May 19, 2026 • 38 mins
Reece sits down with Dustin Stephens, CEO of Alliance Solutions Group, to talk about why contractors cannot treat AI like a shortcut around broken systems. As labor gets tighter and construction businesses get more complex, the companies that understand their tech stack, data, and back office will be in a better position to compete.
Dustin shares what he is seeing across construction ERP, cloud accounting, project management, preconstruction, AP workflows, and AI adoption. The big takeaway: start with the business problem, understand the process, then use technology to make the work faster, clearer, and more human.
https://www.alliancesg.com
email: dstephens@alliance-sg.com
Show Notes:
00:48 Meet Dustin
02:23 Field To Tech
06:21 Innovation Pressure
09:20 Where Contractors Invest
11:38 Building The Stack
13:12 Cloud Resistance
16:22 Operational Tools
17:39 Where To Start
21:36 Strategic Operations
24:26 Back Office Triggers
27:55 Faster Business Insight
30:39 AI And Critical Thinking
37:02 Contractor Advice
Find Our Hosts:
Reece Barnes
Matt Calvano
Podcast Produced By:
Motif Media
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Do we know exactly who we are asa business, where we want to go
(00:02):
as a business? And you know, howdo we start making improvements
if we're doing AI, it's got toelevate the human to human
interaction, because we're apeople services business.
Welcome to builders, budgets andbeers. I'm Reece Barnes and I
started this podcast to havereal conversations about money
in the building industry, thewins, the mistakes and
(00:23):
everything in between. I believebuilders deserve to feel
confident about their finances,and that starts by hearing from
others who've been through ittoo. This industry can be slow
to change, but the right storiesand the right tools can make
profitability feel possible.
Let's get into it. All right,Dustin mics are hot. We're rolling
(00:48):
Great. Glad to be here.
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for jumpingon. Okay, so let's go ahead and
kick the episode off, just witha light introduction, and maybe
you know, a little little toolong. Didn't Read background on
yourself. We can start there.
Okay, yeah, for those of you theaudience who are not aware,
don't know me. My name is DustinStevens. I'm the CEO of Alliance
(01:10):
Solutions Group. We're based outof Sarasota, Florida. We 20
year, you know, serving theconstruction industry where we,
you know, implement ERPs,connect systems between
operations, pre construction,post construction, HR, payroll,
a variety of different things,you know that we bring in to
help our client base with theirtech stack. I myself, you know,
(01:34):
I've been at this role for fourmonths now, but before that, I
was at Sage for 13 yearssupporting Alliance. So as this
transition moving into the CEOhas been fairly smooth, because
I've known the team and workedwith them for the past 13 years
on work with them at Sage andhelping them support the
construction industry clients.
And then as far as mybackground, further than that,
(01:56):
I've been in the constructionindustry. I'm going to sound old
now for 31 years. So, you know,30 you're
an old of that you're an oldvet.
I'm an old vet. So that's fromcarrying a tool belt working on
construction job sites, you knowas a working and building an
envelope construction, and thenmoved into working for building
(02:17):
large building materials,manufacturers, construction
companies and you know, now inthe tech space.
Okay, cool. Okay, so youactually, you started your
career bags on yourYeah, I was on a podcast one
time, and I haven't really toldmany people this, but my first
day in construction was not thefunnest, you know, there they
had me go up going to fly, andput up some of the flashing. And
(02:38):
I had the wrong hammer. At thetime, my very first swing of the
hammer, I smashed my thumb andblood everywhere. So it was the
journey. Wait.
So was that the motivation toget out of the field and into
more of the business side ofconstruction?
Well, yeah. Well, I got betterat swinging a hammer,
thankfully. But it was moreprobably the winters, you know,
(03:01):
shoveling the snow off, just toget, you know, started on the on
the project, and freezing allthe time. Or, you know what,
there's got to be another way Ican stay in the construction
industry. So that totallyyour bigger reason to move away
from doing the hands on, but Istill miss it. Try to do stuff
every once in a while, but Ithink, you know, if you lose it,
you lose it. But I hang my ownpictures up.
(03:23):
There you go. There you go.
Wait, where are you from? Wereyou out of with the snows in the
winter?
I that was in Utah. So in Utah,Utah, Colorado, New York. Now
I'm based out of Portland,Oregon.
Yeah, there you go. There yougo. A lot of seasons, lot of
seasons for you throughout yourcareer. Well, that's great.
Okay, so then, from theconstruction side, I'm curious
(03:44):
to hear more about your journey,because I think what you guys
are doing over at Alliance makesa ton of sense, and certainly
want to dig into that a littlebit more. But just like, how did
you, like, kind of piece yourcareer together, and how did you
make those moves, and what weresome of the biggest, the biggest
pieces that you took away fromeach one of those steps?
Oh, I totally planned this outwhen I was 17.
(04:04):
Yeah,yeah. Well, you know, yeah, it's
funny, because what's thesaying? How do you make God
laugh? Tell him your plans.
Yeah, exactly. There you go.
That's a good one.
Yeah, I just, you know, startedoff, you know, I was working my
way through college. Needed topay for college, needed a job.
Happen to have a, you know, mybrother in law had a
construction company. So that'show I got initially into
(04:25):
construction. Like I said, youknow, just after graduating,
wanted to get into, you know,more of a different side of
things. So went into, you know,actually, it was a company that
I installed their buildingmaterials. They hired me, and,
okay,being, you know, as you know,
getting into sales and, it'sfunny that, you know, I kind of
learned that, you know, Idownplay, you know, when I go to
(04:46):
these calls that I was actuallya construction worker, because I
didn't think anyone want to knowthat, and trying to get into
doors. But the moment I madesome comments, they're like, Oh,
you actually were installed NewYork construction. Okay, well,
I'll talk to you. But yeah, thisyou. Interesting to know, the
respect that people get, sure,been in the trenches with them,
if you so to speak. So just,yeah, just moving, you know, my
career just naturallyprogressed. I just think, like
(05:07):
most people were ambitious, youknow, as we, you know, grow into
a role, you know, we got thatimposter syndrome to start. Then
you start seeing some success,and then you get into where
you're, like, getting some wins,and now you're a little bit
bored, and what's, what's next,and you start again. Like, why
did I just do this to myself?
But we just learned that, hey,you always got to keep
(05:28):
progressing.
Yeah, of course, of course.
Okay, cool. Well, and that's, Imean, that's a big part of the
reason why I was excited to haveyou on the show, because I think
that type of background, youknow, you going from the field
now you're, you know, the chiefexecutive at, you know, Alliance
solutions is, like, you've got alot of perspective. And I think
that's one of the things thatI've learned over my nearly 10
years in the space, is, youknow, our consumer right, the
(05:50):
contractors, they appreciatepeople that have actually lived
and been in their world. Youcalled it right, being in the
trenches with them. So, I mean,obviously, I mean, you had a
hell of a run at Sage. You'reobviously just going going at
Alliance. What would you say is,like the general theme, or the
message that you think thereneeds to be more conversation
(06:12):
around and construction, and itcould be construction,
construction tech, but just overyour career, what would you say
that big theme would be,I would say, Yeah, especially in
the world we see it now is, youjust hear nothing about AI, it's
just, it's innovation, you know,it's in you could argue, you
know, construction now istotally different than when I
first started, you know, when itcomes to, you know, how we
(06:34):
safety, how we did projects, howwe construction, how do we
connect the back office to thefield. And those are just the
hey, you need those things nowjust to survive. And now it's
this big push for, how do we useAI, you know, because it's just,
it's especially relevant in theconstruction phase. Because, you
know, as we were talking before,earlier, for, you know, the
(06:55):
latest steps we've seen, forevery seven that retire out,
we're only getting replaced byone. So you're just going to
have innovation is gonna have tohappen, because you just don't
have enough bodies to do to dothe job. And so, on top of all
that you've got, especially whenit comes to back office, most
companies are still on 4050,year old tech. They're not even
in the cloud, and we're, youknow. So take AI like, Wait, we
(07:17):
got to get into the cloud first,and then we, you know, so all
the cloud across all yoursystems, and so you can take
advantage of it.
Yeah, did you say 40 or 50 yearold tech? Who's the 4050 year
old solution out there? Stillsage timber is it
really that oldTimberline? Sage acquired
Timberline back in 2004 butTimberline started here in
(07:40):
Portland, Oregon, where I am,yeah, 1971
Dang. Okay, I had no andactually, that's crazy, you
know, it's like, no, I mean, I'meven dating myself, and I'm a 30
year old guy, but it's like, in1970s you know, that's 50 years
ago now, which is crazy.
But, yeah, hearing how theywould go and just say, hey, you
need, you know, this is why Ican, you know, you know, you
(08:00):
need these computer systems?
This is, yeah, it wasinteresting listening to the
veterans in that era how theyhad to go and start selling into
this base, controllingaccounting that, yeah,
for sure, well, and there'sstill, like, I mean, there's
definitely that conversation,you know, around like the
construction vertical being, youknow, laggards or late adopters
when it comes to technology.
Well, I personally don't seethat being the case. And even as
(08:24):
of recently, like, definitely,definitely seeing more of an
uptick in an interest inadoption, getting cutting edge
technology, like large languagemodels, agentic AI, stuff like
that applied into theirbusiness. But that was one
piece,yeah, I was just gonna say, yes,
you're seeing some reallyamazing stuff in the pre
construction space, BIM, youknow, that's been around for a
while now, and operations now,it's now we're getting into
(08:47):
what, you know, the back officeaccounting,
totally, totally well. And thatwas, that's where I was gonna
go. I think what was it was likefor every seven that leaves,
what is like, one, two comes tobackfill them, exactly.
Yeah, so it's like, there's,like, definitely the need there,
but I think we're, like, themost interesting, we obviously
were the most interesting areasin the business to start
(09:09):
applying technology. Youobviously mentioned, you know,
the back office workflows, butyou also mentioned pre con,
like, what are you bullish Sean,what do you think is the big
move and where contractorsshould be looking at applying
technology?
Well, you know, I could take itfrom, actually, what the top
contractors are saying, yeah.
You know, we've at Sage when,you know, put on my old sage
hat. We would, we would sponsora survey with AGC every year.
(09:30):
I'm sure you probably did apodcast on this, but where we
would interview around 1400 ofthe top construction firms
across the US, and look at, hey,what are you seeing? Is outlook.
You know, what sectors, youknow, retail, energy, whatever.
Where are you invest in? Whatare you seeing? What's the
economic outlook? And also intechnology? We list of all the
(09:51):
different technologies. What doyou do? Is there any that rise
to the top where you're lookingto reinvest or invest further
in? Do. And the top five was AI,accounting, document management,
estimating and projectmanagement. Those were the areas
that they said that, hey, thismost of them, you know, they
started the project managementgoing into the cloud first. You
(10:13):
know, companies like Procore,they were waiting on the leading
edge with that estimating.
There's still, that's anotherone where sage is the 800 pound
gorilla in estimating space. Butthat's a, you know, an old
product, and I know they'velaunched their new cloud
product, and they're moving, youknow, that's the cloud so, but
design piece with what Autodeskand others do, that's, that's
(10:35):
where they've done some reallycool stuff with AI, especially
on there, on the or others, withdigital takeoff. You know, what
you can do, you can you can bidplans. And so, you know, it
gives the company a hell of alot better chance to win jobs.
Because the more you can bid,the more bid you get out, and
the more bids you get outaccurately, obviously, the more
you can win. And so some of theAI that they can do to to take
those digital takeoffs to anestimate quicker than than
(10:58):
normal.
Totally, totally, okay. So, Imean, it's like, really, like,
like, spreading the gamut, tellme, tell me a little about
Alliance solutions and like,what you guys are doing, because
I think on that thread of wherecontractors need to be looking
at applying technology and justwith, you know, you mentioned
earlier, AI being such a bigconversation. I'm hearing
obviously interest in AI, butkind of the bigger conversation
(11:20):
is, how applicable is it right?
Like, what is it actually doing?
Is it driving a meaningfulresult or driving meaningful
reduction in time spend? Whatare you guys doing at Alliance
Solutions Group? And then we cantalk about some of those
specific solutions that you'reseeing that are driving those
meaningful results.
Yeah. So we, like I said,earlier, been around for over 20
(11:41):
years now, have about customersin the construction space. We're
not like other, you know,similar companies in our space,
where they, you know, hey, we'rejust going to do accounting
systems across variety ofdifferent industries. We've,
we've made a decision that we'regoing to be highly focused on
one particular industry, andwe're going to be the best of
the best that we can be acrossthe full construction life
(12:03):
cycle. How can we help them withour tech stack across the pre
construction, the buyout, theactual construction going on,
post construction service work,and then all feeding into the
back office, accounting,financials, HR, payroll,
analytics, all that. So we wantto be able to, hey, here's your
entire tech stack. How can wehelp support you in the best,
you know, obviously, when itcomes to accounting, we've,
(12:23):
we've partnered with sage. Wefeel like that's the best of the
best as far as the accountingsolution. And then how do we
work with you on what's theright operational solutions, pre
construction solutions, that'sright for your business? That's
what we help guide them throughthat. And one is just, you know,
let's start get all of yoursystems in the cloud, get your
systems connected, to eliminatesome of these silos, or civil
cherish. You're not having toget into multiple different
(12:46):
applications. But if we can getthem talking to each other
operation, you know, so yourproject manager in the field can
be in their operation solutions,solution, they can get the, you
know, the whip reports and allthe job costs and everything
that they know progress on theirspecific job. And then the CFO,
who's taking the stuff can be inthe accounting system, and all
those data, the data flow, so wehelp that customers in that,
(13:08):
creating that tech stack, andhow do we integrate systems for
them? Totally. Okay, cool. Well.
And you mentioned, like, evenjust something as rudimentary
of, like, everything onto thecloud, right? There's a lot of
chatter, you know, youmentioned, like, you know,
timber scan and older productslike that, you know, I mean, you
know, the CFMA forums, andthere's still people, you know,
talking about on prem solutionsversus going into the cloud.
(13:29):
What's your general take onthat? Well, it might be obvious,
but, like, What's your generaltake? And then, do you think
there's, like, any validity interms of, you know, potential
resistance for contractors won'teven stay on prem, as opposed to
in the cloud.
Well, I probably shouldn't saythis, but I have a hard time
getting out of Excel on my youknow. So that's right,
(13:50):
it's, you know, I think there isthat resistance. There's, you
know, you look at, say,potentially timber, timber line,
it's been developed for 50years, and it's the future.
Functionality is very, veryrich, like, it's got more
functionality for constructionthan anyone needs. It's just,
you know, it doesn't have thoselatest and greatest, you know,
the value get from being in thecloud and so, you know. And then
(14:12):
there's a rush to now, withpublishers trying to create that
next gen cloud, but it's goingto take a moment to catch up to
that functionality. But I thinkaround that corner where it's
starting to catch up, and thenit's just gonna be a wave of
customers moving into the cloudfor construction. Because right
now, most of what we're seeingis there's, there was a pent up
demand, you know, constructioncompanies on QuickBooks that are
(14:35):
70 80 million in annual revenue.
You're like, wow, that's butthey're just, you know, they
wanted to go to that next cloud.
And so when they say, Hey, Sageis making a move. And so that's
what we're seeing. A lot ofpeople, they need to graduate
into a more sophisticatedconstruction specific accounting
solution.
Totally. Okay, so, like, really,that resistance is just is, you
know, most simply explained is alack of functionality and
(14:57):
feature in these new, moremodern people. Software, and
that's what the contract thatwas in the beginning. And you're
up to the point where it's, it'sit's close enough where at this
point it's just, hey, what's youknow is it, is it resistant to
change? Or I'll do it when I'mless busy. A lot of it,
honestly, is I'm about to retiresoon as
(15:19):
the next person comes in, I'lllet them make that move to the
cloud. Or, Hey, where's, youknow, there's the founders, you
know, retiring, and then the newgeneration, their their kids,
are taking over the company, andthey want their own new cloud
software. So that's a that's abig catalyst as well. Or a new
CFO goes to another company andthey want to implement something
that they they're familiar with,or take the company to a new,
(15:40):
new level.
Totally. Okay. Okay, cool. Well.
And so with that said is, youknow, you know, next generation
coming in, you know, the old,the previous owners, or the the
owners that are about ready tophase out, they're kind of like,
hey, like, we'll let this nextgeneration make those decisions.
There might, might even be acomponent of like, Hey, I don't
even want to, like, vet thisstuff out, right? I don't even
want to just start that process.
So we'll just let them do it.
Obviously, at Alliance, youknow, you're talking about sage,
(16:02):
but what are some of those more,you know, cutting edge product,
products that you're lookingfor? Because, I mean, you talked
about project management, youtalked about pre con, you talked
about, obviously, Sage being theaccounting side. But what are
you seeing, being really, thosecompelling solutions that are,
you know, peaking the interestof contractors that are solving
really, really valuableproblems,
(16:22):
I would say the operationspiece. You know, whether you're,
you're doing new construction,the field, you need that
collaboration tool for yourproject managers and getting the
data they need to run theirprojects, billing and, you know,
connect the back office. So thatwas, really, that was the start
lead to charge, you know, withProcore, like I mentioned
before, there's been some reallycool stuff, new technology spend
(16:44):
in the pre con space withdigital payoffs and estimating
solutions, and then the postoperations. There's a lot of,
you know, you see the build opsand the sage fold operations
and, you know, service titans ofthe world doing some really cool
stuff in operations. And it justseems to be, you know. Now it's
you know. And we talk to ourcustomers every single day like,
Hey, where are you on thisjourney to get you know, all,
(17:07):
all of your solutions into thecloud? And there some are like,
Hey, we're bullish, and theywant to start immediately.
Others like, hey, maybe it's acouple years later, which is
great. And we can say, hey,well, let's talk to you about a
path. Is your operations in thecloud? Is this like, let's start
with these solutions. And ifyour ultimate goal is to go here
and this with this ERP in thecloud, let's make sure that as
we build out these surroundingsolutions that will be
(17:29):
integrating, that you will havethat integration pass so you can
eliminate so we could just doyou don't want to disrupt the
company too much. But just like,hey, that's not worth one
particular area that's criticalto them,
of course. Okay, well, on that,and this might be, you know, it
depends type answer, but I mean,just of all the customers that
you guys talk to in theconversations that you have,
what would your advice be to thecontractor that's feeling
(17:51):
overwhelmed with all these newsolutions, right? Potentially,
looking at a very legacy techstack, knows they need to go,
hopefully they're already on thecloud, but potentially going on
to the cloud or starting toapply more AI, where should they
start? Like, how should theystart evaluating which function
or which process or whichsoftware they should start
applying? Because, like yousaid, there's a ton of different
(18:12):
directions you couldgo, yeah, and then honestly,
being, you know, put yourself intheir shoes and be empathetic to
this is not, you know, it's notsimple, and you can't be too
disruptive to the business anddo it all at once. And the
reason I say that is I've got adose of my own medicine now, you
know, taking over a CEO atAlliance, where you know now
everything, you can't turnaround without hearing the word
(18:32):
AI. And you know, what's,you know, a
lot you hear the jokes when yousee these different things a
podcast, like, everyone's like,all right, embed AI, and then it
doesn't go any further thanthat. Well, where? What?
ExactlySo, but it is critical. We got
to be on the forefront ofinnovation, so I created a new
role and organization within theteam on strategic operations. So
essentially, how do we overhaulour tech stack to be streamlined
(18:54):
our operations with a heavy AIfocus, you know? And we got all
excited about it as well, andthey come back like, hey, it's
gonna cost us a million dollars.
Million dollars. All right.
Well, that's obviously not gonnahappen. And we can't do all at
once. We'll cripple a company.
So, yeah, we, you know, for us,we just said, Okay, well, what
are we trying to solve? And wehad to get really, really good
(19:15):
at what is our business? How dowe do it? From we're out
engaging, or we're out marketingin the market of like, hey, who
we are. What do we do? How wehelp this construction industry
to prospecting. We close thedeal. We turn them over to
implementation. We turn over topost, go live. You know, happy
customers, customer advocacy.
What are all the different stepsinvolved, all the different
(19:35):
departments involved, what aresome of the break? How much are
the tedious tasks? Where do weget the best gains for our money
and that? So we just had to getreally stood really strategic.
But we started with, do we knowexactly who we are as a
business, where we want to go asa business, and you know, how do
we start making improvements?
Ultimately, that's going toimprove the customer experience,
our colleague experience. Andthen my thing is, like, if we're
(19:57):
doing AI, it's got to elevatethe human to human. Interaction,
because we're, we're peopleservices business, and we want
to unlock more time with ourcustomers, we can have these
face to face consultativeconversations, versus totally,
you know, doing a lot of thetedious work.
Totally, okay, so, and that's,and that's just specifically
through the lens of what you'reseeing in
alliance, yes, yeah. That's,yeah, yeah. Long story short, is
(20:20):
like, so you know that would bemy advice, is to, hey, if you
look where are you on this? Anda lot of them are already doing
it. We just had an event in SanFrancisco where we talked a lot
of current constructioncompanies. They know it's coming
to and they're they're doingvery similar things, of like,
hey, what do we what do we haveto do? And they're creating
this, this roadmap to where theywant to get to, there, where
they ultimately want to get toin their tech stack,
(20:42):
totally totally. And that's whatI wanted to clarify, like, this
is Alliance, because I wasgetting my next question. It's
like, is this playbook and aperspective that could be
applied into the constructionworld? It's really just more
like, how does the business,regardless of what vertical it
is or what the product is like?
That's kind of how you can lookat tastefully adopting AI,
yeah, ultimately, when we can goback without the AI, like, Hey,
(21:03):
here's a good tech path that,you know, we think, just because
we have 4000 clients, and whatwe would recommend, or you can
go talk to other people, they'reexperts in the business as well.
But the AI, you know, is fairlynew for everybody and everyone
you know, there's, what's thebest solutions, what you know?
What's the risk? Do we have awhen we use AI, when we wouldn't
use AI, those type of thingsthat we're even going through,
(21:24):
and it's a huge initiative forus to become experts ourselves
and adopt it. And that would begreat, like, Hey, here's a
better roadmap. Here's what wedid, and help guide them through
that. But totally, or yeah,we're definitely working on
that's awesome, okay? And soobviously that's something
you're working on, but you'dmentioned that you guys, you put
the strategic ops person inplace. Is that? Like, tell me a
(21:45):
little bit more about that role.
And is that a role thatconstruction companies, you
know, obviously depending thesize of the organization? Like,
does that overhead make sense?
But like, is that a role thatyou would advise larger
contractors to do? Is like,strategic ops, this person
focuses on this, and they kindof start going through the
mapping of their journey as abusiness, from prospect to
advocate customer, and they canstart identifying these
(22:07):
workflows to apply AI, andthey're going to really move the
needleAbsolutely, some of our and I
just had a conversation with oneof our clients last week where
they're a fairly larger firm,and maybe, you know, maybe
that's where they're starting.
And they they can afford theinvestment, but hired a Chief
Information Officer wherethey're, hey, technology is
critical to us. It's notsomething that's just a nice to
have. It's a must have to beable to compete. They thought
(22:29):
Scott was worth the investment,and he's coming in like, Hey,
what is the ultimate tech stack?
What we want to do? How do youwork with like us to make sure
that, you know, provide themthought leadership, help out
where they see potentialweaknesses, fix those gaps,
connect different solutions withthem. And then also, they're,
like, they've got contests oflike, All right, here's some of
the AI stuff. And like, Hey,who's going to come up with the
best? And they're kind of, like,gamifying it, putting up. This
(22:50):
is their, you know, theirstrategy of like, get some AI in
the hands of people that aremore tech savvy in the company
and see what happens. And, youknow, those, that was one of
their strategies,totally. I mean, I'm hearing
something very similar, youknow, when we are talking to,
you know, the C level, you know,VP level, and, you know, and
from a leadership standpoint,the more forward thinking
(23:11):
contractors are saying, we knowit's coming, but we need to
evaluate the market and see whatit is. And then they're tasking
the individuals that are goingto be closer to those actual
flows to go out and startevaluating. So I think even if
you don't have, you know theroom on, you know your your PNL
for, for a strategic ops person,specifically, you know there are
things that you can do, and youdon't have to be to a certain
(23:32):
point or a certain revenuebenchmark as a company, to start
delegating this out to your teamand start getting their
perspective on, okay, what isthe potential with AI out there?
And start looking at it morethrough the specifics in the
business and their roles and howit gets applied. Yeah,
you know, I'm the same, becauseI'll get requests all the time,
like, hey, we want thissoftware. We want this AI tool.
(23:54):
And I'm like, All right, well,what's the business case? What's
our and then you have to goback, like, Okay, well, can you
get to, hey, here's business asusual. This is all the this is
all the hours spent in thisparticular task we implement
this. This is, you know, and butyou know, that's where it gets
that you have to reallyunderstand how much time you're
spending on these things. What'sthe real cost? And what are you
going to say by putting inpotential expensive solution? Is
(24:16):
it making the company better? Isit making your experience with
your customers better, or yourcolleagues enjoying more of what
they do, because they're notdoing less hideous stuff and
doing more fun, impactful stuff.
Totally, totally and I mean,just like with the nature of
this podcast, I mean, I talk alot about, like, the financial
side of things, the accountingside of things, what are, what
are? You know, some of thetriggers that you guys hear that
(24:39):
would signal the contractorneeds to start looking at AI for
their back office, or more liketheir accounting, financial
flows. What are some of thosepain points that are like a
strong indicator that theyshould lean in and start
evaluating solutions?
That's good question. It'sdifferent. Seems to be different
for everybody. I. You know, it'sjust depends on the person.
(25:02):
There are people that are justgenerally late adopters, hey,
this works for me. Now I don'ttrust AI. This is fine. And then
you have others that are, ifwe're not innovative, we're
dying and we're you know, butit's not as easy to find those
peoples. Or, how do you get thattrigger? Or a new CFO comes in,
who is more innovative mindset?
Yeah. Or just, they've got tocompete, you know, they've,
(25:25):
they've lost some, someworkforce, you know. And you
know what we need to HR wasnever really something that
they, you know, when I firststarted, we never really talked
to HR, totally, totally.
We'll make sure you get paid.
But now it's become imperative.
It's critical to them. Like weneed to have, we need to retain
(25:45):
our talent. We need to recruit,recruit the best talent. We have
to have solutions and tools inorder to do that. And that's
been a space that, you know,it's been fun to see, because it
wasn't something that was reallydiscussed in the construction
market before.
Totally, totally well. And likeeven you know how you know some
of the things that I'm hearingand that our team is hearing is
it's, I typically, where thisconversation starts is on, like,
(26:07):
an AP side of things. And Ithink that's the obvious. And I
would say it's the obvious,because there's been the most
like, AP point solutions inplace with AI Right? Like, even
just 510, years ago, it was likeaI was optical character
reading, right? And that wasjust like the big play there was
like saving time on data entry,right? But that's usually the
pain point that we hear,especially with these larger
(26:29):
contractors that are processing1000s of AP documents a month,
right? And that's just such, toyour point, such a tedious,
labor intensive task. And there,even, as you know, depending on
the organization, there's a lotof cross function collaboration
that needs to happen. You know,the back office gets an invoice.
They need to know, like, how isthis categorized? What's our
percent complete? Generally,like, what the field context is.
(26:52):
But even with it like this,really starting with AP, we do
start to uncover and theconversation really develops
depending on where you're at inthe org chart. Having that
conversation is like, yes,there's a ton of upside to
automating AP processes, rightand like, creating faster, more
accurate understanding on cost.
But then when you really startto have a conversation with
these people, typically going tobe more AI forward, they really
(27:13):
start to understand that, like,okay, tracking AP and
accelerating that process isnice from a call, it like an
overhead reduction orreallocation conversation. But
really, when you can speed upyour cost understanding and
speed up your incomeunderstanding your revenue,
that's really starting to openup a conversation of, how do we
apply AI to automate web rightand cash flow reporting? And
(27:34):
starting to get into thatfunnel. I don't know if that's
you know, if you guys arehearing that on your end, but
it's starting to turn into moreof a conversation not just
around, like the AP costtracking side of things, but
their eyes are starting to open.
They're starting to become morecreative with, if AI can do
this, then we can apply it here,or this is a more holistic
problem, and we're starting withjust the main issue at hand.
(27:54):
What's your take?
Oh, absolutely. And if we Yeah,and if we can speed up those
processes, rather than lookingat your P L is that history
lesson? Like, how do you get itto where it's a future? Here's
where you're going and get tothe point like, hey, it's not
now. We're giving you insightsof like, what's going to happen
to your business in 12 months,and how you can make corrective
actions now, versus crap we justlost, you know, after the fact,
(28:16):
when you close out the month.
Totally. So I love, I love thatyou did the history lesson on
the P L, because that's reallywhat it is, right? And that's, I
think the best way, even justfor the listeners to, like,
think about AI is like, I thinkthere's just, like, the
immediate friction or concernwith like, AI is going to take
all of our jobs, right? Butlike, that's like, not really
the case. I mean, if they'relike, tedious tasks, then like,
(28:38):
you might not have the businessneed for them. But that's not to
say that like humans aren'tadaptable, right? And they're
not going to develop skills andimpact the business in other
ways. But with that said, it'swhen you think about AI. This is
how I explain it to people. Whenyou think about AI, it's more
important to think, How can Ishorten that timeline that it
takes for me to understand theinformation and to arrive at the
(28:59):
information that I actually wantto make those business decisions
exactly what you just said.
It's, you know, not looking outthe rear view mirror. It's
looking out the windshield,right, and preparing. Hey, look,
we're under billed on theseprojects. Hey, we need, you
know, we're missing changeorders on this is going to
impact our, you know, our profitmargin, you know, hey, if we
apply AI to our billing agent,then we can get more income in
the business. And we're not, youknow, adding risk to the
business. Soinnovation is going to just keep
(29:21):
hitting us. It's not the firsttime we've had, you know, you
know, with the cloud or with,hey, used to, I just marvel at
the times. You know what, emaildidn't exist. You had to write
letters. You had a, you know,someone's got to type this up.
The stuff, the productivitygains that we've had over the
last 50 years or so, it's justamazing. And I was about to
embarrass maybe I will. Butremember talking to my nieces
(29:43):
and nephews about school, andthey have to do these research
papers, like you get one done in30 seconds, where I've spent
weeks going up to the schoollibraries, printing, printing
stuff out, holding my source,but, yeah, anyway, but hang
on, no,but that's an interesting point,
because I think there's a lot ofthat. Like we're talking about,
like, even if it's like, ifwe're talking AP clerks, right?
Or people that are justhandling, like, there's depth on
(30:04):
that team, and they're justhandling these tedious tasks.
What's your take on theimportance of that role being
performed in an organization forfuture talent to be developed?
Right? I guess, to round thisout, to your example, talking to
your nieces and nephews, right?
Like they can crank out a paperusing AI in minutes, right? But
(30:25):
was it was the two week processthat you and I were used to
without AI. Was that theimportant piece of like critical
thinking, getting that firmunderstanding and developing
that skill, and are we going tobe bypassing that with AI?
What's your what's your take onthat?
Well, I could probably talkanother three hours, because
it's, you know, one of my, youknow, not to nerd out on science
(30:46):
fiction, but for those listenerswho might, but the analogy is
the same, but one of my bit, youknow, and it just happens to be
out there. But I don't know ifyou've seen the latest dune
movies, but what's, I'mnot a big movie guy. Well,
it's a book series that startedin the 1960s actually, but okay,
shown if you're if you'rewatching the movies after you
don't see computers, you don'tsee AI anywhere. This is, you
(31:08):
know, 20,000 years into thefuture. Reason in the book, when
they read it and wrote it in the60s, the author saw this AI wave
coming in the 60s, like hecalled a thinking machine. But
basically, the theory he had wasthat in the book, that it's
going to make us soft. Hey, Idid take over the world. It got
too soft. And then humanity, youknow, eventually had to defy
(31:29):
them. And then they had toevolve and get to your point,
better at critical thinking,better being our own personal
computer, better at, you know,just everything out there, not
relying on a, I think, machinesand so, but if you read the book
further along the main you know,it gets to the point where you
can't, you know. And they triedto stop innovation, and then,
sureyou can't stop innovation. You
know, they're, you know. Thecomments was, you know, would
(31:52):
you think in a world withoutbirds? Mankind wouldn't invent
airplanes? You know, sure,nothing. And so what we need to
do is figure out a way to bebetter, you know, and get better
ourselves, involve ourselves tobe better at that critical
thinking. How we do that? Idon't know. I guess we're about
to find out, because it's soconvenient on so many different
(32:13):
tasks that you cando totally it's impossible to
ignore it, right? And that'swhat like. I love that like. And
if this is credit to dune orjust credit to Dustin, but it's
like, we wouldn't have airplanesif we didn't have birds, right?
It's totally doing so it'll takethat
view. Is it Doom or dune? It's du, N, E, right?
Doing like it, yeah, yeah.
(32:34):
That's like, what is it like theTimothy Charlemagne movie? It
wasn't you in that, yeah? Okay,yeah. See, I'm just, I'm
terrible at that kind of stuff.
I just, I'm not a big movie guy.
I'm not a big movie guy. I'm notproducing the movie or not.
Yeah, it is good.
Yeah, I don't know if buildersbudgets and beers is that big of
a podcast for us to get introuble. But totally lost my
train of thought. It was aboutbirds, airplanes, innovation.
(32:58):
How do we still get better andbetter, totally
because, yeah, you don't growwithout struggle. Don't how do
we still, yeah, I don't know theanswer, other than I completely
agree with you, I think we stillneed to need challenge. We can't
have it easy all the time. I'msure that's going to happen no
matter what, but I just don'ttotally,
(33:20):
and I think where I was gonna gowith this, and this is just kind
of like a layup, you know,association here. But it's like,
like, when Henry Ford came outwith, you know, the Model T,
right, mass producing vehicles,it was like, you know, we were
like, largely, like a horsedominated transportation, you
know, world, right? And then youget access to the cars. And it
started out as, like, like aluxury and, you know, less of a
(33:41):
less less of a convenience, butmore of a like, look what I can
do. And then it just like thatpaved the way for vehicles to be
such a huge part of this. Butit's not like we just, like all
these people that wereblacksmiths, like doing
horseshoes and, like, you know,stuff around supporting the
horse industry, right? Theyjust, like, disappeared. They
just moved into differentfunctions.
So industries took overexactly. It created other
(34:02):
opportunities. Now, like, Ithink there's a lot of paranoia
about, like, AI and like, what'sgoing to really be the need
there, but I do see, you know, Ihad Julie Adams on the podcast
we were talking about that that,like, the obvious is you need to
apply AI into the business. Butthen, when you even take a step
back and what industries arelike, extremely insulated from
this is AI requires a lot ofconstruction in order for AI to
(34:23):
be a conversation. We've allread the articles about the
billions, trillions of dollars,getting dumped into data centers
and all the construction relatedaround that, the power plants
and stuff like that. But that'salso going to build more
community, right? Like you lookat these places that they're
putting, the data centers, andit's impossible to ignore that
they're going to create thrivingcommunities that were probably,
like, really small, like, maybenot hard to find work, but hard
(34:46):
to find, like, high value workin those areas. So maybe this is
just like the blind optimist inme, but I think, you know, with
all of the you know, advancementthat we're making, there's.
Going to be plenty of room forhumans. They're just going to be
in roles that we have never eventhought about. Yeah,
oh, absolutely. And even inconstruction, when one industry
(35:10):
might be slow, others take off.
You know, it's a pretty, youknow, well diversified industry
that's protected in some waysoutside of 2008 but, yeah, I
don't know. I think about it,there's probably all a lot of
doom and gloom when somethinginnovative comes out, like, say,
the printing press, people arelike, yeah, no, people are gonna
be, you know, the ruling peopleat the time, like, people are
(35:30):
gonna be too smart, and what'sthat gonna do? And, you know,
but look what's happening andhow technology just skyrocket
after we educated more of ourpeople. So I would imagine AI is
going to do the same.
Totallymy optimist to me as well. Yeah,
exactly. I think you have to be.
And, I mean, I think, like, youknow, just generally, especially
in the United States, like,there's a lot of, like,
(35:51):
negativity around a lot ofdivision, you know. And I think,
you know, you just, you can findsome peace and focusing on the
optimistic side of things. Andjust like, you can't stop
innovation, right? Like AI,adoption is not slowing down,
it's only speeding up. So, youknow, keeping a clear head on
this and thinking like, okay,how can I actually make my world
more efficient?
(36:13):
Yeah, and go ahead,right? It's, it seems the
division a lot is on people'sphones, looking through screens,
versus totallyoutside and just start talking
to people. It's not what you'reseeing in the phone. Totally,
yeah, I agree, fear and gloom.
Yes. Okay, cool. Well, before wewrap up, you know, I mean,
(36:34):
you've got, you know, over a 30year career in the space from
all the way from being, youknow, bags on a hammer swinger,
going up into, you know, thematerial side of things, the
tech side of things, the serviceside of things, if you just
have, like, one piece of adviceor one message, and this can be
as biased as you want, no shame,like, what do you think is the
most important thing forcontractors to consider about
(36:56):
their business and why theyshould take that into
consideration.
Well, one thing I, you know, Ihave to say is thank you,
because I think they, they don'tget enough credit for what this
infrastructure they build thatwe have these nice, amazing
lives that we live, and they doa very hard job. So one thank
(37:16):
you that they've, they've gotinto this industry, and they're,
they're helping us make a betterworld? But, yeah, I would say
just going back to, like, diveinto innovation. Don't let it
scare you. You know, it's youknow, be optimistic about that,
as we said, and take your time.
Do it strategically? Understandyour business. Where do you want
to go? How do we what do we wantto be? What's our values, and
how we adopt this newtechnology? Are we helping our
(37:38):
people, our customers, andmaking the world a better place,
and just have some roles andguidelines that you that work
for you in that endeavor.
Beautiful. I love it. Now I'mgoing to ask you to shamelessly
plug and tell the listeners howthey can get in contact with
Alliant Solutions Group, ifthey're ready to or they need
(37:59):
help navigating that journey.
How can they get a hold of youguys? Where can they find you?
Well, you can Google is always agreat place. Alliance solutions
group. You can look Google.
There's all of our information.
You can contact us. Watch somedemos. We can get in contact
with with them. Interact withour website. They can email me,
Dustin. Dustin, that was my oldemail.
(38:22):
Here we go.
Sage email that's not going togo through, but D Stevens at
Alliance. SG, calm, awesome.
Love to talk to them.
Yeah, beautiful, no Dustin, itwas an absolute pleasure. Really
appreciate you jumping onsharing your perspective and all
the wisdom that you've gatheredover your career. And yeah, I
appreciate you jumping on thepod. Well, we'll connect soon.
(38:42):
Appreciate thanks, Reece.
you bet.
Do we know exactly who we are asa business, where we want to go
(00:02):
as a business? And you know, howdo we start making improvements
if we're doing AI, it's got toelevate the human to human
interaction, because we're apeople services business.
Welcome to builders, budgets andbeers. I'm Reece Barnes and I
started this podcast to havereal conversations about money
in the building industry, thewins, the mistakes and
(00:23):
everything in between. I believebuilders deserve to feel
confident about their finances,and that starts by hearing from
others who've been through ittoo. This industry can be slow
to change, but the right storiesand the right tools can make
profitability feel possible.
Let's get into it. All right,Dustin mics are hot. We're rolling
(00:48):
Great. Glad to be here.
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for jumpingon. Okay, so let's go ahead and
kick the episode off, just witha light introduction, and maybe
you know, a little little toolong. Didn't Read background on
yourself. We can start there.
Okay, yeah, for those of you theaudience who are not aware,
don't know me. My name is DustinStevens. I'm the CEO of Alliance
(01:10):
Solutions Group. We're based outof Sarasota, Florida. We 20
year, you know, serving theconstruction industry where we,
you know, implement ERPs,connect systems between
operations, pre construction,post construction, HR, payroll,
a variety of different things,you know that we bring in to
help our client base with theirtech stack. I myself, you know,
(01:34):
I've been at this role for fourmonths now, but before that, I
was at Sage for 13 yearssupporting Alliance. So as this
transition moving into the CEOhas been fairly smooth, because
I've known the team and workedwith them for the past 13 years
on work with them at Sage andhelping them support the
construction industry clients.
And then as far as mybackground, further than that,
(01:56):
I've been in the constructionindustry. I'm going to sound old
now for 31 years. So, you know,30 you're
an old of that you're an oldvet.
I'm an old vet. So that's fromcarrying a tool belt working on
construction job sites, you knowas a working and building an
envelope construction, and thenmoved into working for building
(02:17):
large building materials,manufacturers, construction
companies and you know, now inthe tech space.
Okay, cool. Okay, so youactually, you started your
career bags on yourYeah, I was on a podcast one
time, and I haven't really toldmany people this, but my first
day in construction was not thefunnest, you know, there they
had me go up going to fly, andput up some of the flashing. And
(02:38):
I had the wrong hammer. At thetime, my very first swing of the
hammer, I smashed my thumb andblood everywhere. So it was the
journey. Wait.
So was that the motivation toget out of the field and into
more of the business side ofconstruction?
Well, yeah. Well, I got betterat swinging a hammer,
thankfully. But it was moreprobably the winters, you know,
(03:01):
shoveling the snow off, just toget, you know, started on the on
the project, and freezing allthe time. Or, you know what,
there's got to be another way Ican stay in the construction
industry. So that totallyyour bigger reason to move away
from doing the hands on, but Istill miss it. Try to do stuff
every once in a while, but Ithink, you know, if you lose it,
you lose it. But I hang my ownpictures up.
(03:23):
There you go. There you go.
Wait, where are you from? Wereyou out of with the snows in the
winter?
I that was in Utah. So in Utah,Utah, Colorado, New York. Now
I'm based out of Portland,Oregon.
Yeah, there you go. There yougo. A lot of seasons, lot of
seasons for you throughout yourcareer. Well, that's great.
Okay, so then, from theconstruction side, I'm curious
(03:44):
to hear more about your journey,because I think what you guys
are doing over at Alliance makesa ton of sense, and certainly
want to dig into that a littlebit more. But just like, how did
you, like, kind of piece yourcareer together, and how did you
make those moves, and what weresome of the biggest, the biggest
pieces that you took away fromeach one of those steps?
Oh, I totally planned this outwhen I was 17.
(04:04):
Yeah,yeah. Well, you know, yeah, it's
funny, because what's thesaying? How do you make God
laugh? Tell him your plans.
Yeah, exactly. There you go.
That's a good one.
Yeah, I just, you know, startedoff, you know, I was working my
way through college. Needed topay for college, needed a job.
Happen to have a, you know, mybrother in law had a
construction company. So that'show I got initially into
(04:25):
construction. Like I said, youknow, just after graduating,
wanted to get into, you know,more of a different side of
things. So went into, you know,actually, it was a company that
I installed their buildingmaterials. They hired me, and,
okay,being, you know, as you know,
getting into sales and, it'sfunny that, you know, I kind of
learned that, you know, Idownplay, you know, when I go to
(04:46):
these calls that I was actuallya construction worker, because I
didn't think anyone want to knowthat, and trying to get into
doors. But the moment I madesome comments, they're like, Oh,
you actually were installed NewYork construction. Okay, well,
I'll talk to you. But yeah, thisyou. Interesting to know, the
respect that people get, sure,been in the trenches with them,
if you so to speak. So just,yeah, just moving, you know, my
career just naturallyprogressed. I just think, like
(05:07):
most people were ambitious, youknow, as we, you know, grow into
a role, you know, we got thatimposter syndrome to start. Then
you start seeing some success,and then you get into where
you're, like, getting some wins,and now you're a little bit
bored, and what's, what's next,and you start again. Like, why
did I just do this to myself?
But we just learned that, hey,you always got to keep
(05:28):
progressing.
Yeah, of course, of course.
Okay, cool. Well, and that's, Imean, that's a big part of the
reason why I was excited to haveyou on the show, because I think
that type of background, youknow, you going from the field
now you're, you know, the chiefexecutive at, you know, Alliance
solutions is, like, you've got alot of perspective. And I think
that's one of the things thatI've learned over my nearly 10
years in the space, is, youknow, our consumer right, the
(05:50):
contractors, they appreciatepeople that have actually lived
and been in their world. Youcalled it right, being in the
trenches with them. So, I mean,obviously, I mean, you had a
hell of a run at Sage. You'reobviously just going going at
Alliance. What would you say is,like the general theme, or the
message that you think thereneeds to be more conversation
(06:12):
around and construction, and itcould be construction,
construction tech, but just overyour career, what would you say
that big theme would be,I would say, Yeah, especially in
the world we see it now is, youjust hear nothing about AI, it's
just, it's innovation, you know,it's in you could argue, you
know, construction now istotally different than when I
first started, you know, when itcomes to, you know, how we
(06:34):
safety, how we did projects, howwe construction, how do we
connect the back office to thefield. And those are just the
hey, you need those things nowjust to survive. And now it's
this big push for, how do we useAI, you know, because it's just,
it's especially relevant in theconstruction phase. Because, you
know, as we were talking before,earlier, for, you know, the
(06:55):
latest steps we've seen, forevery seven that retire out,
we're only getting replaced byone. So you're just going to
have innovation is gonna have tohappen, because you just don't
have enough bodies to do to dothe job. And so, on top of all
that you've got, especially whenit comes to back office, most
companies are still on 4050,year old tech. They're not even
in the cloud, and we're, youknow. So take AI like, Wait, we
(07:17):
got to get into the cloud first,and then we, you know, so all
the cloud across all yoursystems, and so you can take
advantage of it.
Yeah, did you say 40 or 50 yearold tech? Who's the 4050 year
old solution out there? Stillsage timber is it
really that oldTimberline? Sage acquired
Timberline back in 2004 butTimberline started here in
(07:40):
Portland, Oregon, where I am,yeah, 1971
Dang. Okay, I had no andactually, that's crazy, you
know, it's like, no, I mean, I'meven dating myself, and I'm a 30
year old guy, but it's like, in1970s you know, that's 50 years
ago now, which is crazy.
But, yeah, hearing how theywould go and just say, hey, you
need, you know, this is why Ican, you know, you know, you
(08:00):
need these computer systems?
This is, yeah, it wasinteresting listening to the
veterans in that era how theyhad to go and start selling into
this base, controllingaccounting that, yeah,
for sure, well, and there'sstill, like, I mean, there's
definitely that conversation,you know, around like the
construction vertical being, youknow, laggards or late adopters
when it comes to technology.
Well, I personally don't seethat being the case. And even as
(08:24):
of recently, like, definitely,definitely seeing more of an
uptick in an interest inadoption, getting cutting edge
technology, like large languagemodels, agentic AI, stuff like
that applied into theirbusiness. But that was one
piece,yeah, I was just gonna say, yes,
you're seeing some reallyamazing stuff in the pre
construction space, BIM, youknow, that's been around for a
while now, and operations now,it's now we're getting into
(08:47):
what, you know, the back officeaccounting,
totally, totally well. And thatwas, that's where I was gonna
go. I think what was it was likefor every seven that leaves,
what is like, one, two comes tobackfill them, exactly.
Yeah, so it's like, there's,like, definitely the need there,
but I think we're, like, themost interesting, we obviously
were the most interesting areasin the business to start
(09:09):
applying technology. Youobviously mentioned, you know,
the back office workflows, butyou also mentioned pre con,
like, what are you bullish Sean,what do you think is the big
move and where contractorsshould be looking at applying
technology?
Well, you know, I could take itfrom, actually, what the top
contractors are saying, yeah.
You know, we've at Sage when,you know, put on my old sage
hat. We would, we would sponsora survey with AGC every year.
(09:30):
I'm sure you probably did apodcast on this, but where we
would interview around 1400 ofthe top construction firms
across the US, and look at, hey,what are you seeing? Is outlook.
You know, what sectors, youknow, retail, energy, whatever.
Where are you invest in? Whatare you seeing? What's the
economic outlook? And also intechnology? We list of all the
(09:51):
different technologies. What doyou do? Is there any that rise
to the top where you're lookingto reinvest or invest further
in? Do. And the top five was AI,accounting, document management,
estimating and projectmanagement. Those were the areas
that they said that, hey, thismost of them, you know, they
started the project managementgoing into the cloud first. You
(10:13):
know, companies like Procore,they were waiting on the leading
edge with that estimating.
There's still, that's anotherone where sage is the 800 pound
gorilla in estimating space. Butthat's a, you know, an old
product, and I know they'velaunched their new cloud
product, and they're moving, youknow, that's the cloud so, but
design piece with what Autodeskand others do, that's, that's
(10:35):
where they've done some reallycool stuff with AI, especially
on there, on the or others, withdigital takeoff. You know, what
you can do, you can you can bidplans. And so, you know, it
gives the company a hell of alot better chance to win jobs.
Because the more you can bid,the more bid you get out, and
the more bids you get outaccurately, obviously, the more
you can win. And so some of theAI that they can do to to take
those digital takeoffs to anestimate quicker than than
(10:58):
normal.
Totally, totally, okay. So, Imean, it's like, really, like,
like, spreading the gamut, tellme, tell me a little about
Alliance solutions and like,what you guys are doing, because
I think on that thread of wherecontractors need to be looking
at applying technology and justwith, you know, you mentioned
earlier, AI being such a bigconversation. I'm hearing
obviously interest in AI, butkind of the bigger conversation
(11:20):
is, how applicable is it right?
Like, what is it actually doing?
Is it driving a meaningfulresult or driving meaningful
reduction in time spend? Whatare you guys doing at Alliance
Solutions Group? And then we cantalk about some of those
specific solutions that you'reseeing that are driving those
meaningful results.
Yeah. So we, like I said,earlier, been around for over 20
(11:41):
years now, have about customersin the construction space. We're
not like other, you know,similar companies in our space,
where they, you know, hey, we'rejust going to do accounting
systems across variety ofdifferent industries. We've,
we've made a decision that we'regoing to be highly focused on
one particular industry, andwe're going to be the best of
the best that we can be acrossthe full construction life
(12:03):
cycle. How can we help them withour tech stack across the pre
construction, the buyout, theactual construction going on,
post construction service work,and then all feeding into the
back office, accounting,financials, HR, payroll,
analytics, all that. So we wantto be able to, hey, here's your
entire tech stack. How can wehelp support you in the best,
you know, obviously, when itcomes to accounting, we've,
(12:23):
we've partnered with sage. Wefeel like that's the best of the
best as far as the accountingsolution. And then how do we
work with you on what's theright operational solutions, pre
construction solutions, that'sright for your business? That's
what we help guide them throughthat. And one is just, you know,
let's start get all of yoursystems in the cloud, get your
systems connected, to eliminatesome of these silos, or civil
cherish. You're not having toget into multiple different
(12:46):
applications. But if we can getthem talking to each other
operation, you know, so yourproject manager in the field can
be in their operation solutions,solution, they can get the, you
know, the whip reports and allthe job costs and everything
that they know progress on theirspecific job. And then the CFO,
who's taking the stuff can be inthe accounting system, and all
those data, the data flow, so wehelp that customers in that,
(13:08):
creating that tech stack, andhow do we integrate systems for
them? Totally. Okay, cool. Well.
And you mentioned, like, evenjust something as rudimentary
of, like, everything onto thecloud, right? There's a lot of
chatter, you know, youmentioned, like, you know,
timber scan and older productslike that, you know, I mean, you
know, the CFMA forums, andthere's still people, you know,
talking about on prem solutionsversus going into the cloud.
(13:29):
What's your general take onthat? Well, it might be obvious,
but, like, What's your generaltake? And then, do you think
there's, like, any validity interms of, you know, potential
resistance for contractors won'teven stay on prem, as opposed to
in the cloud.
Well, I probably shouldn't saythis, but I have a hard time
getting out of Excel on my youknow. So that's right,
(13:50):
it's, you know, I think there isthat resistance. There's, you
know, you look at, say,potentially timber, timber line,
it's been developed for 50years, and it's the future.
Functionality is very, veryrich, like, it's got more
functionality for constructionthan anyone needs. It's just,
you know, it doesn't have thoselatest and greatest, you know,
the value get from being in thecloud and so, you know. And then
(14:12):
there's a rush to now, withpublishers trying to create that
next gen cloud, but it's goingto take a moment to catch up to
that functionality. But I thinkaround that corner where it's
starting to catch up, and thenit's just gonna be a wave of
customers moving into the cloudfor construction. Because right
now, most of what we're seeingis there's, there was a pent up
demand, you know, constructioncompanies on QuickBooks that are
(14:35):
70 80 million in annual revenue.
You're like, wow, that's butthey're just, you know, they
wanted to go to that next cloud.
And so when they say, Hey, Sageis making a move. And so that's
what we're seeing. A lot ofpeople, they need to graduate
into a more sophisticatedconstruction specific accounting
solution.
Totally. Okay, so, like, really,that resistance is just is, you
know, most simply explained is alack of functionality and
(14:57):
feature in these new, moremodern people. Software, and
that's what the contract thatwas in the beginning. And you're
up to the point where it's, it'sit's close enough where at this
point it's just, hey, what's youknow is it, is it resistant to
change? Or I'll do it when I'mless busy. A lot of it,
honestly, is I'm about to retiresoon as
(15:19):
the next person comes in, I'lllet them make that move to the
cloud. Or, Hey, where's, youknow, there's the founders, you
know, retiring, and then the newgeneration, their their kids,
are taking over the company, andthey want their own new cloud
software. So that's a that's abig catalyst as well. Or a new
CFO goes to another company andthey want to implement something
that they they're familiar with,or take the company to a new,
(15:40):
new level.
Totally. Okay. Okay, cool. Well.
And so with that said is, youknow, you know, next generation
coming in, you know, the old,the previous owners, or the the
owners that are about ready tophase out, they're kind of like,
hey, like, we'll let this nextgeneration make those decisions.
There might, might even be acomponent of like, Hey, I don't
even want to, like, vet thisstuff out, right? I don't even
want to just start that process.
So we'll just let them do it.
Obviously, at Alliance, youknow, you're talking about sage,
(16:02):
but what are some of those more,you know, cutting edge product,
products that you're lookingfor? Because, I mean, you talked
about project management, youtalked about pre con, you talked
about, obviously, Sage being theaccounting side. But what are
you seeing, being really, thosecompelling solutions that are,
you know, peaking the interestof contractors that are solving
really, really valuableproblems,
(16:22):
I would say the operationspiece. You know, whether you're,
you're doing new construction,the field, you need that
collaboration tool for yourproject managers and getting the
data they need to run theirprojects, billing and, you know,
connect the back office. So thatwas, really, that was the start
lead to charge, you know, withProcore, like I mentioned
before, there's been some reallycool stuff, new technology spend
(16:44):
in the pre con space withdigital payoffs and estimating
solutions, and then the postoperations. There's a lot of,
you know, you see the build opsand the sage fold operations
and, you know, service titans ofthe world doing some really cool
stuff in operations. And it justseems to be, you know. Now it's
you know. And we talk to ourcustomers every single day like,
Hey, where are you on thisjourney to get you know, all,
(17:07):
all of your solutions into thecloud? And there some are like,
Hey, we're bullish, and theywant to start immediately.
Others like, hey, maybe it's acouple years later, which is
great. And we can say, hey,well, let's talk to you about a
path. Is your operations in thecloud? Is this like, let's start
with these solutions. And ifyour ultimate goal is to go here
and this with this ERP in thecloud, let's make sure that as
we build out these surroundingsolutions that will be
(17:29):
integrating, that you will havethat integration pass so you can
eliminate so we could just doyou don't want to disrupt the
company too much. But just like,hey, that's not worth one
particular area that's criticalto them,
of course. Okay, well, on that,and this might be, you know, it
depends type answer, but I mean,just of all the customers that
you guys talk to in theconversations that you have,
what would your advice be to thecontractor that's feeling
(17:51):
overwhelmed with all these newsolutions, right? Potentially,
looking at a very legacy techstack, knows they need to go,
hopefully they're already on thecloud, but potentially going on
to the cloud or starting toapply more AI, where should they
start? Like, how should theystart evaluating which function
or which process or whichsoftware they should start
applying? Because, like yousaid, there's a ton of different
(18:12):
directions you couldgo, yeah, and then honestly,
being, you know, put yourself intheir shoes and be empathetic to
this is not, you know, it's notsimple, and you can't be too
disruptive to the business anddo it all at once. And the
reason I say that is I've got adose of my own medicine now, you
know, taking over a CEO atAlliance, where you know now
everything, you can't turnaround without hearing the word
(18:32):
AI. And you know, what's,you know, a
lot you hear the jokes when yousee these different things a
podcast, like, everyone's like,all right, embed AI, and then it
doesn't go any further thanthat. Well, where? What?
ExactlySo, but it is critical. We got
to be on the forefront ofinnovation, so I created a new
role and organization within theteam on strategic operations. So
essentially, how do we overhaulour tech stack to be streamlined
(18:54):
our operations with a heavy AIfocus, you know? And we got all
excited about it as well, andthey come back like, hey, it's
gonna cost us a million dollars.
Million dollars. All right.
Well, that's obviously not gonnahappen. And we can't do all at
once. We'll cripple a company.
So, yeah, we, you know, for us,we just said, Okay, well, what
are we trying to solve? And wehad to get really, really good
(19:15):
at what is our business? How dowe do it? From we're out
engaging, or we're out marketingin the market of like, hey, who
we are. What do we do? How wehelp this construction industry
to prospecting. We close thedeal. We turn them over to
implementation. We turn over topost, go live. You know, happy
customers, customer advocacy.
What are all the different stepsinvolved, all the different
(19:35):
departments involved, what aresome of the break? How much are
the tedious tasks? Where do weget the best gains for our money
and that? So we just had to getreally stood really strategic.
But we started with, do we knowexactly who we are as a
business, where we want to go asa business, and you know, how do
we start making improvements?
Ultimately, that's going toimprove the customer experience,
our colleague experience. Andthen my thing is, like, if we're
(19:57):
doing AI, it's got to elevatethe human to human. Interaction,
because we're, we're peopleservices business, and we want
to unlock more time with ourcustomers, we can have these
face to face consultativeconversations, versus totally,
you know, doing a lot of thetedious work.
Totally, okay, so, and that's,and that's just specifically
through the lens of what you'reseeing in
alliance, yes, yeah. That's,yeah, yeah. Long story short, is
(20:20):
like, so you know that would bemy advice, is to, hey, if you
look where are you on this? Anda lot of them are already doing
it. We just had an event in SanFrancisco where we talked a lot
of current constructioncompanies. They know it's coming
to and they're they're doingvery similar things, of like,
hey, what do we what do we haveto do? And they're creating
this, this roadmap to where theywant to get to, there, where
they ultimately want to get toin their tech stack,
(20:42):
totally totally. And that's whatI wanted to clarify, like, this
is Alliance, because I wasgetting my next question. It's
like, is this playbook and aperspective that could be
applied into the constructionworld? It's really just more
like, how does the business,regardless of what vertical it
is or what the product is like?
That's kind of how you can lookat tastefully adopting AI,
yeah, ultimately, when we can goback without the AI, like, Hey,
(21:03):
here's a good tech path that,you know, we think, just because
we have 4000 clients, and whatwe would recommend, or you can
go talk to other people, they'reexperts in the business as well.
But the AI, you know, is fairlynew for everybody and everyone
you know, there's, what's thebest solutions, what you know?
What's the risk? Do we have awhen we use AI, when we wouldn't
use AI, those type of thingsthat we're even going through,
(21:24):
and it's a huge initiative forus to become experts ourselves
and adopt it. And that would begreat, like, Hey, here's a
better roadmap. Here's what wedid, and help guide them through
that. But totally, or yeah,we're definitely working on
that's awesome, okay? And soobviously that's something
you're working on, but you'dmentioned that you guys, you put
the strategic ops person inplace. Is that? Like, tell me a
(21:45):
little bit more about that role.
And is that a role thatconstruction companies, you
know, obviously depending thesize of the organization? Like,
does that overhead make sense?
But like, is that a role thatyou would advise larger
contractors to do? Is like,strategic ops, this person
focuses on this, and they kindof start going through the
mapping of their journey as abusiness, from prospect to
advocate customer, and they canstart identifying these
(22:07):
workflows to apply AI, andthey're going to really move the
needleAbsolutely, some of our and I
just had a conversation with oneof our clients last week where
they're a fairly larger firm,and maybe, you know, maybe
that's where they're starting.
And they they can afford theinvestment, but hired a Chief
Information Officer wherethey're, hey, technology is
critical to us. It's notsomething that's just a nice to
have. It's a must have to beable to compete. They thought
(22:29):
Scott was worth the investment,and he's coming in like, Hey,
what is the ultimate tech stack?
What we want to do? How do youwork with like us to make sure
that, you know, provide themthought leadership, help out
where they see potentialweaknesses, fix those gaps,
connect different solutions withthem. And then also, they're,
like, they've got contests oflike, All right, here's some of
the AI stuff. And like, Hey,who's going to come up with the
best? And they're kind of, like,gamifying it, putting up. This
(22:50):
is their, you know, theirstrategy of like, get some AI in
the hands of people that aremore tech savvy in the company
and see what happens. And, youknow, those, that was one of
their strategies,totally. I mean, I'm hearing
something very similar, youknow, when we are talking to,
you know, the C level, you know,VP level, and, you know, and
from a leadership standpoint,the more forward thinking
(23:11):
contractors are saying, we knowit's coming, but we need to
evaluate the market and see whatit is. And then they're tasking
the individuals that are goingto be closer to those actual
flows to go out and startevaluating. So I think even if
you don't have, you know theroom on, you know your your PNL
for, for a strategic ops person,specifically, you know there are
things that you can do, and youdon't have to be to a certain
(23:32):
point or a certain revenuebenchmark as a company, to start
delegating this out to your teamand start getting their
perspective on, okay, what isthe potential with AI out there?
And start looking at it morethrough the specifics in the
business and their roles and howit gets applied. Yeah,
you know, I'm the same, becauseI'll get requests all the time,
like, hey, we want thissoftware. We want this AI tool.
(23:54):
And I'm like, All right, well,what's the business case? What's
our and then you have to goback, like, Okay, well, can you
get to, hey, here's business asusual. This is all the this is
all the hours spent in thisparticular task we implement
this. This is, you know, and butyou know, that's where it gets
that you have to reallyunderstand how much time you're
spending on these things. What'sthe real cost? And what are you
going to say by putting inpotential expensive solution? Is
(24:16):
it making the company better? Isit making your experience with
your customers better, or yourcolleagues enjoying more of what
they do, because they're notdoing less hideous stuff and
doing more fun, impactful stuff.
Totally, totally and I mean,just like with the nature of
this podcast, I mean, I talk alot about, like, the financial
side of things, the accountingside of things, what are, what
are? You know, some of thetriggers that you guys hear that
(24:39):
would signal the contractorneeds to start looking at AI for
their back office, or more liketheir accounting, financial
flows. What are some of thosepain points that are like a
strong indicator that theyshould lean in and start
evaluating solutions?
That's good question. It'sdifferent. Seems to be different
for everybody. I. You know, it'sjust depends on the person.
(25:02):
There are people that are justgenerally late adopters, hey,
this works for me. Now I don'ttrust AI. This is fine. And then
you have others that are, ifwe're not innovative, we're
dying and we're you know, butit's not as easy to find those
peoples. Or, how do you get thattrigger? Or a new CFO comes in,
who is more innovative mindset?
Yeah. Or just, they've got tocompete, you know, they've,
(25:25):
they've lost some, someworkforce, you know. And you
know what we need to HR wasnever really something that
they, you know, when I firststarted, we never really talked
to HR, totally, totally.
We'll make sure you get paid.
But now it's become imperative.
It's critical to them. Like weneed to have, we need to retain
(25:45):
our talent. We need to recruit,recruit the best talent. We have
to have solutions and tools inorder to do that. And that's
been a space that, you know,it's been fun to see, because it
wasn't something that was reallydiscussed in the construction
market before.
Totally, totally well. And likeeven you know how you know some
of the things that I'm hearingand that our team is hearing is
it's, I typically, where thisconversation starts is on, like,
(26:07):
an AP side of things. And Ithink that's the obvious. And I
would say it's the obvious,because there's been the most
like, AP point solutions inplace with AI Right? Like, even
just 510, years ago, it was likeaI was optical character
reading, right? And that wasjust like the big play there was
like saving time on data entry,right? But that's usually the
pain point that we hear,especially with these larger
(26:29):
contractors that are processing1000s of AP documents a month,
right? And that's just such, toyour point, such a tedious,
labor intensive task. And there,even, as you know, depending on
the organization, there's a lotof cross function collaboration
that needs to happen. You know,the back office gets an invoice.
They need to know, like, how isthis categorized? What's our
percent complete? Generally,like, what the field context is.
(26:52):
But even with it like this,really starting with AP, we do
start to uncover and theconversation really develops
depending on where you're at inthe org chart. Having that
conversation is like, yes,there's a ton of upside to
automating AP processes, rightand like, creating faster, more
accurate understanding on cost.
But then when you really startto have a conversation with
these people, typically going tobe more AI forward, they really
(27:13):
start to understand that, like,okay, tracking AP and
accelerating that process isnice from a call, it like an
overhead reduction orreallocation conversation. But
really, when you can speed upyour cost understanding and
speed up your incomeunderstanding your revenue,
that's really starting to openup a conversation of, how do we
apply AI to automate web rightand cash flow reporting? And
(27:34):
starting to get into thatfunnel. I don't know if that's
you know, if you guys arehearing that on your end, but
it's starting to turn into moreof a conversation not just
around, like the AP costtracking side of things, but
their eyes are starting to open.
They're starting to become morecreative with, if AI can do
this, then we can apply it here,or this is a more holistic
problem, and we're starting withjust the main issue at hand.
(27:54):
What's your take?
Oh, absolutely. And if we Yeah,and if we can speed up those
processes, rather than lookingat your P L is that history
lesson? Like, how do you get itto where it's a future? Here's
where you're going and get tothe point like, hey, it's not
now. We're giving you insightsof like, what's going to happen
to your business in 12 months,and how you can make corrective
actions now, versus crap we justlost, you know, after the fact,
(28:16):
when you close out the month.
Totally. So I love, I love thatyou did the history lesson on
the P L, because that's reallywhat it is, right? And that's, I
think the best way, even justfor the listeners to, like,
think about AI is like, I thinkthere's just, like, the
immediate friction or concernwith like, AI is going to take
all of our jobs, right? Butlike, that's like, not really
the case. I mean, if they'relike, tedious tasks, then like,
(28:38):
you might not have the businessneed for them. But that's not to
say that like humans aren'tadaptable, right? And they're
not going to develop skills andimpact the business in other
ways. But with that said, it'swhen you think about AI. This is
how I explain it to people. Whenyou think about AI, it's more
important to think, How can Ishorten that timeline that it
takes for me to understand theinformation and to arrive at the
(28:59):
information that I actually wantto make those business decisions
exactly what you just said.
It's, you know, not looking outthe rear view mirror. It's
looking out the windshield,right, and preparing. Hey, look,
we're under billed on theseprojects. Hey, we need, you
know, we're missing changeorders on this is going to
impact our, you know, our profitmargin, you know, hey, if we
apply AI to our billing agent,then we can get more income in
the business. And we're not, youknow, adding risk to the
business. Soinnovation is going to just keep
(29:21):
hitting us. It's not the firsttime we've had, you know, you
know, with the cloud or with,hey, used to, I just marvel at
the times. You know what, emaildidn't exist. You had to write
letters. You had a, you know,someone's got to type this up.
The stuff, the productivitygains that we've had over the
last 50 years or so, it's justamazing. And I was about to
embarrass maybe I will. Butremember talking to my nieces
(29:43):
and nephews about school, andthey have to do these research
papers, like you get one done in30 seconds, where I've spent
weeks going up to the schoollibraries, printing, printing
stuff out, holding my source,but, yeah, anyway, but hang
on, no,but that's an interesting point,
because I think there's a lot ofthat. Like we're talking about,
like, even if it's like, ifwe're talking AP clerks, right?
Or people that are justhandling, like, there's depth on
(30:04):
that team, and they're justhandling these tedious tasks.
What's your take on theimportance of that role being
performed in an organization forfuture talent to be developed?
Right? I guess, to round thisout, to your example, talking to
your nieces and nephews, right?
Like they can crank out a paperusing AI in minutes, right? But
(30:25):
was it was the two week processthat you and I were used to
without AI. Was that theimportant piece of like critical
thinking, getting that firmunderstanding and developing
that skill, and are we going tobe bypassing that with AI?
What's your what's your take onthat?
Well, I could probably talkanother three hours, because
it's, you know, one of my, youknow, not to nerd out on science
(30:46):
fiction, but for those listenerswho might, but the analogy is
the same, but one of my bit, youknow, and it just happens to be
out there. But I don't know ifyou've seen the latest dune
movies, but what's, I'mnot a big movie guy. Well,
it's a book series that startedin the 1960s actually, but okay,
shown if you're if you'rewatching the movies after you
don't see computers, you don'tsee AI anywhere. This is, you
(31:08):
know, 20,000 years into thefuture. Reason in the book, when
they read it and wrote it in the60s, the author saw this AI wave
coming in the 60s, like hecalled a thinking machine. But
basically, the theory he had wasthat in the book, that it's
going to make us soft. Hey, Idid take over the world. It got
too soft. And then humanity, youknow, eventually had to defy
(31:29):
them. And then they had toevolve and get to your point,
better at critical thinking,better being our own personal
computer, better at, you know,just everything out there, not
relying on a, I think, machinesand so, but if you read the book
further along the main you know,it gets to the point where you
can't, you know. And they triedto stop innovation, and then,
sureyou can't stop innovation. You
know, they're, you know. Thecomments was, you know, would
(31:52):
you think in a world withoutbirds? Mankind wouldn't invent
airplanes? You know, sure,nothing. And so what we need to
do is figure out a way to bebetter, you know, and get better
ourselves, involve ourselves tobe better at that critical
thinking. How we do that? Idon't know. I guess we're about
to find out, because it's soconvenient on so many different
(32:13):
tasks that you cando totally it's impossible to
ignore it, right? And that'swhat like. I love that like. And
if this is credit to dune orjust credit to Dustin, but it's
like, we wouldn't have airplanesif we didn't have birds, right?
It's totally doing so it'll takethat
view. Is it Doom or dune? It's du, N, E, right?
Doing like it, yeah, yeah.
(32:34):
That's like, what is it like theTimothy Charlemagne movie? It
wasn't you in that, yeah? Okay,yeah. See, I'm just, I'm
terrible at that kind of stuff.
I just, I'm not a big movie guy.
I'm not a big movie guy. I'm notproducing the movie or not.
Yeah, it is good.
Yeah, I don't know if buildersbudgets and beers is that big of
a podcast for us to get introuble. But totally lost my
train of thought. It was aboutbirds, airplanes, innovation.
(32:58):
How do we still get better andbetter, totally
because, yeah, you don't growwithout struggle. Don't how do
we still, yeah, I don't know theanswer, other than I completely
agree with you, I think we stillneed to need challenge. We can't
have it easy all the time. I'msure that's going to happen no
matter what, but I just don'ttotally,
(33:20):
and I think where I was gonna gowith this, and this is just kind
of like a layup, you know,association here. But it's like,
like, when Henry Ford came outwith, you know, the Model T,
right, mass producing vehicles,it was like, you know, we were
like, largely, like a horsedominated transportation, you
know, world, right? And then youget access to the cars. And it
started out as, like, like aluxury and, you know, less of a
(33:41):
less less of a convenience, butmore of a like, look what I can
do. And then it just like thatpaved the way for vehicles to be
such a huge part of this. Butit's not like we just, like all
these people that wereblacksmiths, like doing
horseshoes and, like, you know,stuff around supporting the
horse industry, right? Theyjust, like, disappeared. They
just moved into differentfunctions.
So industries took overexactly. It created other
(34:02):
opportunities. Now, like, Ithink there's a lot of paranoia
about, like, AI and like, what'sgoing to really be the need
there, but I do see, you know, Ihad Julie Adams on the podcast
we were talking about that that,like, the obvious is you need to
apply AI into the business. Butthen, when you even take a step
back and what industries arelike, extremely insulated from
this is AI requires a lot ofconstruction in order for AI to
(34:23):
be a conversation. We've allread the articles about the
billions, trillions of dollars,getting dumped into data centers
and all the construction relatedaround that, the power plants
and stuff like that. But that'salso going to build more
community, right? Like you lookat these places that they're
putting, the data centers, andit's impossible to ignore that
they're going to create thrivingcommunities that were probably,
like, really small, like, maybenot hard to find work, but hard
(34:46):
to find, like, high value workin those areas. So maybe this is
just like the blind optimist inme, but I think, you know, with
all of the you know, advancementthat we're making, there's.
Going to be plenty of room forhumans. They're just going to be
in roles that we have never eventhought about. Yeah,
oh, absolutely. And even inconstruction, when one industry
(35:10):
might be slow, others take off.
You know, it's a pretty, youknow, well diversified industry
that's protected in some waysoutside of 2008 but, yeah, I
don't know. I think about it,there's probably all a lot of
doom and gloom when somethinginnovative comes out, like, say,
the printing press, people arelike, yeah, no, people are gonna
be, you know, the ruling peopleat the time, like, people are
(35:30):
gonna be too smart, and what'sthat gonna do? And, you know,
but look what's happening andhow technology just skyrocket
after we educated more of ourpeople. So I would imagine AI is
going to do the same.
Totallymy optimist to me as well. Yeah,
exactly. I think you have to be.
And, I mean, I think, like, youknow, just generally, especially
in the United States, like,there's a lot of, like,
(35:51):
negativity around a lot ofdivision, you know. And I think,
you know, you just, you can findsome peace and focusing on the
optimistic side of things. Andjust like, you can't stop
innovation, right? Like AI,adoption is not slowing down,
it's only speeding up. So, youknow, keeping a clear head on
this and thinking like, okay,how can I actually make my world
more efficient?
(36:13):
Yeah, and go ahead,right? It's, it seems the
division a lot is on people'sphones, looking through screens,
versus totallyoutside and just start talking
to people. It's not what you'reseeing in the phone. Totally,
yeah, I agree, fear and gloom.
Yes. Okay, cool. Well, before wewrap up, you know, I mean,
(36:34):
you've got, you know, over a 30year career in the space from
all the way from being, youknow, bags on a hammer swinger,
going up into, you know, thematerial side of things, the
tech side of things, the serviceside of things, if you just
have, like, one piece of adviceor one message, and this can be
as biased as you want, no shame,like, what do you think is the
most important thing forcontractors to consider about
(36:56):
their business and why theyshould take that into
consideration.
Well, one thing I, you know, Ihave to say is thank you,
because I think they, they don'tget enough credit for what this
infrastructure they build thatwe have these nice, amazing
lives that we live, and they doa very hard job. So one thank
(37:16):
you that they've, they've gotinto this industry, and they're,
they're helping us make a betterworld? But, yeah, I would say
just going back to, like, diveinto innovation. Don't let it
scare you. You know, it's youknow, be optimistic about that,
as we said, and take your time.
Do it strategically? Understandyour business. Where do you want
to go? How do we what do we wantto be? What's our values, and
how we adopt this newtechnology? Are we helping our
(37:38):
people, our customers, andmaking the world a better place,
and just have some roles andguidelines that you that work
for you in that endeavor.
Beautiful. I love it. Now I'mgoing to ask you to shamelessly
plug and tell the listeners howthey can get in contact with
Alliant Solutions Group, ifthey're ready to or they need
(37:59):
help navigating that journey.
How can they get a hold of youguys? Where can they find you?
Well, you can Google is always agreat place. Alliance solutions
group. You can look Google.
There's all of our information.
You can contact us. Watch somedemos. We can get in contact
with with them. Interact withour website. They can email me,
Dustin. Dustin, that was my oldemail.
(38:22):
Here we go.
Sage email that's not going togo through, but D Stevens at
Alliance. SG, calm, awesome.
Love to talk to them.
Yeah, beautiful, no Dustin, itwas an absolute pleasure. Really
appreciate you jumping onsharing your perspective and all
the wisdom that you've gatheredover your career. And yeah, I
appreciate you jumping on thepod. Well, we'll connect soon.
(38:42):
Appreciate thanks, Reece.
you bet.
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