May 27, 2025 • 42 mins
Dirk van der Velde, co-founder of Momenta, opens up about the early missteps in aligning business structure with execution—and how tightening operations led to meaningful gains. From auditing underused software to designing a high-output team culture, Dirk shares lessons on building a company that actually runs the way it was envisioned.
https://momentasize.com
Video Notes:
Introduction and Guest Background (0:00)
Dirk's Background and Momenta Size (2:47)
Challenges and Solutions in Construction (6:49)
Adoption of Adaptive Software (19:58)
Impact of Adaptive Software on Business Operations (23:39)
Emotional and Tactical Advice for Business Owners (32:01)
Final Thoughts and Recommendations (38:22)
Find Our Hosts:
Reece Barnes
Matt Calvano
Podcast Produced By:
Motif Media
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to another episode ofbuilders budgets and beers.
(00:03):
Today. We are joined with Dirkvandervell from momenta size up
in Bend Orkin. I feel like Isaid this on the last few
intros, but I feel like theguests just keep getting better
and better. Dirk and his team,they've been customers of ours
for the last three months, andyeah, we talk about adaptive and
applications and use cases, butit was very tasteful. It's very
(00:25):
tactical. It was Dirk talking alot about the problems that he
had encompassed in his five yearjourney all the way from before
adaptive, just talking about,you know, not having a clear
vision on culture, not being agreat leader, hiring anybody
that's just going to come in andwork and really self centering
himself around what is themission of the company to help
the greater good. And you'llhear it from Dirk. He is
(00:48):
massively passionate about histeam, very humble guy. And this
is going to be a great episodefor you to tune into to
understand a little bit moreabout what is a broken process
look like. What does a solutionoriented process look like for
tracking, bills, receipts,budgets, draws. Dirk talked a
lot about draws on here. So ifyou're trying to find just words
of wisdom from an adaptive user,someone who really prides
(01:10):
themselves in strong company,strong process, strong
execution, this is the one foryou. Let's jump in. You.
Alrighty, everybody today, weare joined by Dirk Vanderbilt,
(01:30):
Owner, co founder of momentasize. Dirk, thanks for jumping
on the show. Reese, what isgoing on, my man, thanks for
having us on, dude. Ofcourse, of course. I was, I was,
I was skimming your guys'sInstagram, looking at your
content. A you do a great jobpremium production, but the
energy is just electric. So I'mstoked to have you on let's talk
a little bit about momentum,size. But before we do for the
(01:51):
listeners, give them a littlebackground on yourself, dude.
Just a quick 235, minute spin onyourself, your company and what
you guys do, yeah, well, I'lldefinitely get into that. The
before that, though, we werejust chatting offline, pretty
fun. How even this conversationcomes adaptive, our team was at
the builder show, and adaptivehad a really cool, really
(02:12):
clever, really cool, you know,setup going on, a booth going
on, and it was for 1000 beers.
So that's what drew the momentasized team in there. They put in
for the raffle. Hey and lo andbehold. Lo and behold. Yes, we
brought we also, we bought thesoftware, and it's been great.
And second, we got the beers.
And so the team now is stokedabout that. We got a great
picture of 1000 beers. If youever watch 1000 beers show up in
office, it's quite theexperience. And and now we have
(02:36):
this upcoming Friday, we have abereo cart tournament all on
adaptive. So thank you verymuch. We appreciate it. Of
course,dude, all you need is, all you
need is 1000 beers to draw on alittle momentum, get the
momentum size, and what betterway to get rid of them than a
than a bereo? That'sit. Yeah, we're exactly, I mean,
what? There's no, no better teambuilding than that. So we're
(02:57):
looking forward to that one, andjust to go in on momenta size.
So myself, I'm far from a selfmade man. I was very blessed,
very grateful for aninfrastructure of opportunity.
You know, my family, we cameover from the Netherlands. I
grew up in the Netherlands, in asmall, little town called for
Howard, and then my father was adreamer. My mother was a huge
supporter of those dreams and anoperator. And so I've been
(03:17):
extremely blessed with aninfrastructure of opportunity.
And about five years ago, when Ihad my own child, my wife and I,
we had our first child, we welooked at that. We had a really
this, what I would call thisparadigm shift moment. And
anyone who has kids probably canshare this type of thing. It's
something that you can onlyfeel, not describe when you have
your first child, just yourwhole mindset changes, and your
(03:40):
whole perspective on lifechanges. And so that was the,
what I would call the momentthat the idea of starting our
own thing was born, and it'sbeen quite a journey since then.
Like I said, we're far from aself made company. We have had
so many blessings, so muchsupport, and we're really,
really grateful for both theteam and the talent that has
come in.
(04:02):
Dirk, I love it. I love it. Likehaving the support, the
infrastructure, the peopleputting them before you, having
the motivation from your fromyour family. That's great, dude.
That's great. Okay, so what areyou guys? What are you guys
building? Over at me, where areyou guys out of yeah,
we're headquartered in BendOregon. We've got projects
around all around Oregon,Southern Oregon, Eastern Oregon.
(04:25):
We've got a beautiful project onthe Oregon coast, but our
headquarters is in CentralOregon, and so we build
primarily single family, and I'dcall it mid size, multi family.
That's really been our big, ourbig, our main focus we have.
We've grown now to a company of12, so we're really, really
excited about that. For us,that's big. For others, that's
(04:46):
small, but for us, that's,that's, that's big. And it's
been a great five year journey,just going from wearing all the
hats to trying to figure out howto get clarity on what the
future would look like. And youknow now we're headed into year
five. Of and finally, after aton of ups and downs and
challenges, we're catching thismomentum now and and really
(05:07):
feeling like we have a chance togrow.
Dude, I love it. Okay, so don'tlet me forget about Oregon. I
have a comment about Oregon,yeah, but dude, five years I'm
looking at the product you guysput out that is a very high end,
very quality product to be fiveyears into the game. How did you
start? Did you start big? Didyou like or, I guess, tell us
(05:28):
about how you got into the levelof product you guys are
building. Yeah.
So, like I said, far from beingself made, I was able to, my
family developed a resort calledtether resort. It's a beautiful,
stunning resort. They started,started with a dream, and then
over a 15 year period, they wereable to bring that to life. And
it's a it's just a stunningresort. Learned a ton from what
(05:51):
it takes to have big dreams.
First and foremost, right? Liketo have such a big dream to make
that happen, that's step one,and then step two, to actually
execute on that. I got to watchmy parents do that over time,
and that taught me both workethic. It taught me vision, and
it just taught me what it takesto actually go after something
and to have an extremely highstandard, right? You don't
become the number one resort inthe Pacific Northwest by not by
(06:12):
having this an average standard.
So they set an extremely highstandard, both in the product
that they built, in theoperation that they brought and
I just got to watch that unfold.
I got to be a small part of iton the operational side as well,
but mainly just got to see whatthat looked like. And and so
having mentors like that helpedset a really high standard, and
then we just followed that, andreally worked to become a little
(06:33):
bit better every day is reallythe ultimate goal. We try to
live the growth mindset, try tohold a really hard, high
standard for ourself. And soit's, it's been far from an easy
journey, but it's definitelybeen worth going through that.
And, you know, again, it's, itall comes down to having both
great mentors and then greatpeople as well, right? Having
people who are far better than Icould ever be in the position
(06:56):
that they're in, dude,totally. And that's not, um,
it's not an uncommon story,right? Or, like, I guess we
could call it a plot, right?
Like construction, family ownedbusinesses passed down lots of
like mentoring and learning onthe job sites, and then feeling
that inclination to go out andstart your own thing based on
(07:17):
the impact that the the industryhas had. I mean, dude, good on
you to do it so well. But again,that's just like a testament to
the people that you surroundyourself with, your family, your
colleagues, the people that arehelping you on a daily basis. So
very cool. The organ comment, Ido want to get back to before we
jump in. I was just so I'm fromDenver. Okay. Well, Denver,
(07:39):
okay. And this last weekend, wewent out to the western slope.
Are you familiar with the termNo, no, no. Western slope is
like the western side of theRockies. So we're on Denver, the
eastern side. The eastern slope,you go all the way through the
Rockies, and right before GrandJunction is a place called
palisade. Okay, familiar? No,not many people are, it's
(08:01):
Colorado's wine country, okay,yeah, I mean, whatever. It's
like, it's Colorado wine notreally known for anything.
You're in Oregon. Where are youat? In reference to the
WillametteValley, yeah, the Willamette
Valley, exactly. Willamette. Youlike your pinos, huh?
No. Like anything.
(08:22):
No, you're, yeah, you'll take itall. No, it's, we're about two
hours, just two hours central ofthat. So, and it's a great
valley, and a lot of great winegets produced here in Oregon.
You know, a lot of great Pinotspecifically get produced here.
So if you know, maybe we'll havea momentous eyes booth one day,
and we'll be set, we'll beyou'll come to our booth, and
(08:43):
maybe you'll get 1000 bottles ofwine. You just never know what's
gonna happen. You know, that'sa hell of a trade. 1000 PBRs for
1000 bottles of you know, thatwould be a good win. That would
be a good deal for Reese. Yeah,that is, I
love it. Okay, dude. So let'sget into it here a little bit.
So obviously, you guys areadaptive customers, and you talk
a lot about, like, yourbackground and your family, and
(09:05):
it wasn't easy, and it was like,a lot of mentors and stuff like
that, like, what's just a hardlearned lesson that you have
learned running and supporting aconstruction business obviously
tied to financials, if you'vegot it,
Yeah, yeah. So I think for us,every, you know, everyone, if I
look back at the just the runthat we've had over the last
(09:26):
five years, you start anybusiness, you start it starts
with an idea, like I told youabout. The idea came really when
I had my first son, as I said,Hey, what? What skills do I have
that I could start to buildsomething with and where we
could build something that couldbecome a generational legacy,
right? That I could start, thatcould become a generational
(09:48):
legacy. And construction wasreally the only thing I had to
had much experience in, wasreally the only thing I saw
opportunity in. But my skillswere pretty low. To be real with
you, right? I mean, it's onething to have been a part of
build. Something. It's anotherthing to now have to really lead
the entire experience. You haveto, if you're gonna run a
business, it's not just havingone skill. You have to be a
generalist in each component.
You have to be good atmarketing, at operations, at the
(10:10):
finance side. You have tounderstand how to put, like,
bring together a team, right?
There's many components that youhave to learn. And I would say,
when we first started it justlike anything you go from I was
working at w2 now we started ourown thing. And interestingly
enough, when you first startyour own thing, now you're not
capped by a w2 so at first,you're making more money than
(10:32):
you'd experience, right? Soyou're making more money than
than you'd ever had, but you'realso bird. It's like a self
employed wild situation. You'reyou're hitting full burnout
because you have to wear everysingle hat. And so we went
through that classic thingwhere, okay, sure, we're making
more money, but I'm hitting, I'mworking more hours, and hitting
level like this isn'tsustainable. Then you we went
(10:52):
through the cycle of, okay, nowwe finally have enough jobs to
where we can have some peoplecome in and support, but I
didn't have clarity on culture.
So we went through two cycles,which was all my fault, where I
just took anyone who was willingto help me, right? Anyone that
was willing to help I was goingto bring him in. We were good to
go, and I wasn't a good leader.
I didn't have a goodunderstanding of what we needed.
(11:15):
I didn't have a goodunderstanding of what cultural
fit needed to happen. And so Iwent through two cycles, which
is very costly, right? If youdon't have clarity, one of the
lessons trying to point it thereis before you go and just react.
I think a lot of entrepreneurswill quickly react. I need this,
and they'll just quickly react.
A key thing I'm learning as I'mgetting a little bit older and a
little bit smarter is clarity isthe most important thing. So
(11:37):
once I went through two cyclesbecause I didn't have clarity on
what I needed and what culture,what kind of culture we were
going to have. So clarity is oneof the key components. And once
we finally had that after twocycles, we started attracting
employees, and we started beingable to say, okay, hey, you know
now, now, well, I got clarity onthe culture, now I can attract
the right people into theculture, and that started to
(12:00):
unlock, unlock some capacity.
But one thing that you'll you'llsee is, sure we can bring people
in. But the challenge is, evenwith people, it's very costly.
And even if you have people nowin this new world, it's like,
what technology can we bring inas well, on top of that? And one
of the heavy lifting things,Reese, you know very well, and
(12:21):
this is why you guys created theproduct, one of the heavy
lifting things on the officeside of buildings. If you're
building a lot, you havehundreds, if not 1000s of
invoices that you're processinga month, and that drop process
is massively intensive. Like astandard situation would be what
we had before we had adaptivewould be everyone would submit
their invoices into acentralized accounting email,
(12:42):
right? Classic. Then this wasour process. Reese, I'll tell
you, this was our process forthe first four years of the
business. Everyone would submittheir invoices by the 25th right
into the centralized accounting.
We would then go in there, andwe'd have to take the invoice,
put it into QuickBooks. We'dhave to take the invoice, put it
into our backup, where we'regoing to put our backup, and
(13:03):
then we'd have to take theinvoice and code it to our draw,
which was in Excel, right? Sothree inputs, one from one side,
I had we went three inputs. Soeach invoice we got had three
inputs. Therewas a triplicate process. Yes, I
would callit an extremely inefficient
process that takes a lot. And aswe grew, so that's fine when you
(13:25):
have a couple projects, but aswe grew, we started really
hitting this capacity challenge.
And I remember nights, so whenwe had four employees, I
remember we'd work all day,because, you know, no matter
what, all your other operationalthings are still there. We'd
work all day, and then we wouldremember, we'd come in. Let's
(13:47):
say it was the 25th had so we'dusually come in around like the
first, let's say the first isthat we have to get these draws
out by the fifth so we can getpaid, right? And so we'd work
all day, come home, go to gohome. I'd eat dinner, put the
kids to sleep, I'd go drive tothe gas station, grab a couple
Red Bulls, and boom at nine, at9pm me and my right hand guy,
(14:08):
Connor, who's also my bestfriend, we'd start working from
nine to 12, doing those inputs,doing exactly what we said, into
the inbox, into QuickBooks,right? Because there's no way
around it. There's no way aroundit until we found actually,
until we found adaptive, and wefinally found a way to leverage
that super manual input. Wefound a way to now leverage it,
and adaptive actually does itall for us now, which is pretty
(14:30):
dang good. Now, instead ofhaving to go each input, we're
just running, we're just doing,we're just using adaptive as our
main brain, and going throughthat cycle once, which is pretty
phenomenal,dude. I love it. And that's
like, I mean that is, that isjust a process that has plagued
the industry, right? And like,whether it's adaptive, another
product, Excel, manual, whateverit's like, the way to think
about it is, is, how can Iaccomplish the end goal, which
(14:54):
is a healthy, cash flowingbusiness with. As little
manpower and manual process aspossible, right? And I think
that goes into kind of the firstpiece was like a like you
identified like, one of the hardlessons was like you were
lacking in leadership. Part ofthat was like a lack of clarity
and culture that hurt when youwere bringing people in. But you
(15:18):
finally got over that hump, yougained clarity. You started to
have employees that might nothave been the good fit, and then
you had, kind of like, your rideor dies, who you were putting in
those situations, what was kindof like the big motivator for
you guys to just like, jump on asolution. Like, was it top of
mind? You guys sitting aroundthe boardroom saying, God, our
back office process is so out ofwhack and so manual, we need to
(15:39):
look for a solution. Or was ityou saying, like, hey, I want my
people to be producing highyielding work and not doing this
stuff? Was it just ahappenstance? There's 1000 beers
for raffle. We want to talk.
What wasit? That's it. I love it. It's
a, I'll say two components ofit. We realized the way we hired
and run our construction companyis we have what I would call
(16:03):
like a younger office. So techbased, younger office, because
we want to be able to produceuse technology to our advantage,
to produce things, and theneverybody in the field. So all
of our superintendents have 25plus years, 2025 plus years of
experience leading the in thefield stuff. That's how we
structured it. But when welooked operationally, even
though that was how we set upthe business, our performance on
(16:23):
that was, I would call it a cminus or D. So our technology
adoption was really low. Forhaving that be called the
business strategy, the executionwas really poor. And so we just
decided to actively startworking on that. Are we using
we're paying for Procore, are weusing all the tools properly?
And we just audited that, and wesaid, No, we're c minus, so we
got to take this. We want to bethe best. We're going to take it
(16:45):
to an A we did that. And then welooked, we looked around quite a
bit, because we did identify thethe main, one of the main heavy
lifting components, just manualinput components, was that
invoicing, and we have our SOPsfor it, right? What we wanted
done daily, weekly and monthlyfor that, but it was all mainly
based still on a manual input.
(17:05):
We had our Excel sheet, we hadour QuickBooks, but it was still
just manual. And we tried. Welooked at different, different
things that you could do office.
365 has you know, you could selfautomate things. We just weren't
quite there. Weren't quite ableto make it happen. There's a
couple other technologies thatclaim to use AI properly, but
the problem with some of that AIstuff was a big claim with
little execution, right? So,like, supposedly it's going to
(17:28):
help, but then when you actuallyget into it, the integration
doesn't work properly. You haveto rework everything. It's just,
it's a big promise, but theactual execution of the
technology is really difficult,and so we were very hesitant to
that, because we tried that acouple times, and then you're
like, this has taken more time,like, This is crazy. And then
(17:48):
finally, when we found adaptive,it was one of those things where
the technology we'd seen thatthe technology was working for a
lot of people, and then it justbecomes a quick calculation.
Like me, personally, it's aquick calculation. I always ask,
like, will this actually workfor us? And then what does it
look like from a calculationside? So if we're spending 10
hours a week, right? Let's saywe had our project engineer
(18:10):
spending 10 hours a week at $28an hour, working on just doing
these manual inputs, right? Weif we can get those 10 hours
back. It's a quick calculation.
You just do 10 times, you know,10 times 28 for the whole month.
And very quickly you start tounderstand that leveraging this
technology can add to a hugeadvantage. We can get those 10
(18:32):
hours back. I can have theproject engineer working on
something that is useful for theactual project, that's billable,
and off we go. So, dude,totally.
And that's like, so that thereare so many good little steps in
there. Because that's, again,that's something that the market
can empathize with. A lot oftechnology. You look at a lot of
the reports out there, McKinseydid one where they had deemed
(18:54):
the construction sector the mostantiquated from a technology
adoption standpoint out of anyother sector in the economy,
right? And then you look at thatas a product of, like, where's
the money been invested? Has themoney been invested in good
technology for this sector? Andthe answer is no, but you start
to get this market that's like,software. I'm a business owner.
I got to play that game. We gotto explore, we got to try. And
(19:16):
to your point, you get to ownwith this like, like, you've
been burned, right? It's like,you try it sounds great in
theory, but you try it, and thesolution just isn't there. And
when you think about it, it'slike, okay, well, I can't do
that 10 hours a week times fourweeks a month, 40 hours a month
times $28, an hour, right? Toget that two grand back a month,
(19:40):
if I'm still entering data,right, it's like, I'm trading
Excel sheets for software thatpromised the world, and it's
still not really getting I hadmore flexibility with Excel,
right? Like, those are theconversations that go so it's
really interesting to hear yousay, like it was, you start
looking at, where can we makethe team more lean? Is a project
engine? Your best use spendingtheir time sitting at a desk
(20:03):
with a stack of invoices, codingand approving them, checking
budgets that are in an Excelsheet that they have to update
to then pass to someone else toenter. Or can we streamline that
process with a AI native productlike adaptive that's going to
streamline that entire process,something that you can trust as
confident as growing andlearning on your data, and
(20:24):
you're getting the outputs thatyou're looking for with a
fraction of the effort. Yeah,and exact that's it's really
well said, Reese and does itwork properly? And one thing
I'll give adaptive a lot ofcredit for is it, it's a really
good AI software that focuses itlike, knows what it's good at,
doesn't try to, like, spread outtoo much. I think that's
(20:45):
probably why it's, it's gettingso much market share, in my
opinion, is because it's, it'sone pointed, it's focused. It
knows exactly like, it's solvinga what I would believe is a big
problem in the call it just themanual inputs. It's, it's
solving a big problem there, andthen it's staying one focused on
it, at least for right now, andand it works really well for us.
I mean, the sinking is the otherproblem. Sometimes you have
(21:06):
right like we looked at otherones, even in Procore. So you
can do, you can do the Procorefinancial tools, and it's no hit
against Procore. They're a greatsoftware, but to even have that
integrate into QuickBooks, youhave to use smooth link, and
then to use a smooth link. Nowit's not instant, right? It's
just the the there was too manybarriers that goes back to,
like, that whole talk. It's,it's a big promise, but then
(21:29):
there's too many barriers. Sonow I gotta to make this work.
To make it work with QuickBookonline, I gotta add smooth link
in there. Now I got another it'sjust like, that's where, that's
where I start to get to, like,Okay, now we're almost getting
back to the same we're gonnahave the same issue we already
have, and you're not actuallysolving it, you're just adding
more layers of the operation.
And so I, I think adaptive hasbeen great, and it's, it's one
(21:51):
of those things, like, anytime,as a business owner, you're
going to introduce a newsoftware into your business. It,
there is a cost to it, bothfinancially and just
operationally. You have to learnit. And my hat will be, is tip
to adaptive, because it's beenvery intuitive. I would say I'm
not the best tech savvy person.
Like, it takes me a little bitof time, like, I got to get in
(22:11):
there and understand it, butit's been very intuitive. I
really, I really, like, I one ofthe things that matters a lot to
me is the way that things arepresented. So it's really
important to me, right? Like toif you want to have a company
that's going to grow, perceptionreally matters. And I even like
the way the draws come out. Theformatting of it is very nice.
The hyperlinks that come in arevery, very nice. So that before,
(22:34):
let's say we were to provide allof our backup in Excel, we made
it look as good as we could. Butif we would say like this, like
check line seven for theinvoice, you got to scroll all
the way down manually to theinvoice. It's just not as nice.
Now we've got this beautifulcover sheet. It's it looks
really good. And if I want toclick to what was in the draw,
boom, I just click the hyperlinktakes me straight to the
(22:56):
invoice. And it's a beautiful,very functioning software that
that is actually instant. WithQuickBooks, that's what I like,
too. It's instant. Iwant to touch on that. So I
think, like, the ins, like,Okay, that sounds great. Like
fast instant, in a world ofinstant gratification, right?
Everyone wants it. But what doesthat actually mean to you from a
business value standpoint? Andwhat I mean by that is, is like,
(23:19):
we'll use the smooth link as anexample. Or we can even just
take like, a process and anotherproduct, where you have to get
the invoice, you have to typethe invoice, and you still got
all this paper passing. We justdid a post on Instagram saying,
I think the average time forlike, to get an invoice from
processed, approved to paid is,like, three days. Yeah. And it's
kind of like, how do you evenfactor that in? But what does
(23:41):
that immediacy mean to abusiness owner, the access to
information, the access to yourfinancials, being up to date in
your general ledger, in yourproject financial product,
immediately?
Yeah, I think for me personally,as we grow, it becomes more and
(24:01):
more important. So when you'rejust when you're when it's just
when it was just me. I was doingeverything. It was already in my
brain. Now it's not me anymore,my overhead has grown
substantially, right? I mean, myoverhead, if you looked at what
it was just even a year agoversus what it is today, the
main thing I rely on to makesure that we are hitting, our
forecast is QuickBooks andthere, and it's and the P L's,
(24:24):
the monthly P L's, that's howI'm tracking. Are we hitting our
numbers? Where are we atfinancially? And for that to be
up to date and for that to beaccurate is one of the most
important things, right? And sofor me, it's been huge. I went
from doing all the inputsmyself, so it's sort of all in
your own brain and, like, itdoesn't really matter to now, my
one way to check on how thebusiness is doing and the
(24:46):
heartbeat is happening is to usethat P L and for it to happen
instantly. Like, I can now go inand this is, I'll tell you
exactly. We just finished ourclosing cycle. So the way our
the way we run our business is,you know, like we talked about,
all the invoices are due by the.
25th for that month. So workthat's done, let's say was work
that was done. We're in April orin May. So work that was done in
April, you have to submit yourinvoice by the 25th then our
(25:08):
team starts to work throughadaptive now starts to work on
bucketing those and the AI isgetting smarter. I think we're
like on our second or thirdmonth. It's doing a good job of
now already, like reading theinvoices, bucketing where it
thinks it needs to go. It'sactually really nice. So it's
speeding that process up. It'slearning, and it's learning
nicely. Then we submit ourinvoices by the fifth, is our
(25:29):
deadline. So by the fifth, wewant all those invoices
submitted, and then we're alsoworking on closing out all of
our general expenses during thatsame time, by the 10th, our our
cycle is by the 10th, we need tohave all of our stuff cleared
out, because on the 15th, I'mgoing to review our P L. And
what's so nice about the waythat adaptive is flowing. When I
(25:51):
went to review the P L, we'revery quickly. I could say, Hey,
what's going on with this? This,this, and this. And we spent a
one hour working session,clearing it up and adaptive. And
boom, instantly it cleared upthe P and L, and now all of a
sudden, I can look at it more. Iwouldn't call it like 30,000
view, but on a high level, Iknow what to expect. On my P L,
(26:11):
I could see when something wasoff, and very quickly we could
correct it so it was, it was, itwas huge. It's very important
for that to sync right away,because I'm using QuickBooks as
my main beat, my main reportingsystem,
of course, and that's like,again, it's a common story for
builders, for business owners,but like, when you say, like you
you were, let's call it the10th, right? Or like you're
(26:33):
evaluating the P L, and you seesomething, yep, we talk a lot
about cash leakage, profiterosion and adaptive it's really
fun to talk about like theimmediacy and the time savings
and the overhead reduction thatyou would typically allocate to
those functions in the business,but cash leakage, bills that we
get that we didn't categorizeout, right, that are bucketed in
(26:53):
the general ledger, and it'smaking poor financials look
poor, or profit erosion, right,not having enough cash to cover
the bills that we're paying forCO mingling funds across jobs.
Right? When you make thatcomment of like, you caught an
example? What is that typical?
Like? What's a specific exampleof something that you catch when
you're evaluating a P, L thatstarts that conversation to
square up your books? Yeah,I think on this one, it was
(27:15):
specifically the way we were theway we were bucketing one thing
we were actually using adaptive,we were archiving certain things
that weren't supposed to be andwe were able to get that very
quickly to clear. But one of thethings I would say I really like
about adaptive, to piggyback alittle bit, is it takes away
human error, because now itgives us a second idea, like the
one of the features on adaptivethat's really nice is it will
(27:37):
give you a warning if there'seither a double invoice that's
been been put in or potentialdouble payment. So it flags, it
actually flags it for you. Andit also gives you a warning if
you don't have something codedinto the draw. One of the
nightmares I have, and one ofthe things that we would always
really double check before, wassure an invoice, like an invoice
from a subcontractor, let humanerror is inevitable. An invoice
(28:01):
from a subcontractor, if theygot missed or didn't get paid,
you're going to hear about it,but if we had fronted it, so if
it was on our you know, weprobably have 200 300 300
transactions on our creditcards. If we miss something that
was supposed to get billed outthat month and it did not,
that's a big, big big problem,because that's just, we're just
(28:21):
losing. That's just money that'sgone. Because once that month is
closed out, it's gone. It'sgone. And I guarantee you that,
before we had implementedadaptive, even though we had
manual inputs to check it, Iguarantee you that things were
missed. And what I love aboutadaptive is it just takes that.
It gives you almost acomputerized warning sign,
right? It sort of blocks, I'msure there's still going to be
(28:42):
some challenges, but it blocksthat human error of missing
something, and I really, reallylike that part of it
specifically on the credit cardcoding, because that's where you
can get really, really hurt. Ifyou've got big volume, 200 300
transactions, and you don'tactually build that out,
that's where it hurts totally,totally. And dude, that's that
cash leakage, right? That's thatprofit erosion. It's like, we'll
(29:04):
just talk about the credit cardtransactions, right? It's like,
we ran a study on our customers,and it was like, I want to say,
and I could get the actual dateon here, but I think it's like
80% of the transactions that aremade on credit cards make up 20%
of the cost volume. And when youthink about that, it's like,
(29:24):
that's a lot of receipts. Sure.
You could be like, it's only 20%what's the big deal? But 20% of
cost. Call it a million a year.
Like, dude, if you're missing 50grand, 100 grand in receipts, or
they're getting categorizedwrong, and it's misrepresenting
profitability on jobs, andyou're reflecting that poorly in
p and Ls and in your business,that's a big deal, major deal,
(29:48):
that's going straight to youroverhead, pulling out of your
bottom line, your net, net. Andit's like, that's why it's
important to have thesemechanisms. That's why it's
important. I love it. That's agreat
point. And on top. Top of that,it's also very important,
because think about one of thebig expenses general contractors
have in general is the yourgeneral liability, and you're
always going to get audited onthat, right? So exactly what
(30:10):
you're saying, let's say wehave, for example, a project
specific insurance policy,meaning that it's not going to
go on to our general liabilityif we weren't properly coding,
or we weren't properly takingcare of that. When we get
audited by the company, theythere might be a premium
adjustment. And so it'sextremely important to have have
this integration. In my opinion,it's been huge, and to just not
(30:33):
leave it up to human error, it'sreally nice to have a gut check.
And it works really nicely, likeit works really, really nicely.
And so I Yeah, yeah, it's a it'sa big deal. And the credit card
one, I think, like you said tome, makes me feel better than
ever, because now it takes away.
Before we were just, you get thecredit card memo, and we were
highlighting, like, General,General, General project,
general project, and some there,there. Of course, when you grow
(30:56):
and you have hundreds oftransactions, there's gonna be
leakage, like you said, Dude, ithappens all the time. I bring
this up regularly. It's one ofmy favorite case studies. We're
gonna get Chloe brown on. She'sone of our partners at Wilder
streams. I I still strugglelike, hit her title a because I
think she's just like, humble,and she's like, not that type of
person, but really what she doesis it's more like operations
(31:18):
consulting through the lens ofaccounting. Okay, yeah. So
she'll get, like, she's anaccounting background, very
operationally minded, like, veryprocess heavy. How do we do
things? She loves adaptive butwith one of her customers, she
did, I'm gonna call it like aforensic accounting on it, okay?
And she was going through theirbooks, and she uncovered $5
million in unbilled cost overthe course of the company's
(31:41):
career. And you think aboutthat, you're like, dude, 5
million in unbilled costs.
That's just the unbilled cost,right? That's not including the
markup. That includes themargin, right? So you throw 20%
on that, not a math guy, but itsounds close to 7 million in top
line, right? And you like, youstart to think about that,
(32:02):
you're like, Dude, there's a lotof Miss year over year over
year. Has nothing to do with Areyou making enough money? This is
not a hobby that we'remonetizing, but a business. Are
we making what we should be onthese projects? That clarity is,
it's huge, and I think it's justbroadly been adopted and
accepted by the by the buildingcommunities. Like, just the cost
(32:24):
of doing business. Like, whatelse are you going to do? You
don't have to do it now. Ithink, do you have anything else
you want to throw on that? Dirk,no, no, I couldn't. Maybe Chloe
needs to come check ourbusiness. Because I don't want,
as we grow, I don't want 5million that would that would
make me puke. Devastating,truly, and this was an
individual that had a similarreaction, because this person's
(32:44):
going, Dude, I'm making money.
Like, I'm making money. Thingsare moving. We're paying people,
we're paying bills, we'rewinning work, we're growing a
business. But it's like, that'sthe unsettling part, is like it
has nothing to do with what youthink you should be making. It
has everything are you making?
What you should be making?
That'sit. That's it. Yeah, no, I
that's, that's that now thatif you
(33:10):
want, if you want to, we'll, Iwould love that. Yeah, just have
a conversation, see where itgoes. But um, question for you.
So five years, I mean, this hasbeen, like, just a blitz scale
for you, and you've had a lotof, like, really strong
learnings, I would say, a lot oflearnings that our listeners can
identify with. But for someonethat's listening and is feeling
(33:34):
overwhelmed, what's one piece ofadvice that you would want them
to hear regarding scaling,growing, running a healthy
financial business?
Yeah, it'll be. It's more of anemotional piece of advice than
anything. And it came I learnedit from being in athletics for a
lifetime. But it's to not gettoo high and to not get too low.
(33:57):
Everything's going to come incycles, right? You're going to
have good times. You're going tohave bad times. The key is to
when things are really good.
Celebrate what we want to seemore of so we do want to
celebrate. Celebrate what wewant to see more. But don't ride
so high on that emotion thatwhen things start to turn and
when things are bad, don't rideso low. Try to stay even keel.
If you study the bestcompetitors in the world, the
best professionals, what do theydo? They control their emotions.
(34:19):
They don't get too high and theydon't get too low. And so I
would say, as you continue togrow, the only way to, you know,
to get to it is to go throughit. And I would just say, keep
yourself as much as you can.
Keep yourself riding asconsistent as possible. Don't
get too high, don't get too low.
Know that things come in cycles,and if you're in a bad time
(34:40):
right now, as long as you don'tquit, it'll only get better. And
if you're in a good time,inevitably, things are going to
turn again. It's a cycle. Sototally, I love that, by the
way. Do you have any, like,tactical example of you applying
that?
Yeah. I mean, yeah. I. Is, Idon't always do it. I don't
(35:02):
always do it right. But, youknow, I would say that. I would
say a tactical example of us,even like last year, I would say
would be a great example of notgetting too low when things
weren't going our way, not, youknow, not freaking out
necessarily, when something badwould happen. And we had and we
(35:24):
had some really challengingthings happen, not getting so
low that we're like, hey, let'sI'm not saying the thought
doesn't come across my mind, butI would just say we had a tough
year, or I'd call it just like astagnant year last year, and we
didn't let our emotions get thebest of us. We just kept turning
over every page, saying, Hey, weknow the time's coming, and
(35:45):
let's just keep trying to get alittle bit better every single
day. Reflect. Ask ourselves,what went well, what didn't go
so well, and what are we goingto do to improve on it? And then
let's just wait for our time,for the momentum to come. And lo
and behold, sometimes momentumcomes, and it comes fast, right?
Like you have to put actionbehind it. You can't just make
new wishful thinking. You haveto make sure you're constantly
(36:06):
reflecting, creating positivepivots, and then when the
momentum comes, be ready and actfast. Because that's what that's
exactly what happened for us,and we're just riding that
momentum now that we cameforward. But I would say all of
last year, we were fighting thecall it, not getting too low on
the momentum, not going where wewanted it to go, right the year,
not being the year that wewanted it to be. We
(36:27):
underperformed on what theforecasts were right. But I just
just don't get too low on it.
The whole year was essentiallylike that, and then out of
nowhere, one relationship, oneperson, can change everything
for you. And that's exactly whatoccurred. Jess,
you gotta pop. You gotta pop.
Dude, that's awesome. I mean,I'm just, what I'm taking away
from that is just like, there's,there's a term out there. Maybe
(36:48):
you can help me with this, ormaybe not a term, but a phrase.
It's not like, it's not calledridiculous optimism, but it's
just like, it's just likeoptimism, where it's like, it
might be like, you're justconstantly optimistic, right?
Like riding that wave, butpersistence and consistency is
like, hey, like, this thing'sand if we start getting down,
we're not going to be, to yourpoint, making the positive
(37:08):
pivots that are going tocompound that are going to start
developing those wins. So dude,I think, I think that's great.
Dirk, I think this is a hell ofan episode. I think there's a
lot of tactical, applicabletakeaways for the listeners
here. Thank you so much forjumping on this was this is a
great little episode here. Iappreciate it. Reese. I really,
(37:30):
really enjoyed it. I hope thatwhen you come to Oregon, we can
take you to the WillametteValley, get you some good wines
there. And you know, one thing Iwill say to any of the
listeners, if you're justthinking about adaptive and
you're trying to understandwhether or not implementing the
technology is worth it, it hasbeen. We've had it for three
months now, and it has beenhuge, huge improvement for us.
(37:52):
It's been one of thosetechnologies that I would say
has been a major difference inhow we are running the business
side of our building company. Ihighly recommend it. I think
that it's well worth the monthlycost. And we get out probably
tenfold, tenfold, actually whatwe pay actually
(38:16):
correct. And thank you. But bethree months and you're running,
did you say you're running yourthird draw cycle through this
product? Yeah,we're running our third one. And
I'm extremely and I'm, I am,I'll say I'm pretty hard to
please on those things, and I'mextremely pleased, you know? And
this is not a paid anything.
This is just a happy customerwho is really appreciative for
(38:42):
adaptive and what it's doingsometimes, AI has big promises
and lots of letdowns. And, youknow, I'm, I think it's, it's a
really strong software, plus thecustomer service, you know, the
integration, the customerservice has been phenomenal. You
know, the couple things, couplepieces of feedback that we had
provided for specifically aroundhaving AIA formatting is being
(39:04):
worked on as we speak. That'scoming, and yep, exactly we know
about that. That's probablyabout the only piece of feedback
we had. And so I just, I thinkthe customer service as well has
been really strong as you'reintegrating, if you're nervous
about integrating a technology,the customer service is really,
really good, really strong. Ithink, not to cut
you off, Dirk, but I think it'simportant to quantify for the
(39:26):
listener, because you actuallykind of brought this up in the
beginning of the podcast, theimplementation. And this is the
Midwestern in me, saying goodbyeand picking the conversation
back up. But so again, threemonths, third draw cycle. How?
If you know, maybe your teamimplemented, I don't know. Yeah,
they did. How long did it takefor you guys to get adaptive,
(39:47):
bought, set up, using it,getting value, yo,
super fast. Now we've got areally tech savvy team, and so
I'll give I'll tip my hat there.
And then Mallory, she's beenour, the person that was. But
she's just been phenomenal. Sheshe never makes you feel like
any question is silly or dumb,and then she always makes
(40:07):
additional time for you if youneed it. And we had as many
integration calls as we needed.
You know, we try to, when wedecide on something, we try to
create momentum moment decideright and adapt. Was never in
the way of that, even on, Ithink Mallory was on vacation,
on spring break, and she wasstill helping us out. Was really
cool. So, you know, we it wouldpro it was probably like about a
(40:27):
two week, a two week integrationall in, all right? Because you
got to work through all thedifferent little kinks, yeah,
and then, you know, and then youjust gotta, it's user error
stuff. But I would say both thechat, also the team, even when
Mallory wasn't available, thechats really, really good. And
yeah, we're we were just really,really happy. And again, this is
(40:48):
just a customer giving a fivestar review for a technology
that's really helped usoperationally. Other thing I
really like is from a pricingstructure. Anyone else who uses
technology and construction,right? You use, like a Procore
as you get bigger, so too doesyour bill. And I like the
adaptive, just monthlysubscription component. It's
nice. It just incentivizes youto continue to grow. And it's
just a huge tool. I mean, Ihighly recommend it for anyone
(41:11):
that's considering it, and ifyou want, just reach out to me.
I'll give you we'll give yousome more additional
information.
Love it. Derek, that's great. Weare actually we're rolling out.
We're calling it the adaptiveambassador program, okay? It's
really for, like, our championsand the communities that are
just advocates, a of like,running healthier businesses,
but advocates for strongerfinancials in the construction
(41:34):
sector. I'll reach out to youabout that cool, and we can get
you involved there. But dude,this was great, hand on the
Bible. Final, goodbye. This wasgreat. I appreciate all the
time. All the kind words, allthe lessons for the listeners. I
think this is massivelyapplicable. You have a great
rest of your week, dude. Andobviously, let us know if we
could do anything foryou. You two, Reese, great
company you guys are part of. Ilook forward to continuing to
use the software and watch youguys grow.
(41:58):
Awesome. Sounds like a plan,dude. Likewise, we'll see ya.
We'll see you.
Welcome to another episode ofbuilders budgets and beers.
(00:03):
Today. We are joined with Dirkvandervell from momenta size up
in Bend Orkin. I feel like Isaid this on the last few
intros, but I feel like theguests just keep getting better
and better. Dirk and his team,they've been customers of ours
for the last three months, andyeah, we talk about adaptive and
applications and use cases, butit was very tasteful. It's very
(00:25):
tactical. It was Dirk talking alot about the problems that he
had encompassed in his five yearjourney all the way from before
adaptive, just talking about,you know, not having a clear
vision on culture, not being agreat leader, hiring anybody
that's just going to come in andwork and really self centering
himself around what is themission of the company to help
the greater good. And you'llhear it from Dirk. He is
(00:48):
massively passionate about histeam, very humble guy. And this
is going to be a great episodefor you to tune into to
understand a little bit moreabout what is a broken process
look like. What does a solutionoriented process look like for
tracking, bills, receipts,budgets, draws. Dirk talked a
lot about draws on here. So ifyou're trying to find just words
of wisdom from an adaptive user,someone who really prides
(01:10):
themselves in strong company,strong process, strong
execution, this is the one foryou. Let's jump in. You.
Alrighty, everybody today, weare joined by Dirk Vanderbilt,
(01:30):
Owner, co founder of momentasize. Dirk, thanks for jumping
on the show. Reese, what isgoing on, my man, thanks for
having us on, dude. Ofcourse, of course. I was, I was,
I was skimming your guys'sInstagram, looking at your
content. A you do a great jobpremium production, but the
energy is just electric. So I'mstoked to have you on let's talk
a little bit about momentum,size. But before we do for the
(01:51):
listeners, give them a littlebackground on yourself, dude.
Just a quick 235, minute spin onyourself, your company and what
you guys do, yeah, well, I'lldefinitely get into that. The
before that, though, we werejust chatting offline, pretty
fun. How even this conversationcomes adaptive, our team was at
the builder show, and adaptivehad a really cool, really
(02:12):
clever, really cool, you know,setup going on, a booth going
on, and it was for 1000 beers.
So that's what drew the momentasized team in there. They put in
for the raffle. Hey and lo andbehold. Lo and behold. Yes, we
brought we also, we bought thesoftware, and it's been great.
And second, we got the beers.
And so the team now is stokedabout that. We got a great
picture of 1000 beers. If youever watch 1000 beers show up in
office, it's quite theexperience. And and now we have
(02:36):
this upcoming Friday, we have abereo cart tournament all on
adaptive. So thank you verymuch. We appreciate it. Of
course,dude, all you need is, all you
need is 1000 beers to draw on alittle momentum, get the
momentum size, and what betterway to get rid of them than a
than a bereo? That'sit. Yeah, we're exactly, I mean,
what? There's no, no better teambuilding than that. So we're
(02:57):
looking forward to that one, andjust to go in on momenta size.
So myself, I'm far from a selfmade man. I was very blessed,
very grateful for aninfrastructure of opportunity.
You know, my family, we cameover from the Netherlands. I
grew up in the Netherlands, in asmall, little town called for
Howard, and then my father was adreamer. My mother was a huge
supporter of those dreams and anoperator. And so I've been
(03:17):
extremely blessed with aninfrastructure of opportunity.
And about five years ago, when Ihad my own child, my wife and I,
we had our first child, we welooked at that. We had a really
this, what I would call thisparadigm shift moment. And
anyone who has kids probably canshare this type of thing. It's
something that you can onlyfeel, not describe when you have
your first child, just yourwhole mindset changes, and your
(03:40):
whole perspective on lifechanges. And so that was the,
what I would call the momentthat the idea of starting our
own thing was born, and it'sbeen quite a journey since then.
Like I said, we're far from aself made company. We have had
so many blessings, so muchsupport, and we're really,
really grateful for both theteam and the talent that has
come in.
(04:02):
Dirk, I love it. I love it. Likehaving the support, the
infrastructure, the peopleputting them before you, having
the motivation from your fromyour family. That's great, dude.
That's great. Okay, so what areyou guys? What are you guys
building? Over at me, where areyou guys out of yeah,
we're headquartered in BendOregon. We've got projects
around all around Oregon,Southern Oregon, Eastern Oregon.
(04:25):
We've got a beautiful project onthe Oregon coast, but our
headquarters is in CentralOregon, and so we build
primarily single family, and I'dcall it mid size, multi family.
That's really been our big, ourbig, our main focus we have.
We've grown now to a company of12, so we're really, really
excited about that. For us,that's big. For others, that's
(04:46):
small, but for us, that's,that's, that's big. And it's
been a great five year journey,just going from wearing all the
hats to trying to figure out howto get clarity on what the
future would look like. And youknow now we're headed into year
five. Of and finally, after aton of ups and downs and
challenges, we're catching thismomentum now and and really
(05:07):
feeling like we have a chance togrow.
Dude, I love it. Okay, so don'tlet me forget about Oregon. I
have a comment about Oregon,yeah, but dude, five years I'm
looking at the product you guysput out that is a very high end,
very quality product to be fiveyears into the game. How did you
start? Did you start big? Didyou like or, I guess, tell us
(05:28):
about how you got into the levelof product you guys are
building. Yeah.
So, like I said, far from beingself made, I was able to, my
family developed a resort calledtether resort. It's a beautiful,
stunning resort. They started,started with a dream, and then
over a 15 year period, they wereable to bring that to life. And
it's a it's just a stunningresort. Learned a ton from what
(05:51):
it takes to have big dreams.
First and foremost, right? Liketo have such a big dream to make
that happen, that's step one,and then step two, to actually
execute on that. I got to watchmy parents do that over time,
and that taught me both workethic. It taught me vision, and
it just taught me what it takesto actually go after something
and to have an extremely highstandard, right? You don't
become the number one resort inthe Pacific Northwest by not by
(06:12):
having this an average standard.
So they set an extremely highstandard, both in the product
that they built, in theoperation that they brought and
I just got to watch that unfold.
I got to be a small part of iton the operational side as well,
but mainly just got to see whatthat looked like. And and so
having mentors like that helpedset a really high standard, and
then we just followed that, andreally worked to become a little
(06:33):
bit better every day is reallythe ultimate goal. We try to
live the growth mindset, try tohold a really hard, high
standard for ourself. And soit's, it's been far from an easy
journey, but it's definitelybeen worth going through that.
And, you know, again, it's, itall comes down to having both
great mentors and then greatpeople as well, right? Having
people who are far better than Icould ever be in the position
(06:56):
that they're in, dude,totally. And that's not, um,
it's not an uncommon story,right? Or, like, I guess we
could call it a plot, right?
Like construction, family ownedbusinesses passed down lots of
like mentoring and learning onthe job sites, and then feeling
that inclination to go out andstart your own thing based on
(07:17):
the impact that the the industryhas had. I mean, dude, good on
you to do it so well. But again,that's just like a testament to
the people that you surroundyourself with, your family, your
colleagues, the people that arehelping you on a daily basis. So
very cool. The organ comment, Ido want to get back to before we
jump in. I was just so I'm fromDenver. Okay. Well, Denver,
(07:39):
okay. And this last weekend, wewent out to the western slope.
Are you familiar with the termNo, no, no. Western slope is
like the western side of theRockies. So we're on Denver, the
eastern side. The eastern slope,you go all the way through the
Rockies, and right before GrandJunction is a place called
palisade. Okay, familiar? No,not many people are, it's
(08:01):
Colorado's wine country, okay,yeah, I mean, whatever. It's
like, it's Colorado wine notreally known for anything.
You're in Oregon. Where are youat? In reference to the
WillametteValley, yeah, the Willamette
Valley, exactly. Willamette. Youlike your pinos, huh?
No. Like anything.
(08:22):
No, you're, yeah, you'll take itall. No, it's, we're about two
hours, just two hours central ofthat. So, and it's a great
valley, and a lot of great winegets produced here in Oregon.
You know, a lot of great Pinotspecifically get produced here.
So if you know, maybe we'll havea momentous eyes booth one day,
and we'll be set, we'll beyou'll come to our booth, and
(08:43):
maybe you'll get 1000 bottles ofwine. You just never know what's
gonna happen. You know, that'sa hell of a trade. 1000 PBRs for
1000 bottles of you know, thatwould be a good win. That would
be a good deal for Reese. Yeah,that is, I
love it. Okay, dude. So let'sget into it here a little bit.
So obviously, you guys areadaptive customers, and you talk
a lot about, like, yourbackground and your family, and
(09:05):
it wasn't easy, and it was like,a lot of mentors and stuff like
that, like, what's just a hardlearned lesson that you have
learned running and supporting aconstruction business obviously
tied to financials, if you'vegot it,
Yeah, yeah. So I think for us,every, you know, everyone, if I
look back at the just the runthat we've had over the last
(09:26):
five years, you start anybusiness, you start it starts
with an idea, like I told youabout. The idea came really when
I had my first son, as I said,Hey, what? What skills do I have
that I could start to buildsomething with and where we
could build something that couldbecome a generational legacy,
right? That I could start, thatcould become a generational
(09:48):
legacy. And construction wasreally the only thing I had to
had much experience in, wasreally the only thing I saw
opportunity in. But my skillswere pretty low. To be real with
you, right? I mean, it's onething to have been a part of
build. Something. It's anotherthing to now have to really lead
the entire experience. You haveto, if you're gonna run a
business, it's not just havingone skill. You have to be a
generalist in each component.
You have to be good atmarketing, at operations, at the
(10:10):
finance side. You have tounderstand how to put, like,
bring together a team, right?
There's many components that youhave to learn. And I would say,
when we first started it justlike anything you go from I was
working at w2 now we started ourown thing. And interestingly
enough, when you first startyour own thing, now you're not
capped by a w2 so at first,you're making more money than
(10:32):
you'd experience, right? Soyou're making more money than
than you'd ever had, but you'realso bird. It's like a self
employed wild situation. You'reyou're hitting full burnout
because you have to wear everysingle hat. And so we went
through that classic thingwhere, okay, sure, we're making
more money, but I'm hitting, I'mworking more hours, and hitting
level like this isn'tsustainable. Then you we went
(10:52):
through the cycle of, okay, nowwe finally have enough jobs to
where we can have some peoplecome in and support, but I
didn't have clarity on culture.
So we went through two cycles,which was all my fault, where I
just took anyone who was willingto help me, right? Anyone that
was willing to help I was goingto bring him in. We were good to
go, and I wasn't a good leader.
I didn't have a goodunderstanding of what we needed.
(11:15):
I didn't have a goodunderstanding of what cultural
fit needed to happen. And so Iwent through two cycles, which
is very costly, right? If youdon't have clarity, one of the
lessons trying to point it thereis before you go and just react.
I think a lot of entrepreneurswill quickly react. I need this,
and they'll just quickly react.
A key thing I'm learning as I'mgetting a little bit older and a
little bit smarter is clarity isthe most important thing. So
(11:37):
once I went through two cyclesbecause I didn't have clarity on
what I needed and what culture,what kind of culture we were
going to have. So clarity is oneof the key components. And once
we finally had that after twocycles, we started attracting
employees, and we started beingable to say, okay, hey, you know
now, now, well, I got clarity onthe culture, now I can attract
the right people into theculture, and that started to
(12:00):
unlock, unlock some capacity.
But one thing that you'll you'llsee is, sure we can bring people
in. But the challenge is, evenwith people, it's very costly.
And even if you have people nowin this new world, it's like,
what technology can we bring inas well, on top of that? And one
of the heavy lifting things,Reese, you know very well, and
(12:21):
this is why you guys created theproduct, one of the heavy
lifting things on the officeside of buildings. If you're
building a lot, you havehundreds, if not 1000s of
invoices that you're processinga month, and that drop process
is massively intensive. Like astandard situation would be what
we had before we had adaptivewould be everyone would submit
their invoices into acentralized accounting email,
(12:42):
right? Classic. Then this wasour process. Reese, I'll tell
you, this was our process forthe first four years of the
business. Everyone would submittheir invoices by the 25th right
into the centralized accounting.
We would then go in there, andwe'd have to take the invoice,
put it into QuickBooks. We'dhave to take the invoice, put it
into our backup, where we'regoing to put our backup, and
(13:03):
then we'd have to take theinvoice and code it to our draw,
which was in Excel, right? Sothree inputs, one from one side,
I had we went three inputs. Soeach invoice we got had three
inputs. Therewas a triplicate process. Yes, I
would callit an extremely inefficient
process that takes a lot. And aswe grew, so that's fine when you
(13:25):
have a couple projects, but aswe grew, we started really
hitting this capacity challenge.
And I remember nights, so whenwe had four employees, I
remember we'd work all day,because, you know, no matter
what, all your other operationalthings are still there. We'd
work all day, and then we wouldremember, we'd come in. Let's
(13:47):
say it was the 25th had so we'dusually come in around like the
first, let's say the first isthat we have to get these draws
out by the fifth so we can getpaid, right? And so we'd work
all day, come home, go to gohome. I'd eat dinner, put the
kids to sleep, I'd go drive tothe gas station, grab a couple
Red Bulls, and boom at nine, at9pm me and my right hand guy,
(14:08):
Connor, who's also my bestfriend, we'd start working from
nine to 12, doing those inputs,doing exactly what we said, into
the inbox, into QuickBooks,right? Because there's no way
around it. There's no way aroundit until we found actually,
until we found adaptive, and wefinally found a way to leverage
that super manual input. Wefound a way to now leverage it,
and adaptive actually does itall for us now, which is pretty
(14:30):
dang good. Now, instead ofhaving to go each input, we're
just running, we're just doing,we're just using adaptive as our
main brain, and going throughthat cycle once, which is pretty
phenomenal,dude. I love it. And that's
like, I mean that is, that isjust a process that has plagued
the industry, right? And like,whether it's adaptive, another
product, Excel, manual, whateverit's like, the way to think
about it is, is, how can Iaccomplish the end goal, which
(14:54):
is a healthy, cash flowingbusiness with. As little
manpower and manual process aspossible, right? And I think
that goes into kind of the firstpiece was like a like you
identified like, one of the hardlessons was like you were
lacking in leadership. Part ofthat was like a lack of clarity
and culture that hurt when youwere bringing people in. But you
(15:18):
finally got over that hump, yougained clarity. You started to
have employees that might nothave been the good fit, and then
you had, kind of like, your rideor dies, who you were putting in
those situations, what was kindof like the big motivator for
you guys to just like, jump on asolution. Like, was it top of
mind? You guys sitting aroundthe boardroom saying, God, our
back office process is so out ofwhack and so manual, we need to
(15:39):
look for a solution. Or was ityou saying, like, hey, I want my
people to be producing highyielding work and not doing this
stuff? Was it just ahappenstance? There's 1000 beers
for raffle. We want to talk.
What wasit? That's it. I love it. It's
a, I'll say two components ofit. We realized the way we hired
and run our construction companyis we have what I would call
(16:03):
like a younger office. So techbased, younger office, because
we want to be able to produceuse technology to our advantage,
to produce things, and theneverybody in the field. So all
of our superintendents have 25plus years, 2025 plus years of
experience leading the in thefield stuff. That's how we
structured it. But when welooked operationally, even
though that was how we set upthe business, our performance on
(16:23):
that was, I would call it a cminus or D. So our technology
adoption was really low. Forhaving that be called the
business strategy, the executionwas really poor. And so we just
decided to actively startworking on that. Are we using
we're paying for Procore, are weusing all the tools properly?
And we just audited that, and wesaid, No, we're c minus, so we
got to take this. We want to bethe best. We're going to take it
(16:45):
to an A we did that. And then welooked, we looked around quite a
bit, because we did identify thethe main, one of the main heavy
lifting components, just manualinput components, was that
invoicing, and we have our SOPsfor it, right? What we wanted
done daily, weekly and monthlyfor that, but it was all mainly
based still on a manual input.
(17:05):
We had our Excel sheet, we hadour QuickBooks, but it was still
just manual. And we tried. Welooked at different, different
things that you could do office.
365 has you know, you could selfautomate things. We just weren't
quite there. Weren't quite ableto make it happen. There's a
couple other technologies thatclaim to use AI properly, but
the problem with some of that AIstuff was a big claim with
little execution, right? So,like, supposedly it's going to
(17:28):
help, but then when you actuallyget into it, the integration
doesn't work properly. You haveto rework everything. It's just,
it's a big promise, but theactual execution of the
technology is really difficult,and so we were very hesitant to
that, because we tried that acouple times, and then you're
like, this has taken more time,like, This is crazy. And then
(17:48):
finally, when we found adaptive,it was one of those things where
the technology we'd seen thatthe technology was working for a
lot of people, and then it justbecomes a quick calculation.
Like me, personally, it's aquick calculation. I always ask,
like, will this actually workfor us? And then what does it
look like from a calculationside? So if we're spending 10
hours a week, right? Let's saywe had our project engineer
(18:10):
spending 10 hours a week at $28an hour, working on just doing
these manual inputs, right? Weif we can get those 10 hours
back. It's a quick calculation.
You just do 10 times, you know,10 times 28 for the whole month.
And very quickly you start tounderstand that leveraging this
technology can add to a hugeadvantage. We can get those 10
(18:32):
hours back. I can have theproject engineer working on
something that is useful for theactual project, that's billable,
and off we go. So, dude,totally.
And that's like, so that thereare so many good little steps in
there. Because that's, again,that's something that the market
can empathize with. A lot oftechnology. You look at a lot of
the reports out there, McKinseydid one where they had deemed
(18:54):
the construction sector the mostantiquated from a technology
adoption standpoint out of anyother sector in the economy,
right? And then you look at thatas a product of, like, where's
the money been invested? Has themoney been invested in good
technology for this sector? Andthe answer is no, but you start
to get this market that's like,software. I'm a business owner.
I got to play that game. We gotto explore, we got to try. And
(19:16):
to your point, you get to ownwith this like, like, you've
been burned, right? It's like,you try it sounds great in
theory, but you try it, and thesolution just isn't there. And
when you think about it, it'slike, okay, well, I can't do
that 10 hours a week times fourweeks a month, 40 hours a month
times $28, an hour, right? Toget that two grand back a month,
(19:40):
if I'm still entering data,right, it's like, I'm trading
Excel sheets for software thatpromised the world, and it's
still not really getting I hadmore flexibility with Excel,
right? Like, those are theconversations that go so it's
really interesting to hear yousay, like it was, you start
looking at, where can we makethe team more lean? Is a project
engine? Your best use spendingtheir time sitting at a desk
(20:03):
with a stack of invoices, codingand approving them, checking
budgets that are in an Excelsheet that they have to update
to then pass to someone else toenter. Or can we streamline that
process with a AI native productlike adaptive that's going to
streamline that entire process,something that you can trust as
confident as growing andlearning on your data, and
(20:24):
you're getting the outputs thatyou're looking for with a
fraction of the effort. Yeah,and exact that's it's really
well said, Reese and does itwork properly? And one thing
I'll give adaptive a lot ofcredit for is it, it's a really
good AI software that focuses itlike, knows what it's good at,
doesn't try to, like, spread outtoo much. I think that's
(20:45):
probably why it's, it's gettingso much market share, in my
opinion, is because it's, it'sone pointed, it's focused. It
knows exactly like, it's solvinga what I would believe is a big
problem in the call it just themanual inputs. It's, it's
solving a big problem there, andthen it's staying one focused on
it, at least for right now, andand it works really well for us.
I mean, the sinking is the otherproblem. Sometimes you have
(21:06):
right like we looked at otherones, even in Procore. So you
can do, you can do the Procorefinancial tools, and it's no hit
against Procore. They're a greatsoftware, but to even have that
integrate into QuickBooks, youhave to use smooth link, and
then to use a smooth link. Nowit's not instant, right? It's
just the the there was too manybarriers that goes back to,
like, that whole talk. It's,it's a big promise, but then
(21:29):
there's too many barriers. Sonow I gotta to make this work.
To make it work with QuickBookonline, I gotta add smooth link
in there. Now I got another it'sjust like, that's where, that's
where I start to get to, like,Okay, now we're almost getting
back to the same we're gonnahave the same issue we already
have, and you're not actuallysolving it, you're just adding
more layers of the operation.
And so I, I think adaptive hasbeen great, and it's, it's one
(21:51):
of those things, like, anytime,as a business owner, you're
going to introduce a newsoftware into your business. It,
there is a cost to it, bothfinancially and just
operationally. You have to learnit. And my hat will be, is tip
to adaptive, because it's beenvery intuitive. I would say I'm
not the best tech savvy person.
Like, it takes me a little bitof time, like, I got to get in
(22:11):
there and understand it, butit's been very intuitive. I
really, I really, like, I one ofthe things that matters a lot to
me is the way that things arepresented. So it's really
important to me, right? Like toif you want to have a company
that's going to grow, perceptionreally matters. And I even like
the way the draws come out. Theformatting of it is very nice.
The hyperlinks that come in arevery, very nice. So that before,
(22:34):
let's say we were to provide allof our backup in Excel, we made
it look as good as we could. Butif we would say like this, like
check line seven for theinvoice, you got to scroll all
the way down manually to theinvoice. It's just not as nice.
Now we've got this beautifulcover sheet. It's it looks
really good. And if I want toclick to what was in the draw,
boom, I just click the hyperlinktakes me straight to the
(22:56):
invoice. And it's a beautiful,very functioning software that
that is actually instant. WithQuickBooks, that's what I like,
too. It's instant. Iwant to touch on that. So I
think, like, the ins, like,Okay, that sounds great. Like
fast instant, in a world ofinstant gratification, right?
Everyone wants it. But what doesthat actually mean to you from a
business value standpoint? Andwhat I mean by that is, is like,
(23:19):
we'll use the smooth link as anexample. Or we can even just
take like, a process and anotherproduct, where you have to get
the invoice, you have to typethe invoice, and you still got
all this paper passing. We justdid a post on Instagram saying,
I think the average time forlike, to get an invoice from
processed, approved to paid is,like, three days. Yeah. And it's
kind of like, how do you evenfactor that in? But what does
(23:41):
that immediacy mean to abusiness owner, the access to
information, the access to yourfinancials, being up to date in
your general ledger, in yourproject financial product,
immediately?
Yeah, I think for me personally,as we grow, it becomes more and
(24:01):
more important. So when you'rejust when you're when it's just
when it was just me. I was doingeverything. It was already in my
brain. Now it's not me anymore,my overhead has grown
substantially, right? I mean, myoverhead, if you looked at what
it was just even a year agoversus what it is today, the
main thing I rely on to makesure that we are hitting, our
forecast is QuickBooks andthere, and it's and the P L's,
(24:24):
the monthly P L's, that's howI'm tracking. Are we hitting our
numbers? Where are we atfinancially? And for that to be
up to date and for that to beaccurate is one of the most
important things, right? And sofor me, it's been huge. I went
from doing all the inputsmyself, so it's sort of all in
your own brain and, like, itdoesn't really matter to now, my
one way to check on how thebusiness is doing and the
(24:46):
heartbeat is happening is to usethat P L and for it to happen
instantly. Like, I can now go inand this is, I'll tell you
exactly. We just finished ourclosing cycle. So the way our
the way we run our business is,you know, like we talked about,
all the invoices are due by the.
25th for that month. So workthat's done, let's say was work
that was done. We're in April orin May. So work that was done in
April, you have to submit yourinvoice by the 25th then our
(25:08):
team starts to work throughadaptive now starts to work on
bucketing those and the AI isgetting smarter. I think we're
like on our second or thirdmonth. It's doing a good job of
now already, like reading theinvoices, bucketing where it
thinks it needs to go. It'sactually really nice. So it's
speeding that process up. It'slearning, and it's learning
nicely. Then we submit ourinvoices by the fifth, is our
(25:29):
deadline. So by the fifth, wewant all those invoices
submitted, and then we're alsoworking on closing out all of
our general expenses during thatsame time, by the 10th, our our
cycle is by the 10th, we need tohave all of our stuff cleared
out, because on the 15th, I'mgoing to review our P L. And
what's so nice about the waythat adaptive is flowing. When I
(25:51):
went to review the P L, we'revery quickly. I could say, Hey,
what's going on with this? This,this, and this. And we spent a
one hour working session,clearing it up and adaptive. And
boom, instantly it cleared upthe P and L, and now all of a
sudden, I can look at it more. Iwouldn't call it like 30,000
view, but on a high level, Iknow what to expect. On my P L,
(26:11):
I could see when something wasoff, and very quickly we could
correct it so it was, it was, itwas huge. It's very important
for that to sync right away,because I'm using QuickBooks as
my main beat, my main reportingsystem,
of course, and that's like,again, it's a common story for
builders, for business owners,but like, when you say, like you
you were, let's call it the10th, right? Or like you're
(26:33):
evaluating the P L, and you seesomething, yep, we talk a lot
about cash leakage, profiterosion and adaptive it's really
fun to talk about like theimmediacy and the time savings
and the overhead reduction thatyou would typically allocate to
those functions in the business,but cash leakage, bills that we
get that we didn't categorizeout, right, that are bucketed in
(26:53):
the general ledger, and it'smaking poor financials look
poor, or profit erosion, right,not having enough cash to cover
the bills that we're paying forCO mingling funds across jobs.
Right? When you make thatcomment of like, you caught an
example? What is that typical?
Like? What's a specific exampleof something that you catch when
you're evaluating a P, L thatstarts that conversation to
square up your books? Yeah,I think on this one, it was
(27:15):
specifically the way we were theway we were bucketing one thing
we were actually using adaptive,we were archiving certain things
that weren't supposed to be andwe were able to get that very
quickly to clear. But one of thethings I would say I really like
about adaptive, to piggyback alittle bit, is it takes away
human error, because now itgives us a second idea, like the
one of the features on adaptivethat's really nice is it will
(27:37):
give you a warning if there'seither a double invoice that's
been been put in or potentialdouble payment. So it flags, it
actually flags it for you. Andit also gives you a warning if
you don't have something codedinto the draw. One of the
nightmares I have, and one ofthe things that we would always
really double check before, wassure an invoice, like an invoice
from a subcontractor, let humanerror is inevitable. An invoice
(28:01):
from a subcontractor, if theygot missed or didn't get paid,
you're going to hear about it,but if we had fronted it, so if
it was on our you know, weprobably have 200 300 300
transactions on our creditcards. If we miss something that
was supposed to get billed outthat month and it did not,
that's a big, big big problem,because that's just, we're just
(28:21):
losing. That's just money that'sgone. Because once that month is
closed out, it's gone. It'sgone. And I guarantee you that,
before we had implementedadaptive, even though we had
manual inputs to check it, Iguarantee you that things were
missed. And what I love aboutadaptive is it just takes that.
It gives you almost acomputerized warning sign,
right? It sort of blocks, I'msure there's still going to be
(28:42):
some challenges, but it blocksthat human error of missing
something, and I really, reallylike that part of it
specifically on the credit cardcoding, because that's where you
can get really, really hurt. Ifyou've got big volume, 200 300
transactions, and you don'tactually build that out,
that's where it hurts totally,totally. And dude, that's that
cash leakage, right? That's thatprofit erosion. It's like, we'll
(29:04):
just talk about the credit cardtransactions, right? It's like,
we ran a study on our customers,and it was like, I want to say,
and I could get the actual dateon here, but I think it's like
80% of the transactions that aremade on credit cards make up 20%
of the cost volume. And when youthink about that, it's like,
(29:24):
that's a lot of receipts. Sure.
You could be like, it's only 20%what's the big deal? But 20% of
cost. Call it a million a year.
Like, dude, if you're missing 50grand, 100 grand in receipts, or
they're getting categorizedwrong, and it's misrepresenting
profitability on jobs, andyou're reflecting that poorly in
p and Ls and in your business,that's a big deal, major deal,
(29:48):
that's going straight to youroverhead, pulling out of your
bottom line, your net, net. Andit's like, that's why it's
important to have thesemechanisms. That's why it's
important. I love it. That's agreat
point. And on top. Top of that,it's also very important,
because think about one of thebig expenses general contractors
have in general is the yourgeneral liability, and you're
always going to get audited onthat, right? So exactly what
(30:10):
you're saying, let's say wehave, for example, a project
specific insurance policy,meaning that it's not going to
go on to our general liabilityif we weren't properly coding,
or we weren't properly takingcare of that. When we get
audited by the company, theythere might be a premium
adjustment. And so it'sextremely important to have have
this integration. In my opinion,it's been huge, and to just not
(30:33):
leave it up to human error, it'sreally nice to have a gut check.
And it works really nicely, likeit works really, really nicely.
And so I Yeah, yeah, it's a it'sa big deal. And the credit card
one, I think, like you said tome, makes me feel better than
ever, because now it takes away.
Before we were just, you get thecredit card memo, and we were
highlighting, like, General,General, General project,
general project, and some there,there. Of course, when you grow
(30:56):
and you have hundreds oftransactions, there's gonna be
leakage, like you said, Dude, ithappens all the time. I bring
this up regularly. It's one ofmy favorite case studies. We're
gonna get Chloe brown on. She'sone of our partners at Wilder
streams. I I still strugglelike, hit her title a because I
think she's just like, humble,and she's like, not that type of
person, but really what she doesis it's more like operations
(31:18):
consulting through the lens ofaccounting. Okay, yeah. So
she'll get, like, she's anaccounting background, very
operationally minded, like, veryprocess heavy. How do we do
things? She loves adaptive butwith one of her customers, she
did, I'm gonna call it like aforensic accounting on it, okay?
And she was going through theirbooks, and she uncovered $5
million in unbilled cost overthe course of the company's
(31:41):
career. And you think aboutthat, you're like, dude, 5
million in unbilled costs.
That's just the unbilled cost,right? That's not including the
markup. That includes themargin, right? So you throw 20%
on that, not a math guy, but itsounds close to 7 million in top
line, right? And you like, youstart to think about that,
(32:02):
you're like, Dude, there's a lotof Miss year over year over
year. Has nothing to do with Areyou making enough money? This is
not a hobby that we'remonetizing, but a business. Are
we making what we should be onthese projects? That clarity is,
it's huge, and I think it's justbroadly been adopted and
accepted by the by the buildingcommunities. Like, just the cost
(32:24):
of doing business. Like, whatelse are you going to do? You
don't have to do it now. Ithink, do you have anything else
you want to throw on that? Dirk,no, no, I couldn't. Maybe Chloe
needs to come check ourbusiness. Because I don't want,
as we grow, I don't want 5million that would that would
make me puke. Devastating,truly, and this was an
individual that had a similarreaction, because this person's
(32:44):
going, Dude, I'm making money.
Like, I'm making money. Thingsare moving. We're paying people,
we're paying bills, we'rewinning work, we're growing a
business. But it's like, that'sthe unsettling part, is like it
has nothing to do with what youthink you should be making. It
has everything are you making?
What you should be making?
That'sit. That's it. Yeah, no, I
that's, that's that now thatif you
(33:10):
want, if you want to, we'll, Iwould love that. Yeah, just have
a conversation, see where itgoes. But um, question for you.
So five years, I mean, this hasbeen, like, just a blitz scale
for you, and you've had a lotof, like, really strong
learnings, I would say, a lot oflearnings that our listeners can
identify with. But for someonethat's listening and is feeling
(33:34):
overwhelmed, what's one piece ofadvice that you would want them
to hear regarding scaling,growing, running a healthy
financial business?
Yeah, it'll be. It's more of anemotional piece of advice than
anything. And it came I learnedit from being in athletics for a
lifetime. But it's to not gettoo high and to not get too low.
(33:57):
Everything's going to come incycles, right? You're going to
have good times. You're going tohave bad times. The key is to
when things are really good.
Celebrate what we want to seemore of so we do want to
celebrate. Celebrate what wewant to see more. But don't ride
so high on that emotion thatwhen things start to turn and
when things are bad, don't rideso low. Try to stay even keel.
If you study the bestcompetitors in the world, the
best professionals, what do theydo? They control their emotions.
(34:19):
They don't get too high and theydon't get too low. And so I
would say, as you continue togrow, the only way to, you know,
to get to it is to go throughit. And I would just say, keep
yourself as much as you can.
Keep yourself riding asconsistent as possible. Don't
get too high, don't get too low.
Know that things come in cycles,and if you're in a bad time
(34:40):
right now, as long as you don'tquit, it'll only get better. And
if you're in a good time,inevitably, things are going to
turn again. It's a cycle. Sototally, I love that, by the
way. Do you have any, like,tactical example of you applying
that?
Yeah. I mean, yeah. I. Is, Idon't always do it. I don't
(35:02):
always do it right. But, youknow, I would say that. I would
say a tactical example of us,even like last year, I would say
would be a great example of notgetting too low when things
weren't going our way, not, youknow, not freaking out
necessarily, when something badwould happen. And we had and we
(35:24):
had some really challengingthings happen, not getting so
low that we're like, hey, let'sI'm not saying the thought
doesn't come across my mind, butI would just say we had a tough
year, or I'd call it just like astagnant year last year, and we
didn't let our emotions get thebest of us. We just kept turning
over every page, saying, Hey, weknow the time's coming, and
(35:45):
let's just keep trying to get alittle bit better every single
day. Reflect. Ask ourselves,what went well, what didn't go
so well, and what are we goingto do to improve on it? And then
let's just wait for our time,for the momentum to come. And lo
and behold, sometimes momentumcomes, and it comes fast, right?
Like you have to put actionbehind it. You can't just make
new wishful thinking. You haveto make sure you're constantly
(36:06):
reflecting, creating positivepivots, and then when the
momentum comes, be ready and actfast. Because that's what that's
exactly what happened for us,and we're just riding that
momentum now that we cameforward. But I would say all of
last year, we were fighting thecall it, not getting too low on
the momentum, not going where wewanted it to go, right the year,
not being the year that wewanted it to be. We
(36:27):
underperformed on what theforecasts were right. But I just
just don't get too low on it.
The whole year was essentiallylike that, and then out of
nowhere, one relationship, oneperson, can change everything
for you. And that's exactly whatoccurred. Jess,
you gotta pop. You gotta pop.
Dude, that's awesome. I mean,I'm just, what I'm taking away
from that is just like, there's,there's a term out there. Maybe
(36:48):
you can help me with this, ormaybe not a term, but a phrase.
It's not like, it's not calledridiculous optimism, but it's
just like, it's just likeoptimism, where it's like, it
might be like, you're justconstantly optimistic, right?
Like riding that wave, butpersistence and consistency is
like, hey, like, this thing'sand if we start getting down,
we're not going to be, to yourpoint, making the positive
(37:08):
pivots that are going tocompound that are going to start
developing those wins. So dude,I think, I think that's great.
Dirk, I think this is a hell ofan episode. I think there's a
lot of tactical, applicabletakeaways for the listeners
here. Thank you so much forjumping on this was this is a
great little episode here. Iappreciate it. Reese. I really,
(37:30):
really enjoyed it. I hope thatwhen you come to Oregon, we can
take you to the WillametteValley, get you some good wines
there. And you know, one thing Iwill say to any of the
listeners, if you're justthinking about adaptive and
you're trying to understandwhether or not implementing the
technology is worth it, it hasbeen. We've had it for three
months now, and it has beenhuge, huge improvement for us.
(37:52):
It's been one of thosetechnologies that I would say
has been a major difference inhow we are running the business
side of our building company. Ihighly recommend it. I think
that it's well worth the monthlycost. And we get out probably
tenfold, tenfold, actually whatwe pay actually
(38:16):
correct. And thank you. But bethree months and you're running,
did you say you're running yourthird draw cycle through this
product? Yeah,we're running our third one. And
I'm extremely and I'm, I am,I'll say I'm pretty hard to
please on those things, and I'mextremely pleased, you know? And
this is not a paid anything.
This is just a happy customerwho is really appreciative for
(38:42):
adaptive and what it's doingsometimes, AI has big promises
and lots of letdowns. And, youknow, I'm, I think it's, it's a
really strong software, plus thecustomer service, you know, the
integration, the customerservice has been phenomenal. You
know, the couple things, couplepieces of feedback that we had
provided for specifically aroundhaving AIA formatting is being
(39:04):
worked on as we speak. That'scoming, and yep, exactly we know
about that. That's probablyabout the only piece of feedback
we had. And so I just, I thinkthe customer service as well has
been really strong as you'reintegrating, if you're nervous
about integrating a technology,the customer service is really,
really good, really strong. Ithink, not to cut
you off, Dirk, but I think it'simportant to quantify for the
(39:26):
listener, because you actuallykind of brought this up in the
beginning of the podcast, theimplementation. And this is the
Midwestern in me, saying goodbyeand picking the conversation
back up. But so again, threemonths, third draw cycle. How?
If you know, maybe your teamimplemented, I don't know. Yeah,
they did. How long did it takefor you guys to get adaptive,
(39:47):
bought, set up, using it,getting value, yo,
super fast. Now we've got areally tech savvy team, and so
I'll give I'll tip my hat there.
And then Mallory, she's beenour, the person that was. But
she's just been phenomenal. Sheshe never makes you feel like
any question is silly or dumb,and then she always makes
(40:07):
additional time for you if youneed it. And we had as many
integration calls as we needed.
You know, we try to, when wedecide on something, we try to
create momentum moment decideright and adapt. Was never in
the way of that, even on, Ithink Mallory was on vacation,
on spring break, and she wasstill helping us out. Was really
cool. So, you know, we it wouldpro it was probably like about a
(40:27):
two week, a two week integrationall in, all right? Because you
got to work through all thedifferent little kinks, yeah,
and then, you know, and then youjust gotta, it's user error
stuff. But I would say both thechat, also the team, even when
Mallory wasn't available, thechats really, really good. And
yeah, we're we were just really,really happy. And again, this is
(40:48):
just a customer giving a fivestar review for a technology
that's really helped usoperationally. Other thing I
really like is from a pricingstructure. Anyone else who uses
technology and construction,right? You use, like a Procore
as you get bigger, so too doesyour bill. And I like the
adaptive, just monthlysubscription component. It's
nice. It just incentivizes youto continue to grow. And it's
just a huge tool. I mean, Ihighly recommend it for anyone
(41:11):
that's considering it, and ifyou want, just reach out to me.
I'll give you we'll give yousome more additional
information.
Love it. Derek, that's great. Weare actually we're rolling out.
We're calling it the adaptiveambassador program, okay? It's
really for, like, our championsand the communities that are
just advocates, a of like,running healthier businesses,
but advocates for strongerfinancials in the construction
(41:34):
sector. I'll reach out to youabout that cool, and we can get
you involved there. But dude,this was great, hand on the
Bible. Final, goodbye. This wasgreat. I appreciate all the
time. All the kind words, allthe lessons for the listeners. I
think this is massivelyapplicable. You have a great
rest of your week, dude. Andobviously, let us know if we
could do anything foryou. You two, Reese, great
company you guys are part of. Ilook forward to continuing to
use the software and watch youguys grow.
(41:58):
Awesome. Sounds like a plan,dude. Likewise, we'll see ya.
We'll see you.
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