Buildex 2023 D1E5 | BD Strategies to win Better Work in Construction with Enoque Panzo, Co-Founder & CEO at Kiese Technologies | EP70

Day 1 Episode 5 | In this episode, live from the tradeshow floor at Buildex 2023, James and Christian are joined by Enoque Panzo from Kiese Technologies. 

They discuss effective business development strategies for winning better work in the construction industry. They draw on their experience to offer practical tips for contractors looking to grow their business and improve their bottom line. Topics include developing relationships with key stakeholders, leveraging technology to stay ahead of the competition, and improving historical project data tracking to make informed future decisions. Whether you're a small contractor or a well-established General Contracting business, this episode provides valuable insights and actionable advice for building a successful and sustainable construction business.

Enoque Panzo is a construction industry veteran and former United States Airforce member, hailing from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. With over 9 years of experience in construction, Enoque founded Kiese Technologies, a company committed to revolutionizing the industry through dedicated CRM platforms. Kiese Technologies' solutions are easy, accessible, and reliable, designed to meet the specific needs of construction companies. Enoque's passion for an active lifestyle extends to sports and outdoor activities in his free time.

Kiese Technologies is a company founded in 2019 with a mission to revolutionize the construction industry through the use of technology. Our team, made up of builders, programmers, software developers, and innovators, is passionate about creating easy, accessible, and reliable CRM platforms specifically tailored to the needs of construction companies. We believe that by challenging the status quo and working closely with industry professionals, we can provide cost-effective solutions that benefit the entire construction industry, not just the top-tier companies. Join us on our journey to change the way construction companies utilize technology!


EPISODE LINKS:
Enoque Panzo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/enoque-panzo-b115aa99/
Kiese Technologies Website: https://www.kiesetechnologies.com/

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:29

All right, Build X 2023. Um, this is episode five. Here we go. All right. Five point five? Five point five. Here we go. We're we are um we got this. We got it. We are having a great day. Uh ripping through episodes live here at Build X. And this one is really exciting. I feel like we already know a lot about you. But we've got Enoch joining us from GSA Technologies. And I'm getting that right. That's right. That's right. Fantastic. And we were introduced by Sanjeev, the man, the networker in the Captain Network.

SPEAKER_03 1:05

Yes, he is. BD Yoda. The BD Yoda. He needs bigger ears to be the Yoda. We should come up with he has normal ears. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He needs hairy bigger ears to be Yoda. Isn't that? Yeah. Yoda's got the bigger. I'm not a Star Trek guy. He's the weird-looking old man with the big ears. Yeah, yeah. Okay, good. Okay, continue.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

Sorry. All right. We are uh talking about business development software, business development and construction. And um we won't talk about Sanji more because he's coming on tomorrow, but he introduced us. Yeah. And I think that's really cool. Um, construction obviously is uh it's a small world and you can get to know a lot of different people in the industry, as you know. Um why don't you give our audience and our listeners uh a little bit of a background about Enoch and um how you came to the story of starting Tiesa?

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Yeah. Uh so yeah, I'll just give you a quick how I met Sanjeev. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I actually met Sanjeev when he was working at your competitor, won't say their name. Oh, we don't have to respectfully. Um and he used to put out this LinkedIn posts all the time, right? And LinkedIn stuff. So I reached out to him. We didn't get to connect, but then uh he went to Chandos. At that point, we were kind of competing with each other for work. Uh and then when he left Chandos to go to uh ICBA, and I had left turn already to work at Kiese. Uh reached out to Sanjeev and just asked him, you know, if we can grab a lunch, and he was like, sure, let's do it. And uh we actually ended up connecting. Sanjeev's family is actually uh they're from Kenya. That's great, yeah. And I'm from Angola. So we we connected there and and and ever since then, you know, been meeting up and he's been really helpful in uh helping us get going.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

Well, that's really cool. I mean, getting back, I guess, just a little bit, he he is fantastic at building that network, and he really can't has come around to us a lot as of late to just reach out. He's a very um yeah he he just likes to be like a glue guy in the industry.

SPEAKER_03 3:05

Yeah, he's always been like a solid, so even when we he did go to the dark side, um we were like it was it was super cool still and it's it's kind of it's kind of neat. Like when something like that happens and then now he's not in there anymore, I think that relationships get even tighter because you were respectful for the whole time, which is great.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Yes, absolutely. Okay, cool. Well, you said you're from Angola. Yeah, that's very awesome. That's that's it's interesting. And why don't you tell us about a bit about your background story? Yeah, yeah. Because you came over to the the United States. I did.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

I did. So uh I was born in Angola. Um my family's from from Angola, Congo, um, and we moved to the US uh during the war.

SPEAKER_03 3:46

So just quickly on the war thing. So uh like what specifically what was going on there at that time. Um so Angola Is it dangerous at that time?

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Like really um it it depends what you consider dangerous, right? So dangerous is a relative, it's it's like you know, it it depends, it's relative, right? Life-threatening. Um but oh Angola had independence in the 70s from Portugal, and then Civil War broke out from that moment on until 2002. So um yeah, so so there were times where there was no, you know, wars happening far away, but there are times where it came, we lived in in uh Cabinda where my family's from, and then we moved to the capital in Luanda. Uh and there are times where you know we're affected by what was happening. Um when you're they're taking away 14-year-old, 13-year-old boys to go fight in the war, right? So you can only imagine like my parents being worried uh that we get you get snatched up, put in the back of the truck, off you go, and family never sees you again. Sheesh, yeah, you come back, you're all messed up. Um so so during that time we left. Uh we moved to the US, settled in Philly.

SPEAKER_03 4:46

Good on your parents.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, good old Philadelphia. Oh Philly. Love Philly. So pretty, pretty rough right now. Super Bowl. Yeah, won't go there, but uh we were sad. But uh yeah, living in Philly was great. Grew up in Philly, uh huge Philly sports fan. Uh went to middle school in Philadelphia, high school in Philly, uh, and then I came back uh to go to university at Temple. So proud Al here. Uh yeah, so studied uh civil and construction engineering technology at Temple, and which kind of set me on a path to construction.

SPEAKER_02 5:16

What was it about construction that initially hooked you?

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Yeah, so I actually was doing research, and I thought that um my path was to go get my master's, get a PhD. I was an undergrad doing research at the university, which meant that you know it was set up for us to go and do get our PhD. So that was kind of what I was thinking. Uh and then, you know, I always like construction, thought I maybe I'll look into it, but one one, you know, before I graduated, I actually had an opportunity to do an internship with a site contracting company, uh local company in Philadelphia. And I really loved it. So doing research, you're stuck in a lab, you know, we got to travel around to different places, but for the most part, you're in your lab doing your research, right? Uh construction was just way more dynamic. Uh being on site and like seeing the plans and then seeing them build the actual stuff that, you know, I was looking at on the plans, and it was pretty, it was pretty cool, and I wanted to be a part of that. Uh my internship actually was supposed to be for two months, ended up being extended, became a one-year internship. Uh so I worked that they hired me, I worked with them while I was graduating, and then I kind of that's set me on the course to being in construction.

SPEAKER_02 6:20

And then from there, you okay. I I feel like when we had a conversation prior, you mentioned something about being okay, you said aviation. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

So oh yeah, so I actually started out at Liberty University as an aviation student. Um so I started as aviation with aviation, and as I mentioned in our earlier conversation, uh my brother is a computer guy, and he wanted me to go to school for computer science. So I said, okay, I'll I'll do both. Uh, you know, but then I decided to drop the computer science part and just do aviation. But after transferring from uh I actually want to be a pilot in the Navy. That was like that was that was one of the things I wanted to do. And you get some um get some actual action in the Well, I wanted to do to do that, but I ended up not finishing my aviation. So I switched to construction, uh, which kind of ties in later on. I ended up actually going back into military because I feel like you know that's what I wanted to do, and I and I got the opportunity to serve uh the US for for about um a couple years. Well, that's pretty neat. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

All right, and then from there, you're in construction, you're loving the site stuff, actually seeing things taking shape. You had a stint at Turner, and that's where you kind of got your love for BD, and then pursuing the rest of your career in construction.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Correct. So, you know, worked in construction, like I, you know, I uh worked for a site company, sleeping outside in town sometimes in the middle of Pennsylvania. Uh, we're doing dams and and uh wastewater plant projects in the middle of PA. Uh it was like two and a half hours from my house, and you might as well go camping when you can. Um and then eventually I got let go from my my job, we just didn't have enough work. Uh had friends working at Turner that got me into Turner. Uh, love Turner, got to work on really cool projects in in Philly and New Jersey, uh higher education and uh healthcare projects there. Um and then I meet, you know, met a meet and he asked me to come out here. Never done BD before. Uh you know, and then they just asked me, hey, we want you to come and support our business development efforts uh to help us grow in the ground up side of things. Um so if we decided, hey, why not? Let's let's check out Canada, right? Where the polar bears live.

SPEAKER_03 8:25

Oh yeah. Polar bears. Let's see.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

Disappointment.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

No, I know. You can find them, you just gotta go a little further north.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Yeah, I thought they were here in Vancouver when I looked at the map. Yeah, right. They're like, come to Vancouver, and I was like, wow, that's pretty cool. Like, you know, right near Alaska must be polar bears. No, very disappointing.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

I could imagine though, like if you were in you know the the heart of the the U.S. And this isn't from like uh um an awareness standpoint, this is just literally looking north and being like, well, what's beyond that? Correct, right? Like you see this little stretch of these populated areas along the border, and there's really nothing. Even for us, we look there's not much up there, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:00

But there's there are people, right? Yeah. Now that I've been here, I'm kind of like I I love it up here. There's a lot to do.

SPEAKER_02 9:05

Oh, that's cool. Yeah, all right. A meat. We're trying to get a meat to come on the pod. I invited him down here. He's out of town, unfortunately. Uh he was he was it sounded like he was celebrating some Super Bowl stuff. Oh yeah, okay. Anyway, he was down, he was in Phoenix. Maybe it was the waste management open. We'll just say that. He was celebrating some golf. But he um, yeah. And so if you know if you know a meet, I should shoot him in a meet.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

I will text him. Tell him. A meet would be a great person to have on the show.

SPEAKER_02 9:33

Fantastic, would be. Okay, cool. So you um, and out of Turner, you are getting some pretty good experience and starting to really dig into the business development world.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Yeah, so so I kind of, you know, I I really enjoy doing BD and learning and and you know, kind of helping grow the business unit. I I worked with some pretty cool people, yeah, like I meet Libby, Libby Rowe, uh, Regina. So it just got to learn from a bunch of people from Turner and as well as people outside of Turner, right? Andy Techiro is really helpful to me in my career. Uh there's a guy by the name of Bruno Vajetti that works for used to be Integra, I think they IntroBot, whatever they're called now. Right. So a lot of people really helped me to kind of guide me. Uh and and it set me to be to learn like how do you actually do business development, especially when you're new to a city, right? I knew no one when I got here and was able to actually build the network that I have now of people in this in the industry here. Um so kind of did that for a bit, and uh, and and the part where kind of you know Kiese kicks in. Kies A. Uh has something to do with Stanford, right? So in 2019, I I had an opportunity to go down to Stanford for a summer program uh that's set up for entrepreneurs and people who want to do entrepreneurship. Um and after finishing the program, actually, I um there was a lady who, Mary, who, you know, we were talking. I was like, yeah, I don't know what I want to do. And and it kind of scared you a bit, the program about entrepreneurship and raising money and doing all this stuff, right? So I was like, I don't know if I want to do this. And she said to me, she's so you're in construction, you know, go back and find something that you you'd find passionate, you want to work on. So coming back um to Vancouver and just working in B D, uh, you know, I didn't realize the problem was like staring me right in the face. I actually talked to Amita a few times and he was like, Well, you know, you you kind of just look off since you came back. What are you gonna do about this? The gears are journey. Yeah, and then eventually it just kind of it led to me, you know, realizing that, hey, I I was running into uh problems with the with the on the you know software side of for business development and realized that, you know, using a lot of Excel sheets, spending a lot of time in front of my computer, and I was like, how do I make this much easier so that I can actually go out and just chat with people and make the relationships that I need. Uh and that that led to me going out and starting Kiesa.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

That's that's awesome. This is the origins of Kiese. Let's talk about the name really quick.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Yeah, yeah. So it's not Kaisa.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

It's not Kaisa, it's not Kiesy, it's not. It's uh Kiese, Kiese.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

So my family is from there, we're about Congos, right? So in and uh in our in our language, my parents' language, uh, Kiese means joyful. So when I was thinking about what do I name the company, my my I used to talk to my mom. I was like, mom, I'm starting this thing about starting this company, what do you think of names? And she threw a bunch of names, and I was like, I, you know, I was like, I have all this names, English names, but I really would like something that goes back to our roots where we're from. Uh she threw some names at me, and then this one really stuck as uh Kiesa means joyful. Uh and in construction, sometimes we could lose our joy, right? Construction is supposed to be fun and great, but software can sometimes you know make us like be frustrated. So we wanted to kind of bring back the joy in construction, especially, you know, with BD side. Yeah, winning work. Yes, winning work and be joyful, right?

SPEAKER_03 12:40

So is that your tagline? Feel the joy, more sales.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

You know what? I'm gonna use that. That's not my tagline now, but thank you.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

What were some of the English names that you came up with?

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Man, I'm trying to think now. Um Arco was one. Uh I'm trying to think of the names. It was just like random generic names that everyone uses, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:00

It's like I was like, I think I think you once you tell the story a little bit, and this is kind of what we were talking about before we um went live, is uh like even Google, right? Like how we pronounced it originally. And but everyone was talking about it. Yeah, right. And if you generate that kind of buzz around your name, but people are like mispronouncing it, they're like, Oh, I've been using Kaisi for three years now. It's like, dude, you're pronouncing it wrong. Yeah, right. You kind of get you can kind of build a bit of a buzz around that. Hershey's Kaise.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Oh a friend of mine actually she wanted to make uh masks when we were all wearing masks a year ago, right? She was like, You should make make a mask for uh St. Patrick says uh give me a key Shout up, give me a key S, right? You know, like it's like I could have used that yesterday.

SPEAKER_03 13:42

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

No, that could have worked. I know. No, that's cool. Um All right, so why don't you because I think that when we say like CRM in construction, BD in construction, and especially because you know software guys, we go, oh yeah, we're thinking like oh HubSpot, Salesforce, and whatever. But construction is different. Yes, it is. So go into that a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Yeah, that's so the difference between you know using a HubSpot or Salesforce, right? They're they're generic software, they're made for anything. You're selling shoes, you're selling, I don't know, software, right? You can use it for that because you track a deal with someone and then you you do what you gotta do, you close a deal. Whereas construction, there's a lot of people involved, a lot of stakeholders, right? So you could be tracking an opportunity for two, three years, right? And not only that, you have estimating working on stuff, you have your pre-construction uh team working on stuff, you have the BD working, you have marketing, and everyone has to collaborate on this opportunity, right? Uh and and not only that, you have to track all the metric somewhere. Uh you have to try to figure out historical information, right? So, what happens often with construction? We build a bunch of Excel sheets, despite having a CRM like a Salesforce or whatever, to kind of fill that gap, right? And that's time consuming. It's really not the best way to kind of have all your data in Excel. And I used to do that, right? I had dated a lot of Excel files that I had to fill out all the metric to show to my team. And when we were collaborating, we're collaborating using Word, emails, which is very ineffective and just very time consuming. Uh so kind of with Kiesa, what we've done is bring all this into one place. So you fill out one form, right? And that form populates everything. So instead of you having to transfer information from Excel file to Excel file or Word documents or sending an email, everything just lives in one place.

SPEAKER_03 15:19

That's cool. Nice. So is the um so the main the main differences between that is is the um like the life cycle of the sale. I mean, is it's all is you were saying that. Yeah, imagine construction would be a lot.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

It's not only the life cycle of the sale, that's one, but also how the data, you know, how you consume the data, right? And how the data is set up, the data structure is set up. Uh with normal CRMs, you you don't mean to hit there's certain things that you need to track in construction. I need to track you know, hit rate and whatever, but I also want to know which clients I work with the best, right? Which which uh you know projects are what market segments are best, where am I more profitable, right? Where do I spend most of my time? And I should be able to actually find the information very quickly, right? And and and look look at the data and know, okay, like this is, we've been really good working in the lower mainland or maybe Kelowna, whatever, right? So you've got to track that information very quickly. Whereas a lot of the other systems don't, they don't give you that because they're they're so generic, you have to actually super customize them to get that, right? Like to get the data output to look the way you want it to.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

Yeah, I mean it's often the case, right, with software as a service businesses is that like you can get into more niche and provide a lot more value than just generic project management or generic CRM or pipeline or whatever software, right? So it does make a lot of sense. But the concept of business development is something you're obviously very passionate about. You've built an entire business around it. That's right. But business development and construction, it's a little different, right? What are some things in your time, you know, Turner and now doing what you're doing in the the tr the patterns you might see that work, that don't work, that are you know?

SPEAKER_01 16:55

So so when I first started, actually my first job with the internship, right? They they I was an estimator guy, like helping the main estimating guy, right? And then and then they fired the guy. So you're the guy within two months, and they're like, hey, by the way, we think you're good enough to be our estimator. I was like, me?

SPEAKER_02 17:12

So you to the wolves. So so might be overpriced.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

I was like, okay, cool. Like I'll I'll be the estimator, I'll be the estimator guy, right? And uh, and and most and that for for that, all we did was bid jobs, right? Like submit a bunch of bids, never really had any relationships, never really went to meet people, right? So we just submit bids, we're high, we're low, okay, we won this job. Uh, but then, you know, and that's what a lot a lot of people actually think of construction business development. It's just like, okay, you just don't you just bid people ask me that you just bid work. Uh and I used to think that was how you did BD as well. And then, you know, when I went to Turner and I was actually brought into strategy strategy meetings, right? This is before I went into B BD. I was doing BIM for uh pre-construction. So we will model, you know, you come into these meetings and everyone talks about how we're gonna actually present it to the client, right? What are we doing? What is our strategy? And it really changed, and I was like, that's why Turner does this really cool big job, right? Like you're not gonna win a stadium by being a low guy. You know, you're not gonna build this hospital just by bidding, right? You actually have to have a plan how you're gonna execute and win that job. Uh and it involves a lot of people and a lot of pieces. So so what doesn't work is just bidding jobs, right? Like, yes, like you could win work when there's a lot of work, but when things dry up, you're not. Uh and and what works is actually having a plan. And I and I think you know, I learned that from people like in Andy's, like, hey, what is your plan? What are you planning to do, right? And it's Shiro, what I was telling me. So um what works is actually having a plan, right? A plan that you can execute because if you have a plan that you can go back and re and actually measure yourself up against and review, you can see the pitfalls. Yeah. When you have no plan and you're just kind of like throwing your number out there, you know, even if you're grabbing coffee with people, right? What is the actual why are you grabbing a coffee with that specific person?

SPEAKER_02 18:49

Totally.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Right? Is that someone and it's it doesn't matter, like not to say that relationships are important, they are, right? But you have to have a plan like of what you're doing. So I I've seen uh when someone has an actual plan in BD that it works, and when you don't, it doesn't, right? And I and I could attest for that for myself, having been in that place.

SPEAKER_03 19:07

So does your does your software allow you to implement that plan? It does. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

So you can actually create a plan for a client, you can create a plan for an opportunity, right? So it's not just okay, like we got this client, okay, what are we gonna do with this client or potential client or with this region, right? What what's our plan for Vancouver in 2023, right? You map that out the beginning of the year and you can actually go verify are we actually doing what our plan is? Right? Are we doing this plan for this client? Are we doing this plan for this opportunity?

SPEAKER_03 19:32

And then classify cohorts of types of clients, all that kind of stuff. Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Types of clients, types of jobs that you're going after, right? So you so for everything, it's like it's different and it's different, right? So you can't say it's not one size fits all, things change, and um and and you know, so you gotta be able to track that. And I think that's what really works for companies that are have grown. Just having a and something as simple as what's our social media plan? Totally, right? Like our website looks like it was built in 1975, right? Like in HTML, like Web Web.0, right? Maybe we should before the web reports do something about that, right? And that's and that's uh I think where I think oftentimes construction people, we're doers, we go out and build stuff, right? And that's what we're really good at.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

But we'll um yeah, no, and that's a really good point, is like, yeah, we're construction guys, right? Like we can apply that to any aspect of construction from business development to the way we do estimating to the way we manage manage projects or anything, close out, whatever. We can we can say, oh, you know, we just we're we're basic, we just want to get out there and get it get it done, right? So then you end up with loads of random documents, spreadsheets, correct, mismanaged folders, and all this kind of stuff, right? But when you think about it, okay, software, sales, it's all about building predictive revenue, right? Correct. And and using a plan to actually hold yourself accountable, right? Hold yourself accountable. Whereas like that haphazard approach can be like, ah, well, you know, we'll we'll fix that haphazard approach with a piece of software at some point in time, or we'll fix that haphazard approach. But then you actually look at the way, like, the only way your business stays afloat, especially in construction, you've got to keep feeding the machine. Correct. Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

And and and and the way to go out of business as well is by feeding the machine. So it's a double-edged sword. Yeah, it is. So if you if you feed the machine and you have no plan, right, then you don't have the staff to do the work, or you don't have the right staff and then you don't execute, or you you just in you lose money and you're out of business, right? Yeah. So or you don't feed the machine and then you go out of business, right? So it's it's really it's a two-edged sword, right? People think I'll just win a lot of work and solve it. But in reality, it's like what kind of work are you winning?

SPEAKER_03 21:36

And kind of so just one thing. So on on your on the CRM then, uh you're you're you're also tracking uh you know deal size, revenue. Um are you would you be tracking the the revenue just top line? Yeah just top line sales. But that number would be in there based on deals closed, all that kind of stuff. The proposal is gonna be in there and everything. Yes, that's right. And not only that, we actually No, no, no, software digging in.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

We actually uh help you actually, you know, not just track the revenue and things like that, but you can see how you're actually doing month by month, how you're doing quarter by quarter, year by year, right? Is there a growth, is there a drop, and then what does your pipeline actually look like? And how's that pipeline being converted to actually awards, right? Uh so you know, is it is it is it the curve going up, is it down, right? So you can you can kind of react like instead of being reactive, you can be proactive and start planning ahead, right?

SPEAKER_03 22:28

Yeah. I mean there there is there is an element to that if I if you know we use HubSpot for our for our um you know sales and marketing efforts. And you know, one thing that would actually be kind of cool in the the difference between construction for what I've noticed is is that marketing is kind of maybe one person and then they sort of go out and hire an agency to do a little bit of work here, kind of on a piecemeal basis, they don't really have like a department. That's right. Um and even if they do, it's not it's just kind of just get stuff done. Yep. Whereas it would be really cool if uh on the BD side, whether using your software, they what they could actually get a customer acquisition cost. Yeah. So they could actually see how much they spent to get that customer. Because I don't but I think there's so many diff uh fragmented areas in a construction company that they just think marketing is just this check that they have to write every month and they don't attribute it to actually how much of that those efforts were to getting those customers.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

So we actually do that. Yeah, and it's something we, you know, I used to track that on Excel file, Mr. Excel. So our system actually tracks for every opportunity you're working on, how much money did you actually spend for that opportunity, right? Whether you win it or you lose it, but then we aggregate for each owner how much money you're actually spending, whether it be marketing, you know, printing dinners, coffee, swag, all that. Swag, printing out stuff, pamphlets for that uh for that opportunity, right? So we track all this and it gets aggregated. And it's actually pretty cool to see, right? Because you're like, hey, I I think, you know, let's just say you spend like three million dollars, right, for a client to get a job, right? Maybe that job is a$50 million job. And you're like, wow, I got a$50 million job, spend three million dollars. But if your profit straight out of your project's two million, well, you lost a million dollars. Yeah, yeah, you paid your staff because they were working on a job, you're gonna write it off, but you didn't you didn't win any, like you lost money, right? You keep doing that, eventually you go out of business, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:25

Well, what's funny is you're dealing with a lot bigger dollar volumes when you're doing general contracting, right? That could be being wasted. Whereas you go customer acquisition costs for you know a unit of a uh uh or seats of a software sale. Yes, yeah, and because it's happening so quick, you kind of in software, you might look at it and and you can attribute to like, oh, that sales cycle only took three weeks. I can attribute the cost pretty easily. But in construction, because things take so long, right? You almost forget about your bad exactly and you just repeat it.

SPEAKER_03 24:52

Yeah, yeah. And your software would be like, uh-uh, shh, yeah, we did that all over again.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

And then it tells you the truth, right? It tells you the truth.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Look at that, like when you just spend another, you know, a hundred grand.

SPEAKER_02 25:01

And then you go, and then because I I I know coming from the general contracting world as well, and doing some business development, selling a few projects and stuff like that, is like you know, some customers aren't good customers to work with. And like you have that feeling in your gut, yeah, and you kind of know because of how profitable it was. Yeah, but then if you really just look at all of it, you're like, it took too long to win, it cost too much to win, yeah, wasn't that profitable, change orders never got never got approved, yeah, whatever, and you just go, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 25:28

But if you're able to track, if you're able to track that, right? To have that, okay, like we have a debrief on our software, right? So if the project is done, you can actually the team can actually put a debrief together, and then BD has access to that and say, hey, like this is yeah, what this client is like, and and they are able to make that decision, right? So you know what? It's not worth it. We're not gonna take on this job, right? Totally. And uh and and things change all the time. So I think you know, being able to actually have a place to look at the information to make those informed decisions is it's is key.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

Oh, absolutely. Well, I think this is, I mean, coming from I can feel the pain in what you're solving here, having known a little bit about it. So I'm like, this is kind of cool. And and uh it'd be it'd be good to continue our conversation.

SPEAKER_03 26:09

There's just a lot of a lot of stuff from building software company that we can help with the uh the path. I appreciate that. Totally a lot of yeah, that's good.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

There could be some synergy. Um I think there is, and we can definitely unpack more of the BD conversation too in a longer conversation on a podcast or something like that. Another game. Rapid fire. Boom. Well, we end usually with three questions. Okay, a full-length episode. We're just gonna end with one. Yeah. Okay. Um, but before I just want to give you the opportunity to say anything to any potential customers or anyone that you might be recruiting for your team. Just what would you say about Kiesa that you'd want our audience and the broader construction industry to know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Uh I would say that we're passionate about construction. You know, we didn't go into this for the sake of just creating a software just to do it. We really I I love construction, so does my team. My team is made up of construction people. We're not like, you know, we're not all quoters. We have coders, but most of us love construction. Uh and we we just want to solve the problems to make the industry a better place so that you know, as the industry's growing, that uh more people will be able to um to grow their businesses as well, right? So if you so if you're trying to grow your business and you want to be strategic, right, reach out to us. We're here, we're always talking to clients. If you reach out to our clients, they'll tell you. We're always annoying them and trying to find out what other problems are having that we can solve with our system and how we can make it better, right? So that'll be my nice.

SPEAKER_02 27:34

That's fantastic. Okay, the question we have for you, Enoch. If you weren't building key essay, okay, and loving on all these people in construction, giving them the greatest BD tool they've ever seen, what would you be doing? It's a tough one.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

It's a tough one. Uh Spider Jets. I really, I really loved, but yeah, I you know, I loved uh working at Turner. Uh I really loved doing my job at Turner. I'll probably still be there, right? I think I'd probably still be working at Turner. I really enjoyed what I was doing. Uh and and at the time I was also in the military, got to do some pretty cool stuff there, right? So I'll probably still be doing both. Uh, you know, I think it was it was great while I did it. I don't, you know, regret, like it's not like, oh man, I waited too long to do this. You know, if I so if I wasn't doing KSA, I would probably continue building buildings, which is one of the things I love.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

I love it.

SPEAKER_01 28:24

If you guys ever get a chance, check out my last project was the UBC Art Student Center. Oh, yeah. Go check it out.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

Oh, that's awesome. Well, hey, you know, thank you for joining us. Uh really appreciate it and look forward to continuing our conversation. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_03 28:37

Thank you very much. Well, that does it for another episode of the site. Thank you for listening.