You’re Flying Blind in Business (Here’s How to Fix It)

Would you jump on a plane if the pilot didn’t understand their cockpit dials? Randy Stanbury of 4 Level Coach shares how builders and remodelers can stop “flying blind” by mastering financial literacy, building systems, and creating a clear vision. Learn the steps to free yourself from day-to-day operations while scaling profitably.

https://4levelcoach.com

Show Notes:

Opening Analogy & Randy’s Background (0:00)
Breaking Down the Four Level Success System (2:53)
Why Builders Struggle to Trust and Let Go (6:48)
Profit Before Growth, Systems Before People (9:38)
Using Metrics to Drive Profitability (16:39)
Incremental Goals and Building Momentum (24:13)
Software Adoption Challenges and Team Buy-In (30:13)
Integration Support and Maximizing ROI (36:16)
AI, Technology, and the Future of Building (43:37)
Closing Advice and How to Connect with Randy (48:09)

Find Our Hosts:
Reece Barnes
Matt Calvano

Podcast Produced By:
Motif Media

Transcript

0:00

You would not jump on a plane if the pilot did not understand his or her dials in their cockpit, right? Totally, yet we're flying the plane of our businesses every day not understanding those dials. Mics are hot. Randy mics are hot. Let's get at it. Let's get at it. Baby. Good to see you, dude. Thanks for jumping on. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, good to be on. I look forward to this, yeah, yeah. I love it. I always like to do a little intro here, and I think specifically it's important for what you're doing over at four level. Go ahead and give the listeners a little background on yourself, what four level is all about, and we'll use that to kick off the combo. Yeah, little bit about myself. I mean, I what's interesting. I started my first business in 95 so it goes back a few years now, or 30 years into this thing. Now, I was one years old. You were one years old, I had to agree. Yeah, that's a long time. Man, yeah. Okay, jabs over, jabs over. Go ahead. Well, you know what's interesting about it is, back in the day, it took me about three years to know enough to know I didn't know nearly enough. And you know, I started to get some help. Started working with a business coach. Took me nine years to get myself removed from my core business. That business ran and operated without me for the next 10 years. I was paid extremely well during that time. And then I went and started another business, and another business after that. And I continued to do the same thing that I figured out during that you know, that time frame from 98 to 2007 2017 I sold that first core business. And what I realized when I sold it is it's extremely rare what I pulled off to be removed from the business for 10 years. Well, it ran and operated without me, and I was able to go start another business and another one. And so the the reason I bring that up is four level coach has been built from what I pulled off, what I figured out, and what we share today is how to do exactly that for builders and remodelers. And you know, it's, it's what I think we all want. We all want ultimate freedom of time and money follow a coach is a success system that has been built from what I did in my businesses along the way, and so our team has been built under this four level Success System to share what we do with builders and remodelers that really are highly ambitious, self driven action taking entrepreneurs want more for themselves, their families, their life and their business, right? And if they want that, then we have the system, the steps to do it. And we love transforming life. So that's kind of why we exist and why we're here. Dude, I love it, and I so, you know, I have not done what you've done, but when I was at builder trend, I built their onsite consulting service with a couple of others. And the standardizing of business processes to the point of getting a business owner or just even partners individuals to remove themselves from the business is crucial. And to your point of like, what you were able to do in a nine year period ultimately remove yourself from the business and build other businesses is extremely rare. What is it like? What is the key component to getting that done? Oh, man. What the one thing or a theme? Yeah, theme, right? No, it's very cool. I like where that, you know that conversation can go, right? And the truth is, you know that nine year, what I figured out nine years, we can help people do now. And really a three year, we have a kind of a three year Success System. It does take, hey, others will take five six years. Some will take two years, right? But you know, you can do it in three to four years for sure. And what is it? So? What is it really? You know, in a nutshell, we wrote the book The 10 Reasons builders remodelers fail to grow, right? So love it that 10 reasons why, the 10 Reasons Why builders for modelers fail to grow. It's on Amazon. You can grab it, Google my name, whatever, right? But the point is, is, what's really clear to me is that unless we get those 10 Reasons dealt with, and we don't, if we can solve those, then we can package this and. Get to that level, right? That's possible. Now, lots of guys are going to say, you know, and listening to this, well, I don't want to remove myself from the business that. And that's not the intention of this. The intention is that you have a business that can run and operate without you. You don't have to. It's nice to have a choice in what we do, right? My thing was, like, I didn't, I didn't want to go lie on a beach, right? That wasn't my intention. I wanted to get freed up because I had other desires, passions, you know, to go and that I needed to get focused on, because that's what drives me. I want to be challenged by, you know, what I can build next sort of thing, right? So, what is it so? The 10 Reasons, if we don't have a clear vision, we're not going to get there, right? If we don't know where we're going, we can drive around in circles, we'll never get there, right? It starts with vision, to me, always. The other real key thing is we need some financial literacy, right? We have to understand our numbers, we have to be pricing projects, our jobs profitably, or else we'll never be able to build the teams around us or hire the A players that we need. So it's a combination of knowing the financial side of our business, having business savvy, and getting ourselves off of what we call it transitioning you from being in a contractor to an entrepreneurial leader, right? Love it so business savvy, financial literacy, we need to be able to get our time right. We refer to it as time mastery. If, if, if I'm running in circles and I'm not leveraging my time properly, I will never get there, right? I have to get really, really dialed in on, how do I leverage my time? And then, on top of that, how do I delegate? How do I trust and let go? Right? Big, big challenge for a lot of this industry is being able to trust and let go, right? That's a key component. Why do you think that is, I don't mean to derail because it's great, but it's so true. It's like, even if you had the chance and the operation, the business that was running itself, could you even let go? And I would say most builders struggle with that, like you just said, why is that? Do you think it's I think because we believe, first off, that there's nobody else that can do it as good as we can. I mean, I had a conversation with a gentleman this morning about that, right? So if I believe in my mindset that no one can do it as good as I can, how do I trust someone else to do it? How do I trust and then let that go for somebody else to do it? Because, you know, I'm the only one that can do this right now, the fact of the matter is that if you're able to trust and let go, Well, there's a number of components that we need to be able to trust and let go. First of all, we need a team of eight players. If we have C players, yeah, that's why I can't trust and let go, because I got a C player that I have attempted this with before, and it went for a shit, and therefore I'm no longer wanting to try that again. And I'm like, no, this doesn't work. And I'm out it's not only reasonable, it's probably a good idea to not trust and let go in that circumstance, correct, right? Okay, yeah. So it makes if I get the right player in place, that's great. The other thing is, if I haven't built the system and trained someone properly, they're not doing it the way I want it done, therefore I'm looking at them pissed off. But really, I should look in the mirror and say, Well, damn, I didn't give them, I didn't give them the tools to be successful. Yeah, yeah, right, totally. So, so if I've tried it in the past and it didn't work, then the past is dictating my future, and we've got to get rid of that too, because we can't. Just because something didn't work before doesn't mean it won't work again. It just means we have to change what we did. Yeah, totally. Do you think part of that's because there's so much risk in not only just like starting and running a business, but so much risk and construction that that letting the past dictate the future, or that close mindedness that I tried this before and it doesn't work, therefore It'll never work, mentality seeps in? Well, sure. I mean, I it's much safer if I just do it myself, because I know and I can trust myself, so I'll just do it. But right? The more that I do that, the more I'm stuck on the hamster wheel. Yes, right? So I hit a ceiling. I'm stuck on the hamster wheel. And the truth is, when I'm that busy, I don't have time to build the system or to get the training in place. So we always say, look, there's three things we need. One is profit before growth. I think far too many try to grow and they don't know their numbers are not profitable yet. We're trying to grow something that's not really making money. We hope that we're going. To make money one day once we get bigger, right? And that is, you know, just means to disaster. So we've got to get pricing and profitability right before we grow. Second thing is, we need to get the systems before people right. But we don't have time to get the systems. And I mean systems, the training, the structure around somebody being successful. So I throw people at my problem, and it creates more chaos, frustration and overwhelm, because I did set them up to be successful. Therefore I get this stuff because they're not doing the things I want done. And then I go, well, this doesn't work totally right. So that happens. And then the third thing is, we need to get the how before the what. As builders or modelers, we're focused on the what, it's what we know it's the what I refer to as the it's the job, it's the job site, it's the build, it's the construction, it's what I'm comfortable with. So I focus on the what, but the how is what people will pay more for? The how is the client experience? The how is the system, the, how is everything else that makes the what go to another level? Totally makes sense. It totally does so. Profit before growth, systems before people, systems before people. And then how, before the what? Now, if you get those things right in the right order, then you have a completely transformed business and ability to grow and scale. And our job is to help people piece that together, understand what that is, and then take the right steps in the right order. And when you say, you know, how do you get yourself removed from your business one day to have a scalable, sellable business? It's it's all of those things done extremely well, and then making sure we have a marketing machine that's feeding us consistent, predictable leads. It's making sure that we have a sales system that's again predictable and consistent that we can remove ourselves, train somebody else to do this actually better than you can sell, which is hard for us to imagine, because nobody else can sell like we can. Typically Right, right? But when, when you get the parts and the machines all working and they're dialed in, those are solving the 10 Reasons, you know. And another big one that you guys focus on is the metrics, right? So another one is, I need to know that the KPIs my business, I need to be on top of my numbers. I need to understand the needle movers in my business so that I can track look. I cannot improve what I don't measure, I don't track. So what I measuring gets tracked, gets improved. So all of this stuff is extremely hard because at the end of the day, we don't have the bandwidth and time to focus on doing it. So all of this goes back to my own personal time management and how I leverage that totally. I know that was beautiful Randy, and I say that I literally just had a conversation with Chloe brown about this, and it's, honestly, it's been coming up, like, very commonly on this podcast, is like, if you don't know your margin, I frame it this way, like, if you don't know if you're making money on what you're scaling, why are you scaling it right? And that's like knowing your profit before your growth. It's like it was just absolutely plagued the US and builders in the last five years, really, right from covid, like covid immediately, like it was super, super rough, volatile, volatile commodity markets. You know, you got your lumbers, your supply chains, off the off the roof, you can't scale for a lot of people got burnt on that, but there were a hell of a lot of builders that caught a lot of opportunity with inventory shortages. People at home, remodeling homes, building homes right with interest rates as low as they were, there was a huge opportunity for people to go out and double the size of their business, and they'd turn around after a 1218, month build cycle of doubling their business, looking at their profit margin or what they actually netted, and they're like, I didn't make any more money doubling my top line than I did where I was originally at. Like, I'm gonna go back and like, do it, yeah, it's because they didn't know what they were scaling, right? They didn't know their profit before their growth, right? It needs it's like, you wouldn't imagine Apple going out and creating billions of iPhones if they didn't know, to the decimal of a penny what their margin was going to be on that unit, right? Like, that's, of course, like an obnoxious reason, but I think, like, if metaphor that I think we all understand, get and understand it, that that's simplistic, right? And the challenge in this business, as you said these are long sales cycles, long build cycles, you know, chatting with a client this morning. I mean, it takes, it takes a year to two years to turn around bad pricing. If we're a custom builder, because we've got projects that we have on the go that might not be priced well, right? We have priced. Jobs recently that haven't started yet, that are going to start soon, that are a year, 18 month projects that were tied into already. And then, if we start changing our pricing today, it takes, you know, the sales cycle to close and then to get that project started, and the new pricing starts kicking in when the old stuff ends. So it's like a year to two year process to start feeling the effects of new, improved, higher level pricing that will turn the business around. Right totally. I like, just immediately go to like, I just see bloat in that even, like, in a like, even the more day to day operational standpoint, meaning, like, it's really like, these, these time horizons that it takes for these problems to surface, and then have the information you need to act on them to, like, start weeding it out. To your point. Like, it could be a year, like I could be bidding a project, and I could have three projects going right now, and I'm bidding stuff on the project that I haven't quite crossed right now with my current project, or I just did and I didn't take that into consideration. Well, I just got a bid signed on that right now. I'm locked into those numbers to where, if I would have been seeing my data in real time, I probably could have circumnavigated that poor pricing and got ahead of it, right? That's what I mean, like, and like, and I was like, I'm biased towards adaptive on that because, like, that's the entire intention of using AI to automate bookkeeping and construction accounting, is that you can have the immediacy in your data, because you're not building a project, finished with a project, and then decide to bid another one. You're constantly bidding, constantly building, constantly moving this pipeline. What are you seeing builders do to shorten that timeline, or that feedback loop to understanding their numbers, to prevent that type of situation. Well, getting a bad product, having pricing, have to work itself out. I mean, your your comment about being biased on adaptive, I think is, you know whether you're biased on adaptive or you're not. Adaptive is quite simply an answer to that, right, like, right, yes, I get the your bias to it, but adaptive is the answer to that. That is what needs to be done. The other, of course, is if we are using like you mentioned, builder trend, earlier, job. Trend, resume, build, builder, whatever the software is that we are using to, you know, grow, scale our business. I think far too often I just see it being underutilized, right? It's, it's always, it's 30% typically we see anywhere from, I'm going to say 25 to 30. 35% that we are using the capabilities of it. And so if we want to do this, we need to be using a much bigger percentage of the software in the system the way it was designed to be used. Again, I go back to look, and it's no fault of the builder out there. The challenge is there's a hundreds of moving parts every day. We're being pulled in a million different directions. The challenge is we're trying to do more of it ourselves and trying to keep up with it because we feel like we can't afford the help that we need to do this, or we're not even sure what to necessarily do with that help if I were to get freed up, right? So it's, it's a really, it's a real big challenge. And I'll go back to the fact of you know our 10 Reasons, and that business savviness, the financial literacy and business savvy, those two things are the key to all of it, you know, because as soon as you have business savviness and again, it's no fault of the builder, because typically a builder becomes a builder or remodeler because they were skilled, right? Skilled, great hands, great skill, so knowledgeable on site, and that's where my comfortability is. But the trouble is, if that's how I lead and grow my business, I'm going to run into challenges, because I'm not, I'm not thinking of the business savviness stuff or the financial literacy required to make decisions in this business, to decide that, to the side that it's I need adaptive, and adaptive, the return on my investment with adaptive is like, it's such a no brainer that I should be doing that I just I might not be coming from the place of an entrepreneurial mindset, right? You might not understand that that's that's the potential, or that kind of goes back to, like, needing the clear vision, right? It's like you might not even understand that that's what you need. But it's no slight to the builder, because it's like, that's not necessarily their wheelhouse, or they haven't spent the time or felt the pain to move into that world. Of thinking is what I typically see. Yeah, well, and let's, let's touch on vision for a moment. I think most of us, well, this is a simple human nature. Our vision to think beyond what we've currently done is extremely difficult. So to go with a a bigger vision than what we think is possible based on where we've been and where we are today, you know? So the past is dictating our ability to think of a vision greater than where we are, right? So if you put that into context, it's like, look, it's taken me 10 years to get to here, and I'm doing 2 million in sales, 2 million, right? And I always ask the question, where do you want to be in the next, you know, three to five years? And the answer is, typically, hey, I'd like to get to, you know, maybe double that. Maybe I can get to 4 million. But it's typically like, maybe I'll do another million dollars in the next three years, right? Really? Interesting. And the truth is, it's like, you know, it might have taken you 10 years to get to here, but when we move forward, when you put the four level success system into play, you start dealing with these 10 Reasons. You start exponentially multiplying what's possible, right? It's no longer, you know, two, you know, 10 years to get to two. It's, you know, we've done this several times, and at the end of the day, it's possible to get to 10 million in the next three to five, but it's so beyond our imagination of thinking that we end up with this really small vision. Now, a small vision, all I have to do is just keep showing up the way I've already showed up. Nothing really has to change in order to get to that incremental vision. So my vision isn't big enough to actually move the needle and make the changes that I need to make totally right? If I have a bigger vision, then I have to move the needle today if I'm ever going to get there. So I've got to get more serious about the actions that I take. The actions are driven by our vision. I'll take no freaking action totally. Yeah. I won't invest in adapt, adaptive. I'm not going to put the time and money into that, because I don't really need to to get to my vision. My vision is small enough that I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. Vision is, do you think there's anything real scalability? Do you think there's anything wrong with that? Anything wrong with what, with with not necessarily, like, not having, like, a big enough vision? Well, it there's not a big enough vision. Or if, if you want more than what you currently have, yes, there's something drastically wrong with that, because you will all always only have what you already have if you don't have a big enough vision. Yeah. So there's nothing wrong with it, if what you have and what you where you're at is what you want, right? If you're cool with your life and your lifestyle and the time that you spend in that business and the frustration most look most are frustrated about their their their time and their lifestyle, and you know, the 60 plus hours a week that they work. So if I want that to change, yes, that's a problem. If I'm okay with that, then, no, that's fine. Totally, totally. I always think about this. I think, like, from a vision standpoint, do you think that vision should be as like, simple and pointed as possible, as it should like. And I'm thinking about this tactically for the listener, right? Because like this is like, this makes a ton of sense. Like, if you don't have the vision, you're not going to be motivated, and you're not going to have the clarity to make like action, to take action. But I think a lot of people, they kind of get right action, the right action, and that's what I'm saying. This is the difference, though, too. I want to make sure that that's clear, right? Because this industry takes more action and works harder. Like, it's not about more action, it's the right action. And I know you, you and I are on page. I just want to make sure for the listener that makes sense. Like, this is the hardest working industry on the planet. It's not about action. Just clear, clear that up. Yeah, it's about the right action. And that's where I think, like going back even like the simplicity of the vision, right? Is like having a clear, simple vision of, I'm tired of working the 60 hour weeks in my business, I want to scale back into 40 or 20. Do you see that as being like, reasonable? Maybe, like, baby steps into a bigger vision? Or do you think that people should be saying, like, I want to be $10 million a year at a 30% net on a remodeling business, and I want to be completely removed and just do this like big package deal vision? What do you suggest when people are struggling with this great question? I think it has to be done in incremental steps, because we cannot wrap our mind around it. Our job is to help people wrap their mind around it. And how this typically works is one. We need courage. We need the courage to think bigger than we are already. And it takes real courage, because I've gotta, if I, if I'm true to that, I've gotta do things different. That is going to make me extremely uncomfortable, right? So I gotta have the courage to have a vision that goes beyond my current capabilities, right? If I have that vision, I have to make commitment now to that vision. So if I can go beyond and, I mean, we don't have to go to 10 million. Let's go a little further than our, our doubling of size. Let's go to triple. Let's say, call it 5 million from two, and say I can do five and three. And this is what I'm going to do. I'm also going to work not 60 hours. I'm going to get down to, you know, 30, you know, maybe I'll cut that in half. Maybe, could I get to 30? And, believe me, all of it's 100% possible, but our mind has to be able to think that. But we have to have to have enough courage to, you know, Believe in it and think it and go after it. We got to make commitment to it. Now, we don't have the capability, and nor does our team, and that's the beautiful part. You don't have to, you've got to be able to make commitment to the vision, and then your team, then every action we take, everything that we're moving towards, every needle mover in the business, when I'm talking not just action, but needle moving action actually builds ourself and our team's capability. That then gives us more confidence to believe in a bigger vision again. So it's incremental steps towards a bigger and bigger vision, but we got to go beyond what starts with courage. We got to make commitment. We got to get our confidence based on our new capabilities. Yeah, and then that will fuel more courage. Yes, it'll almost like, just kind of like, create an environment of the process that you had just outlined, right? It's like, it's like, it's like, once you, once you, it's like, it's just momentum, right? It's like an adaptive even, like, it's like, we have a ton of momentum right now as an organization, internally, right? Sales pipeline exploding, product humming, like engineers ripping like, you can feel it in the organization. Isn't even a remote environment, right? Right point being is, like, that's because, like, the vision was clear, like leadership was committed to it. We started to drive and had the courage to go after what it was going to take to get there, and now we've accomplished it. And you increase capability along the way, you did not have the capability to do what the vision was in the first place, but you're increasing capability now, right? Totally. And you're getting that momentum, which then kicks in confidence. And the fact, my guess is your team is more confident than it's ever been before. Incredibly, night and day, you look at this organization from 12 months ago, and it is a completely different organization. It's incredible. Bingo. There's the you just hit the nail on the head of what happens. So when you join four level coach, and you join our ecosystem and our success system of everything we just talked about to this is the stuff that has to shift. You make this bigger step, you make the commitment, you increase capability, you get more confidence, you increase his courage. I can then think bigger, and I then the engine turns. We call it the success wheel. When this success wheel, this fly wheel, is starting to take action, like you're seeing with adaptive what you just explained is exactly how it works. Builder, modeler, world. When they get that this is when you can go from 2 million to 10, so much faster you ever believe possible, because your world is completely transformed. You said your business does not look like it didn't feel like it the confidence 12 months, yeah, right, totally quarter after quarter, year after year, and the momentum that that kicks in three years from now, you're, you're off the charts, totally, 100% 100% and I think that that is, like, an important piece. And then I think, like, even, like, bring it back into, like, the tactical bit, you know, I, for whatever reason, like this is resonating with me. I hope I'm not just like, ripping the E break on this you can, we can jump back if we need to, no but go ahead. But I think, like, part of what prevents this momentum from happening is the day to day, right? Because it's like, one thing to listen to a podcast, a couple of guys that have seen it, that have executed on it, right? And like, of course, we can get excited. And like, Yes, this is what it is. But then for the guy that's in the guy that's in the truck that's driving the job site, that's working 60 hours a week, getting his ass kicked by all the day to day stuff that's happening is like, I think part of it, from a solution standpoint, is going back to your comment of the 25 to 30% of these products that get used comment, and I have been saying for like, years at builder trend even, probably. It's like Job tread. People bark about price at Procore, right? I say all these companies have been priced so low comparative to the value that they could potentially bring. Like, that is my God's honest truth. Like, if you're actually using job tread, the way that job tread can be used, if you're actually using builder trend or adaptive or whatever, to the fullest, like those, those upfront costs are truly like pennies compared to what they do. But I saw it at builder trend, 25, 30% usage, and you sit here and you scratch your head like, why are people not motivated more to start leveraging these systems and processes capturing data on their businesses, to actually start getting out of this momentum. Okay, so what do you think the reason is like? And I've got my belief around it, and I'm curious of yours, so I think that, like, five years ago, I would have answered this of like, you've got a market that's, like, primarily resistant to tech five? Yeah, I was probably close about 10 years ago, like, right when I started at builder trend. And like, mind you, I was like, 300 around their employee. They've got 800 employees now they have, like, maybe like 10,000 customers. I think now they're like 25,000 just to like, kind of give you a perspective. And like, builder trend was, like, this was before job tread. This is before all that well, I mean, you'd call builders, and they'd be like, I'm not running software, right? There was like that resistant to software. But now, as I like, I start to see like the number of competitors, the resios, the build tools, the build books, the builders, the builder pads, the whatever, insert project management software, dime a dozen, as it always comes down to like user interface and ability to adopt. And I think that now you've got an industry of builders that are comfortable and familiar and have been sold and bought and shifted and changed software, but it's so challenging for them to get their business to adopt it that it prevents them from ever fully ingraining it. And the people that do adopt it really well, totally bought in, use every feature as much as they can. They see a ton of value out of it. And they're like, this is totally invaluable, right? But that's my answer is, I think, like, I think it's the products that are available are extremely difficult to adopt from a functionality and a process and a piecing together standpoint, and it's easy to lose sight of it, and it's probably because there aren't sound business processes in place before, so they're biting off so much at the beginning of the front end of these processes of I've got this really cool piece of software now that is basically providing a framework for me to execute workflows in but I don't have those workflows today in place. That's my take you to me 100,000% nail on the head. And this is exactly why at four level, when I'm looking at how we help people become as successful as possible to get to the absolute pinnacle, and peak, which is a level four business in our world, that sellable business that removes yourself from day to day. The thing is, peak, it's flowing, it's profitable. It's, you know, it's a well oiled machine, right? So, simply put, in order to get there, systems and software is a critical key component. It's one of the 10 Reasons systems and software, without it, you will get to a certain point, but you will not get beyond that, right? So what we realized is there was a massive gap in how much people are using their software and how well they use it, and then the adoption, you said, adoption of their team, right? So we created four level integrators, so we are integrating these project management software solutions into businesses that once that happens, it's a whole new world, right? But it's completely built out. It's a done for you type system, because they don't have time to build it. They don't tie one. We're also not like if you ask me to build it, it ain't happening. That's not my that's not my expertise. That's not, but I, but if I, you know, if I'm on job site, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a builder mindset to start with. I'm trying to be an entrepreneurial mindset. I'm trying to shift from that right transition from contractor to entrepreneur, right, and now you want me to become a software expert as well, and set that I just that's completely ridiculous. I also don't think if, unless you're a marketing expert, you should be focused on your marketing. So, you know, we need to get the help we need, and then we need to get our teams to adopt it. The challenge with that, and in large part, is the training, right? So you know now we've got to be trained and our team's got to be held accountable. Right? So, you know, we believe it in a role called the system CIA. The CIA is creator, implementer and accountability. It's what it stands for. But we need to do the same thing with our software. It's the, you know, creating the the software to be leveraged and used the way it should be following. And I don't believe in just standardized templates that, you know, we can get anywhere because those workflows, they're not That's not how you run your business, it's not how you think, and it'll get you, you know, maybe halfway home, and then you're going to be pissed off, because it's, it's, it doesn't work for you, the way you think and how you operate, right? So we have to customize our workflows, and it's been a game changer our whole integration side. And, I mean, it's like, it is so busy too, and they're just going full tilt, doing this constantly for, you know, clients. It's, it's, yeah, but it's also, I love what you said, right? Neil, is there 510, years ago, this wasn't a big as big a deal. Everyone pretty get pretty well gets today that this is a critical component, and it needs and and we just got to take it over the edge. We got to go further with it, totally, totally and I think, you know, when it comes to, like the integrator side, like that was a lot of what we were doing at builder trend with the on site consulting service. It was like me Daniel Martinez, who's actually adaptive now on our customer success side, and then Brett Jones. He's still at He's still at builder trend, but we would do like 60 consultations a year. Is what we would call him. It was like a 60 day service. You would like do pre work. You would go out for two days. You would sit down with them, have them implement, I don't implement, identify SOPs, head back 60 days of rollout, building workflow charts and like, how people actually execute, move through the business, and it would still be like a tough adoption. Yeah, tough adoption. Do you gotta work? Oh, yeah, that's you've gotta. We have to work with them and their teams after the adoption, or it typically will fall off the table and again, not use it as well as they, you know, they could, you know, they'll, they'll go way further, but they're still not taking getting the full value. Yeah, right, that you know that that that tool, you know, we need to look at our software as one of the most important tools in our toolbox. I mean, we've got a lot of important tools, but that's, there's not one that's much more important than that, yeah, well, and I think, like, that's like, I, to me, it seems like a goofy cliche, but it's so accurate. Is like, the tool in the toolbox. And I think it's goofy because, like, we sell the contractors, right? And we work with contractors, and they're kind of like, okay, yeah, software. But it's like, seriously, if you're, if you're, are you gonna try and drive screws with a hammer? Like, the answer is like, obnoxiously, no, right? Like, that is totally ridiculous. And it's like the guys that you're talking about, like in the field, who are like tradesmen, craftsmen, decades of experience, like, that's where they go, and then they get the leap of faith to start their own business as like, if you're not viewing establishing process, if you're not viewing applying and adopting software, if you're not viewing that as any more important than am I using a Phillips head screwdriver on a Phillips screw? Or, am I using, what is it? Is a torque? Or what's the weird, whatever? Right? A wrong screwdriver on the screw? Right? I'm not a contractor. Point being is, like, that would be ridiculous in any other component of your world. But when it comes to software, like it gets devalued on and then that's where I say, like, in terms of, I'm super bullish and excited about, like, the innovation and the disruption and the moves that products are making, because I think there's a huge opportunity for project management solution to become more compelling. Honestly, like, I think, I think right now it's I struggle with this, and actually I want your take on this. I actually think I have someone. I talked to someone this morning. I need to get an answer back to him. I'm connecting with another builder. But he was like, I talked to builder trend. I talked to resio. I've talked to Job trap. Like, literally, he's talking about project management tools. He's pretty stoked about adaptive, but he's like, how does all of it play together? And like, how should I go about shopping and choosing and designing project management software, I always come at a loss, not necessarily a loss, but it's like, it's a nuanced answer, because they all, they're all very similar, but they all do certain things differently, right? And they're like some of them are known like CO construct and builder turn with a historic competition, right? It's like CO construct was known for having tighter financials. Builder turn was notorious for having better project management. Project management, right? That was an easy delineation for people to make. The comment on there was really two people to choose from, co construct, builder trend. Now you're off. Now when you're kind of flooded with all these different solutions, how do you go about that Randy? How would you handle that conversation? How do you choose job code over builder trend over Procore, over resi over whatever? Or, yeah. I mean, I think it's pretty straightforward today in terms of just, how do you do you enjoy the user interface? Is it really, at the end of the day, it's you have to find it easy enough for you to use, not so complex that you can't use it right, or don't want to use it, your team won't want to use it. What we find, as well as even, you know, builder trend will do certain things one way. And you know, somebody moves from builder trend to Job trend, and their whole world blows up because Job trend doesn't do things and think that, it's almost like I gotta rethink backwards as to the way I thought before, right? But at the end of the day, I don't give a shit what software you use, use the software to its fullest potential, and, and, and you will like, because they all are going to have their nuances, but they will all get the same outcome, right? So at the end of the day, you're going to get the same outcome, I think, as well, it depends what, what size are you? What sort of enterprise level are we looking at? Are we, you know, our commercial side? Of course, Procore is the Cadillac. And if you, you know, over in, in the small builder remodeler world, there's certainly, you know, the job treads flying off the shelves and builder trends struggling because they're keeping price point up and right, you know. But the the larger custom builder, you know, is going to be the builder trend fan, right? So I to me again, I don't, I don't really. Doesn't matter which one you use, use it fully. Get dialed in. And you know, I would say the components that I think we also need to look at, though, is the support. Customer Support is so critical for them, right? Like we'll do full, full integrations of the software. So you need a lot less support if you you know work with four level on the integration side, because it's all going to be built out and done for you, and then we'll train you through it. But if you're not doing something like that with any with anyone, then you're going to need the customer support in a big, big way, right? So, you know, I think if you're choosing software, you you need to be looking at the customer support size and what's what side and what's available, and how deep and how far they go with you. Totally. I couldn't agree more. I mean, that was like, so when I started to build, I was on the BDR, like, cold calling, closing deals that type of side. And then when I was on the on site consulting that was more on the customer success side. It was a value added service, right? It was like the premium implementation integration. It was probably like a light version of what you guys do coupled with their customer success. And dude, we it was six to 18 months. Was like normal, normal for like, six, six months, if you have someone like, full on dedicated to doing an implementation rollout, sharper business, some type of a hierarchy or org chart with like responsibilities and process outlined, and something that you could, like, map and like, tie in, and then you could train people on 18 months for the guy That's like, I bought it for scheduling and to do's, and then I always wanted to get into this stuff, but I never had the time. So I couldn't agree more, like, the customer success side there, but that's why I also say, and I double back down on this, like, super optimistic about, like, the solutions that are out there and that are hopefully being dreamed up when it comes to project management. Because I think, like, today, like, just, I think a six to 18 month, two year, whatever it ends up being, implementation set up to time to value adoption is totally ridiculous with the technology that's available today. And you, like, the very first thing that you had mentioned when it came to, like, how do you approach this project management conversation is user interface is like, that should be like, just the standard at this point, because the way that like, artificial intelligence is moving and workflows are getting automated, and the technology that's available is like, is, is UI even going to be the selling point in the future, or is it going to be how, how artificial intelligence is taking and leveraging available data to execute workflows. So, yeah, yeah. I mean, we're just obviously scratching the surface of AI and what's possible. So, I mean, it's, it's, it's like, scary, exciting of what's possible and what's coming. And the truth is, if we're not jumping on to that today, man, we're missing opportunity in a big way. Like, you've got to be adapting, adopting fast, right? You know, you just, you do have to, yeah, I'm kind of over the, like, scared of AI phase. Obviously, I work for, like, an AI native. Of product, right? But I think, like, there was certainly, like, a component of that. You see some of the stuff that comes out, and you're like, oh shit, like, AI can make cold calls and sell stuff, right? It's like, that's pretty well, yeah. And it's like, no one's safe. But on the other hand, you look at it and it's like, the way that AI is getting traction is it's not going to go away. And I think the way that AI is being applied to reduce the tedious, mundane tasks that people typically didn't want to do is the exciting part, but, but here's what's beautiful about our industry, right? The industry of builders, remodelers, trade subs, right? Our sub. This is not, this is not an industry that's going to be disrupted, right? We will, we will be building homes. We'll be remodeling home. There's so much inventory that needs remodeling. We need a lot more homes being built, right? And so like, and, you know, of course, there, you know, there's 3d printing, and there's going to be some that, like, we're going to have all kinds of product shifts and technology inserts, but we still need human beings to build this industry 100% and I think, like, just like today, even Before AI, what was the differentiator between Finnish carpenters 20 years ago, right? Yeah, yeah. Who can do it better? Right? It was like, what human is a better finished carpenter who has the better eye for detail, who has the most precise cuts, who's thinking about the functionality of whatever they're getting ready to finish, right? It's always been that way. You're so far away from a robot or RPA from actually, and I know we're coming up on time here, I can let you jump in a minute. No, no, but, but it's we're so far away from like robots, automating this stuff again, it goes back to the tedious task. It's like, you see the, I think 3d printing is too early, but you see these big, like machines, and they're like, they pour concrete and they set rebar, and they're typically used on, like, big interstate jobs, right? It's like this big machine that, like, just moves and does it? It's like, how many people and how much skill does it take for humans to tie in rebar and pour concrete? Right? That seems like something that's reasonable for a robot to do, right? At a probably, like, more consistent output and a more quality like, that makes sense to do when it comes to our industry with residential and, like, actual, like, hands on contractors, is like, you're still the differentiator is the human, and there's so and that's the argument now, is like the trades, like, the trade pool is so low because there's not that many skilled people, it's like, we'll start training them like, well, and if you think of future here, right, like we're private if you look at where private equity money is going, the big capital money, it's going into this industry and the trades. And why is that? Because they see it as the long term future, the undisrupted business that is so beautiful for us in our world that it's just, you know, we need to build our machines out. And I mean our businesses as machines totally like, you know, we've got to think about it differently. And you know, if we leave, you know, your your listeners, with anything, I think, like, to me, biggest takeaways here, there's, there's two keys, become financial literate, like really, really understand the Dows in your cockpit. We use the terminology all the time. You would not jump on a plane right if the pilot did not understand his or her dials in their cockpit, right? Totally. Yet, we're flying the plane of our businesses every day not understanding those dials so so we are very unsafe in our business if we don't have financial literacy, it's impossible to make intelligent business decisions that help you grow and scale without financial literacy, it's completely impossible. So if, until we have that, we are going to struggle, no matter what, we're probably never going to get to where we want to go ultimately, and we're going to have that smaller vision. And we may achieve that, but we'll never get to a vision that was beyond our, you know, wildest dreams today, and the truth is that's available. If we get this the, you know, these things dialed in, financial literacy, business savvy, we've got to be able to transition from contractor to entrepreneurial leader. If we can do those two things, our whole world can change, because we're going to see things differently that we could never see before. Without financial literacy and business savvy, totally, I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. And again, like, that's that's just kind of our world. So I guess there's maybe some, like, assumed bias here, but it's the truth. It's like, if you don't know what. Scaling what in the hell are you do scaling it if you don't know your financials, if you don't have an entrepreneurial mindset, it's tough building a lifestyle business. I was at the Sunbelt show just literally this week, and scbc the week before, and a lot of the builders I was talking to, I asked them a question, there are typically two buckets, either you're monetizing a hobby or you're building a business. Which one do you fall into? And they're like, Well, what do you mean? I was like, monetizing a hobby is like you're making money, you're supporting a lifestyle, like it's not like, necessarily repeatable, or you're looking at p and l's and balance sheets, can't really make sense of it, whatever it might be. And then when you're building a business, is like you are creating and producing and selling a product to the decimal of a percentage profit margin, product in, product out, and your goal is to scale and grow. And it was like 60% of them were like, I'm definitely monetizing the hobby, sure, and it's like, none of that, no fault of their own, of where they were, where they are. But when you hear this podcast, or you hear other people talking about this, what I always want to do is I just, we have to drop this message in so that, hopefully that it shifts a mindset. It says, Oh, it that clicks. I might have heard it several times before, but it just clicked today. And I hope for someone it clicks today to go shit that makes sense or that that's something I get. I need to take that to that next level, and I can do extremely well. The other thing in this business, I can make a really good living, you know, monetizing my hobby, as you say, right? But, but I will never make a fortune. And if you're in the four level world, we're here to help you make a fortune, not just a living. I love it. I love it. I think we leave it there. Randy, this was great. Dude, awesome, man. We'll, we'll have to get, we'll have to get in touch again. This was good. It's good. Yeah, please chatter back and forth. Yeah, yeah. There's lots of roads we can go down. And I wish we had a lot more time, honestly, because, yeah, there's, there's so much to uncover in this world. Totally, totally, I'll reach out to you actually, and before we let you go, where can the listeners find you guys? Find us at website, the number four level coach.com, you can reach out to me directly and happy to to chat with anyone my email. Randy Stanbury, S, T, a, n, b, u, R, Y. Duck at Gmail, sorry. Randy at four level coach.com man, I was all messed up there. Yeah. Randy at the number four level coach.com. Yeah, please reach out to me happy to jump on a call. I love doing assessments right, looking at a business and saying, hey, where do I have holes in it? What would have to change whether you want to work with us or not, or move forward or not, we can always do a quick 30 minute assessment call. Yeah, I love it. I love it. I appreciate you, Randy. I'll let you get back to it. Thanks for jumping. For jumping on the pod. Cheers and appreciate you too. Thank you guys, see you, dude.