we I I pride our our team, we understand the applications and the problems we're trying to solve. Yeah. Right. And then that way we know what solution to to recommend. If we recommend you the right solution, we know for a fact it's gonna be on every one of your jobs and machines. Yeah. Because it's cost effective now and you can afford to do that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:12

And I've been I've been sitting here kind of biting my ton, letting you guys fight through this, but I'm like, I'm like, Chuck, you keep you use the word entry level. There's nothing entry level about this. And in my opinion, those upper systems with the 3D, full 3D, all that, like what would be your guess? Five percent, seven percent of the companies actually need that? Literally. I mean, you've got to be sub 10%, I guess.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:35

Yeah, I mean, we talked about the market. A lot of these our marketplace in our space is 10 employees or 20 employees or less. I think we it was like 85%. I think it's 10 and less. There you go. I I knew you had the statistic there. And so it's it's unbelievable. Why are we trying to sell these? Unbelievably advanced systems that most of us barely have the time to let alone understand. Are we ever going to get there? Are we ever really going to get solidly implemented? And it and it's there's if you've never dealt with GPS, and this is your first conversation you're having, call the team over at Benchmark, call Ryan. He'll get you in touch with the right people because it is very, very egregiously overwhelming to try and implement a full-on um big three industry without dropping too many names here. I'm still not fully as the owner implemented where I could go out, set up, localize the whole nine. The team is one, no doubt. We have processes built. Anyways, but the utilization of this specific system is so quick. Within three to four hours, I I do believe that I could grab a good grasp and and be digging out that basement or you know, setting a waterline ditch and recording points. It's very easy. The buttons are large, it's not go in here, sub-menu, subtask this, get to this, to it's right there.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:09

And you know, I think getting into like the the guys that deal with a lot of water stuff, like retention ponds, detention ponds, HOAs, you don't have to guess. You're not hogging out a whole bunch of extra material underwater, right? Like you're on spot, on with.

unknown: 1:02:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:23

And like, how much money are you saving in material movement and transferring or you know, repacking and everything else? But but I my point of this was like, you know, you say entry level, like it's not a Fisher Price toy, man. This is a highly advanced thing. And for 90% of the businesses out there, it's the top of the line because they don't need 3D modeling capabilities. You know, if you're doing residential work and a little bit of like commercial on occasion and little, you know, government smaller projects, yep, like this is what you need.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:52

And another point is to tack on to that is that the market and the industry as a whole has as a they've adopted from a contractual standpoint where you're pushed to have GPS capabilities and layout capabilities. And just a hint for you guys if you're not a licensed surveyor, you can absolutely still push back, even though if GPS is in your con or layout capabilities is in your in your contract, you can still make a licensed surveyor put that engineers on the on the ground. But with this tool, go out and record everything right behind them, just like I do with my TopCon stuff out of the hat there. But at the same time, this system allows you and to be able to say that, hey, I don't usually do a ton of this commercial stuff. I can't justify one of those big systems. But the couple of times that I do have the opportunity, hey, I can check that box now and go, hey, I can lay out and record. And the big deal is, guys, they just don't want to keep calling you out for staking. As you know, you guys sit out there, wait for another stake, another stake, engineer didn't get there. You're eliminating all of that time with an affordable user-friends-friendly system that can literally put you on exactly where that engineer after Timmy ran over the stake the other sixth time.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:12

And you know, Chuck brought it up earlier by you know we're at the mass adoption phase. Yeah. And here's what's gonna happen. And this is just blunt truthful. I'm sorry, I'm give it to him. I'm not polite about it, right? You either start buying into systems like this, or you lose your best employees because they're gonna buy like this. Is gonna become the norm. This is gonna become the expectation over the next decade. So you can either get on the train now, get your guys up to date with it, or you can wait till your competitor down the road gets it on his and tells your employee, hey, I got this awesome GPS, and I'll give you a dollar more out. Yep. So which side of the fence do you want to be on?

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:46

Literally, you have to adapt now. Even you guys that are probably tuning into the show from you're like, yeah, si, I'm fixing to exit out of the market. I really don't want to be buying anything else and reproving the systems. Well, are you just gonna be in the same position you were for the last five years or the last 10 to some of you guys? Hey, what about next year? Is it going to make a different to adapt these newer guys that you're trying to get? You know, maybe you can't keep a guy. It's such a great point to be able to say, hey, look, I'm trying, guys. And they'll and and your guys that have built crews, these uh old head, old school mentality that is still lasers and cut and fill, they will see you trying. And a lot of these guys are so set in their ways, and I just want to talk to them for just a minute. They don't believe that your crew is gonna be like, oh my God, he's changing. Oh my God, I'm out. No, they're gonna go, man, look at old boss, he's trying. And they're gonna step up right below you and go, hey, how can I learn this as well? Because it happened with me, because I thought it was gonna be a more of a pride and ego thing, like we talked about earlier. But like, set that aside, guys. If you're fixing to exit out of the market, at least for the last five years, make your life really easy and maybe make a little bit more money than you've ever had because now you're catching gravel efficiencies, now you're setting grades for these younger oper operators to be hopefully successful within the summertime that they're working with you or whatever. So such a great point.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:20

But if you've only been in business for two to 10 years, you want to scale, right? So if you don't put this type of technology in your equipment, you're not you think the labor pool sucks now. Wait till you see who applies for your jobs without that equipment.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:34

True. It's gonna get to that point. I agree 100%. And and say the kid that's 20 years old that is inspiring to go up to the top of the market, he's jumped around to two different companies and they have machine control. You are not going to attract him to your he's gonna take a look at your job site and go, why are they out there with a dual slope on the top of finish floor? And what are they got? What are they doing? You know, anyway, so that's such a great point.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:03

And and and it's the point that like nobody talks about. They haven't talked about it in 25 years, yeah, right? Like they want to talk about how great the equipment is, how efficient you can be, how accurate it is. But as a business owner, like you should be able to use this to your benefit to keep the best employees. Because what's it cost to train an employee that leaves in nine months? It's the most expensive thing. Grand in minimum.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:24

Yeah, literally, it's the most expensive thing. You're a system plus in almost two just buy the equipment and be done with it. And that's another point, guys. For literally the cost of one basin rover within the Trad three, you're sitting here outfitting three machines. That is mind-boggling to me. I haven't fathomed that yet.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:48

We haven't even discussed it, Chuck, but like that rover you're talking about, and you know, like it's got integrated camera, it's got all the setups, and Google Maps.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:58

Talk about that for some.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:59

But it's only 10K. So you're sub-25,000 for a whole machine control and rover.

SPEAKER_03: 1:08:05

And and and even to support that for you know, the uh the big part of the market, as you mentioned, are 20, you know, staff of 20 or less. So cost allocation and cash flows extremely important. Oh, yeah. It's important at all sizes, but you know, you could be just starting out, you know, cash in your pockets keen, right? So we have we've we've got partners that just finance, have finance packages for this technology for your industry. So you break it down to your monthly fixed costs for that payment. All this stuff's got great warranties that that can supersede actually determine a finance, so you don't have any unexpected repair costs. Wow. So you got basically a fixed cost for whatever two years, three years that's drastically lower than a human body to check grades. I mean, it's there's no comparison. Yeah. I mean, you're talking, you know, this this system easy now, what,$300-ish dollars a month to finance it. And even now, you know, this time of the year, they're the you know, they got deferred financing. Okay, it's wet, cold in a lot of parts of the country, but a lot of parts are frozen. It can't work. So there's deferred financing for 90 days. So it puts you on into February, March of next year. So you acquire now at the you know cost-effective package price, why, and you're ready to go.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:28

So you're saying you know what we go through as a contractor, as a company? What? That's it's just unheard of. Like when you get in the middle of these wet years and wet winters, and you call up an equipment company, you're like, hey guys, times are tough. Hey, I would love to defer one payment or so, and they just act like, What? What do you mean? You uh it's uh well, it's rained for literally four weeks. Like, what do you want me to do? Like, I'm trying to be ahead of this. And it's like they don't even understand that our for the next 60 days, I gotta make up for this 30 days, and like it just makes it sound. Absolutely, it does. But for a company to stand there and say, hey, when you buy this system, we understand things can happen. We'll work with you, just talk with us and already have a system in place that's uh thinking about your end user first, man.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:18

Well, and to me, as a business owner, it's a it's a capital investment up front, but it's actually gonna save you cash flow very quickly. Oh, yeah. Because you don't have that extra labor payment. Or you or you're able to complete one extra job a month, you know, or a week, even depending on what size projects you do. If you're doing septics, should you could probably do one or two more a week. Very easily with maybe one less guy. With one less guy.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:43

So now what's that do to your cash flow? To start another crew, right? Right. Double your you could, or think about the guy that wants to keep overhead low and just wants to one man bandit. This right here minimizes the labor that he would have to hire.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:56

I know a guy that does it in the septic industry.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:58

Oh, dude, he's gonna be obsessed with this. No, he already does it. No, he already does it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:04

He's a one-man band. So I will I I I'll go back to one technical thing that's for a guy I don't want to really point out. For excavators in this system. If if you dabbled in or researched these 2D systems, right? So now you're getting 3D at the price of what traditionally was 2D. Literally. So what that been number one benefit, if you've researched it, or maybe you have 2D today and you can relate to this, when you're digging a trench and you move that machine back, you have to do what's called rebenching, which can be done two ways. You either take your bucket and reach back and touch something that was on grade, and hopefully you put that bucket exactly there, or you're gonna compound error. Or you have to run the stick with a laser sensor on it through a laser to basically recalculate the height of the machine for it to be accurate to keep digging. This is real-time GPS, so you never stop or have to rebench. So once you set your grade at the starting point, you could dig 10,000 feet and never have to rebench, right? That is if you're experienced to understand what we're talking about, that one thing, it it eliminates that one hurdle. And we've seen it already. People are making the leads. Yeah. So it's continuously updating the elevation of the machine, right? So you do not have to rebench without mass. So the only time you do not have to rebench with a 2D system is if you're on perfectly flat grade where the height of the machine does not change. And that's very rare. Yeah. Yeah. Never. Yeah. Even if the pad you're going to is flat, it's going to be slow. So it just you're basically eliminating the rebenching.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:42

It's worth it just for that, right? Say, and then I saw yesterday back to the trenching and sloping thing, real quick, is you know, say you have the room to do benching or sloping, you can literally put it as trench uh OSHA safe benching straight out of your uh, you know, your mainline ditch. You can back slope it all and it will show it right there within Levi said that to me. I'm like, and and here in our area, we don't usually get that much room. Don't get me wrong, we'll bench, but the traditional big sloping, like that you see out west, you don't really see out here. So we're more of a trench box type application, 95% of the time or benching. But that's so cool for those guys out there that can be out there in the middle of nowhere and go, you know what? I really don't want to sit here and take shots and figure everything out. Uh okay, shot here. Here's my trench, here's what I'm doing. I'm on three to one, cast a plane, and just go to town.

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:41

That's silly. Yeah, and and I'm just a I'm always looking at ways like how do you get the most out of this stuff? And like for you, like let's say you're building pad for a residential customer putting an outbuilding up, right? And like you're able to save all those data points, start, finish, and all that. You can provide that to him so the next contractor has them and all that. Like, yeah, you now added a value point to minimize the cost value, right? Like, so if you say, hey, it's 15 grand, guys like, oh, it's kind of expensive, but you get this, this, this. And I'm also gonna give you the map plans and the plotting and as built, essentially. As built, right? So whoever does this, and you know, and it's all included in that price, they're going, let's do it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:21

Think about the septic guy that said, Hey, I'm gonna provide you underground shots and underground mapping of your septic plan that you can have for life after I install it. Yeah, that's game changer.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:34

I mean, it's it's it's it's like a computer, right? When everything's running, your data's there, you're good. But the minute it crashes and you don't have access, it becomes very valuable. Same thing there. It's not really okay, maybe it not it may not be perceived as a great value when you're having a conversation selling your septic job. That's right. But in time, when that customer has a problem, it becomes extremely valuable. 100%.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:57

So that's what I was thinking too. Like you could actually create a file on everybody in the sub industry. So you know exactly to the inch, the leech field, the pink, the you know, the cover, the cap, yeah, all of that.

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:08

And it's getting to the point now where like a lot of your definitely consultants, but a lot of you municipalities are providing a lot of this data when they spec a system for you to install and sharing that data. So that data can then be brought into these machines.

SPEAKER_00: 1:15:24

This this equipment doesn't solve the problem, but I would guess nine out of every ten septic installers is still hand drawing.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:31

100%. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I bet you money.

SPEAKER_02: 1:15:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:34

Digging them with the same back of the game. No, but like for permitting. Yeah, in some states.

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:39

For permitting, you're still hand drawing at ground too. Yeah, you do layout, but it it's um wow. We could talk for weeks about applications, bringing up one more like for residential work. It's big market. A lot of people doing driveways, right? Yeah. So with this system, you know, Ryan, I, you know, I do look at it as entry level. It's not in its capacity. Right. I'm just I you know, I don't know why I'm saying that, but it's I guess because it's affordable, easy to use. The base unit, maybe.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:09

I don't know what we call it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:10

Working with a company uh right now in Missouri that does a lot of long residential driveways. So what they do, either with the machine or rover, in this case we're talking rover, they can shoot center line, and you can do this in that excavator system you've got and basically design that road. Okay, this is my center line, and from center line, I want to go right and left six feet at a 2%. So I crown this driveway. Or I can do sheet drain. Once you do that one time, I'm like, you guys have discussed, you've got that project. So then we can either take it from the the data collector on the road or and put it in in the excavator. In this case, we're looking at uh installing on a skid steer with an attachment.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:50

To basically, so he it's new construction driveway. So you design it. Now maintaining it just become a lot easier. Oh, yeah. So you you've got your design. So it you know, it's in rugged terrain. Some of these driveways he's saying is like a thousand feet long. So you get a lot of rain, a lot of runoff. So maybe two years needs to be maintained. You just reload that model with the GPS on the skid steer, bring in some stone, and grade it back exactly like it was. Wow. I mean, it's one person's right. Well, you're not out trying to figure grades with a laser and grade rod. I mean, it's just it touches every application in our industry, and it's it's it's really exciting to be at this point.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:36

No, it's it's really exciting to be in this room talking about it and bringing it to hopefully mass market adoption and trying to transcend that as much as we can. We're about out of time, fellas. Um, number one, where can we find you guys? Let's make sure and make that clear for the audience, Mr. Ryan.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:56

Oh man, skinstearnation.com for the attachments, get throttle up.com for the marketing. And then the easiest way is just you're listening to a podcast. Go find the Skins to Your Nation podcast, and you can reach out to us through there. 160 of them, uh, I got goals.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:13

Where can we find you, Chuck?

SPEAKER_03: 1:18:14

For for us, you can just head over to benchmarksupply.com. We're also on all the socials. Yeah, Facebook started uh ramping TikTok back up, YouTube channels back up and running. Uh, we're we're hoping to get a lot of educational content out there to really help contractors that may be listening here adopt the right technology for the right task.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:40

It's needed so bad on YouTube because we've even done, we've talked about it jokingly, we've done a couple of videos, but we really aren't the best people to be doing the videos. Now we've got you guys here. We're trying to soak up as much as we can so we can put it in that internal video base for our guys. So that way, if we do have a new guy, he likes those QR codes you see in my excavators. We're gonna stick one in it for these videos and go, hey, this system, he can.

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:04

Well, and here's the thing, Scott, you're not gonna need to do that. Chuck's gonna have that done in the next six, twelve months. Yeah, that's a he's gonna have a university of videos of training.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:13

Let's go. It's underway.

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:17

So, as a business owner, you don't have to spend there and record and build those. This is how you set the slope, and this is how you bet those will all be done.

SPEAKER_03: 1:19:25

Let's go, dude. Shout out to Derek that you met yesterday. Yep, he's in charge of that, and it's underway. I mean, it's already populated with quite a bit of content. So yeah, right from the cabinet machine. I I guess we didn't really touch on that. I forget things, but we can remote in. So if you're stuck and forget how to do a task, or maybe you're having a problem. We can diagnose or push the buttons for you from anywhere in the world.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:53

Very critical and important. That is uh that's insane. That's gonna, I mean, again, if you get stuck on the implementation process.

SPEAKER_00: 1:20:03

And you've got a great line that you always use about that this the network that you're running off of. I didn't hear you say it today, and it's the one that just stuck with me, right? Like, like you guys that have ran the big three, you run into like problems all the time, right? Or just the connectivity. And he talked about having that nationwide network. And literally, if you can send a text message, yeah, you have access to GPS.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:26

I had 31 satellites on that thing yesterday. That's more than the other system I've bought and paid for. Yeah, it's it's incredible.

SPEAKER_03: 1:20:34

Yeah, that these these GPS chips that are developed in-house and and produced will track every satellite that's available to track in the sky. So, you know, the more satellite, the more efficient you are in working in uh in obstructed areas. So, you know. Five years ago, we would not have been able to go in a residential backyard in the eastern half of the US where you have trees and do any work with GPS. Now it's very rare we find a spot where it even thinks for a second. I mean it's it's it's unreal. And again, you know, after doing this for 28 years, it's seems to be we'd get to a point where it wouldn't be exciting anymore, but it just keeps coming.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:23

I've got uh one final question that I usually ask everybody that comes on this show and I have for every episode, but I want to re-gear it just a little bit for you guys and our topic here for the day. But what's the takeaway for that blue-collar entrepreneur that is literally stuck um in the mud mentally, maybe physically or emotionally? We can go off on that. That's the usual question, but literally mental blockading from entering into the GPS market or adopting any of this technology. Blue-collar performance marketing's passion is to bring attention to the honest work done in blue-collar industries through effective results-driven marketing tactics. They specialize in comprehensive digital marketing services from paid advertising on Google and Facebook to website development and content strategy. I started working with Ike and the team earlier this year, and they've had a huge impact on our specific marketing campaign and trajectory of our overall company. Their expertise in digital ad management, website development, social media, and overall marketing strategy has been an absolute game changer for our sales and marketing at SciCon. If you're looking to work with a marketing team who does what they say, does it well, and is always looking for ways to help your company grow, book a discovery call with Ike by going to bcperformance marketing.com backslash BCB podcast, or click the link in the show notes slash description below.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:49

Thanks, guys. Um for me, from the from the buyer side of things, it can be confusing. Um you're getting all sorts of opinions. I mean, if you if you look at the socials, I mean you you know you got 80% of the folks out here that have not adopted or have no clue what they're talking about. That's right. Saying you don't know what you're doing, you know, if you had to have that. Like it's nonsense to me that that you would not use the available technologies to help you make more money, right? It it's there's no fighting this. Ryan said it earlier, you're either gonna adopt or you're not gonna be competitive. Um, from the entrepreneur side, you know, I'd say make sure you have the systems in place and do your homework, do your due diligence, don't follow the normal path because this market is being disrupted in a big way right now. So do your own homework. You know, put your eyes on it yourself before you make decisions, but have systems in place. How are you going to use it? Like you mentioned, processes. It's very easy. If you don't know how to do that, we're here to help you with that. I mean, we can help you. We we know what the roadblocks are and the obstacles, right? Yeah. We've we've been doing it with we we support every brand that's on the market now. Yeah. So we see what what's out there and what you fight to get through as you implement it, but just have processes in place. Uh, we touched on training. It's very important. You know, it's frustrating when we hear, well, we don't have a half a day to get training done. We wait till a rainy day, right? It's frustrating. So you mean to tell me you won't take four hours a day to speed up your production by three.

unknown: 1:24:30

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 1:24:30

I mean, really, does that make economical sense? It doesn't, but it's hard to get through our thick freaking skulls, man. Yeah. So I guess just processes, procedures in place, and do your homework. Do not follow everybody else's path. I agree. Times are changing fast. It's technology. I don't think anybody listening would buy a TV today that was produced 10 years ago, would they? I mean, great point. You're gonna pay more for older technology. Same thing applies in the machine control world.

SPEAKER_00: 1:24:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:24:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:00

Mine's gonna be a little bit less about GPS, more about business ownership. I mean, you've been in business 10 years, and we were talking that this is last year you got dialed in with your CRM and all that other stuff. So that means you operated for nine years inside headspace. So I think the biggest thing I see in the industry is that too many guys are trying to hold on to too many things in their head. They're being very reactive. So when opportunities arise to them, they don't have the capacity to include that in what they're already. They've already forgot to call the engineer back or double check on that quote, or shit, Tim's not coming to work tomorrow. I gotta find another labor. They don't even have time to think about it because they're in reactive mode. So this is like getting back to those core values. And you know, Chuck said that you know, you gotta build the systems and the processes. Those are awesome buzzwords, right? Yeah, but go find somebody that can actually help you do it. And and here's the thing a piece of paper, a whiteboard, it does not have to be some crazy, you know, pro core system. Yep. It just has to work for you. Google Sheet, you know, get started. You'll you'll advance the ladder. Yeah, right. But when you start getting that, pick one thing. Like, what keeps you up at night? What's one, like what's that one fire that you just hate? Don't worry about nothing else. Fix that fire to 80% and then move on. Yep. You don't try to fix them all at one time. And I think if people start looking at their business that way, because you just you did it this year. You now have the mind space to look at where we need to be going. And the secret to business doesn't matter what industry in is you should be looking at 90, 180, 365 days. If you're looking at tomorrow, you've already lost the battle.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:35

Dude, go catch more awesome sauce just like that over on Skid Steer Nation podcast with Ryan Diemer. Uh, I've tuned in. Great stuff over there from uh just anyone in the market that is literally just trying to make it. Ryan shines light on him and he drops entrepreneurial nuggets just like that. I appreciate that. Chuck, you've been wonderful. Thank you for your knowledge and your education and on a product that is going to help everybody that's listening to this show, somehow, somehow. I don't care what type of trade. I know we were talking about utilities and dirt today, but concrete layout, uh I it can I can go on. Pit fence guys, pool guys, uh literally anybody and euseptic guys. I know we talked and highlighted you guys today. So I hope you guys found value from Chuck and Ryan's time. If you wouldn't mind, guys, dropping a following or a rating here, if you're listening on Spotify, iHeart, or anywhere, Amazon or Apple, or if you're just listening totally for free for no subscription at www.bluecollarbusinesspodcast.com. You can watch or listen straight from there for free. Subscribe to the newsletter while you're there. Guys, I hope this is, I think this is going to be hit right at Christmas time. I can't thank you enough for the support and the tracking of the audience all year long. You guys have just every week been back for more and bringing more folks with you. Hope you guys have a wonderful, Merry Christmas, and a happy new year. Thank you, gentlemen, so much for joining me, and we'll catch you guys next time. If you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to give it a like, share it with the fellas, check out our website to send us any questions and comments about your experience in the blue collar 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.