Building People In A Tough Market

Recorded live on the floor at BuildX Vancouver, we catch up with original co‑host Christian Hamm to explore how a multifamily builder navigates a market reset while protecting its people and purpose. Christian pulls back the curtain on his role in corporate development at Caliber Projects, why the team shifted from a private‑developer pipeline to non‑market housing with BC Housing, BC Builds, and First Nations partners, and how they’re building an enduring brand through long‑form storytelling instead of short‑term hype.

We dig into the practical economics behind stalled projects and delayed starts: sticky material and labor costs, municipal fees that don’t flex, and the hard truth that feasibility fails when revenue drops but inputs don’t. From there, the conversation widens to strategy. Christian outlines a 10‑year plan to diversify into adjacent industrial businesses, create new career paths for A‑players, and smooth the cycle without losing focus on quality delivery. Content becomes a strategic tool, not a vanity metric—think people profiles and a docu‑series that provide the 10–12 brand exposures buyers need before making a decision.

People sit at the center of it all. We talk trades as a future‑proof engine in an AI‑powered world, the rise of co‑op programs that let students earn while they learn, and why resilience matters more than credentials. Enter AQ—the adversity quotient—as a hiring lens that reveals who performs under pressure. We also touch on culture on site: a shift toward genuine, outcome‑driven leadership that welcomes strength in many forms and rewards clear thinking as much as brute force.

If you’re a builder, developer, or construction leader looking for signal in the noise—how to win work now, invest in talent, and plan the next right step—this conversation offers grounded insights you can act on. Subscribe, share with a teammate who needs a lift, and leave a review to tell us what topic you want next.

PODCAST INFO:
the Site Visit Website: https://www.sitemaxsystems.com/podcast
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the Site Visit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-site-visit/id1456494446
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Transcript

Live At BuildX: Setting The Stage

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Alright, Mr. Ham, here we are, back in the saddle.

SPEAKER_00 0:03

I want to show you something really quick, James.

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Okay. Oh, I love it.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

This is still my daily user. Isn't it choice? Totally worn out, but it's been refilled countless dozens of times, and uh I love it, man.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

You're minus the sheath, I see.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Yeah, I have it. It's in my bag. Sheathless. It's just uh it's it's a process to unclip it or whatever, but this is um, you know, this makes me relatable to uh those that are on site and and in construction more than I am. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

I have mine with me.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Do you? Yep. For those that aren't, I guess can't see this.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

It's a yeah, it's a you describe it while I get mine.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Yeah, it's uh it's one of those Pika, I think is how you say it, um, carpenter pencils. James gave this to me a number of years ago, and I'm a big like uh nine mil, there you go, and you've got the chief.

Meet Christian: Role And Caliber’s Shift

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Do we do a Pikachu? There we go. Oh man, okay. Welcome to the Site Visit Podcast Leadership and Perspective from Construction. Your host, James Baldwin. Recorded live from the dope floor at BuildX Vancouver, Vancouver, Vancouver. That's very cool. Okay, so Mr. Hamm, um you are the OG uh Site Visit. Yeah, man. We started it together. Yeah. And uh with Andrew, Hansen from Site Partners. Um also you and I worked in SiteMax for a long time. So many memories. We did, there are but now you are vice president of corporate development at caliber projects.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

And uh it's been how long now? Two almost two years. Just about over two years now, yeah. So how how's everything going? Like I think everyone, I'm always curious to know like what the day looks like, what you're working on, all that kind of stuff. So take us a day through uh Christian at Caliber.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Um caliber background a little bit. Yeah.

Market Reality: From Private To Non‑Market

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Maybe go for it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Yeah, so um caliber, multifamily builder, um, construction manager, we do our own development on uh certain projects as well. I think it's no surprise to anybody, whether you've had conversations here already today or in the past, that uh the multifamily, just the housing market in general obviously has changed substantially in the last uh 12 to 18 months. And so we still do a lot of the same things, um, just a different variety of projects and for sure different kinds of clients. What we're all private developers are now non-market projects for BC housing, BC builds, math squee first nation relationships of that nature. I see, okay. Yeah, and so we're still building a lot of the same product, um, but also just looking at different opportunities to, this is the time where, you know, if you did well in the last three to five years and um made good choices and were wise with certain things, you can make it through. You can make it through and you can experiment and actually truly diversify and take advantage of any opportunities that are available right now. So that makes sense. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Okay, so what is the what is the day in the life of of of you look like these days?

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Day in the life of me. Yeah. Well, um, hey. Um there he is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

What uh so many people you see coming by and you're like, oh god.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Well that's the that's the fun thing.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Rick Wagner, he's like, he's I think Rick's famous.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

He's very famous. Yeah, he's he's been on here a number of times from what I remember. He has, yeah. He's been awesome. Good guy. Um Day in the Life of Me originally, um, when I would have started with Caliber, would have been doing business development. So that's landing, you know, these projects with the private developers that were at the tail end of what was the boom cycle. The tail end, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Because there was a whole bunch of stuff that Caliber was from what I remember, like getting into, like close to the highway. There was a bunch of projects there.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that would have been like Latimer Village for uh Vesta properties, and then Hair Town Center for Hair Builders Group. Uh so great, great uh development companies that we've worked for in the past. Now they're still doing their things. Um those projects have wrapped up, so and those weren't anything to do with me. I came in as those projects were finishing up construction-wise, but there was still a bit of a tailwind from what was left in a busy market. Um, and so we did. We picked up a bunch of projects that we're now either in the ground on or some have been delayed, or that we're currently still working on pre-construction for. Now, that was business development. Um brought in a great guy who I think has been on the podcast a couple times, Brandon Lasse. Oh, he's awesome. He is a beauty. He's coming down tomorrow, I think. You should sneak a conversation with Brandon.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

I love it. Because he was on the podcast a few times and he was in some videos at SiteMax with us. Remember that? North Band Project?

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Yeah, he yes, totally. He he loves that. He brings it up all the time.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

He was with Bold at the time.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

He was with Bold Properties. Which is now Edge. Which is, well, yeah, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Well, Bold, didn't they? They did a split or something.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Yeah, yeah. So there is still Jaime's with that. Jaime's went and started Edge. Uh I guess exactly. Yeah, Jaime's a good guy, too.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Yeah, they're very good, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

Um but yeah, and so Brandon came in, he's running that, he's got a tall task at hand. He is working now through making inroads in all the non-market. I know I'm giving a bit more background here, but I think it's helpful to what caliber's up to and what we're all doing.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Yeah, go for it, yeah.

Business Development Hand‑Off And Pipeline

SPEAKER_00 5:22

And so um Brandon has been working uh you know his butt off to land all these um non-market, uh, working with development managers, um, and uh it's it's just a different game. There's a lot of work, you've got to get a lot of volume just to bring in a small amount of work. They're big projects, but you have to really hit the road, and he's done a fantastic job of that, and it's started to uh come to fruition. So most projects are coming down the pipe now too, which is great. Um now, for me, corporate development, what does that even look like? Uh well, this has been a time, and uh I'll I'll caveat by saying we're back to our friend Andrew at Site Partners, we're we're filming a uh a docu series right now, which we have found, and this is you would appreciate this being a brand guy. And really not saturating, well yeah, in a way, just putting out a lot of content that is just really opening ourselves up to showing the industry like this is caliber, these are our people, this is how we do things. Like there are no, we're open book management internally, but we're open book for the most part to the industry as well. Like this is how we are, this is how we operate, this is what we believe in, values, purpose, all this kind of stuff. And so Andrew filmed the number of these, his team at site, which has grown, they're great, um, filmed the number of these people profile videos, which really showcased our key players. Brandon was one of them, and it was really cool. Someone was saying this the other day. They were asking, like, how are those being received and what impact are they having? And a lot of times on a longer form video, you're not going to get like a whole bunch of likes, but you get really deep engagement, like way higher than average watch time on those videos. And we have been, and someone the other day, Kyle Davis, another guy, I was hanging out with him, and he said, you know, when you make a lot of content, it when you think about buying decisions, it takes somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 12 brand exposures for someone to be influenced into a buying decision.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Ah, interesting. Right?

What Is Corporate Development At Caliber

SPEAKER_00 7:25

And so people are like, well, what is the content doing? Like, does it lead to sales? Does it do whatever? And you know this from SiteMax, you just have to put it out there. It's what the podcast has done, it's what any video content in the past has done. They become artifacts that people stumble upon, and it just is another brand interaction. So we have been filming this upcoming documentary series, which we're, you know, it's a lighter version of any of those Netflix docuseries that you see, but we're trying to like have some fun with it and be some pretty professional about it. Anyway, short story long. Um we're being like, we're having fun with what does Christian even do? Um making, I don't know, poking fun at a little bit of like what the heck is corporate development, like what is even happening, or anything like that. So it's a pretty wide net. It is to do a lot of things. 100%. So, like, even like you're saying, helping out the foundations of leadership. Really just, hey, you got some ideas? Yeah, let's tease those out. Very small portion of it, but um fun thing to do. But in these times when you have to consider diversification, not for diversification's sake, but making wise decisions with, hey, what does the future of the company look like? Yes, we're a builder. Our primary purpose is building people. We really cultivate from early career all the way through the ranks and project management, construction leadership, now even business development and marketing as we're building out a team there. We really are honing in on the building people, creating these A players, and we feel like we have a real high concentration of some pretty high performers. I know a lot of companies would say that, but we're so intentional about that that we also see opportunities where we go, hey, we can create our own career growth paths. If it's not necessarily filling the pipeline with loads of construction volume, what if we diversified in a way that we, I don't know, started another business, or maybe we acquire another business. This is nothing revolutionary, people do these things, but it's become part of our key focus for the next, well, that's a that's a 10-year growth path that we want to focus on is building a portfolio of industrial companies and creating an enduring brand. Justin will love that, he's been saying that a lot lately.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Well, that's cool because you're basically filling in the dip and then uh filling it with a ton of capability, i.e., because it it inevitably will turn around. That's just the way things go. We're just in this kind of right now, which kind of sucks for everyone. Um I was saying to Dave, um, who was on the podcast just before you came in here, we look at this trade show and all of the people, all of the families, all of the supply of income that needs to come in. And I kind of don't know why we don't give everybody what they need via the economy. Like what are we what what have we done here?

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Yeah, well.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

I mean, we all we all allowed this to happen. It's kind of weird.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Well, you're yeah, you're digging into like the root of why are we where we are.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Which we don't have to get into it, because it's okay. It can get it.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

It's it's it's it's a very real reason or reasons why we are where we are today.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Uh we, and I'm not an economist, and I'm not a I'm actually not even a development expert. Those there's way more qualified people at Caliber that that do that every day, and it's the profession. But we we created an economy in the last 20 or 30 years around a housing market that was providing a huge chunk of Canada's GDP based on foreign investment, immigration, all these different things. We don't need to get into all that stuff, but like it built it to a certain point where as soon as soon as you turn anything off, or as soon as you know, um projects become infeasible because as more people come, as more money comes, prices rise to charge for these for housing, as we know, like everyone's houses went crazy, and if you had any private property, that's another one. That increased substantially, but then also on the other side of new projects, you had fees and municipal um red tape and their own development cost charges and all those different things. Again, not the pro in those areas, but the general gist of it, those increase as well to the point where, okay, well, you turn anything off and now you don't charge as much. Well, cost didn't go down, now projects aren't feasible. That's just one vector of you know why we get to where we are. But to your point of like, yeah, you look at all these families represented here in an industry.

Content Strategy And Brand Exposure

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Kind of makes you feel bad. Because it's like everyone here is just a hardworking person. All they want to do is make something and hopefully charge more than it costs them to make. That's it. Yeah. I mean, it's very basic. Basic economics. Yeah, basic economics. But um like what do you think about the like pricing wise, let's just say that the floor is, let's call it right now, 700 a foot. Okay, yeah. Kind of right. Like for a 500 square foot uh studio, that's what they're selling for, are they not? Like 700 bucks a foot.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Well 700, 800? It depends obviously depends on where you are.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Not new, but like like resale, all that kind of stuff. That's kind of what what let's say that that's the floor. In order to make that prop that just to make that now, things have continued to increase. Material costs are still more. Labor costs are st go up every year, just with inflation in general. So when it costs, um, you know, we always talk about this, I do anyway, eight dollars for a thing of butter.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Nothing's cheaper right now.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Nothing's cheaper. So, in in in and nothing is going to get cheaper. I just don't see where it's gonna go. Oh wow, butter's five bucks now. Holy smokes, really? When did that start? That's not gonna happen. We've got too many, I don't want to get into too much stuff, but we've got, you know, like I I came back from France in the summer, and you know, I get cheese that cost me, it cost me there 170 euros, and it's 15 bucks here. Yeah. For this same brand. And but if you go and get an import thing in France, it's expensive, which it should be. But what we do here is we we um not only charge a lot for our imports, but we also allow our locals to fleece us as well. Because of the the the dairy tariff, basically, right? So we're not helping ourselves in in all ways. Like it we just need to get back to like what do British Columbians and Canadians need writ large? Like, what what does everyone need? And it's not this. Something is weird that's going on. I can't quite put my finger on it.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Well, I mean you made a good point there, we're not helping ourselves. One of the things that we need to understand is we kind of did this to ourselves. I'm not gonna say our nation, we're here in Canada, um, is uh uh the fault of uh anyone else other than ourselves. There's obviously macroeconomic and international things that have you know put pressures on what we need to do. But we've done a lot of things to ourselves here domestically, right? And to your point of like when we were saying all these people that are here, you know, why why can't they just have what they need? Why can't they go out and create the things that they need to, you know, have the proper provisions for their for their lives and to find their own ways to get their own prosperity. No, there's no margin to make it. But there's also just doesn't seem like there's there's always going to be opportunities in any market to go and do something. Um you have to play by the system and you have to go and do those things and create new frontiers, is what we're doing at Caliber. We have got a pretty go-getem attitude. We're but we're realistic and I think we're pretty pragmatic about the whole thing. But we also know that, yeah, there's a future that we need to go out and create, and there's parameters here within our province and and country that we need to play within. But also, there's a lot that we could be doing as a nation. Um, again, we're getting into like bigger, more macro pictures, but there's a lot we could be doing to just create a more prosperous nation. But those conversations are happening, right? Whether it was, I don't know, one administration or another, it doesn't matter. There's enough pressure now that we need to find the things that would that would push us towards being a more prosperous nation. And now you start getting into the conversation of resources and mining and energy and all those types of things, which is it's good that we're having the conversation, but they're only conversations right now.

Diversification And Enduring Brand Vision

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Well, let's just let's there's one example that a sort of a personal anecdote that I think lends to this. So we obviously needing um our to be able to investing in our youth and et cetera, and those people who want to go out and crush it and do things, we're not supporting those people. Sure. And I'll give you the perfect example. Yeah. So um you and I have talked about my daughter possibly going to um Trinity. Yeah. She's going on Friday for the tour.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Very cool.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Um, but we gotta get her a car. Yeah because she's gonna come from downtown and go to Trinity. It's like, okay. It is she's a new driver, she just passed last Tuesday. Nice, congrats. Yeah, well that was that was cool.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

That's a milestone.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

But just for a car under$20,000, her insurance is six thousand a year. Really?

SPEAKER_00 17:09

I know it's high because we just went through the process with our son.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

$500 a month for insurance plus the car, plus parking. So it's it's a thousand dollars for a student and she has a job, so she's not like asking for a freebie. She wants to pay a percentage of it. But which is good? Yeah, but it's still like what do we and so I called our insurance broker. I said, So what's the deal? Like$6,000. You can give me commitment. Well, yeah, it's a high-risk driver, you know. Um I said, yeah, I I I get that, but how how are it basically means that not everyone can all the universities are far. Like she was thinking of SFU as well. SFU is only 20 minutes less than Trinity. Point to the Valley, yeah. And UBC is a gong show too. Yeah. So I don't know. What are your what are your thoughts around we're not even helping our our youth? No programs for all this stuff.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Yeah, I mean, that is a big number. We went up, as I was saying, we went through that just with our our oldest son uh back here in the fall. I don't know if it's because he had uh he also works and and wants to contribute and pay, which I think is that in itself, again, about people that want to be creators and and and and makers of things in their lives. I think that's fantastic. That's just a good mentality and a good work ethic for kids to have. I think that's that's one part of the conversation that in you know us growing up, we would go out and you would get a job. You could, yeah, okay, maybe you could afford more things and a lot less money, but you went out there and you were looking to create something for yourself. You would go out there and you were work, you would work hard. That's things that we our parents would teach us, that's things that we saw about those around us. Kids these days, they don't see a lot of inspiration about going out there and working hard around them. I know that's not the conversation of what's being done for them, but that's definitely not being done for them, the examples that are being set.

Industry Strain And Basic Economics

SPEAKER_01 19:13

True. Well, it's a lack of hope, too. Sure. Yeah. They don't know what the future is. I mean, for a lot of people, this, you know, when the narrative is, well, um, you know, within 2027, 20 to keep pushing this. Oh, everyone's gonna have just a, you know, their own income and everyone's gonna have a luxury life because AI is gonna do all the jobs for us. Well, okay, it's let's say that that is the landing spot of all this. You don't tell me it's gonna be bumpy along the way. Oh, for sure. We're gonna have civil wars along the way, is what we're gonna have. There's gonna be uprisings along the way.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

It's gonna be crazy weird. You bringing this back to like a uh even a trades conversation, do you listen to Mike Rowe at all? You know the dirty job. Yeah, yeah. He he's been big on, like he is, again, he's he's he's realistic about the the what's our current, what our current situation is, but also he you know he tries to cast this vision of what where he thinks things could be going in the future. He's also a huge promoter of of trades.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

Right? And that our current economy, whether it's, you know, this this um AI-driven economy, the need for power, the need for infrastructure around that kind of thing, well, that that's a lot of that's a lot of construction that needs to happen. That's a lot of uh electricity, it's a lot of uh uh trades related to anything that goes into those buildings and to provide that power that is going to be available. And even when it comes to AI, there's gonna be, it's more about what you're able to do with it than it replacing anything in particular, right? And when it comes to trades, I think we see like we're doing as much as we can with foundations of leadership, partnering with different people who really want to be investing in co-op programs, which we started to do as well, which I think is an awesome way to get people real working experience at a young age who are still in school. But I do think that there are quite a number of people that are doing everything that they can or doing a lot to invest into the younger generation to help them build those skills, to help them see a little bit more of a picture, painting a picture of hope and vision for their future. And so that is good to see. It doesn't change anything about the current reality, but it it does help inspire them towards more of a desired future.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

So what we what were you saying with your um your oldest son? Yeah. You were saying that there's the that when I when I said the 6,000, did you guys get something better or?

SPEAKER_00 21:37

Well, I was just gonna say an insurance competition. We can have this. Premium wars. Trying to remember what his was. I think I think it was uh it was definitely not that much. Uh he went out and he he saved up money and he had a particular car. It's a beater.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

Which, cool, right of passage, right? Get a beater, which he's having all sorts of troubles with now, and we're helping him navigate through. But it's helping him learn. He's like, I'm not making enough money. I gotta go out and work more. Well, you still gotta get good grades because you're in grade 12. All these things are helpful because they create adversity, but when you can actually navigate it with them, it helps build resilience.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Resilience is one thing that is so lacking everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

You have it.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

I definitely have it. You build it through doing hard things, right? You want to hear really cool. We were having a conversation, this is kind of around this the corporate e-development thing and some of the capital investments that we're making as a company. But we were talking to a gentleman the other day and he was talking about uh a quality that they look for in whether it's founders or operators or whatever. We've heard of IQ, we've heard of EQ.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

They use one and they hone in on one called AQ, which isn't a totally new one, but you don't hear about it a lot, and it's adversity quotient.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Ah, yeah.

Housing Feasibility And Costs

SPEAKER_00 22:59

So it's like, what has this individual endured? Endured. Okay, yeah. What have they persevered through? What has driven them to overcome a challenge in their life?

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Anyway, that's very that's very that's a very important part.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

It is a very important part. And again, it is that resiliency and that edge that I think are, again, back to our youth. Yeah, they need to have that provided to them. The trades will do that to you. They will. People, we've talked about this in the past, they might just end up there out of necessity. But there also are pretty incredible futures available for people that can build really solid careers and can navigate a really nice path for themselves and a family, hopefully, one day to be producers and contributors.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Yeah, it's gonna be an interesting time. We've got a lot of um a lot of change, I think, afoot in such a positive way. I think that we the character of the archetypal worker, trades person. Um we've talked about this on podcasts before about the sort of anti-masculine thing and all this stuff like it's I think this is is this the whole concept is rounding itself out. I think the sort of a-holes of the world have kind of, you know, people have just rejected that. So now it's a matter of um just on the masculinity part, there's masculine features within people. It's you know, and it can be characterized as, you know, the more hunter versus villager kind of thing. And you know what? It doesn't matter if what, if it's uh a man or woman, male, female, there's still now, because of the type of hunting we do, it doesn't necessarily need as much brawn as it used to need. And there are these alpha women who are amazing out there in the hunting grounds. They don't have to hang out in the village, which is the office. You know what I mean? So, and it's not disruptive, it's strategic, they can do cool things, and I think we're in a time now where this has sort of level set itself to actually be uh less of the gender wars, if you will, when it comes to construction. Um but it's become, I think the cool thing is the pendulum is swinging. We're now going to be in the decade of re of of being genuine and real and less virtuous. Sure, yeah. I think it's because it's because the the virtue side of things, all it's really done is create a bunch of myths that haven't come to fruition.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

You know, one of the things about back on Mike Rowe there is I can't remember what I listened to him on, but it doesn't matter. I've heard him say it a number of times. You're talking about the next five to ten years of less of what we've been seeing in recent years. And he's like, you know what, there's gonna be this desire to almost regress a little bit. Not in a bad way. You still, yes, you push forward with some innovative things and technology. And technology, but you regress from these things that have just taken up everyone's time and distracted them and consumed their mind and not allowed them to have margin to even think about what is going on or what they need to be doing or to think beyond themselves and their own current reality. So I do think that that is coming. Maybe we see that with our own kids too. This next generation does, yes, they're inundated with all these things that could distract all their time, but they also think differently.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Yeah. Well, so with your kids, I was watching this, this um, it was this little cartoon about Gen Xers, which is what I am.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

Yeah.

Opportunity, Pragmatism, And Policy

SPEAKER_01 26:45

And you know, you and I have worked together, and there's been many times when you're probably like, what the hell, like, what's the deal with him? Like, why is he this way? Why is he able to like turn things off or be super independent or not ask for help, or like, he just wants to be this, just yeah. And this one cartoon explains it all. So when I would come home from school, my parents weren't home. So I would learn how to make food because I was hungry at 315. I would figure out how to, because I didn't have the internet, I'd have to find a way to entertain my free time rather than being bored. So I would try things and break things and and learn and get in trouble. And like it was that was what made us that way. So it's it's but I think that our kids are like that now. Like, I don't know if you guys are home all the time. I mean, I know you've got really young ones now, but but in general, I think that there is less helicoptering now, and it will be less in the future because we realized that experiment was kind of not that great.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

And hopefully it's not less helicoptering because parents are distracted themselves, because you do see that, they just don't even want to raise their kids, which is kind of tragic. But I do know what you're saying, and that's again, it's this reverting back to well, you know what? You know you always hear your parents or someone older and you say, well, this is how we did it, or this is how we did it. Well, there's value in that. There is. Because there's life lessons that get learned in there, and again, back to the grit and resilience thing of like, you know what, I'm just turn this stinking TV off, put the device away, like some restrictions around that, not in a bad way, but so that you can go out and experience life. Like go outside, hurt yourself. Go inside and build something, create something. Um I think it's it's very good. It's very good for kids and it's very good for uh this next generation. I would agree with you.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

I think that's a good place to put the old pin at the third mister. Sounds good. This was um this was super awesome. Obviously, there's shorter, uh shorter episodes than we've done in the past. But um how are you feeling about uh 2026? Year of the horse? What's that? Year of the horse. Year of the horse. Yeah, Chinese New Year starts. Well, it was a year of the snake last year. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

And does anything come along with that?

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Is there anything uh apparently it's it's it it Chinese folklore, it's supposed to be a prosperous well, you think that. Yeah. Get on the horse, right? Get on the horse, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

Yeah, no, I think.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

Run away from the snake.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

I think that we are, we've talked in the office. Of course, we need to we need to talk more, hopefully, about the future. We need to continue to be realistic. We also need to work. Like to get out of these things and to go and create opportunities. It requires certain activities, but they have to be very intentional. So more thought around the next steps. And I think that it's it's good for people to not be as reactive and to be able to consider what the what is wise, what is the next right step and to bring everybody into alignment around some more intentional planning and thinking and executing.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Wow. Couldn't have said that better, Marcel. All right. Well, this this has been awesome. Thanks very much. I appreciate it. James, yeah, right on. Thanks, buddy. 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 our monthly newsletter at SiteMaxSystems.com 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 Visit, the job site and construction management tool of choice for thousands of contractors in North America and beyond. SiteMax is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building the first time.