Ep. 88 - Utility Safety: The Cost of Taking Shortcuts

Unmarked utilities and accidental strikes are more than just a nuisance; they are massive profit leaks that put lives at risk every single day. In an industry where the pressure to produce often outweighs the patience to be safe, the "boots on the ground" are frequently the ones left holding the bag when things go sideways. In this episode, I sit down at the Common Ground Alliance (CGA) conference with industry veterans Josh Hinrich, Scott Brown, and Eric Metzger to bridge the gap between those who mark the lines and those who dig them.

We sit down to dismantle the adversarial relationship between excavators and locators to find a more profitable, safer path forward. We get into the tactical realities of damage prevention, including the implementation of "positive response" systems, the technical challenges of directional drilling, and why "white lining" your job site is a non-negotiable step for crew efficiency. The panel shares the "secret sauce" of utility safety: a culture shift toward "trust but verify" that moves beyond the paperwork and into real-time communication between stakeholders.

The unglamorous truth is that our industry is facing a massive knowledge gap and a turnover crisis in the locating community that affects your bottom line. Whether it's the overwhelming volume of tickets from fiber buildouts or the struggle to provide safety training across language barriers, the logistics of keeping a job site "clean" are getting harder, not easier. You will walk away with a clear understanding of how to use CGA best practices to protect your business and a mindset shift that views the local locator as a partner rather than a hurdle.

If you care about protecting your crew, minimizing downtime, and mastering the logistics of underground utilities, you’ll get a lot from this episode. Please subscribe and share this with anyone in the trades who is tired of playing "utility roulette" on their job sites.

Transcript

Live From The CGA Conference

SPEAKER_02 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, Sy 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.

SPEAKER_05 0:47

They're your guys. We've used them personally at SciCon for dirt and utility takeoffs. Um, if you've got a large project coming up and your estimator's just a little bit overwhelmed, they're a great contact. Get with Ben and his team over there. Guys, we are at the CGA conference, not convention, I believe, conference is what they reference it to. Yep. I have four different podcasts over the next three days with some prestigious guests. I am absolutely honored to be sitting here with this first panel for sure. Panels with three, two tomorrow, one Thursday. And as you can tell, we've got folks running around us, but I think this is a wonderful environment to bring this. We were just out at Con Expo last March, it was literally last month, and uh Chris Am Kerr sat with her, and that's how this opportunity came with A11. Um, guys, we're talking about damage prevention, and I have three gentlemen. Eric Metzger was so come on so calm underground. I almost messed that up, Eric. Sorry. Josh Heinrichs down at the uh far left here, Silvertip Consulting, former CGA board member as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:57

Yes.

What The Common Ground Alliance Does

SPEAKER_05 1:57

Uh, and then sorry, Scott, I'm flipping through Scott Brown, correct? Okay, and you're with Washington Guest. Washington Guess. That's correct. Okay, there it is, right there. Sorry, I had to flip through notes. Um, gentlemen, I'm gonna start down here on the far left, if you wouldn't mind, Josh. You were with CGA. Tell us a little bit about what CGA is from the from that standpoint, how you were involved, and you also said you've literally dedicated your entire life to utility locating. Why are you here?

SPEAKER_04 2:28

Why am I here? That's that's a great question. Um obviously, yeah. So my association with Common Ground Alliance has been longstanding. Um, almost 20 years, some form or fashion involved with with the CGA. Most recently um served as chairman of the board for for CGA. Um and and stay involved with with CGA now, um, with the uh damage prevention action center or DPAC.

SPEAKER_03 2:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 2:54

We are the C4 organization or C4 arm of the CGA that can lobby and and sort of uh influence a little bit at the lawmaker level, both federally and state. Okay. So I've been been doing that for a long time and it's just been in the industry for forever. When I first came out of college, went to work for the utility in my hometown in in Fairfield, Montana. I've been fortunate enough to be able to live and work in Montana most of my life. Beautiful and uh ran ELM utility services for years and and now fast forward to you know having my own consulting business and helping out equipment manufacturers like Vivax MetroTech and others to just kind of understand what's going on in this industry.

SPEAKER_05 3:34

I'm assuming you led from CJA consulting with damage prevention, etc., along those lines, sir. Correct, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:41

Damage prevention, all aspects of damage prevention. Utility locating as such. Utility locating, especially, yes.

SPEAKER_05 3:47

Thank you for joining us so much. Um, Scott, totaled opposite ends of the country over Washington, D.C. area, correct? That's uh Washington Gas. How long have you been doing utility locating and why are you here? Same question, sir.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Okay, well, uh been in this business for 43 years. Wow. Came out of college and was going to get a job with one of the three-letter agencies in the country. And it takes about a year to go through a background check. And a friend of mine said, Hey, I got this job locating utilities. It's a good thing to tide you over through that year. And I was like, I'll give it a shot. It was brand new. It was one of the first places that contract locating was done. The utility companies couldn't keep up with the expansion, so they contracted the locating out. By the time I got ready to go to my three-letter agency job, I was making more money as a locator than I would have for the government. So I said, you know what? I'm gonna ride this out.

SPEAKER_05 4:43

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

Rode that for, gosh, about 15 years. And then the gas company in the area said, Hey, we need somebody to run our program. We need some experience locating. And uh, I was really blessed to be given the opportunity to work for Washington Gas and create friendships and have a total group of people who are all dedicated to safety. And you'll see the passion as this interview goes on. We're all about it and it's in your blood. You can't get you can't get it out, and you don't want to. You want to do this because it's the right thing. Um, I most recently became involved more with the CGA, and there's a best practices committee. And what they do is we look across the country and find best practices that we think will work everywhere. There's a process where you go through, you bring your idea up, it gets voted on, we have committees that work through them, and then we pass best practices. And Eric and I are both care co-chairs. Um, and we passed 20 best practices today, which is uh a record for that was the first time, yeah. And it's it's just a great feeling to know that we made a difference. And the only thing I didn't have was the dress code for this podcast. I didn't have pink shirt, blah blah pink, but uh so I just want to be a part of the crew.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

You're you're fitting right in, I can tell now.

SPEAKER_05 6:05

That is awesome.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Bold Mr.

How Best Practices Get Made

SPEAKER_05 6:08

Eric, uh you're a man after my own heart contractor world, right? Yes, I am exactly where I started to well still am, obviously, and you're as well as still a contractor to this day. I am awesome. So calm underground. The you're on my side of it coming from the contractor's perspective, and so I really respect you getting involved with CGA like you have, because you know, I find so many contractors, we hardly understand 811 by loss. You know, like we don't understand, but let's not go to best practices, and we'll get to there here in a minute. But talk about a little bit of from the contractor's side of perspective, because you're sitting here talking to mainly gentlemen, zero to tenure, uh utility underground, could be concrete, electrical, all anything in the blue-collar space, right? But everybody's got a dig. At one, fence guys have to put a fence hole in, you know. So talk about a little bit of your perspective coming from the contractor space, why you're with CGA and why it's so important.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Well, I I want to back up a little bit. Please. Uh I was raised in the trades. And I told my dad I hated it. I never wanted to be a part of it. And so that the day I graduated from high school, I was in the Marine Corps. Thank you for your service, sir. And thank you. Uh, you were worth it. So I thought I was gonna do four years, 23 years later, I I I finally got out. Wow. But it it helped me understand a context of the importance, the important things in life. So when I retired from the Marine Corps, I'm like, okay, now I gotta grow up and do something for a living. And uh I thought I'd I never wanted to work for somebody, so I I got my contractor's license, and my dad smiled at me the whole time. So I knew it, I knew you'd be back. And there's such a similarity to how we worked in the Marine Corps, to how we work, at least how I organized my groups. I ran my own company for about 10 years. I had life changes going on uh with my family. So I I took a step back and went to work for a a fle a small company. There was about 18 field employees at the time. Okay, but over the next 14 years, we went from 18 to over 600. And with that growth, I I ran the field operations. Uh I did most of that work until we got up to about 65, 70 million dollars. And then they asked me to step over to actually build a safety team. We had had a couple major instances, and we were really good at I don't want to call it hiding it, but you know, putting it under the carpet type of scenario. And we we realized we needed to have a cultural change. So somebody at an executive level that was willing to take on the task of building the team. So that was that was my introduction into this. So in 2014, uh, I think it was the first year I got involved with there's a regional common ground alliance in California, which is unfortunately where I'm based out of. Um, but then there's there's the national. I got involved in I think it was 2014 when I started. So I'm the youngest of the three from that perspective. But uh, and just navigating it, I got challenged by Ashley Scott and my predecessor who was on the board to uh take on the task team, and then from there, you know, really got into it. But to get to your question now, I think the the real thing was I saw a vacuum, a lack of our side of the house participating in that. And there's there's it goes back to the culture. We're focused on we don't have the luxury that a lot of operators have where they have monthly money coming in. We have to be out there doing it. But I was blessed with the company I was at that we knew that there was a value in getting our voice heard in the national and regional organizations to invest in the future. So we it started there. So uh about three years ago, I stepped out of that company and started my own organization, which is now SOCOM Underground Construction. Um, and you know, we're primarily doing it for the utility industry. But I made my partners understand that I was not going to step away from my participation in it. Good. You know, small company, like you were saying, and like a lot of your your uh people that watch you, uh they're struggling. How do you spend that kind of money? It it's a burden, but it's a it's a value, and just like Scott said, the the effect and impact we had over the last few months to get to where we were today to have the success is what drove drives me to want to participate in this and why we as contractors need to have a voice in this. You'll you as you talk here, you'll see a lot of participation from operators, from 811 systems, from locators, but it's the excavator, the guy, the boots on the ground that really need to have a voice in this so that there's common sense in what we're trying to apply.

The Contractor View Of 811

SPEAKER_05 11:16

It's literally why I'm sitting here, sir, very awkwardly, sitting on this stool in front of a bunch of people with a microphone in my face. But it is absolutely crucial for my kids, my generation, to have a good understanding. So thank you guys for going forward, sitting through the committees, committees and the meetings and going, man, this keeps happening. Why does it keep happening? And let's find a systematic procedure, not just for our region, but for the country in my work. So I want to get off on the best practices, but Josh, if you could literally help me understand a little bit from the contractor perspective, you know, smaller side, okay? You're you're dealing with four crews here, utilities, right? Now I know there's some other contractors that you probably have hundreds of crews, right? But what is some similarity that often contractors don't even see that are costing their bottom line? And I'm gonna get to this culture point because it's all focused around culture, but what is something that you see even from the smaller angled contractor to the mass market contractor? Things that we still miss as contractors because we've got our blinders on.

SPEAKER_04 13:22

I think, you know, one of the one of the biggest challenges that that any crew has is consistency in the way that you approach whatever it is that you're gonna do. And obviously, damage prevention is one of those things that needs to be approached consistently every time. And you know, one of my grandfather's favorite sayings is we don't we don't have time to do it right, but we always have time to do it open. And we had the same grandfather. I think we all do, grandfather, right? It's that's that's a very wise statement. And and taking shortcuts, you think you're taking shortcuts, you think you're saving yourself some time. There's nothing more costly to a crew than that line strip. Yep. Well, sir, you're shut down, you may have to deploy elsewhere until the tell the damage it's fixed. There's all all kinds of stuff. So, you know, one piece of advice I'd give to any contractor that's out there, large or small, is make sure that your individual crews understand what your approach is to damage prevention and that there are no shortcuts and we do these things the right way consistently every time, you will make money because you won't be standing still waiting on that facility to get fixed or writing a check to fixie.

SPEAKER_05 14:37

You know, that leads perfectly into best practices, and I'll tell you, gentlemen, a little bit about what I do uh in-house personally. If I have a new hire that comes on, there's about 15 videos you guys met Will just a minute ago. It's me sitting at my desk, it's me talking about from respect, how we act in and out of a gas station with the logo on, to hey, when we pull up to a job, we have a hard hat safety vest on. I don't care if the entire job doesn't have a hard hat and safety vest on. We do because that's our standard and that's our practice, right? And so some of these fifth intro videos is what I call them, intro to hire, is talking about, hey, if we're spot you're spotting your first utility and you're standing there and you don't know what to do, you're looking for coloration on the backside of them teeth. Okay. And and we talk about some b-roll from Will being out there in the field, real-time scenarios that that they're seeing. Knock on wood, gentlemen. I haven't really dealt with a whole lot of damages over 10 years. I've dealt with my cons consistent gas line services and mismark major. We just crossed our first liquid petroleum line last week at 900 psi eight inch. That was beyond scary. Oh, yeah. But man, the guidelines and the best practices that not only CGA, but the industries that you guys have already put in place, like he knew exactly what we were asking to do. Hey, we want to spot dig this line. It was funny, the engineer never made a one phone call. Isn't that funny? So here goes my boys out there, and we called a locate and a month in advance so we could get a hold of this gentleman and go, hey, we're fixing across your liquid petroleum line. Did everything we can to prevent that. But circling back, Scott, bring me into some best practices. You know, I've mentioned just a little bit of some things, and and Eric, please uh weigh in here since you guys are literally the other cool thing about this before I let you guys go, how cool is it to have a contractor who's on the very bottom receiving of A11 and the frustrations, and having you gentlemen sit here who can make the damn change?

SPEAKER_00 16:41

It's so cool. You know, one of the one of the things I want to throw in there because I grew up in the trades at a different generation than even you. And you didn't see a guy become a foreman unless he had 10 plus years in the industry. We we don't have that at that luxury anymore. So we have to be more dependent on procedures, process, and you know, systems than ever before. Because that's one, that's how these younger generation thinks and works. But two, it helps us keep everything flowing and bring those people up to a level of competency that protects you as a business owner in the field. I mean, that's and that's what we do with the best practice. That's that's to me, that's a big part of it.

SPEAKER_03 17:25

Yeah.

Consistency Beats Shortcuts Every Time

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Yeah, I think it's important to recognize that the knowledge gap between the people who are our age, who are leaving the industry, and what's coming in. We've got children who grew up playing Nintendo and playing on their phones. We grew up riding our bicycles and playing in the woods. So we've got to consistently get that information out there. And I'll throw out there uh in 1972, I was 12 years old and about two miles from my house, a house exploded. It killed two people. Oh that was wow. Hey, this doesn't what's happening here? And that kind of started me along that path of hey, there's a whole world out here that people don't know about. Yep. What had happened in that instance is the uh back co-operator had pulled a service. Uh he didn't break the service where he fooled it. It pulled from a coupling inside the house. Yeah, the people inside the house didn't speak English well enough to understand the technician going, get out. They were scared and locked the doors. The house went up, and we had a very unfortunate incident. The fortunate thing for that is that's what started Washington Gas, paying attention to damage prevention. Hence my career 20 years after that. But what the best practices do is they give anybody who's interested in getting in as a stakeholder, whether an excavator, whether they're a locator, whether they're a call center, whether they're a legislator. It gives you the manual of everything that you need to know and where to go to find out how to do things safely or properly. And a lot of times when I go to damages, somebody breaks our lines. We go to damages, it's something that happened that somebody knew they shouldn't have been doing, but it was quicker, shorter. I gotta get out of here at three o'clock. My boss said we got to make more money. And all we try to do is preach and educate FIFA on okay, this is your education opportunity. Here's the way to do it right. And realize this could have been you leaving here in the back of an ambulance. And we get opportunities like that. I think that's where we have the best practices. They're continuously updated. If we get 20 of them today, we've changed some of them from 10 years ago. Where technology's changed and it's time for us to update it. Hand that off to those people with the pat on the back and also realize that there's other stakeholders out there that want to help each. Everybody wants each other to be successful, and I think that's something somewhat new since COVID. The utility operators and excavators didn't have such a great relationship. COVID brought us together to say, we're all suffering here. We've got to do more to help each other. And so I know our company's got a training program that we offer the public, we'll offer anybody we can get in there. We've recently developed it in to be a Spanish, also. So our huge the DC areas over 30%. It's amazing that I did a napkin survey. 75% of the people that damaged our facilities and sorry for my my you're all right. Uh they their name sounded Spanish to me. Yes, sir. I went I seeked out and found a Spanish-speaking person who we could train in damage prevention to be a trainer, and we have one of the most successful damage prevention programs in Spanish around. So as an excavator, don't forget that you've got operators out there and you've got other excavators and your local CGA groups who they want to help you just as bad as you want help. But sometimes knowing that that that's a resource out there is a problem.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

It's free, correct? Well, yeah, it's free. And I mean, what the it's broken down. There's there's a section within each, and there's there's hard copying that's online, the manuals for all these uh uh best practices, but it's broken down by each of the stakeholders. So for me, when I first started uh and got involved, I was working on uh transaction reports or TRs for specifically towards the contractors. There's that one section was the only one I looked at. But what I've learned is by me looking at that and expanding and looking at some of the other ones, I get a better sense of why it's a challenge for locators to actually get there or why you know these different areas have challenges. And it's it's helped me be more effective at knowing how to navigate through that challenge. Yeah, it's a challenge. I mean, I do directional drilling, I do open cut excavation, you know, and one of the when I first started in the industry, if you weren't drilling a thousand feet a day, you're a crappy driller. Okay, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_03 21:49

You're right.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

But today, given all the safety procedures we have to do, if you do 500 feet without hitting some, that's a good day. It's a real good day. And and that's it's it's it took me a lot to get my mind around that culture. But it goes back to some of the stuff in the military. What I did in the military, you know, I had to put people in arm's way. But there's nothing that we do. This this job or this industry that we're in, especially the gas electric side, it's hazardous. We make it dangerous when we don't follow procedures, and that's the key to me. Uh every my guys are going home every night, and I've lived through losing guys on a job site. It's nothing any of us want to do, especially when you're a small cover.

SPEAKER_05 22:33

It's more workers.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

The survivability of that is is challenging.

SPEAKER_05 22:37

So no, go ahead, Scott.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

I was gonna say, yeah, in the past, that this was a little bit more of an exclusive group. It was mostly utility operators, vendors, and some locators. And the excavators have come into the group and made us a lot better. But most importantly, when you're an excavator and you can At the message from another excavator that has power to it that I can't give you. I can tell you it's dangerous. My old boss used to say, We're not delivering milk through these lines, Brown. This is dangerous stuff. When you hear it from another excavator, that has meaning.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Even if it's an excavator in pink, okay? You know?

SPEAKER_05 23:14

The pink hell was a nice touch.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 23:16

But you know, you guys are all three hidden on the same subject matter, and I think you're all three facing the same issue. You know, you mentioned your grandfather earlier. My grandfather, uh, is the whole reason I'm actually a Canadian immigrant. I moved here in 2001 with my mother. My grandfather fished a boat off the coast of Newfoundland, four or five guys, then he would be in the construction union, come downtown Toronto and build these skyscrapers. I was on a wrecking ball in downtown Toronto in 1994. I was four years old, four stories up. Like those kids didn't have that kind of experience, right? And so my grandpa, my poppy was my absolute hero. And so you never got to see any of what we've got going on. But where I'm leading with that is man, times have changed. Yes. Man, times have changed. Just in the 10 years I've been in business. But I would love to hear a little bit of it. May not be back from 1972. I'm glad that woke him up almost 50 years ago because, man, the issues it could have caused, you know. But maybe something you're seeing, Josh, that is coming so fast that we don't even realize, or maybe we're too slow on the industry side, but our industry is just changing. And how do we get better as contractors back to CGA 811, etc.? How do we just how do we get better and why what is the number one thing we are facing from a new age speed perspective?

Tech Shifts Like Positive Response

SPEAKER_04 24:40

I think the answer one of the things that I've seen in the last decade at CGA, and then it ripples across the entire country, um, is that contractors, um, excavators and contract locators are starting to understand that they are not each other's enemy here. And and that's been a really important um bridge to to build. Now I know, don't get me wrong. I mean, every everybody that's listening, I'm sure they're rolling their eyes banging at them. Yeah, right, whatever. Uh the locator is a is a pain in the neck. And and a lot of times they are. But what I'd ask you to keep in mind is your job site that day, as as the excavator, is the most important thing in your world. They have probably 20 to 30 of you to go visit that day. Now, that doesn't mean your job site is any less important. As a matter of fact, it's still the most important thing you have going on. And the best thing that you can do is to help that that locator by articulating very clearly what it is uh where you're going to be digging for the day, what type of work you're going to be doing, and try to limit that locate request as much as you practically can so that they can get in there, get what where you're going to be digging excavated and get out. A lot of times what I'll see is uh an over notification where you're you're putting in a new service from the house to the main on the street. You're gonna be digging in a straight line between you know the house and the main, and they'll call in both sides of the street and you know, half the city blocks different things going on, and it turns that 20-minute locate into an hour. Yeah. And and it wasn't necessary.

SPEAKER_05 26:19

It slows out whole ticket time for that locator all day.

SPEAKER_04 26:23

Yeah. Now, what I will say on the flip side of that, the the technology that's coming, right? It it's a lot easier to whiteline, electronic whiteline, yeah, do all those kinds of things than you used to be able to do. You have the ability to check as a contractor, hey, have have things gotten marked with positive response, that kind of stuff. You're you're saving truck rolls, you don't have to go to the site and and guess whether people were there or not, a lot less than you used to be.

SPEAKER_05 26:46

Teaching me some positive response. I'll be looking into that.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Well, you're you're not familiar with that? No, sir, I'm not. That that is I when when they changed the state law in my states that I work in and they went to positive response, I hated it. Because I'm like, oh shit, here comes another, here's another thing I gotta check. But what I've learned is I'm not gambling on rolling a crew and spending that that money for them to sit there because we can't actually do something. I have a higher degree of confidence that I actually have clear marks for me to be able to begin work.

SPEAKER_05 27:19

And that's Arkansas. I don't know if that's state to state, but it I've never heard of it. State to state.

SPEAKER_04 27:24

Is it okay? Positive response, you know, depending on where you're at, the country. But what the technology that's changing now is is that's really coming fast, is an improvement in the ability to sort of audit the quality of the locates and different things that are going on, which is which is going to come fast. And I think for uh for an excavator, that's gonna give you a lot more confidence because ultimately you're the one that lives with the consequences of the bad locate, right? You you are your your people are the ones that are in harm's way, and that ability to get some assurance that the locates were done, not only done on time, but done correctly, is coming fast, way faster than anybody believes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

I I've got I gotta brag a little bit about our company and our contract locator, Utilif West. We've had a relationship with them now for 43 years. You've evolved when we send a locator out to mark a job site, he goes out and marks a job site, he takes pictures, he has GPS-enabled maps that we capture the date and time the locator was there. And it used to be that that was our information. If you hit us and we went to court, I'd hold up the document, say, this is where he marked it. Here's the picture, and here's the map. What we did has probably been 10 years ago, is we really went out on a limb and we send that information to the excavator the same time they get it from us. There you go. So he's got that map that says, This is where the locator marked. It snowed yesterday. Let me go check and see if those marks are there. I need to call them back. That's something that caused a little bit of consternation at the beginning because we're giving our evidence over to the excavators. The excavators took that and said, Oh, God, you trust us. This is great.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

That's that that is a that's a thing.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

I'm calling you rather than carrying it. Well, you and it drew us all together and did that step with this, and this is my my push for the next couple of years, is to also provide the map. And that way you can audit what the locator did, you can see the pictures what he did, and you can check it against the map, and you have all the information that the utility has. Put your workers out there and expect they'll come home safely.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

They're a bit of an anomaly with that. It's it's not they we have to move more towards that that trust factor, but at the same time, what you have is there's there's different types of uh uh excavators, and most operators are excavators themselves. But once again, it comes through a cultural difference on how they look at a job compared to me. And you know, I their production levels are different usually than what I'm trying to strive for. And it it now, you know, they're I'm their customer or they're my customer, but at the same time, you know, they're almost my adversary when it comes to getting some of these things we need up front to be able to do this successfully. It's starting to evolve. I'm I'm working with a lot of different uh large-scale gas and electric companies that are getting more like they're they're actually pointing out worth.

SPEAKER_05 30:18

That's such a good point because it has been such a friction fighting, constant battle, and you're you're you're gaining my trust. You send that to me. Well, he just sent me everything he's gonna take me to court with.

SPEAKER_03 30:31

Yep, right.

SPEAKER_05 30:32

You know what I mean? You're just immediately, hey, can we just stop this so we can both be successful? And that's that like ultimate goal here. Like, you send me that. I'll and the other great point you made, Josh, is white paint, not calling in a quarter mile block. I actually, me and Chris and during our podcast at Con Expo, I called myself out. You know, you're right. Sometimes I don't run out there and get the white paint down. How can he be successful? Well, that just makes his ticket time even longer. Now he's gonna want to leave and come back. Well, then I mowed the crew. Well, then it's my fault because, anyways, I couldn't basically be successful. It's a team thing, is what I'm trying to say. And for some reason, we just want to have our guns out at you guys and you guns out at us waiting for a damage to strike to happen.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

And it doesn't mean to be like that that's another reason for us as excavators to participate in in these kind of organizations, because I I have a completely different level of respect for what the locating community is up against. I really do. I mean, the the the ticket volumes have to handle, and it's just what he said. If if you go out there and you mark out a thousand feet and you only need 300, you're you're part of the problem. Yep. You're part of the problem. Now you develop those relationships with those locators, and guess what? They're gonna respond.

SPEAKER_05 31:46

And and you're gonna be able to call them. Yep. You're gonna build a relationship. Yep. Hey, Timmy, I think you missed a service over here. Them boys are fixing a start. Would you mind? Oh man, I can't be there till after lunch. Uh you good with that? Yeah, we'll wait. We'll wait because I don't want to hit it. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

You know, I don't want to shift down the road or I'll be exactly.

SPEAKER_01 32:05

I think one of the things to Josh's point, this technology is really driving things to be so much more efficient, and our capabilities are so much better. But one important thing that we have to have is we have to be able to communicate handshake and eye to eye, take your eyes off the phone, shake the person's hand and say, we need to be friends to get through this job safely. And it's coming. We're coming together very nicely. It's been it's been a long haul, but I think that down south's a little different.

SPEAKER_05 32:32

We ain't come together strongly, I'll tell you that, boys.

Sharing Maps To Build Trust

SPEAKER_00 32:35

You'll get there eventually. But I mean, you know, it's not the low-key community's leveraging newer and better technology, but even myself as a small excavator, I invested in my own internal capability, and part of our process is we sweep every morning before we excavate. We sweep that area. And I call it the Ronald Reagan method, trust but verify it. You know, I want to I didn't know he said that, but I say it all the time.

SPEAKER_05 33:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

The point being is that I want to make sure that there's a last check that occurs before we put that shovel in the grocery.

SPEAKER_04 33:10

So uh good go ahead, Josh. I was just gonna say, and that and the the beauty of what he's talking about there is you're protecting your people. Yes, you're protecting the facility, and you're even, you know, you're helping you're helping the locator out and doing them solid as well. Because if there is something that goes haywire, far better to figure it out before you hit it. It's just uh it's a great responsible way to uh build some some respect from the rest of the community if you do that.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

And those locators are our sons, daughters. Yep, that's the next generation coming up. We want them to be successful.

SPEAKER_05 33:43

You know, you talked a little bit about what the utility locating community is up against, and it kind of just dawned on me. I'm like, maybe I don't know. Would you all of y'all just take off because there's some things in the contractor side of perspective that I probably am not prefaced to if I wasn't involved, you know?

SPEAKER_00 34:02

But if you uh literally I I I don't know what the current stats are, but I can tell you uh because like you said, build that relationship with those locators, you know, we get to know who they are. And some of the ones I've talked to out there where we work, and and I'm telling you, we're in remote locations. We're doing a lot of uh undergrounding of the overhead for fire resiliency, but they're carrying anywhere from you know 60 to 90 tickets at a time. And now you're gonna do that and you're gonna compound that because everything's remote, you gotta drive how far to get to it. You know if you understand that and they call you and say, Hey, look at I need a little more time, you can negotiate that or and once again, limit size your tickets, do a couple more tickets so you at least have a section to work on while they're still catching up to you on those other things. So it's it's changed how we project manage, how we plan and execute. Um because I can put in those all those tickets, and what you'll see is large projects, and I I there's a whole movement on that coming up. Okay, but where guys will put in uh like we did a lot of pole work, we're setting poles for uh a electric company. They hand me a package with a thousand poles on it, and each one is you know too far away to polygon, so you're doing a 50-foot pole area around that pole every quarter mile. Do you know how many locates exactly? So getting with them and negotiating that up front, you know, and and doing it in a meter approach is what we're trying to do.

SPEAKER_01 35:34

I think the locators are also hamstrung by when I became a locator right out of college, I was being paid to route the same with what a back co-operator was being paid out as being paid. I was not the lowest paid person on a job site, but as a utility business grew and encompassed this contract locating, it saved the utilities money. And so they started looking, okay, we're gonna start doing competitive bidding, and it drove the price for contract locating down to where there was a 15-year period where there was no increase in our contract. All the locators were being paid the same. The locators then were forced to leverage the technology that they had rather to be profitable and expand their industry, they had to use that money to keep paying their locators. So part of the problem is the utility industry and the utility operators aren't recognizing that the utility locators they need to be able to get high-quality people in who want a career in the job. I've made the statement many times and probably get cut, but we need to make locate and get great again. And it's true.

SPEAKER_03 36:36

I love it.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

When we were younger, that was a career to have. And now you see a lot of locators, they're a locator until something better comes along. Fair enough.

SPEAKER_00 36:44

It's an entry-level position. Yes, sir. Unfortunately, it should be a destination. Only way you're going to do it is you make it a competitive, attractive field for people to give them the best technology and give them the compensation that they deserve. Because if they do their job the best, everything flows well from there.

SPEAKER_05 37:01

Literally. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:02

And the challenge that you have right now is you have a locate tech that shows up on time every day, they do a good job, they're instantly hired away by the excavator community or the utilities. Yeah, we're guilty of that. They pay more. And I don't blame, you know, I don't blame them for wanting to make more money. There's no doubt that they can in other areas. So I appreciate what Scott's saying because it's it's part of the process that needs to evolve there, where we have careers for locate techs again, where you have somebody who's here five, 10, 15 years, and that's where they're they're proficient. They understand their customer service to their people, um, you know, in their area, they understand their system, and things just go much more smoothly. But right now, when you look at literally uh some of these contract locate companies have a hundred percent turnover in a year.

SPEAKER_01 37:50

We've got our 40-year relationship with ours has helped to keep that at bay a little bit. Of course, because some of the locators have been there and they are able to put their kids through college and buy a home and all those things. But generally, that it's a high turnover area for what jobs.

Ticket Overload And Fiber Buildouts

SPEAKER_05 38:06

I'd have to agree. Like uh utility locators in our area, when I was in the field every single day, I did build those relationships and but I mean it wasn't three months later, there was somebody else. And you know, in our area, gas, we're a water and sewer. We we mainly do water and sewer infrastructure, but we dig around gas and electric all the time. And so the gas company is actually a corporation in our area, a little bit different around it is, yes, sir. It it, you know, mainly everything around us is public, publicly owned, right? And so they've definitely come in and uh created some new waves within the utility locating market. But honestly, gas strikes are going down. There's no doubt about it, what they're doing. But they are spending some coin, they've got five or six people dedicated driving around. Yeah, it does feel like they're trying to catch you, but if you're not doing anything bad, they're not trying to catch you. They're showing up and they're going, hey, even from a guy that does it every time, they'll still show up and go, hey, uh, we got a high pressure out there. Are you gonna call a VPI? Yeah, it's already scheduled. How do you not know that? But that's a bit that's a totally different other conversation for another day. Yeah. But no, I think that's that's great because excavators on this side of the table, you know, we're literally, we don't have a clue what they're dealing with, past the point of calling a locate and then being pissed off when it's not done right. But there is some things that we can be doing as contractors for dang sure, and you've already hit on. Go ahead, Josh.

SPEAKER_04 39:34

You just you just hit on a really good point. Okay. And you're you're pissed off when they're the locates aren't done. Think about the environment that this locate tech is working in, especially if they're new, inexperienced, overwhelmed. They have, you know, you mentioned 60, 70 tickets in their hand in a day, which is ridiculous, but sometimes that is absolutely their reality. But they're a one-man crew running around. If they're lucky, they get to talk to their supervisor once in a while. Maybe a trouble tech will come help them out on a locate from time to time. They roll up on your job site and you're the whole crew. Four of you, six of you, however many of you there are, you're all mad and you're you're busting his chops over this, and he's one guy standing there just trying to do his best. And so he catches a lot of that flack and he's overworked, and then he catches a bunch of static from a bunch of guys on a job site. How bad do you think he wants to stay in that job? That's another driving point. Yeah, it doesn't, and it's not his fault. No, the fact that he's late or or behind or whatever's going on, he's not the one making the decisions. He's just out there trying to help you get your work.

SPEAKER_05 40:38

It's usually the system that failed him to begin with, why he's out there.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

That's absolutely right.

SPEAKER_05 40:43

But that's exactly why we're sitting here having this conversation.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

And and I was guilty of saying that they were lazy and they, you know, no account until I got more involved here and learn more about their side of the industry.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

So you can be a locator, and the locate companies try to give their locators a reasonable amount of work that they can do in a day's time, but it's free sister. You can be a locator who gets 10 tickets a day, and you can do those 10 tickets a day, and somebody decides they're going to replace all the trees in between the curb and the sidewalk, they're calling 200 tickets the next day, and you're sitting there with 212 tickets, but it's more work than I can do. And you don't see that. All you see is you're late. You're supposed to be here four hours ago. My crew's down.

SPEAKER_04 41:26

And I got it. Go ahead. Imagine a business where the entire book of business that you have to do is due in the next two days, and you have no idea whether you're gonna get 10 tickets or a hundred. And within those tickets, you don't have any idea whether there's gonna be a thousand feet of locating or ten thousand feet of locating. And you can't say, sorry, we're full, you're gonna have to come back tomorrow. You got to take them, and then that's when you start negotiating with contractors to try to see.

SPEAKER_00 41:51

And you think about it since COVID, right? And uh and these fiber build-outs have been coming out, yeah. That that has been that's that large project. You know, you think about capacity without that, with just burnout repair or you know, sewer main replacements or standard work that we do every day, right, right? There's plenty of those tickets. But now you're gonna throw, hey, I got a contractor coming in doing a hundred miles of fiber. Yes, he puts it in this one or two tickets that with no warning. No warning. Boom, but just on top of it.

SPEAKER_04 42:23

Is the day the first ticket showed up.

SPEAKER_00 42:25

And it still has the same time time frame on it of responsibility for them to complete it. Good luck with that.

SPEAKER_04 42:31

An area that used to be able to be supported by three tacks needs 10. Yeah. And somehow you're supposed to just be able to turn the spigot on and magically have more locates.

SPEAKER_05 42:40

You know, it's foot locators. It's funny you say that because in my northwest Arkansas is where we're home-based now, home, home of Walmart, town right next to Bentonville, Rogers. We do a ton of water and sewer work within our little hometown. All of a sudden, our locates kind of were dragged. I called the gentleman over there and I said, Hey man, what is going on? Like, we've had such a good working relationship, dude. They're putting a million linear feet of fiber in Rogers, and nobody has told us. They've hit four water mains this week. We got service lines getting shredded. Yeah. And I'm he's just pulling his hair out. Cool, calm, collected, dude. And he's like, I have no idea when we're gonna get to your locate. I don't know what to tell you. And then and then what's it's so crazy to hear?

SPEAKER_00 43:21

Now all of a sudden, these locate companies are gonna try to staff up to support that, and it's done. Six, three months, six months, it's done. Now what do you do?

SPEAKER_01 43:29

Yeah, it's an important thing for the excavating community to know is I've been a little bit of an excavator when I was in college. They hired me off the street, and the next day I was a laborer. I I was spotting utilities. For a locator to be comfortable in an urban area takes at least a year.

SPEAKER_05 43:45

Oh, I could only imagine.

SPEAKER_01 43:46

Now you have somebody come in and you need to speak, you you can't trench through Old Town Alexandria, arguably the oldest city in the country. There's layers and layers and layers of utilities, and you have to be an expert locator to get through that. And those those expert locators are very hard to come by.

SPEAKER_05 44:04

You know what? Talk about that for just a minute, Scott. What makes a good locator? You know, say somebody is sitting there going, you know what, Scott's kind of talking about my alley here. This may be cool. Talk about what makes a good locator compared to a bad locator.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

The best locators, and I did a napkin study 10 years ago. I went to the excavators and said, Hey, what makes this locator good? I knew who the locator is because we track them. Without a doubt, every excavator said, You'll communicate with me. And I did the same thing with the locators and said, What are the best excavators? Why are these people so good at saying? Because they'll communicate with me. They get over notified on the ticket, but when you establish that hand to hand, eyeball to eyeball relationship, you're helping each other and you want to help each other. And people realize, and that's that's probably the biggest component the electronics and how the equipment works is something. That most of the good low-key companies have training for, but it's that personal communication key that seems to have slicked in the last 15, 20 years.

SPEAKER_05 45:02

It has.

SPEAKER_01 45:03

Get somebody who's got that, knows how to communicate with people, they'll be ahead of the game.

SPEAKER_00 45:07

Well, and sorry, you think about it. Why are you successful? You build relationships with those customers. Yes, sir. It it's up and down the chain. You can't just do it with the your customers or your employees. You gotta do it with all your supporting elements, and that's that's a big one for you.

SPEAKER_04 45:24

And the locate tech has to care and understand why those accurate marks, being as accurate as they can possibly be, matter so much to the contractor. Yeah. I mean, if they're out there digging around trying to find something that you marked and you're always, let's say the tolerance zone is 24 inches and you're always 18 inches off, that matters a lot to them. That's a lot of extra time for them to expose those facilities. So a good locate tech understands that, yeah, things happen from time to time. There are reasons why we have tolerance zones, but you you have a piece of the putting in your hands, and over time you have knowledge, and if you care about it, you'll get those where you're within just a little bit, most of the time. And that matters a lot to the contractor, and a good locate tech understands that.

SPEAKER_01 46:12

And you know probably why I got fired into Washington gas because I was a locator and I wasn't very good. Getting me out of the field today, hard man, so you won't cause any more damage. Josh's point is spot on, though. You gotta care about what you're doing.

What Makes A Great Locator

SPEAKER_00 46:26

Well, and and you know, you your side of the industry, I gas or water and and sewer. You think about it, most of those infrastructures have no low cape capability built into them. Yeah, they are now, but not in back in the days. So they're 90% of the time they're working off a map, and it's a guesstimation. And I can tell you, I I could show you pictures of potholes that are nine feet long trying to locate that. And that's that's the part that gets frustrating for us. Yes, sir. Nobody likes the sport dig, right?

SPEAKER_05 46:55

Yeah, actually, it's funny. The only gas strike dig or gas strike we've had in five plus years, I actually made a video about it. Yeah. There's a couple of videos online, but anyways, the only gas strike we were exploratory digging, looking for our water main, and the gas main was just a little off, but it was within strikes. We've I encourage you go watch the video. It's a very big awareness thing. Hey, you're a contractor. What do you do if you do hit a utility? What's the first thing you do? Number one, you stay calm. Yeah, nothing's burning down is as long as everybody's safe. That's a whole different don't let me get off in the weeds there. But I really want to wind this down because you said something earlier, Eric. It's so true. And everything that we're talking about, every company, every utility locator, municipality, contractor, if they work on their dang culture and communication, communication is driven by culture. I think you guys understand that, but I'll talk about myself for just a minute. I had terrible culture three years ago. Absolutely terrible. I had more employees than I ever had, 30 plus rocking and rolling, seven crews, rock on. Culture sucked. That was my problem. That was my fault that I let that get outside of the bounds. And I didn't realize I was just so far in the weeds. What's the saying? When you're in the forest, you can't see the trees or etc. But I was just, and I had to do something about it, and it sucked. But all the vain reoccurring things I was running into was hey guys, what's the first 30 minutes? What do we do in the day? What's the last 30 in the minutes of the day? Like those two things are like crucial to your day being successful. And so, anyways, kind of going off on a little bit of a tangent, but I really, over the last two years, systematically, procedurally, structurally gave my crew something instead of just puking it out of my head, my mouth on the Monday morning meeting. Like, these guys have a system and a following and and and a standard practice and operating procedure. SOPs, guys, are not like the worst thing in the world. I'm telling you, I live off here now. But I think that also drives culture when people aren't feeling so brand tense and uh overwhelmed, whether it be ticket volume, whether it be production day today, what I don't care what it is. They're always over so overwhelmed if they have that company culture that I believe we have today, that my teams will sit there and tell you that we can look at and go, man, I'm just I need a second, I need five minutes. I'm a big Herb sergeant. I don't know if you guys know the name, Sergeant Utilities, Northeast United States. Wonderful man, unbelievable. Take five. Take five seconds, take five minutes, take five days, take five months. What are we planning for? What are we prepping for? But take five. If you I never get mad at my guys and we come show up and working, working through a problem, and I stand up, drives me crazy when the iron's sitting still, as it should anybody. But literally, hey, what are we working on? Well, we've got this sewer service here, and we're we're thinking about how we're gonna slide the box in. What I don't care, take five minutes, keep somebody safe, you know. But it's the culture driving what we've got to do across every industry.

Leadership That Makes Safety Real

SPEAKER_00 50:04

It goes back to my time in the Marine Corps, you know. Uh Marine Corps is a cult. It's a it's a there's a culture within there, but it's all about small unit leadership, right? And you can't you can't BS your way through that. No. Well, you when you come into this industry, and I've been around so many large companies, I've been in large companies. You can you can have those the stuff up on the wall, you can have it on your trucks. It doesn't mean crap unless it's coming from the leaders, and it's sincere, you know, and the the guys will sniff that out in two seconds. When you tell somebody they have stop work authority, you better really mean it. You know, what does that mean? Hey, I don't understand this. Everybody stop. And when that foreman comes over there and he flips out on the guy, then you don't really have stop work authority. There you go. It's it's when you could say, all right, let's let's make sure you understand this. Maybe you're a knucklehead, but at the same time, I gotta take the time to make sure you understand what we're doing. And that that's leadership, that's leadership one-on-one. I don't care what industry you're in, but it's paramount in what we're doing out there. Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_05 51:10

Oh, it really is.

SPEAKER_01 51:10

It's our job as leaders to make sure that our employees want to come back to work the next day. Come on.

SPEAKER_04 51:16

Talk about yeah, you gotta give them the feedback, let them know what the expectations are. They'd rather know that what the expectation is and come up short than not know what the expectation is.

SPEAKER_00 51:29

That's just my guys know damn well that I'm not gonna ask them to do anything I have not done or will not do.

SPEAKER_05 51:36

Same here, sure.

SPEAKER_00 51:37

And when they understand that, they're willing to take the hill for you all the time.

SPEAKER_05 51:42

I think it's also too, maybe from the utility side of things, is I uh Scott, I already know for a fact, you've been out there in the field with your guys, going, You're working through a problem. What do you got? I got time. Let's go work on it. Let's go work on it together. The best time leaders that you can spend in your day, trust me, I'll tell you how I know. Screwed this up, is taking 30 minutes and spending with that superintendent on the job site, that project manager running through the three or four jobs that's got critical path items, taking that time with your team, that you're building culture hour to hour, 30 minute to 30 minute, 15 minute to 15 minute with that laborer guy that didn't have a clue to hold my shovel's for the left-handed guy. I don't know what's going on. Like, you got to deal with those people and you've got to figure out are they a part of your team or not? But you're exactly right.

SPEAKER_00 52:30

And you and you set some standards. I mean, just like you're saying with some of the podcasts you've done or the the YouTube videos, you know, within CGA now we have training modules. And they're I was like, I've seen a lot of those before, but they're actually concise, there's something you could do in a field, especially when you're bringing on a new guy. Spanish Spanish and English. Telling you that's a huge thing for me. Yep. 30% of the workforce minimum out there nowadays.

SPEAKER_05 52:55

So some of them I have unbelievable Hispanic guys, four of them that I think off my head, my project manager is also bilingual, and which is unbelievable. But I'm telling you, having people from the culture side of things drives that communication, right? Right. Well, if you have great culture, but what about my Spanish speakers? Like I say habla español, poquito español, but like not enough to carry on fluent conversation, but I try.

SPEAKER_00 53:22

What was it three, four years ago that that FIMSA finally said, you know, we would allow so you know you have to have OQs to do any gas of work. But it was only in the last uh maybe five years that they finally allowed them to test and communicate in Spanish. Some of my best guys doing fusion could not pass a test because they could not articulate it in English, but yet they could do it better than most of the the English speaking guys.

SPEAKER_01 53:48

And this is recent, very recent. Yes. I have one of my trainers who's here somewhere. I'll introduce her to you. She gave a presentation about how to work with people and how to trade people. And she started out the session the first five minutes speaking in Spanish, and everybody's looking around. I must be in the wrong place. Oh, she goes, that's what your safety training sounds like to the Spanish people. We've got to change that. And it's been very happy to say that we CGA has embraced it, and we're now just as focused on the Spanish-speaking population as we are in the English speaking population. As we should. As an Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 54:22

And as an organization, CGA has the ability, and it's it's actually written in the certain laws, state laws, that you have to follow CGA best practices. So we have the ability to influence the the culture, the way we operate and the way we work. And that's why, you know, I just can't encourage enough that we, especially on the executive community, have a better opportunity to invest in this and and get our voices heard. So that it's not just, no offense, these guys trying to make all the rules.

CGA Resources And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_05 54:51

No, I completely agree. Like, but at the same time, if they're gonna be sitting here willing enough to sit here and ask for feedback, we've got to be willing to give it. You know, we've got to be, you know, it's awkward podcast here at a convention show, but this is what we need. There is hundreds of people, the thousands of people that watch this show weekly, monthly. They need this information. They want me to sit here and go, hey, why is 811 so hard to deal with? Now they may be in Tennessee, they may be in Florida, and obviously they're state done, but there's folks like CGA, reach out to your regional folks, your team, get that started. Where can we find best practices online? The the two we were talking about best practices, and what was the website?

SPEAKER_01 55:36

Go to the CGA website and look for engage, and there you can print them out. You can there's the address here, they'll send you the books that you can have in your truck. Um, there's as many different ways as you can imagine to get the word out.

SPEAKER_00 55:49

Yeah, they're they're all online, but they they do have hard copy posts you can get. I think there's a cost associated with that. But the online versions will always be the most up-to-date one. And I I believe they can get to them without being engaged.

SPEAKER_04 56:00

Yeah, so yeah, they're free online. It's at common groundalliance.com. And then just go to the engage section. You'll be able to find the best practices in there. And there are also resources, local resources. If there's a local CGA association in your area, you'll be able to find it there as well.

SPEAKER_05 56:18

Yeah, I encourage you guys to reach out. Obviously, um, we've been lining up with CGA here for a little bit uh since before the year, but really glad to be here. First time I've ever been here to this this conference. So uh gentlemen, where can we find you firstly before we sign off? Josh, Silvertip, shout them out. Where are you at? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 56:37

So I'm Silvertip Consulting. I uh run my business out of Montana. Um stconsult.us is where you can find it. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 56:45

Scott? I'm all over. I'm on CGA. You can find me looking for best practices. You'll you'll find Eric and I there. Both. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 56:52

Eric, anywhere else?

SPEAKER_00 56:54

We're uh I'm primarily right now uh as a smaller new company working out of the state of California. So uh I'm out there. Uh not much of a footprint on the uh uh social media side yet, but you know, we're we're always available. We're we're working at the gas and oil.

SPEAKER_05 57:10

Just always always want to encourage our audience. You'd be surprised how active our audience is with reaching out. These are resources for the tradesmen that are trying to build our country, the new age tradesmen that are really dealing with all the parameters and variables getting thrown at them and still trying to be better. Yep. And so I can't thank you guys enough for your time today. Truly, this was the start of a couple of cool episodes that these guys really need to hear this information from the tippy top. You know what I mean? Not just a bunch of contractors, not just a bunch of utility contractors, you locators up, excuse me, sitting together from all sorts of the spectrum. I can't thank you guys enough and uh look forward to seeing you guys else in the show. Guys for having us. Uh no, thank you guys. Seriously. Thank you. Um, guys, CJA conference. If you're not here this year, be here next year. I have a feeling I'll be here next year. Um, beautiful Colorado Springs, Colorado. You're gonna join one of our committees, right? I think that's probably coming down the pipeline. You look differently in the next best practice video. I'm hearing um this may be a recruitment scheme, I think, is what this is. But in turn, you guys you guys be safe out there until next time. We will catch you on the next one.

SPEAKER_02 58:25

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 card business. Who do you want to hear from? Send them our way. We'll do our best to answer any questions you may have. Till next time, guys.