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The SiteVisit
Leadership in construction with perspective from the job site. A podcast dedicated to the Construction industry. Construction professionals, General Contractors, Sub trade Contractors, and Specialty Contractors audiences will be engaged by the discussions between the hosts and their guests on topics and stories. Hosted James Faulkner ( CEO/Founder - SiteMax Systems ).
The SiteVisit
Balancing Finances: Corporate Culture and Financial Wisdom in Construction with Shawn Gray, Founder of ConstructIQ Advisory
Imagine standing at a crossroads between saving for the future and indulging in life's finest pleasures. Join Shawn Gray, the Founder of ConstructIQ Advisory as we navigate this very dilemma and share professional insights on how emerging technologies can revolutionize financial strategies and decision-making in the construction industry.
Curious about how to balance employee raises when inflation keeps rising? We discuss the challenge of maintaining fair compensation amidst escalating costs. We'll dive into the psychological impact this balancing act has on leadership and staff, and how a company's cultural approach to money can shape its integrity and the well-being of its employees.
Ever wondered why workers often feel disconnected from the projects they build? We explore the substantial financial and emotional toll of rework in construction, highlighting how up to 25% of project time can be lost to repeated tasks. Discover the untapped potential within the affordable housing sector, where skilled tradespeople can find more meaningful work. We'll also discuss the importance of thoughtful corporate spending on cultural activities and workplace experiences, showing how both small and large investments can significantly boost employee morale and satisfaction. Tune in for an episode packed with insights that merge personal anecdotes and professional wisdom, offering a holistic view of money's role in our lives and businesses.
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All right, Sean. So from Calgary, how are you doing today, Doing great James? How are you doing out on the West Coast there. The West Coast is now very fall-like. That's what I would have to say it is there too, getting colder.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we went from great summer and then Saturday, sunday hit. Now it's full-on fall.
Speaker 1:Full-on. I know it's crazy how it changes and then the light changes. Everything changes like whoa okay, depression mode setting in so we're gonna we're gonna talk about money today.
Speaker 1:money, god, it's so weird. We all think about everything that we do for this weird transactional thing called money, so it's gonna be kind of an interesting topic. It's something we haven't actually talked about in any of these episodes, so it's going to be kind of cool. You have a lot of background dealing with companies, with your Construct IQ advisory company, and, yeah, I think that's going to be a very interesting thing. What do you? Are you a guy?
Speaker 2:that's how are you personally with money, are you? I'm cheap, I don't know about you, but you know, yeah, I'm more of a conservative, thrifty kind of kind of person. Um, you know, but I I do uh, appreciate. You know the kind of value of money and you know what's, you know aligning it to spending it on. You know where things that kind of give me purpose and joy and things like that. That's where I'm trying to put it. My wife's probably a little more conservative on the spending, but I think we're a little bit, probably on that lens, more than just the spangle for the thrills and things like that I tend to spend a lot of money on food.
Speaker 1:That is something I can't skimp on. I'm not doing Subway, I'm not doing fast food. Then again I was in Vegas and I the Shake Shack. I don't know Shake Shack it's. It's still a fast food place, but great ingredients, awesome flavor, so yeah. So there you go, but that's not cheap. I mean in and out versus shake shack. Wow, big difference. It was like 33 bucks for shake shack and then it was 14 for uh, in and out, in, both in vegas, both on the strip oh well, yeah, vegas is no longer the uh, the cheap, the economical destination anymore.
Speaker 2:it's uh kind of a gone upup-in-price point down there, but you can't go to any type of restaurant nowadays without putting down at least 50 bucks, it seems no matter where you go.
Speaker 1:That's totally. I mean, I've got a Back in the day. I had a client of ours at SightMax actually customer number one and still a customer today and we did a thing in vegas, um, where he he asked me if I could get one of his clients into a nightclub. Okay, anyway, ended up spending ten thousand dollars us only drinks. It was awesome, awesome. All right, you can remember, Glad you can remember it. I do remember it. I was pretty. I was pretty excited getting back to the hotel room Like yes, and it was like three in the morning and yeah, no scars on that one, but it was awesome. Welcome to the site. Visit podcast leadership and perspective from construction with your host, James Faulkner. Business as usual, as it has been for so long now that it goes back to what we were talking about before and hitting the reset button. You know you read all the books, you read the email, you read Scaling Up, you read Good to Great. You know I could go on. We've got to a place where we found the secret serum.
Speaker 2:We found the secret potion. We can get the workers in. We know where to get them. One time I was on a job sale for a while, and actually we had a semester concrete and I ordered like a Korean-Finnish patio out front of the site show.
Speaker 1:Yesterday I was down at Dallas and a guy just hit me up on LinkedIn out of the blue and said he was driving from Oklahoma to Dallas to meet with me because he heard the Faber Connect platform on your guys' podcast Home of the crusher and lover. And we celebrate these values every single day. Let's get down to it, okay, sean. So we're talking about money today. Let's just talk about you a little bit, just so everyone knows what you do. Construct IQ Advisor. You're an advisor for construction companies, gcs subtrades to help them with technology, help them with change management, all that kind of stuff stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that's fundamentally it, but with a slight nuance, and I kind of walk in two worlds one foot in the traditional architect-engineer construction space and one foot in the emerging technology space, having experience on both sides of those fences. And really it is fundamentally about change management at the end of the day, these things. But what I do, kind of more specialized through Construct IQ Advisor, is by understanding those nuances in both those worlds, really helping to bridge the gap through more meaningful collaboration rather than just B2B sales, things like that. And that's also where the topic of money comes in. It's how does that approach and understanding those nuances, things like that. And you know that's also where the topic of money comes in. It's how does you know that approach and understanding those nuances? How does that kind of help unite construction with the technology community a little more efficiently?
Speaker 1:All right. Well, money is a big issue for lots of people and the psychology of money I think there's a book around that. Shout out to Jordi, by the way. Jordy says to say hello to you. Yeah, the psychology of money is interesting because we have this personally that we have to deal with on our own lives, lives, and then when we interact at the office, it obviously these emotional attachments we have to money are obviously going to dovetail into how we conduct ourselves with our business, our business decisions, especially on the leadership side and also on the management side. You're dealing with someone else's wallet. So I don't know if you can remember kind of when you were a kid and you were good to go to a restaurant with your parents. You're like I'll have the steak. It's like okay, and your parents know well he's not going to finish it and it's still going to be 30 bucks. Even back then they're like do you really need the steak? How about the hamburger?
Speaker 2:So I mean there's the psychology of someone else's wallet versus the values around money. What have you know in corporations who really are, an incorporation is its own person, that's, you know it's legally, it's set up as a you know it's being its own, its own, being um, run by, you know, other people. So it's interesting how the, the kind of the psychology of money, the brain of the corporate machine, is run by people who have individual, you know, motivators, biases, things like that, and you know they're directly influencing who opens the purse string, what comes in and out of that and you know on paper should be to the you know the benefit and betterment of that corporation and then the people working within it and the customers they serve, uh, on paper, in a vacuum. In reality, I think we know that that people are making decisions every single day and a lot of that that back end psychology and let the personal values kind of kick in in terms of, okay, yes, this, this obviously maybe seems like a must do, implement immediately, obvious business opportunity decision, but and I'm not a psychologist, this is just from you know, having dealt with this over and over and over and over with with um customers and my group's employers it's it always comes down to well, how does this benefit you personally as a person?
Speaker 2:You personally as within your direct job function? And then you know, does this improve your position or security within that corporation? And so you can, at the end of the day, make sure you can go home and continue to feed and support your family? None of those things have really to do with. Is this for the betterment of that corporate, the corporation, the business, the customers they saw they serve or the people that they employ. So you can really start nipping down, kind of that. You know the value of where does the value of money lie and that psychology around it, and you know when you kind of look at and try to understand the motivations behind decisions on how money is spent and moved around within a business.
Speaker 2:It's really about you know who are you addressing. And if we just give a kind of an example and I'll just bring this to that more of that technology adoption side of things, in the last 10, 20 years predominantly, we've spent industry's spent about $30 billion on technology. Over 40% of that spend has been around technologies that really support the business leader, that executive function, you know, at the end of that technology chain, even though there's front end users using these things. You know project management, information systems, erps, CRMs, those things like that. You know they feed information in, which is great. People use them.
Speaker 2:There's some, you know, lower level job function improvements, but really those are brought in, developed and sold, sold to, um. You know those more of the project leadership decision makers who you know resonates with their direct job function life, um, so they're willing to pay for it, um, you know, to the detriment that it actually might be making more work for someone else lower than in the chain that is having to do a little more extra steps. Now, at the end of the day, it didn't matter it directly, it might end and I'll throw this other thing in terms of, you know, making decisions that are supposed to be to the betterment of the business, the customer and otherwise, when you look at that $30 billion spent, there's been less than 2% improvement in productivity Crazy right.
Speaker 2:So we're not making the decisions based on the true value drivers. They're typically based on how does it actually help me as a person in my job?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I mean that's got to sting a little bit from when you think about that as somebody developing a company, your hires on the onboarding side and on the recruitment side, I mean these are questions that should be asked. What are your values around money? And because I think there's an element of personal identity attached to this. So you know, what do I get to do at my company? Well, they just say yes to every budget item that I want.
Speaker 1:I mean it might not necessarily be part of the end product. It might be something that they think their life will be better, their job will be easier, et cetera. They will be more efficient if they have this widget. And if you are a person that has always gotten what they want and haven't had to work to get what you want, you have to earn. I mean, I've always only developed companies. I think I've only. My only jobs I've had were a small stint, and it's because they bought my company out and I worked there for a while, um and.
Speaker 1:But that whole time I wasn't able to spend anything unless I earned the money and capital to be able to buy that thing, whereas people are in companies oh, I just want this thing. It's like well, okay, what is the return on the dollar? Is that going to give me 4X on what it costs? If it does, then that's great. Or is this just a? I'm bored, I need a thing and everyone gets a thing, and then that becomes a complete. Let's just say it can metastasize this whole throughout the company as well. So-and-so got this. Well, how come I can't get this and it starts to become this huge spend waterfall. You can't even stop so when it comes to on the recruitment side, then, like, do you think that it is a an appropriate question to ask somebody when, when, bringing them on, when, when you know that they're going to have some sort of influence on budget and they're going to be able to have some kind of spend, what do you think about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think we'll frame it into maybe more and more the kind of the critical hirings happening now in terms of, like project management, field supervision, quality control, those types of things, schedule planners, things like that.
Speaker 2:For example, if you're a project manager or even a superintendent or construction manager getting hired in, that should be a question you ask Because, again, I'll frame it around where the last 10, 20 years it has been the executive level, the back office folks that have been getting all the widgets, baubles and things that they've been asking for, trying for wanting, and now we completely understand that we have some workforce productivity challenges, constraints. These are all field-related problems. So if you are in that hiring process, I would definitely be asking how is your funding, how is money being prioritized? What initiatives are you supporting that can help me in the field execute day-to-day to ensure productivity and profitability? Me in the field execute day-to-day to ensure productivity and profitability and that is the ones that are developing and positioning products for the field. Operators today are going to be likely the most successful for the next 10-20 years because those have been the most underserved and it's now time for those PMs, cms and supers to be asking how is the company going to support them. Right, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So I mean there's the budget expenditures for process et cetera, and that's kind of where you are. On the digital transformation side there's also perk things. What can I do for my team? And then the last one is the big one and that is the constant ask for raises. You know the value of the dollar. You know what I always try and figure out at my company is you obviously have your industry standards, sort of what. You know that income parity is, so that you know you have some sort of a, some corporate self-esteem there, that you know your people are being paid well enough. So that's one part of it. But when people come and ask for more money, there's always that I'm getting the same for more, which is hard Because it's kind of like you go to it looks like that inflation thing.
Speaker 1:It's like I'm still getting the tomato, but why is it $3 now? It used to be like $1.25. So that's the interesting part. Is that being able to endure this inflationary period we've been in for quite a while now. It feels like it's just never ending.
Speaker 1:The pressure on the, the pressure on the employee for being able to have you know their dollar to go further. It's not going to go further. They have to get it from somewhere. So it's either they're going to go and you know moonlight somewhere else, or do some you know some other kind of job or find some other way to get some money, or you're the source of fixing their problem, which kind of sucks, because that means ultimately, as a construction company, you can't just keep shrinking your profits. I mean, I think what some people don't understand is that the market can only bear so much, and especially in construction. We are completely stuck in this tumble cycle of all the news out there Homes are super expensive, et cetera. The cost of construction is super high. Well, it all comes down to the fact that that tomato is $3 now. So I got to pay my staff more. That means my services are going to be more. It costs more to get the materials. The materials have gone up, everything's gone up, so what ends up happening is, well, the end product's more expensive. So we're in this cycle now of the psychology of money People are and this is another point and we can kind of dig into this is that there's kind of this.
Speaker 1:I kind of don't give a crap anymore, because it just seems I can't get on top of this Every time I get a little bit of a raise, inflation happens and it's gone. Or I make a little bit more money and then I get taxed more. So I mean, I've seen, I've even looked at that in my income, I can pretty much, you know, within a certain amount I can say, well, you know, I can, as long as I have approval from my board of directors, I can put my salary up to something. I always look at this and I go, well, what is the company getting from me? Putting that up, like, I even do that to myself. That's the accountability I have. And I wonder, okay, well, and then I look at when I go to this other tax bracket. I'm like, okay, wow, if I move that to there, I only personally get that much and the company got killed on that increase. And I think, well, why would I do that to my company?
Speaker 1:So there's this psychology around money on the leadership side and the management side. It's just a real hot topic that I'm not sure if any companies really talk about it in a way that is vulnerable, a vulnerable relationship, because you've got ego involved, you've got lifestyle, you've got like, how financially secure are you? Some people might have inheritances from parents. Some people might not, some people might have previous relationships and marriages and responsibilities that are dragging them down. So there's so many different factors that make the conversation very difficult to have on a corporate level. On what the corporate psychology as a group is. About money, because you probably know about this a lot, is it? You know what? And when you talk about the company's culture, well, the value around money is a cultural element. I don't know if many people even talk about it. They talk about integrity and you know these values everyone has plastered over their walls and on their messaging. You know everyone uses the same stuff. But around money, the value of the dollar, I think, is a really, really important thing.
Speaker 2:So maybe you can speak to and I've talked a lot here, but I think that was good, and this is actually probably one of the most important aspects of this conversation likely and I'll bring it back to what you kind of started with in this section was things are more expensive than ever, always getting more expensive, um, you know so. Therefore, you know your people are asking for raises, things like that, and you know whether they're, you know, working harder than somebody else. Maybe, maybe not, but I'll say the.
Speaker 2:You know the, these kind of the standing status quo in industry has always been time is money and that has actually put a negative toxicity around corporate culture. Things like that If you're dragging your butt you're going to get fired, things like that. Lots of fear and mental stress with that. Lots of fear and mental stress with that. But in this day and age, when 80% of firms are experiencing resourcing challenges, time is no longer money. People are money. Okay.
Speaker 2:So and then you know you can tie these things to. You know some of the critical issues within industry around, like mental health, mental illness and things like that. Yeah, you know the. The suicide rates, all those types of things you know, for all different types of reasons a lot to do with with financial pressures, household pressures, things like that. But you got to understand too Well. Well, james, you know cause.
Speaker 2:You work with these people day in and day out, but these are really hardworking people and a lot of them love what they do. There's lots of false, false stigmas around, obviously who's working in the workforce, but most of them are extremely hardworking and you know when you're especially when you're a manager and someone comes to you, you know and gives up the pitch of why they deserve a raise. You should. You'll probably know if they are a you know, uh, you know if they are having going above and beyond, doing some extra things. And yeah, they, you know they're demonstrating value beyond their you know what they're were brought in to do. Um, then there's some others that might not be, you know, going above and beyond, but there might be some. Obviously, something happening behind the scenes. Um, you know, and if a little bit extra helps them alleviate some some stressors that might be distracting them from doing good work, then got to be really caught, really conscious about that and you know what and you, you know.
Speaker 2:Again, kind of going traditionally, it's pretty tough to pull money out of thin air in construction. You know everything. All the budgets are already set, you're executing. How can you ask for a raise midway through a project when the budget's already there and you know every additional dollar is, you know, a reduction in that margin, yep, and there's already a lot of risks. You're likely not going to be a profitable project at all. You know all odds against you. But here's the difference and I always got to swing it. But I'm going to swing this all the way around to the opportunities that technology is providing to, or even alternative methods of doing work or how you run your business. But if you are, the opportunities now exist for a company, depending on your position, like if you are a general contractor, let's say like a buyer of services, sub-trades, and otherwise if you have to find an extra $100,000 somewhere to give somebody a little bit of something not saying give them $100,000 raise, but that's a lot, but something.
Speaker 2:There are things you can bring into your company that directly and I won't in this format, I won't provide specific vendors or anything like that. Your writers can come talk to me if they want to know more specifics. But there are things you can bring in as a GC that actually provide you direct, immediate savings with no cost involved, helping kind of provide some early payments to your sub-trades in return for a little cut off of their invoice. That's a direct saving right to that GC. And some of them that have kind of caught on to that have been leveraging, you know, that strategy to make little pools of additional funding. So most of their projects are like a CCDC 5B construction management at risk, lump sum, guaranteed maximum price type of a structure where if they can save money. They now have a pool and they can use that to go either support the resources, technology or tools or whatever. So there's an interesting new opportunity that exists. And the other aspect I want to share is just on average, if you are an average construction company doing $10 million a year, 1% productivity improvement equals $100,000. So that's typical. So when you have people trying to have people asking for more, you can actually introduce some things relatively easily into your company without having to boil the ocean. Try to move that 1% productivity improvement yield $100,000 back into your little profit pool. You can now establish these little banks to help support your resources. It's something that never was really available until the last four or five years.
Speaker 2:And there's some other opportunities too. There's alternative ways that you can now, especially if you're a smaller company. There's alternative ways that you can approach, for example, like legal services. Traditionally you'd go to a large legal entity, very expensive, to do lots of your stuff. That you can approach, for example, like legal services. Traditionally you'd go to a large legal entity, very expensive, to do lots of your stuff that you could probably do yourself. There's lots of technologies that can take that off your plate now, and there's also interesting fractional services that can subsidize things. So there's lots of angles. There's lots of different grant programs that are available now that can help subsidize different aspects of your business so you can divert those savings and invest more into your people. There really is about 10 different levers that businesses can and should be pulling today. If it is about the stressors that your workforce is feeling, the stressors that your workforce is feeling, and if money is something that helps motivate them or that they need or whatever there's opportunity to help them, do that more than ever.
Speaker 1:Okay, so just on the calculations of those numbers there, I would assume that that $10 million is a net figure. It couldn't be like a gross figure because you've got material costs that you can't. That's not going to create any efficiency change on on anything I mean 10 million, 10 million.
Speaker 2:So, just like you know, just try and put an average average. So just on a, the average average company being $10 million annual revenue. So 1% product and this is just the general calculation 1% productivity improvement translate to $100,000 profitability improvement. So when you look at a project and project by project is different, but typically a construction cost is broken down. I think it was what 40% labor, or is it 20% labor, 40% equipment Sorry, 40% labor, 20% equipment, 40% materials, materials those are fixed. But where you can, obviously when you improve productivity, if you're reducing timelines, reducing downtime, that's affecting the labor and equipment costs.
Speaker 2:Fair enough, we just did one calculation with a customer who's exploring and it's interesting how these things are kind of interconnected in an interesting way. We're looking at an AI-driven tool that helps automate a lot of the field supervisors, admin tasks like meeting minutes, daily reporting, schedule updating and whatnot, and it's interesting. The metric of value, the zero level metric of value, is oh, you freed up time, hours of time, my hours equal this amount of dollar value, but that doesn't do anything to productivity profitability. What we looked at was okay, you freed up time. What do you do with that time? As a senior person with some experience. Well, use that time to go out in the field, mentor your staff, go and be a little proactive. Try to avoid an issue before it happens.
Speaker 2:What we discovered was you know, by just you know, something that is almost completely separate from the problem of productivity. Just automating some time from a field supervisor translates into about two extra proactive supervision inspections a week and, on this particular instance, about a $60 million project. Avoidance of one issue would save that company about $78,000 on that project. So it's interesting how these things are all connected and how you can you can identify these, these productivity improvement areas that can directly, um you know, improve your, your bottom lines okay, um, so when it comes to people doing things in their company to spend money, um, where do you think that there is, like the waste?
Speaker 1:for instance, when you think about when I've seen this before you know you do a corporate party and you order too much food.
Speaker 1:You order like $200, $300 too much food, and where does it go? Well, staff feel kind of weird taking it home. It just goes in the trash, you know. Do you think that there is an element of corporate waste? Um, and also on the other side, there's the um, the element of changes. For instance, project consciousness around, change orders, all that kind of stuff. How much gets wasted in terms of materials that have to be thrown out because they were constructed wrong, cut wrong, installed wrong, et cetera, and they're not going to be able to be used again? What about the fear of the fear that something's going to go wrong? Do you think that that fear flows all the way down through management, or do you think they're a little bit more? Or do you think carelessness today is more than it was yesterday? I just want to see the past.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know if it's carelessness, more so that there's the. I think the environment that we're trying to build and do work in has become a little more complex and again, I always start with the. You know the belief in the benchmark that people are designed and built to. You know generally want to do good work, good things. Yeah, so carelessness, I don't believe that's the aspect.
Speaker 1:Well, it's not an intention, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:For sure, and I think, especially if it's the fear of change orders or things like that, due to maybe some being burned before on some incomplete design drawings, scope, those types of things. And then you blame carelessness on others in the value chain, but those types of things you know. And then you, you know, you blame carelessness on another than the value chain, but in each aspect of that, of that value chains, there's some constraint preventing them from doing the best work that they possibly can. Usually has to do with money, but when we look at you know from from what I've seen, kind of those key areas when you took, when you talk about things like how much material has been wasted and you know the cost of that waste on having to do rework, you know the typical, depending on, obviously, the size of your project. When you look at rework and the statistic being, on average, 25% of project time is spent on doing something twice, yeah or less dismantling or just moving from one thing to another, back to where it was before. That costs a single project between $150,000 to $3 million, right, and about 500 hours per worker. So is it carelessness?
Speaker 2:I'm not too sure, but it's likely attributed to a couple of things the fact that there is significant issues around planning, coordination, the right people in the right job, going back to the people who should be out mentoring, supervising and, and you know, making sure that that you know their pile isn't having to be moved twice. They're in the office doing office work or updating schedules, things like that. Um, so there's kind of a key chain of events. And also the fact that you know we just we're losing our most experienced people. Um, so you know, as we start losing those, those experienced people, um, you know that backfill is you're going to, you're going to be doing things probably a little bit longer and a little little less, um, as quality, as you expected. So they're all interconnected. You know planning, rework and and the admin stuff.
Speaker 1:I mean, we kind of see this going on in the medical industry. You know, there's this sort of consciousness for the patient that's kind of gone out the window, this whole bedside manner thing. It's kind of a it's like just a transactional kind of a thing where, as you said, that things have changed. You know, it's not so much a job as a like. When inflation is so high and the cost of living is so high as a result, people are just, I'm not going to say phoning it in, but there's just, there's satisfaction, I guess, in the result of the project that you're doing. You know, if you were able to put up a great wall or you were able to do some great finishes or you can see the results of your work, that's kind of cool. But when that gets mixed with this dissatisfaction about what you got paid to do it, it kind of leaves you with this huh, I have this, I'm just gonna. I'm not gonna do it poorly, I'm gonna do it well, because that's just how most construction people are. They don't wanna just cut corners, most people wanna do a good job. But there's that kind of like icky feelings, like I did. I put my all into this and it still wasn't enough. You know what I mean. That's got to suck, is that feeling that, uh I've talked about this on on the other on some other podcasts is that, you know, and when field crews and specific sub trades come in and they work on a project, that um is not going to say a super expensive uh, condo project, let's say but something that's mid-market kind of thing, and they realize that they can't even afford to buy this thing they're building and that, right there, creates this feeling of I'm building something for the haves and I feel like I have not, you know.
Speaker 1:So I mean, and that changes the people's value for the money they're getting paid. The owners of the subtrade companies who have to pay the bills feel it's expensive. The people receiving the money feel it's not enough, and that psychology there is very difficult because the market can only bear so much. And who gets stuck? Well, both are unhappy. The employer is like I'm paying too much and then the employee is like I'm not getting enough. So where do we go from here?
Speaker 2:You know what? I wish we had all the answers to all of the amazing questions, but I think you know where I would kind of throw on this one is. There's an interesting opportunity that exists now, you know, under the lens of affordable housing and the chief bottleneck to that Once we get over urban applications and rezoning and all those things, the chief bottleneck is around. Well, we just don't have enough people to build all those affordable houses that we need. That's actually to me and I was traveling with this with another colleague that presents an interesting opportunity for, like you said, the ones that might be working for themselves or for a company who is typically a sub trade to especially trade that is always working on those luxury condos or otherwise and goes day to day, go work, boat at work and go oh, I wish I, I wish I could afford this. Uh, you know marble, uh, slab, uh, whatever, um, you know what.
Speaker 2:There's an opportunity for them now to there's a big gap and a big vacuum where those specialty trades are needed to go do a little more purposeful work around affordable housing projects. There's lots of them coming online, lots of opportunity, and there's actually, if you really need to go there, there's programs where you could be building your own house. You put all your you know. So your effort, your work, your craftsmanship goes towards something that you get to live in, own, all pre-financed for a little bit, and then move on to something else. So it was kind of interesting If you were one of those people, especially in a specialty trade situation where you go to work every day and you're thinking you're working for the haves and you want to do something a little more purposeful. There's opportunity to do that, definitely around the affordable housing area.
Speaker 1:That sounds crazy. You'd end up with a community of pretty capable people.
Speaker 2:I foresee the utopia of just everybody working together fixing each other's things. Everybody you need to own and operate a house or car, everything are all in one community and they're just. You know, it's just. They're just thriving while everyone else is lining up.
Speaker 1:So, but that would be interesting though, and then they would move on to the next community, because, you know, people can't just stay in one place. No, that's just. I mean, humans were not built that way. That's kind of interesting. So I mean, is this a program that you've heard of? That's happening.
Speaker 2:There are a few and unfortunately none of the names are coming to mind right now, but there are a few programs. I know, you know, the province of Alberta has a scant amount of money going towards these types of initiatives and a couple of innovative developers are going down that road going, hey, we've got, we want to help, we want to, you know, build these houses. We don't. There's nobody to build them. Let's get the tenants to be the, you know, the ones that build them. Um, so it's, there's an interesting play around that. Um so I know, know a couple of developers over in Alberta here that are that's their essentially their fundamental, uh, one of the pillars of their business strategies.
Speaker 1:Wow, Essentially, they're fundamental, one of the pillars of their business strategies. Wow, so you get paid to build your own property? Pretty much, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think having a structure is like it's almost you're given a loan, an entry-free loan, that you're working, you're getting paid, paid and you get to live and operate and be a tenant there, while they and then at some point it'll be sold to somebody. So a little more, a little more to it than that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds uh yeah there's always uh, there's that.
Speaker 1:What's the catch or thing is it's what I've discovered over the years is nothing's free ever. You pay somewhere, somehow there's a payment to be paid. But you know innovative financing, you know project setups like that are pretty cool. I always think that the government should be setting in. If they really want the amount of homes that we need to be building, the government could do so many things. I mean they waste so much money. Be setting in. If they really want the amount of homes that we need to be building, the government could do so many things. I mean they waste so much money on stupid things that they could be doing things with tax breaks for construction people to they get higher. You know X amount of dollars or you know appropriated tax-free to be able to put down on a place. If you're going to be putting in into a tax-free account for a down payment, you don't get taxed on it. There's so many different things that they could be doing.
Speaker 1:But let's just go back to the psychology around all this stuff, because these we're getting into mechanics, which is part of the psychology, I guess, because it's the result of that stuff. But what about? I talk about corporate self-esteem. Often you know whether or not a company has this feeling. Uh, that they you said it earlier in in this conversation is that a company is like a person. You know it's its own entity, has to do, it has its own behavior, et cetera. Do you think that that person, the company itself, has an esteem around it, a self-confidence, a level of security that it can operate out there in the world and be something to contend with?
Speaker 2:to contend with. Well, I think, obviously, when we talk about the company as a person and again that works in a vacuum on paper, but a person is being pulled by strings by people, but other people but I'd go look at it this other way Maybe what their self-esteem is typically, what you feel, uh, like, what is the definition? It was like the you know how you feel on the inside. You know your, your kind of, uh, internalized, external, um, presentation or feeling of yourself. Okay, um, so when you look at a company and now just, maybe this, how I would turn this over to that is, a company's purpose is, you know, if you're a for-profit company, company's purpose is to sell to a customer.
Speaker 2:So I think the esteem of a company is likely based on the perception of you know what does your customers think of you? Likely based on the perception of of. You know what does your customers think of you, and you know that's maybe that you know, just think of yourself. Well, maybe not you, james, you're probably a cool, cool kid back in the day in the on the playground. But if you're on the playground and you know you, you're constantly being told that you are, you know, a great, great person, great company or a you know bad person, bad company, you company that's definitely going to impact your personal culture, your corporate culture. There's lots of complexities around that. If you're a company, your company's esteem, I think, is really in relationship to how your customers perceive you, and then maybe even how your employees perceive you as well.
Speaker 1:I don't know what you think about that, but I think that makes perfect sense, um, but I think it's, it's an, it's the net feeling of everyone together that they get cultivated, because, because if one person thinks that the company they work for is great and the next person and the desk over something, this place sucks, you basically got. If one person thinks 10, the other one thinks zero. We're at five right now. Um, so, in terms of the relation to money, it's uh, you've heard this before. It's like, yeah, great company, they pay well. You've heard this before. It's like, yeah, great company, they pay well. You've heard that Expensive reputation to have, but you do want that. You also don't want there to be. They overpay, like. I think that's what matters to people these days is having compensation, that is, they feel they're at least at parity for what they could get somewhere else. That's A and then B. The company is not cheap when it comes to doing things you know, cultural things that you know, or things that contribute to meaning at work. So establishing relationships allowing to do social things, so that relationships can can be based on something other than you know how you operate at work. Like you see somebody I mean cymax, you know.
Speaker 1:We did a, a basketball thing the other day and watching some people show off a little bit, which is cool because they're like, okay, I'm going to show that I can play basketball. And to other people like, well, I had no idea that person was like that, it's a cool opportunity, you know. But you know, what did we? Did we have to leave the office earlier to do that? Yes, we did. Did we have to go and get drinks and bring in a little picnic situation? Yes, we have to do that. And as a company, you have to support those things and do those things. And that's where you can either be chintzy or not.
Speaker 1:You know, I always try and do things that are, for instance, are, you know, not bringing in things like hey's subway for everyone today? It's not, and it's not. You know, there's no domino's pizza. This is like I'm gonna get pizza. That's from, you know, proper air forno oven that people are gonna wow. The pizza we always have at sitemax is good pizza, because you want people to have a good experience. Those little things of care is the value that you have around things. For instance, the hoodies we get. They're nice quality, all that kind of stuff. You'll see companies that will go and buy Arcteryx jackets and just have their company name put on it. It's a $1,200 jacket, company name put on it. You know it's a thousand twelve hundred dollar jacket. But the perk there is is that you know we care about our people, we do these things and that in turn, I think uh contributes to the corporate self-esteem.
Speaker 2:Is how we do things around here yeah, and I I don't disagree with you. Um, and you know I think I believe all those things are necessary. Um, you know, I'm probably in the camp where I a motivator for me isn't like lunches and things like that, but uh, I know lots of people, it's, you know it just it shows that the company's caring about them. You, you guys, have done a good job of you know, obviously, creating an atmosphere of safe space for your folks. You know they're out playing basketball and showing off doing stuff. They, you know you've, you've done the right things, I think, and internally in the culture, to do that, and you know your, your people, and how to motivate them to do that.
Speaker 1:When I look at um, I don't know how safe it was. I got fouled.
Speaker 2:If you don't yeah, it was it safe. Safe, uh, maybe emotionally or whatever. I guess we say but um you know. But uh, and maybe, at the end of the day, the budget you spend on hoodies, sandwiches, drinks, basketball courts, yeah, maybe it's uh in the thousand. Maybe let's call it the under 10 000. For sure, let's call it that, okay.
Speaker 2:So you know for sure, let's call it that, okay, so you know it's a minimal, minimal cost for you know, for a business I'd say, you know, let's call it an established business. Um, so that's something I can, you know, easily, easily done, uh. But when we look at some other things, I think that money gets spent on, uh. When we look at the, uh, you know, you know the brand new year of truck that comes out every year that rolls up to your you know job site, right, you know the. You know retreats to places where you need to fly for five hours and take two boats, things like that. Yeah, you know. Those are things where I quickly add up and go.
Speaker 2:You just declined this emerging technology company $4,000. But this is the behavior that I've seen and that $4,000 would have given the tools that your field operators needed to solve the problem that they've been talking to you about for the last five years, like that's. Those are the areas where I see, um, you know the corporate waste happening. Or you know, did that? You know, did the put, did that? You know, shiny new truck really demonstrate externally that your company is, you know, uh, well established?
Speaker 2:And, um, you know that that lawyer effect, right, but, uh, a real estate agent effect or whatever. I don't think that's that's what people buy or, um, you know, do work with construction companies. Um, I think that's just something that's been brought forward over the last last 30, 40 years of of how things were and, um, you know when we when again I could we sit down and go companies are turning away, um, you know, highly collaborative technology companies quite often and again their money's being spent elsewhere. That really drives no value towards what's really causing problems around workforce planning, rework, those types of things.
Speaker 1:Interesting. It costs them millions, yeah, but I think that there's and I could see where that's coming from. But I think that there's and I could see where that's coming from. So first of all, let's just say that there's a lot of companies go to do these fishing excursions Cost of fortune, Salmon fishing in. You know we're up something to the leadership.
Speaker 1:I don't do this, I don't do these huge things where I get something. But I do know the people that do that and it's part of their thing. It's part of their thing. It's part of their compensation that they go and do these things. It's an all-expense-paid thing. The company paid for it, the CEO, COO, whatever it is. This is part of their thing. They get to do this and there is a tightening and they bring some customers on, et cetera.
Speaker 1:There's a tightening of relationships and some of the reasons some of the people do that when it comes to the new F-150 every year or the GMC or whatever it is that is on the sub-trade side, that is their only flag they can fly. That is the how we show up kind of thing. So it can easily be justified there. Maybe the leasing programs support that kind of thing. Sign this thing that they're getting new trucks. I mean, everything's so interconnected to people getting things these days because taxes are so high that people are looking for other ways to get benefit. So that's why you see a lot of stuff. You're like, well, you just spent this here and you could have just spent that there and that would increase your productivity. By this they're like, yeah, but you know, kind of like the fishing trip, but but the reason is is because this is such an emotional attachment to the other stuff and they might not believe the other thing.
Speaker 2:Well, and that I think that's where the, the change management aspect of this whole thing comes in. You're used to getting that perk of new truck every year, or you need to use that as your method of this is how we show up. You're afraid of changing that If I come to your door and say, hey, if you just didn't get that new truck this year or didn't go on that fishing trip this year, didn't get that new truck this year, or been to go on that fishing trip this year, and instead invested that into these three, these three products that um have a high likelihood of yielding you know, 10 X multipliers, so you can now go on two more trips, get another truck, pay your employees more, do some things like that. You know, on paper it all sounds good, but there's the fear of results. Is the is actually the number one, number one resistor to change right now because industry has been burnt for the last 20 years. Fear of results, fear of results. Okay, take me through that. So we'll say SiteMax is outside of this because you have a great, great product and the people that you serve love it a lot, but over the last 20 years. You know, love it a lot, but over the last 20 years, you know, 30 billion spent on developing construction products, technology products. So you know, remember we're talking about an industry who really fundamentally has not changed since World War II but in just in the last 20 years of changing, over 70% have you% have embraced some new technologies In just 20 years. Already a third of that group and the number is growing, but already a third of that group is reporting dissatisfaction with the results of the technology that they've procured over the last 20 years.
Speaker 2:And that dovet that's, you know that's dovetails into or has relations to other things that we talked about on this podcast and previous ones. But you know, when you've, when you've been spending that much money and the things that they've spent their money on have been the most expensive pieces of technology, you know, in the in the 50,000, a hundred thousand, in the $50,000, $100,000 plus range, typically if it's not yielding the returns that were sold to them, it was really sour taste in their mouth and they're just, you know, they kind of put the brakes up on anything and don't want to try anything else. They don't believe the results will happen anymore and that's typically what's. You know. When you get lots of other, you know excuses or barriers brought to, especially if you're trying to sell technology. You get lots of other excuses we don't have time, our people don't do it, things like that.
Speaker 2:But really when you boil it down now it's all about it ends up being the resistances around fear of results. They've been burned so much, or someone they know in another company has tried something. They've been burned so I don't want to try anything anymore. Um so the the you know the uh around the psychology of money. Now, especially if you are a technology company, emerging, emerging company, demonstrating the proof of being able to demonstrate proof of value simply and quickly and that resonates with, with, um, the job functions of the users and speaks to the metrics of the business, demonstrating proof of value is the fastest way to kind of break through that fear of results hurdle. When you get through that, that opens up the purse strings and things like that as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Opens up, the flip her strings and things like that as well. Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense. I mean, I have a, it's a non. You know, the fear results is also this paradigm, which is pre-buyer's remorse. So you're speaking about buyer's remorse is the yeah, we did this, we spent a lot of money, didn't get the results. So the fear of results this is a very similar thing. It's probably just labeled a different way. But the pre-buyer's remorse is the fear of feeling that again You're like, oh shit, why did I buy this again? And often the reason things don't work are people reasons. Absolutely Sometimes it is the technology. Maybe the technology sucked or, you know, I always see this on a lot of websites these ROI calculators, and some of them are real and some of them are just not real. Like, I'm sorry, I mean, they're just. You know, we had an anecdote of, you know, people doing payroll through Sitemax and somebody said it used to take them two hours. Now it takes them 15 minutes because of Sitemax.
Speaker 1:I'm like, okay, well there, but I can't say that on the website and I can only make that an anecdote. I can't make that ROI calculator for everyone because I don't know everyone's payroll system. I don't know what they're doing.
Speaker 1:And I think it old COVID kind of did this. It pushed people so quickly into technology because they couldn't touch anything anymore, everything had to be digital that people got in over the head and they didn't necessarily pick the right solution. And now they're still dealing with a hangover of that, because the rip and replace in construction, as you know, in technology is not easy because from a compliance point of view, you have to be using something. So if you got rid of your paper, you're going to go. What are you going to do? You're going to use your crappy digital solution you were using or you are using, and then now you're going to rip and replace and do something else. Now I'm going to do it twice. Someone has to do something twice in order to demo or trial a new one.
Speaker 1:Otherwise it's like a, you know, jump in a lake, in a dark lake, and, you know, hope for the best. So, yeah, I mean, there's there's kind of some interesting stuff around that. But well, this has been pretty cool. I love. I love the cool thing you know chatting about you. I think you know companies should chat with you a little bit more because you're very matter of fact. Every time I've met you, you're always talking about some statistics. You're very well read in this area and you know you're very serious. I like that. You're very, very serious and analytical about things. So, yeah, just tell everyone how they can get hold of you, etc. And yeah, your website and email, LinkedIn, all that stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely the website's, obviously just the landing page there, wwwconstructqadvisorycom, but definitely the best way to have this is all about meaningful conversations and, and you know, have talking, uh, so definitely, um, linkedin has been a great way to facilitate those conversations. So find me on LinkedIn, um, or else, uh, shoot me a note, uh S gray at construct IQ advisorycom and we can set up a time. And this is all about having chats and discovering opportunities, and it's interesting what can be done in just an hour conversation sometimes.
Speaker 1:Well, that's great. This was awesome. Lots of good content there. Thank you very much. Thanks, James.
Speaker 2:And I look forward to seeing you. I'll be out in Vancouver for the ICBA Innovation Summit, so I'll likely see you out there. Okay, great, all right.
Speaker 1:Well. Thank you again for having me on. 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 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 Sitemax, 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.