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PODCAST INFO:
the Site Visit Website: https://www.sitemaxsystems.com/podcast
the Site Visit on Buzzsprout: https://thesitevisit.buzzsprout.com/269424
the Site Visit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-site-visit/id1456494446
the Site Visit on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5cp4qJE5ExZmO3EwldN1HH
FOLLOW ALONG:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thesitevisit
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesitevisit
Welcome to the Site. Visit podcast. Leadership and perspective from construction With your host, James Faulkner.
Speaker 2:Live from BuildX Vancouver 2024.
Speaker 1:Alright, mr Ham, back in the saddle. Hello, mr Faulkner. Hello, it's good to be here. Ah, it's really good to see you. It is, that's a nice shirt, thanks man.
Speaker 2:Is that fresh?
Speaker 1:Lou Lemon Special, is it? Yeah, do they have that kind of style? Yeah, because it's so canadiana looking it is, I brought a few. I mean it's almost root style. Yeah, you know you go when you Is it soft, it's really soft, you can feel it. Okay, that's it. Oh yeah, that's pretty deadly, you know.
Speaker 2:you know, when you find something you love and then Maybe this is just me, because I'm like such a uniform kind of guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you are, I wear uniform.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'm waiting for me. Yeah, yeah, out the night before you find a shirt you like, you find something you like, you buy multiples of them. Yeah, I know, Lou Lemon, you know they've got. This is like the over shirt. I got like four of them. Just different colors, every color.
Speaker 1:Nice, yeah, that's the way to go when you get really crazy.
Speaker 2:You buy the same color just so that it's fresh day to day.
Speaker 1:I did that. I actually bought a pair of shoes and I bought the exact same pair and they're in a box.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just waiting. Yeah, cycle them in so they don't wear out as fast.
Speaker 1:I guess so, or, but something about the fresh? What about those like those? Is it? I think it's what rock star I think is it Eminem, or is it Usher that only wears a brand new pair of shoes, like they just do not wear it the second time. They just have brand new shoes on the go all the time and they might donate them or whatever.
Speaker 2:But they only wear them once.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's my goal.
Speaker 2:You got to break the shoe in anyway. That might give you boosters everything it would.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's rock. A lot of big changes in your life. Yeah, you and I used to work together. We had a lot of great memories. Yeah, started this podcast together. Yeah, and you're now with Caliber. You're on your back in the construction side of things, gc side of things, yep. So, yeah, tell us what you're doing at Caliber projects and how things are going.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly so, back in the GC world and a little bit more with Caliber. We know Caliber, caliber is a. Yeah, you know, go back with these guys and Justin and Ian and Zach and Kevin and the gang doing business development.
Speaker 1:This is good.
Speaker 2:You know, like for a lot of years, you know, with Sitemax getting going out there, getting the deals, making the pound in the pavement. Thankfully, the sales cycle is a lot different. Yeah, More prolonged. Yeah, you don't need to hit up 100 leads or something like that yeah, exactly, yeah, it's a long tail, long tail more relationship base, which is great and I love so. But yeah, so business development half the role.
Speaker 1:Less of a drive.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, less of a drive. Was that 10 minutes? Right now it's five. That's pretty short. It'll increase to seven to 10 when I move. Yeah, but yeah, no. No, so that's all nice, but yeah. So you know, primarily we're out in the Fraser Valley, but I was told to announce to the world, caliber is open for business.
Speaker 2:Open for business Meaning our sandbox, which has historically been Langley yeah, langley and surrounding area, a little Surrey, a little Abbey, a little Aldergrove area. Yeah, yeah, we are looking at expanding outside the sandbox, just a little dip in the toe, just across the bridge, but actively going to be starting something. Yeah, so technically that would become Metrovan, which is exciting, pushes everybody and the capabilities are all there and the process is all there, with the team and the construction teams on site, so everyone's excited about that.
Speaker 1:So what kind of work is in the sites for Caliber? Obviously you've been doing a lot of multi-family out in the valley. Is it kind of what's the focus?
Speaker 2:Yeah, focus is like the last five years and this is kind of when Caliber really got the name and the notoriety is one of the going concerns. And the going concern in the Fraser Valley with Kondo. Yeah, six-story Kondo Started with single-family homes and townhomes when Justin initially started Caliber, but six-story Kondo and much of the same as we expand out with the addition of high-rise, high-rise Well, so that's kind of the next step is concrete going up.
Speaker 2:It is a whole actually. It could be like 20 or 30 or 40 more levels. Yeah, Of course it could be.
Speaker 1:It's another one, I get another, but it's just another whole complexity. In general, though, oh, totally, totally yeah, and there's not a lot of wood frame going on when talking high-rise. No, oh, I mean it's just a whole other level. Again, again.
Speaker 2:Sorry about the pun, absolutely it is. I mean they're pushing all sorts of things and you know you get the Etchra guys on here and they'll love talking about, I mean, the stuff they do on UBC and stuff like that but like pushing the bounds of how high you can do different products and different material products and you know 20 story buildings and stuff like that. But yes, concrete, concrete, concrete, concrete, concrete, concrete, concrete, concrete, concrete, concrete, concrete, concrete, concrete, concrete, concrete, concrete Are your group together that's going to be capable of doing the stuff geographically if we want to expand, and capable of doing the product if we want to expand out of the product category as well. So it's all there and now just building their relationships. They're having their conversations and look again in that direction.
Speaker 1:Cool.
Speaker 2:So you're going to all these events and doing all this stuff and chatting with people and yeah, you know, okay, so in the fall there's always yes, sure, hitting up all your events and stuff like that. That Justin, so Calibur's principal that he told me get ready for Winter Golf. So Winter Golf is the desert, yeah that would be awesome.
Speaker 1:It's not.
Speaker 2:Phoenix. Oh, it's not, the bomb springs, you know, in the summer when you get out and everybody's doing their golf tournaments and everyone's schmoozing. That way, winter Golf is all the winter schmoozing. So it's like, hey, honey, I'm playing around today, I'm going to the TD Bank event, I'm going to the CW Bank event, I'm going to the Broker event I see it's a lot of those for two months, gotcha. Okay, that's November, december, nice. So yeah, fun times.
Speaker 1:That's cool. That's what Winter Golf is.
Speaker 2:That's Winter Golf.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's a synonym. Yes, yeah, exactly that's cool, now I get it. I was like sounds cold, sounds really cold, I know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can do that.
Speaker 1:The irons are painful, the hitting an iron thin when it's cold. That hurts. How's the shoulder, by the way, on the golf.
Speaker 2:You know what? It's fine, yeah, it's getting well. I kind of never know when something's going to happen, but when it pops it's no good. It's no good, no good, but it's okay. It's ready for real golf, like spring summer golf Nice.
Speaker 1:Yes, have you seen that video of Tiger? I love that you're talking about Tiger.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's new brand, weird though I was wondering if you were going to talk about it. It's that little, those little stripes of the Tiger.
Speaker 1:I know it's kind of punk Like it doesn't look that great. What's it called? Red Red something, sun, sun, sun.
Speaker 2:So three words Sunday red. You know what's one of those things that's probably going to grow on you? It will, yeah, and then maybe it slowly evolves, but it's supposed to be like a premium golf brand, so who knows, maybe the quality and the luxury of it is different.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I'm excited.
Speaker 2:He's playing first round at the Genesis. I was going to go down to it and didn't, but it's too bad. He's back today playing.
Speaker 1:He's even probably now. The video that I saw was hilarious, so he's like, okay, we're going to do a long drive contest if you've seen this one With Riggs from Barstool on his knees, yeah, and he gets on his knees and just crushes it.
Speaker 2:I'm like, oh my.
Speaker 1:God, that's crazy.
Speaker 2:It's like they're running joke in like the golf YouTuber world now, because so Riggs, one of the guys from the four, play podcast, barstool's golf podcast. You know they do all these events and at the Genesis, where Tiger launched that new brand and is playing this weekend, riggs, he opens up and he's like you know whatever talking about, oh, and you know we did this event and you famously drove me on your knees. It's becoming this talk amongst whatever all these social guys that he got roasted in from Tiger on his knees and he legitimately did. The old drove him.
Speaker 1:I know. So he did actually result in actually further, because the short doesn't go that far to see the result of the ball. I know, I know, no apparently he did.
Speaker 2:Apparently he drove him. That's awesome. He's got a lot of power. Yeah, he's got a lot of power in the body Mechanical bionic body.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so funny how he's sort of become this. He's just a different dude now he's older.
Speaker 2:I know, yeah, grab a snack, yeah.
Speaker 1:Thanks.
Speaker 2:Yep, they're good cookies here they're snacking on.
Speaker 1:They're really great cookies here. Yeah, it's been interesting. How has it been? You said 14 episodes, you've done. No, no, I haven't done. That's total.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're still doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you are. I think I have three more after you. Oh, at least more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's been good that ellipse is like we did 10, maybe last. That's crazy. I know Just me you feeling okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just you. Yeah, it's Ken, just me. Thanks a lot, just kidding. No, it's been pretty good. We had some pretty good guests on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I heard Andrew was. I was talking to Andrew last night.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And he said, it was good chats.
Speaker 1:It was Nice, it was good. I mean, all of this is like it's pretty interesting to see how everybody evolves through their careers and all the kind of things they do. Yeah, you know, I also chatted with Gabe. I had him on, oh nice, yeah, so that was kind of interesting to chat with him. Really good dude, gabe is a good guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was kind of yeah, it was.
Speaker 1:You know, you and I, you know, had some, you know, I would say, interesting interactions before. Yeah, Nothing on a negative basis, but just like you know what is this, what's going on here? Yeah, yeah. So, but you know, now things have evolved and we've had a few referrals and, you know, kind of gone backwards and forwards and yeah, we'll see how things evolve. It's going to be kind of interesting.
Speaker 2:Do you feel like people have like there's no, there's no. I mean there are secrets, but there aren't really secrets and generally those that are out there killing it are really collaborative and like pretty open.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what you kind of find. You know I've been, you know, had Luke Forrest on from Autodesk again and you know chat with him. You know there's like a lot kind of going on.
Speaker 1:Also, sage, here you know who's just chatting with those, those guys they're saying that they wanted to get their president on to chat with me, which is going to be kind of cool. And you know we already work with Sage as it is and, you know, as a Sage partner, with integrations and stuff like that. So, yeah, lots, lots of cool stuff going on. I've also had Motorola on. We're looking at cameras and kind of stuff with them as well. So there's some stuff going on.
Speaker 1:Relationships have had in the past so sort of you know, focusing, you know, on site and site max and what is it doing on that site? Right, and you know, you know I've always been geeked out on like robotics and all that kind of stuff and it's just happening more and more and more and how that all comes together I think we'll be very interesting later down the path, oh for sure, yeah, so, but you know you and I spent a lot of time, you know, over the years did a lot of things, you know, chatting site max and site max stories and all the kind of stuff. Like you think about all the things that we did. I mean just I don't know if anybody you know wouldn't actually most people wouldn't know this, but you know there's, we did some trips, we did some fun stuff. We've been to you know Whistler a number of times. Yep, we went to Chicago yeah we did and that was a crazy trip.
Speaker 1:We went to Chicago build and had a booth and took that all down and Andrew Hansen came with us. Yeah, and do you remember we this is just, this is more entertainment for everyone listening. This is more like a hey, this is kind of fun stuff to listen to and everyone's heard you for so many years. And but to share some of these stories, I mean we, we found, actually you found, you found this Airbnb where we went and rented Yep, and do you remember taking the Uber or the taxi to there? And we're like, are we coming in? Cause that's the time when Chicago was having this gun violence everywhere. Well, and we're like, where are we going? Remember that.
Speaker 2:Still still have. But yeah, but no. Yeah, cause it was in an area that was only within maybe five or 10 years had been going through like a gentrification, like and cleanup, and but not too far from like, cause remember we went for like the late night snack walk two or three and we are like I am not certain if we are going back tonight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was a little concerned in the back of my head yeah, Cause we went somewhere to eat and then we walked back and it was not no, I was like it took the wrong road or something like that.
Speaker 2:But yeah, anyway, and it and and um was it. They have that river in Chicago, the one that they turned green, the one that they turned green, yeah Right. And they have that boat cruise, which is pretty cool cause there's so much architecture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome to see.
Speaker 2:It was incredible, but getting there cause you were saying forehead.
Speaker 1:I know what is it Like, yeah, so we, we had, we had to dump the stuff off to the condo, and then we had only a certain amount of time to get to this boat cruise. Yes, just one of those flat things with the stairs that go up, and they had the beer thing in there. Oh, that was awesome.
Speaker 2:But like the stereotypical hop in the cab, hop in the Uber, you're getting there. You're like we're not going to make it. We got to get, we got to run on foot. So we literally ditched the Uber and we're running through traffic and I don't know what part of town we're on, but we're near the marina where the boats launch and we hop up on the like abutment in the middle of the road and without even thinking about it, just like looking forward, two of us jumped over or what. Maybe one person looked down and realized this is like a four story or five story drop onto concrete. Yes, I remember.
Speaker 1:And you had to clear like at least 36 or 40.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Almost four feet probably. You have to jump and we did it. And when you do that with nothing below, you don't think about it. But as I was jumping I caught a glimpse of what was below me. My momentum, thankfully, carried me over. That would have been like we went around.
Speaker 1:I think, because you went first, I would yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think we, andrew and I, you said hey, hey, that would have been a teeth. Yeah, that could have been teeth mash and then teeth smash and then cranie old damage. So yeah, that was pretty brutal, but I think we actually it was a good sprint of a K in a bit for sure.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, to get there.
Speaker 1:Full speed To get there on time, but a thousand meters a sprint, that's a long sprint, like we were not.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it was slow. No, no, no, no, and we made it and we made it. You know one of the things that you because you go through some notes for this but you said what are some of the things that you, you know that you're fond of, or the memories, or whatever? And immediately I wrote down the trips that we went on, yeah, like, and there's something to be said, and sometimes I mean maybe we undervalue the offsite or whatever, but you truly do build some of the greatest bonds and memories and things that allow you to go and do great things together when you're working, yeah, and you're bumping shoulders, you know, in front of the computer or wherever you're in boardroom. But we went on some awesome trips, strategy stuff in Whistler Chicago, you know, throwing those golf rounds getting out there with the guys, like man, that was good times. That's probably where we had some of the best, best laughs. More on the, the cash, the cash, let loose, yeah.
Speaker 1:Let the strategy flow side. We did go to that really high end experience on the that restaurant. Oh, alenia, alenia, if everyone saw Chef's Table, I think that was on that, right, was that what it was? Episode one, season two Right, and that's the experiential you know they had the. Everything is sort of a sort of taste in 3D, basically right, yeah, you basically look at stuff, you hear stuff, you smell stuff, you the humidity, the room changes the nuts oh, unforgettable, yeah, so that was pretty amazing.
Speaker 2:You pay to go to a Broadway show, or you, you pay for it's like dinner theater, but no actors, just.
Speaker 1:And then you remember the hot dogs Get your hot dogs.
Speaker 2:Remember that at the at the Cubs game.
Speaker 1:The Cubs game we went to. Yeah, we did go to a Cubs game, just so you know. What struck me was so weird about the? The difference between Canada and the United States is that they're. The guy who was selling hot dogs is probably in his 60s, probably been doing it for 30 years and just happy, happy doing that job. You think, oh right, you don't know his personal life, but it just seems like he actually had a passion for what he was doing.
Speaker 1:And that's that, that that happens in the United States, whereas here people are like I don't really want to do this and that's all, and is more Seoul south of the border? Um, well, I will say I was, as you know. I went to New York and New York has completely transformed. Transformed from um, you know the Italian influence, uh, you know um, and or the, you know that sort of gritty kind of Bronx kind of sound, yep, or the Italian sound, to now it's, yeah, it's like you're in a different place, it's and the quality's gone down, right, like you go to a hot dog stand it's actually better bararred in front of Lululemon than it is in New York, and that's true.
Speaker 1:It really like you go to that, yeah, that one that's a bararred and Robson Jappadog Nope, not Jappadog, just the regular guy that's there yeah, right on the corner, and it's fantastic, yeah, and the one in New York sucked the buns, sucked. The actual hot dog was lame, the onions weren't done properly, you didn't have all the same condiments that this guy has. I mean it's, and New York was known for that, right, yeah, so it's unfortunate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these things that were fixtures in our head of, like you know, greatness or the depth of the history and the quality and all that kind of stuff you know, taken a bit of a slide, I guess.
Speaker 1:Certain cities, certain cities. We also had this um. This one trip was pretty interesting. We were at Whistler and um you, myself and Andrew uh had a lot of drinks. We were smoking some cigars and listening to this. This life isn't in half speed, Was it half speed and then double speed, and it was so hilarious, you know what I probably have never laughed harder in my life.
Speaker 2:Some probably you know reasons for why we were laughing hard but, like you know, just going through that experience of, uh, listening to ourselves and not taking your stuff too seriously, yeah, probably pretty good.
Speaker 1:It was pretty good. It was pretty good. So what other things do you? Can you uh? Can you you remember? Do you have some? I mean the notebook, hello, yeah.
Speaker 2:I still got the notebook going. I got like stacks and stacks of these in my whole professional career, but I've got one in my mouth. Man, you know what? That'd be interesting, because I write down more than just like to do stuff. I always write down like, oh, today was this and I felt this way.
Speaker 1:Not a weird way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like a diary there's a little bit of a diary aspect to this. I mean it's good just to like maintain, like, oh man, that was not a great spot you know fall of 2020 or something like that, who knows right but it'd be interesting because there'd be some good sitemaks, probably insights, in there. But one thing I did write down I really loved. Do you remember when we would like? And as companies grow and evolve, obviously teams get built out and you do things differently and you know responsibility gets shared and dispersed and everything like that but when we did some of the first iterations of the mobile app changes and we would like sit in front of the screen and be like, oh, this icon there, no, no, no, like this over here, oh no, this color and this and whatever.
Speaker 2:And we built out a phase of like when it was like and Nikolai was like right in there and a lot of the team and just the build, build, build stage. I mean there's a lot of good things that came out of that and probably some like artifacts that were sticking around that were a pain later. But man, just like that, the freedom to just build, build, build, build, build, Ah, that was good. And there's a couple of years of just really fast building.
Speaker 1:I know, I know we're sort of trying to get back to that, but it's. You know, you have a when an ecosystem gets quite large it's difficult to get back to that agility, yep.
Speaker 1:But you know with and you would think that you know you add bodies to that and actually makes it worse. Yeah, you would think that you know having bigger teams and all that stuff. I think once you get a little bit bigger, there's a lot of, I would say, growing pains of trying to change behavior, to get bigger and then, once you're past that I'm sure it's probably you can probably see the benefits of that.
Speaker 2:But I think that transition stage is probably very difficult, you know one thing we always would talk about and maybe we overused it, but I don't think that we were off base in it is the punching out of your weight class or punching above your weight class. Yeah, so you know, jumping over to caliber. One of the ethos of caliber is, you know, being the small giant of our sandbox Right. And small giant, you know people will look and go oh my goodness, you guys are building all these things and on the 200th corridor and you know all this condo product just building after building. You guys are gigantic.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we go oh, that's interesting because we don't think that way. Okay, what does the small giant thing mean? And it's more of this ethos and one of the values Symax was build more with less or something to the tune of that. Yeah, that's something that definitely was, that you stayed true to and it sounds like you're staying true to today. Yeah, it's being able to build more with less. You move things a lot further. You can get back to a nimbleness when you're doing that, when you can keep mentality small and just produce outsized results. It shocks people too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's true. I mean, you know, trying to do that on the on the marketing side, business development sides, obviously, you know, difficult to you know, you know, and Braden often has customers that say where have you been for the last five years? We didn't know you existed, Right, Right, and you're like, oh my God, like well that part of the time, if we had only been there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, true, it's just construction is so big and it's such a geographical huge space of North America. Yeah, I mean it's tough so but you know it's, it's rewarding to some degree. I'm sort of ready for the next phase of how we do things and you know it's, you know it's definitely motivating to continue to, you know, create a return for everybody and do our things.
Speaker 2:What's you know? One of the things that was in there as well was talking about industry events and things like like BuildX. It seems like like I was following some of the I mean even the social presence that you guys were putting out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Taitan has been pounding it out, right, that's what I mean, and she's done a great job, yeah.
Speaker 2:And noticing it a lot more even from that sense and it's not like you added three or four or five people, just a focused attention, you know put a little more consistency and all this kind of stuff. So, but also BuildX as a whole did seem like there was a lot more buzz this year around it, and even just walking the floor here, you know, late on the second day seems like the industry's really come out, which is cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's pretty cool. I mean even on our social engagement. I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but you know we have increased 5% just in the one month.
Speaker 2:No way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I know that's not a lot, yeah, If you do that every month. Yeah, oh, yeah, Totally. You basically you know you've gone at it right so, but you know the engagement has been way more like hockey stick stuff in terms of traffic on a lot. She's done a really great job, yeah, so it's pretty good and I'm actually focusing on so upstairs in the podcast room there we've got a couple of plants we actually have. One side is actually Sitemax and the other side is the Site Visit.
Speaker 1:So I'm gonna be doing all of these videos and I've sort of realized to double down, as you kind of have two sort of schools of thought you can either be the quiet kind of person in the background or you can actually lead the charge and be the personality on the front. So that's what I've decided to do is really push it home that's good and talk about technology, and we have a bunch of themes that I will be doing these videos on. So that's gonna be pretty cool Use that technology that we have when we bought all that stuff. So we decided to just keep at it.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, that's probably a good decision, right? I mean, be the face, be the voice, and the most intimate knowledge of everything that's going on is in your head. You get that out there. That in itself will create a buzz. That's probably an uptick from anything else that just could be noise.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, all right, man. Well, short ones today, tatiana's like time to go.
Speaker 2:Time to wrap up. She's doing this for the time. Oh, we're two minutes over, are we? Ah, this is awesome, appreciate you coming back, man. Yeah, good job.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Thanks. Well, that does it for another episode of the Site Visit. Thank you for listening. Be sure to stay connected with us by following our social accounts on Instagram and YouTube. You can also sign up for a monthly newsletter at sitemaxsystemscom slash the Site Visit, where you'll get industry insights, pro tips and everything you need to know about the Site Visit podcast and Site Max, the job site and construction management tool of choice for thousands of contractors in North America and beyond. Site Max is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building.