In this conversation, Justin Neagle and Will Foret speak with Kami Farahmandpour and Chris Kottra from Building Technology Consultants, Inc. (BTC) about their experiences in the engineering industry, the founding of BTC, and the importance of company culture, leadership transitions, and quality in their work.
They discuss the challenges of hiring in a niche market, the significance of training for autonomy, and the role of litigation in honing expertise. The conversation also touches on reflections and advice for future leaders in the industry.
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(00:00):
You know, you're 67.
(00:01):
What do you mean you're thinking about it?
And the other thing you gotta understand, andunfortunately, we had this experience.
My my first transition plan was Josh.
You've you've heard the name Josh.
Josh was my first partner who came in inFebruary after we got started.
And as they always say, man plans God loves.
(00:22):
Josh got sick and he passed away at an earlyage.
So that plan didn't work out.
So if you don't start planning things veryearly on, you'll never have time to catch up if
there is something that doesn't work out theway you planned it.
Have you ever wondered how successfularchitecture, engineering, and construction
(00:45):
companies scale their business?
Or have you ever wanted guidance on how to getmore growth, wealth, and freedom from your AEC
company?
Well, then you're in luck.
Hi.
I'm Will Foratt.
And I'm Justin Nagel, and we're your podcasthosts.
We interview successful AEC business leaders tolearn how they use people, process, and
(01:05):
technology to scale their businesses.
So sit back and get ready to learn from theindustry's best.
This is Building scale.
Hey, listeners.
It's Will here.
Our mission is to help the AEC industry protectitself by making technology easy.
If you've ever listened to our show, then youknow that the three pillars of scaling a
(01:28):
business are people, process, and technology.
So if you suspect technology is your weak link,then book a call with us to see where we can
help maximize your company's IT cybersecuritystrategy.
Just go to buildingscale.net/help.
Today's guests are Chris Katra and KamiFarmanpur from Building Technology Consultants
(01:51):
Inc, also known as BTC.
Kami is the founder and principal consultant atBTC with over forty years of experience in the
evaluation, design, and repair of buildingenclosure components.
He is a fellow of both the InternationalInstitute of Building Closure Consultants and
National Academy of Forensic Engineers.
He also holds multiple industry certifications,including RBEC, CCS, and CCCA.
(02:18):
Kami is licensed in 23 states and has managedover 900 projects involving facades, roofing,
and waterproofing systems on existingbuildings.
Chris is the managing principal of BTC withover twenty years of experience in structural
evaluation, repair, and design.
His expertise includes critical facadeexaminations for the city of Chicago, parking
(02:39):
garage evaluations, and resolving businessenclosure deficiencies.
Chris is a licensed professional engineer inthree states, a registered exterior wall
consultant or REWC, and a certifiedconstruction contract administrator, CCCA.
Both Kami and Chris are actively involved inprofessional organizations like II, BEC, SWR
(03:03):
Institute, and ICRI.
You got more acronyms than we do in the techspace.
It is wild.
Super happy to have you, and gentlemen, welcometo the show.
Thank you.
Thank
you for having us.
Just to be clear, I'm the old guy.
Yes.
The old guy.
So it'll be easy when they they watch thevideo.
They'd say, oh, I'm the older one.
So that that's it.
We'll just use our eyes to know who's who.
(03:24):
But, Kami, tell us, about the beginning stageshere.
Obviously, Chris came on, later, but what wasthe original story when you started BTC?
Sure.
So it was back in February, the year February,when I started thinking about having my own
firm and usually people have differentincentives for wanting to start their own
business driven by money.
(03:47):
You want to make more money.
You want to probably get away from politics ofa larger firm, or you may want to just have a
vision that you want to implement for your owncompany.
In my case, money was not the incentive.
I even remember telling my wife at the timethat if we can make 70% of what I make, we can
still get by and we'll be okay.
(04:08):
So money was not the reason I started thecompany.
What I really wanted to do was to start acompany that focuses on building and closure
and get away from the office politics that Iwas faced with in working for a, it was about
120% firm at the time.
And I also wanted to be able to control thedestiny of my career and be able to do whatever
(04:31):
I wanted to do with my career and go towhatever seminars I wanted to go without having
to get approval from somebody else.
So that's how we got started.
We got started in February on the same day thatGeorge W.
Bush was flown in actually.
Wow.
Very presidential of a day to start a business.
That's right.
(04:54):
What about you, Chris?
Like what how did you come along?
How did you find yourself to this situation?
So out of
school, I started with a structural engineeringcompany that specialized kind of smaller
commercial buildings or, you know, largersingle family homes.
And I worked there for four years.
It was I enjoyed it at the time, but hadanother opportunity with a family friend that
(05:17):
kind of led me in a different direction.
It was an interesting company that specializedor their their main clients were banks, and
they did a lot of due diligence work.
And it seemed like a company that was growing,and it just kind of aligned with some of my
interests.
So I took that job.
But unfortunately, I took that in the February,shortly before the economy crashed.
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And with a company that had a client base ofmainly banks, things didn't didn't fare too
well for that company.
I think the best environment.
No, not
exactly right.
And, you know, I did make it through a couplerounds of layoffs, but I finally was let go and
found myself searching for a new opportunity.
I landed four interviews very quickly afterthat.
(06:02):
Three of them, I got job offers almostimmediately.
The fourth one was BTC.
And that was the one I really wanted afterafter interviewing with Kami and Josh.
It was that it was a niche industry that Ididn't know anything about really until I met
with Kami.
And although I didn't get an opportunity rightaway, about a month later, I did get a call
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from them saying that they had the opportunityand the availability to train me, because
that's one of their their cool or always wasone of their core missions was to make sure
they had the right amount of time to trainpeople when they bring them on.
So I started at the beginning of 02/2009, andI've been here ever since working my way up the
ranks.
So when you were hired, obviously, you weren'thired as the managing principal
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Correct.
Initially.
So, you know, did you see yourself being in theposition that you're in today when you first
when you?
Well, that's an easy one.
No.
No.
It was never something I ever imagined or orreally dreamed of.
It was never a lifelong goal.
(07:09):
You know, I think one of the main reasons whenyou're starting out as a as a junior engineer,
you don't don't really know a lot.
Right?
I mean, you know, when you see, you know, thethe wealth of knowledge that other people have,
you're just down at the ground floor startingup that, you know, my main mission was just to
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be able to be, you know, at a competent level,let alone being like at, you know, at this
level, or, you know, being considered an expertin the industry or something like that.
So, no, it was never really an aspiration.
It just became more and more of a of apossibility.
And then Kami and Josh decided to incorporate.
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That gave opportunity to buy in for everybody.
And, I mean, it was a great opportunity.
And I think that led us to get, you know, alittle further down the road where I I saw that
this was a possibility and possible.
K.
Kami, this is for you.
When we talk about transitions, ownershiptransitions, whatnot, I would argue that you
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are starting early.
Relatively to other people that I've seen outin the industry, I've seen, like, 80 year olds
start this process.
Okay?
Yeah.
Why why are you deciding or why you decide totransition earlier than a lot of people, let's
say, in the industry do transition?
And and then what made you decide that Krispmight be part of that transition process?
(08:42):
So great questions.
In my mind, a transition is exactly exactlythat.
It's a transition.
It's not a switch you flip and you go, I'm 65.
I'm gone.
You guys take over or this other person isgonna take over.
It's a very, very long process.
You don't not only have to transition thebusiness itself and ownership of the business,
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You have to transition your clients.
You have to transition the the culture in thecompany.
You have to before you get to that point whereyou can transition ownership, you're gonna have
to develop interest.
I I just listened to Chris for the first timesaying he originally had no interest in being
an owner or didn't think about it.
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One question I always ask everybody weinterviewed was, where do you see yourself 10
from now?
I think of probably 75 people I've interviewedwith that question.
Maybe two or three of them have said ten yearsfrom now I want to be an owner.
Very few of them would see themselves ten yearsfrom now an owner.
So it takes ten years for you to not onlyinstill the skills in them to be able to take
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over, but also instill the interest.
It will take a long time for people tounderstand that boy, ownership could be fun.
Ownership could be beneficial from a financialstandpoint or from a, you know, career
standpoint in general.
It's a very, very long process.
(10:12):
I always felt that if we didn't starttransition, when I was 50 years old, I was
behind.
And you're right.
I talked to a lot of friends and businessowners who are 65, 70 years old.
I'm like, so what's your plan?
They're like, well, we are thinking about it.
I'm like, dude, it's too late.
(10:32):
You know?
You're 67.
What do you mean you're thinking about it?
And the other thing you gotta understand, andunfortunately, we had this experience.
My my first transition plan was Josh.
You've you've heard the name Josh.
Josh was my first partner who came in in02/2004, three years after we got started.
And as they always say, man plans got lapsed.
(10:55):
Josh got sick and he passed away at an earlyage.
So that plan didn't work out.
So if you don't start planning things veryearly on, you'll never have time to catch up if
there is something that doesn't work out theway you planned it.
You always have to start early so you canrecover from any unexpected bumps and still
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make the plan work.
I think one part, if I can add to that, thatKami's leaving off of that is, you know, this
is this was his baby.
BTC was his creation, and he wanted to see thatlegacy live on.
And I think his plan to do so was to make sure,you know, he could hang around long enough to
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to make sure that that happens and that itcontinues along his vision instead of to, you
know, stop working immediately, like he said.
Oh,
there's the idea of how transition works, andthen there's how transition actually works.
We
laughed a little bit about this before.
Can you talk can you both speak to this?
I think you both have kind of perspectives onthis.
(11:59):
So, Kami, I'll let you start first, and thenChris, if you wanna add, you know, do your
part.
So, yeah, I think from my perspective, thefirst step towards transition is identifying
those well, you gotta decide whether you wannasell or you wanna transition.
You know, a lot of people go the route ofselling their business outright.
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And over the years, we were very successful.
We had a good reputation for small firms.
So we would get calls all the time from biggercompanies who said, we just want to buy.
We decided very early on that's not the way togo for us because I have seen far too many
times where those, you know, and beer companycomes in and buys you and they want to change
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your culture.
They want to change the way you do everythingand things just don't work out that well.
It would have been the easy way out for me toget money out of the company.
But I think after that, I would have beenmiserable because I would see, as Chris said,
my baby being handled the way I don't like tobe to have it handled.
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So my decision was, we wanna really transitionfrom within.
We wanna create a culture where people canstart buying in, and there was a number of
reasons for it.
Number one, it was a great way to retainpeople.
Right?
People came in here and said, you know, boy,you're in a small company, but this is the only
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company that I can actually become an owner in.
It's a way for you to feel that you're part ofthe family, that you can share in the success
of the company.
So that was one benefit of doing transitionfrom within.
There were a number of other benefits for ittoo, but gradually we started to realize that,
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okay, we want to do it from within.
And now you got to sell the idea to everybody.
You got to make sure that people who just wantto come to work nine to five and go home and
spend their weekends with their families andnever have to worry about work, that they would
see the benefit of ownership because all theyhear is ownership is a pain in the butt.
(14:11):
Right?
So we started to come up with a number ofdifferent ways to show people how successful we
were and allow them the opportunity to see forthemselves that, gee, know, if I own 5% of the
company, this is how much difference it's goingto make in my bottom line.
So transparency was the first thing we did.
(14:34):
Well, you know, we would have meetings everyyear at the end of the year, I will say, here
are the numbers.
This is how much we spend on rent.
This is how much we spend on this, on that.
And here's the profit that Josh and I tookhome.
You know, for two people, we probably took amillion dollars.
There was one year we took a million dollarshome between the two of us.
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And that was very eye opening for these youngerpeople who are making maybe in the 6 figures or
just below the 6 figures to say, wow, I couldhave a chunk of that million bucks going to me
if I were an owner.
Right?
So first you develop that interest in them.
Then after that, you got to find a way to makeit possible for them to buy it.
(15:20):
So we came up with formulas about valuation ofour company that if you had, let's say you had
spent $10,000 on buying stock, your rate ofreturn would have been 25, 30.
It was pretty good.
Right?
So they would see the value of buying it.
And you had to make it easier for them to dothe first purchase because a lot of them are
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just not saving a lot of money.
They're putting money into their four ks's,they have young families.
So we also came up with an initial stage of astock purchase where the stock prices were just
like half of what they would typically be.
Rate of return would be 70% and they justcouldn't refuse it anymore.
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And there were a few people who just couldn'tafford it and we would help them out.
We would finance it.
Just for clarity's sake.
Okay.
Because you talked about multiple, you know,employees.
Is this an ESOP or did you consider an ESOP?
We did consider an ESOP.
ESOPs would have been great for me and Josh atthe time because of taxes and everything else.
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There were two reasons we didn't go for ESOP.
Number one, ESOP meant the company would owemoney, and we were financially very
conservative.
Everything we owned was paid for.
We didn't want to owe money.
Right?
And number two, ESOPs are complicated andexpensive to implement.
They work much better for probably a 100 plusemployees versus us who are twelve, thirteen
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employees.
We were told by ESOP consultants that it wouldcost 2 to $300,000 to set it up.
And then we would have to go out and get a loanfrom the bank to finance the ESOP, which meant
the company would owe money.
And we didn't want to do that.
So what we did was just a straight purchase.
(17:11):
We came up with, you know, our lawyers wroteagreements for purchase of the shares.
We didn't have a different classifications ofshareholders.
So every shareholder had the same rights as Idid, you know, that would be entitled to the
same dividends and the same benefits that everyeverybody else was.
(17:32):
We tried to keep it simple.
I I always believe in simplicity, especiallyfor smaller companies.
So you, you also mentioned one of the benefitsor one of the things that drew you to opening
up your own shop was the politics of a largerfirm.
Just what that looks like.
So you also were offering the fact that like,hey, you could be an owner, but you also are
(17:54):
not dealing with that.
Can you break down some of that for us?
What is a big firm politics?
What does that mean?
What does that prevent you from doing asleader?
That's a good, it's a good question.
In a larger firm, I was part of a firm thatwas, it was a wholly owned subsidiary of a
nonprofit organization.
Okay.
So even though I was called a principalengineer, I was not an equity principal.
(18:17):
I had no equity in the firm.
A lot of other people were also principalengineers, but they had no equity in it.
So the incentive level was different.
I also felt like everybody was just kindaracing to the top.
There were too many chiefs and too few Indians.
Everybody was trying to get to the top, andthey were more worried about their own careers
(18:38):
than the good of the company.
I remember there was one particular individualwho would get happened to get an inquiry call
from a big client.
This was their opportunity to write a proposal,get the job, and now they manage a big project.
Well, they would sit on these calls until theday before the proposal was due.
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And on that day when they decide, gee, I can'thave time to write this proposal, they'll go
hand it over to somebody else and go, thisproposal needs to go out this afternoon.
Well, that's people thinking about themselves,you know, putting themselves ahead of the good
of the company.
And I just hated that.
I couldn't deal with that.
And to that end, the culture we tried to createwas we tried to incentivize company performance
(19:28):
over purely individual performance.
Obviously we want to reward individualperformance, but the good of the company
overall was always given a big emphasis.
So we always worked as a family, as a team.
We have a saying the greater good of theorganization.
Right.
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What that if you just keep focusing on that,things will come to you individually, right?
Like if you just keep like, what is in the bestinterest of us creating an amazing
organization, your culture stays thick.
Like obviously people increase their wages.
Like all of these things occur because theorganization is the blood of how we all survive
essentially
in a
(20:09):
business sense.
What's your take on that, Chris?
Well, so I would say, you know, talking aboutthe structure of large companies or something
along those lines, one thing that really, Ithought set BTC apart from that concept is I
feel like larger companies have a very setorganizational structure, meaning you can't
(20:33):
advance until there's a position available, youknow, somebody clears out of that spot, then
you can move into that.
One of the philosophies philosophies of BTC isto really, if you're, you're promoted on merit,
not on what's available.
And you work your way up based on what you'veaccomplished yourself and how the company has
(20:56):
done.
And if there wasn't a position necessarilydefined, they would create a position.
And I and we've maintained that process.
Because, I mean, I think as we look at mecoming into this role, my goal was to keep
things the same.
I very much bought into I was drinking the KoolAid on how Kami and Josh put this together, and
(21:22):
I thought it was a perfect system, not aperfect system, a great system that I wanted to
keep going, not come in and just change.
And I think other, you know, larger corporatestructures, there probably would not be that
kind of opportunity.
At least that's my perception of it.
Got it.
You didn't have to come and make the waves.
Right?
Like, you can come and say, like, what we gotgoing on, it's pretty good.
(21:42):
Well, is.
And let's take her let's take her with this andthat, but, like, we got a good thing going.
Let's let's keep it rolling.
Exactly.
It was not our intent to come in and, you know,take a wrecking ball to it.
It was to maintain it and, you know, evolvewhere necessary where the times require it, but
maintain those same core values and keep going.
Okay.
So not so not ESOP, just to circle back aroundto the original topic.
(22:08):
So not an ESOP.
So this would be would this be consideredshareholder financing, essentially owner
financing?
Yes, it is.
So we had a simple stock purchase that wasfinanced by me personally with certain
guarantees.
And one of the conditions was I could work aslong as I wanted to work.
(22:28):
Right.
I couldn't be fired.
That's an important part of the bylaws, by theway.
That's right.
But other than that, it's a relatively simpleagreement.
Yeah.
We refinanced it over ten years.
Figured, you know, I'd done my math and Ifigured if these, these people make as much
money as we did, they're going to be able topay the payments every year and still have
(22:54):
money left over to enjoy their lives and, youknow, realize the benefits of ownership.
Sure.
Are you two the only leadership structurewithin PTC?
Or how does this
Well, Kami, it takes a lot
of leadership at all.
Yeah.
Kami does.
He's only a part time employee, technically.
That's right.
You just can't fire him.
(23:15):
It's just part of
the Right.
It takes a lot to fill Kami's shoes.
And so, really, four of us were the ones thatwere coming up through the ranks to take over.
And so, really, that ownership I mean, there'sstill other smaller percentages, but, really,
the four of us took over as, you know, mainowners with the three of them voting me to be
(23:37):
the, like, the the prince the managingprincipal in that regard.
But
Yeah.
By the way, they asked me, who would youappoint as the president?
And I said, I don't wanna get in the middle ofthat fight.
You guys are gonna have to decide amongstyourselves who's gonna be the president.
Boy, first first major decision.
You
have turned out to be not a big deal at all,though.
(23:58):
Honestly, the four of us work great together,and we do divide and conquer.
We each have kind of our avenues to focus on sothat way there's not just one person working on
every aspect.
I think we have we're able to divide andconquer and accomplish a lot that way.
By the way, of those four people, three are thetechnical people like Chris and Mike Wisconsin,
(24:20):
Charles Seedman.
They are the technical consultants.
And then the fourth person is the officemanager.
We we hired an MBA about a year and a halfbefore the transition, and she's been wonderful
in just looking at a big picture and being ableto be part of that management team and do it.
Right.
Well, think regard Sorry.
(24:41):
Was gonna
say she's so much more than that.
I mean, it's she's she wears many, many hats,and that's one of the she's the glue that kinda
keeps us together in that regard.
It's we have a great relationship, and her andI bounce each other bounce stuff off each other
all the time.
So
By the way, when it comes to making decisions,one of the things we did as part of the first
(25:01):
stages of transition was Josh and I sat aroundand said, you know, a manager makes we make so
many stupid decisions every day.
You know?
What are we gonna have our office party nextyear?
What are we gonna get for holiday gifts?
You know, we we came up with a list of a 100different decisions like that that we have to
(25:22):
make on a routine basis and we divided it upamongst the staff.
We said, you are gonna have these, you know, 15different things you're gonna have to decide
on.
Your responsibility.
Just don't drive us bankrupt.
Don't get us into a lawsuit.
As long as you do that, you're fine.
And we set some budgets for certain things.
(25:43):
And that was a very interesting process becausewe had younger folks who have grown up in the
new education system where homeworks are doneas a team.
And they would hold the meeting for three hoursto decide where the next company party is going
to be.
And then we would calculate how much billabletime we just lost because we had that three
(26:05):
hour meeting with five different people in it.
But that was a learning experience for them.
They had to go through it to startunderstanding ramifications of decisions,
understanding that forecasting nation is notgonna pay.
It's gonna cost you money.
You better off to just make a decision and gofor it.
(26:25):
And every once in a while, you're making thewrong decision, but you can recover from it and
keep the company moving.
I mean I know this time is a resource.
That is Yeah.
That's a valuable lesson.
Yep.
Very much.
Well, and, you know, we are in a serviceindustry.
Right?
We don't sell widgets.
If you sell widgets, you can you can go golfhalf a day and come back and sell a million
(26:48):
widgets in the afternoon, and you're stillokay.
We are in a service industry.
We sell time and expertise, and there are onlyso many hours a week you could build to your
clients.
If you're wasting that time making decisions onwhere to hold the next company party or what
company gear you're going to buy next time,you're not going to be able to make money.
(27:11):
Figuring out all the small decisions, and ifthey take a very long time, that, you know, you
can't get the big things done.
So it makes sense.
That's right.
But important to have the right people, right?
Right people on the bus.
What's y'all's philosophy on hiring?
What does that look like?
Is it we take them green and we build them intothe ideal engineers that we want?
Or is it the opposite?
(27:31):
Like, no, we need to have somebody that hasmore chops to them already when they walk in
the door.
I'll tell you our first principle, and thenI'll let Chris tell you where we hire these
days.
Our first principle was we hire when we have anopportunity to hire a good person, not when
there's a job opening.
We learned very quickly that when you're busyand you need more people, it's a wrong time to
(27:56):
hire someone because when you're really busy,you don't have time to train them.
So we were going to hire just because we needmore bodies to do work.
We decided we're to hire if we find the rightperson, even if we didn't have work for them.
We would let them do different things aroundthe office, go to meetings with other people so
(28:17):
they could learn.
But if we only hired when we were busy, wewould have hired a lot of wrong people.
And don't get me wrong, we've still done that.
So that's our first part of our hiring processand our hiring philosophy.
I'll let Chris talk about who we hire thesedays.
Well, no.
I was gonna echo that, and I'm I'm kinda casein point on that.
I said I started in January 2009 when, youknow, economy was down.
(28:42):
That was not a a great year for the company.
But they hired me, they saw something in methat they thought it was worth the investment.
And we've tried to carry that same philosophyall the way through where it's, you know, we're
not hiring just to hire.
We're hiring people that fit.
Right?
And we'll weather a storm that if we're toobusy, we'll find a way through it and not just
(29:06):
add people to add people.
That's exactly what Kami's talking about.
We've tried to carry that same philosophy.
As far as where we're finding that talent, it'sit's been a challenge of late.
And I I I don't know if we're, you know,barking up the wrong tree or what the case
might be.
But, you know, mid to high level people, we'vehad a lot of trouble securing those.
(29:30):
So we've had a lot more success actually, withyounger, you know, coming out of school and
even actually interns.
Interns, several of them have actually stayedon and become full time.
So I think that's been our best path right now.
And I think one of the tricky things,especially when you're talking about, you know,
mid level and higher level, and and Kami wouldtell you this too, is that it's kinda hard to
(29:52):
teach an old dog new tricks.
Right?
And we have very specific ways on how to dothings on our writing skills.
You know, these are all the things that set usapart as, you know, as experts in the industry.
So to focus on those things is is crucial.
And so if somebody's used to a certain writingstyle or doing things a different way, it may
be a big change for them to come here and learnthose new ways and and, you know, fit in the
(30:16):
right way.
It's not to say they can't, but I do wonder ifthat's why we're struggling with that because
we are a little bit picky in that regard.
But like Tommy said, we've been successful, sothere's no reason to really change everything
completely.
But it would our best success has been throughyounger engineers coming right up.
Yeah.
And and hiring has always been a challenge forus because we we are not like a typical
(30:40):
engineering firm.
Right?
If you're just a typical design firm, you go toschools, people get trained on structural
design or whatever.
You can throw them at one of these projects andthey'll do their calculations.
They've they've been trained in it.
What we do, though, is very niche.
Very
specific.
And when I teach classes to architects orengineers about what we do and I ask them how
(31:02):
many hours of training did you have on thistopic in school?
Usually, zero hours to maybe at the most threehours of training.
Yeah.
So people aren't trained in what we do inforensic engineering and building enclosure.
So, but 90, I would say 95% of what people doday in and day out here is experience based,
(31:25):
not education based.
One thing I've told people actually, especiallyyounger people is, you know, school engineering
school will teach you how to think like anengineer, but only experience will teach you
how to actually be an engineer.
Like, there's there's nothing that couldreplace just having the experience of doing all
this, you know, hands on in front of us.
(31:48):
Experience is king.
That I we see that all the time where Ifrequent there's books behind me, books behind
Will.
We frequently say, like, you could read a athousand business books, but that doesn't make
you a business person unless you lived it.
Like, it's so much there's so much passion andconviction and understanding when you've
actually done a thing compared to, well, youdid a lot of schooling about this or you read a
(32:11):
lot of books about this.
Right.
But it actually kind of brings me full circlehere.
So, obviously, we're not trying to become a bigfirm.
Like, we're not trying to become a big firmproblem politics.
However, we're adding mouths to feet in regardsto profit.
So you do have to, you know, hire, get bigger,you know, grow that way.
But we're also gonna not hire when we're busy.
We're gonna hire off busy so we can train them.
(32:31):
It's hard to find people.
How do you make a balance of all these things?
Like that seems like you're really trying tothread the needle, perfect person, right skill
level, right time, all of those things.
That seems like a hard
thing to reason that we've stayed small, right?
Couple of things.
Think about it in service industries where youhave specialties that require a lot of
(32:56):
experience and knowledge like ours.
How many people you could hire depends on howmany people you have to mentor them.
And, you know, when you're our size and out ofthe thirteen, three of them are admin people,
you have 10 technical staff.
You need about one principal or one mentor perevery two or three employees.
(33:22):
If you go beyond that, you're not gonna besuccessful because that mentor also has to do
their own work.
They have their own clients, they have theirown project load, and they have to mentor all
these other young people and oversee theirwork.
We have to review every report that goes out.
We have licensing requirements that, you know,if we write a report, a licensed engineer is
(33:43):
gonna have to review it and stamp it.
You have all those requirements.
So practically speaking, although a lot ofcompanies do it, which is to just hire people,
throw them at these jobs, and one principaloversees maybe 20 people, we have refused to do
that.
And that's really what sets us sets us asidefrom a lot of other people in our firm, in our
(34:07):
industry is because we can keep the quality ofwork that high.
We always tell clients, you're not gonna justsee me when I'm sending you the job.
I'll be at the meetings.
I'll be doing the work.
I'll be writing the report.
If it's testimony, I'm gonna be doing thetestifying when we do forensic work.
Right?
(34:27):
So they get that quality of work from us, andthat that's how we can maybe charge a little
bit more than most of our competitors and keepthe quality high, but you cannot it well, I
gotta take that back.
There are firms out there who get very big andthey have kept the quality pretty high.
(34:48):
Honestly, I don't know how they do it, but forus, we've had to keep the firm small, profit
margins higher and more comfortable.
And that way you don't, you're not underpressure to take every job every time.
Right?
We can turn down clients.
We, and we have, we have fired clients who wedon't like to work with because they either
(35:10):
don't pay on time or the expectations areunreasonable from us.
And we have said, you know what?
We don't want to work for you because we don'tneed we don't have we only have 13 mouths to
feed.
Right?
We don't need every job out there to keep thecompany going.
And that's the advantage of staying small and aboutique firm.
(35:31):
I think one of the things that impressed me themost when I was a junior engineer in my first
few years here is we would compete againstcompanies, you know, some of our competitors
are one is like close to a thousand people, youknow, another one's like 80 people.
And there's a couple more that are up in thatrealm too.
And yet we win jobs over them.
I was always impressed with that and didn'tunderstand it until later on when I understood
(35:57):
how much the the quality meant to people andhaving that personal interaction like Kami's
talking about.
By him being involved in those projects, that'swhat gains us that that trust with those
clients.
Yeah.
I think, especially with engineering quality,it's everything.
Right?
Obviously, communication is super crucial,important in any business, but like the actual
doing of what you do, you have to have highquality because it matters.
(36:23):
Right.
Some places you buy a t shirt, it doesn'tmatter as much.
But when you're doing engineering, it's likethat is it's crucial.
Especially our kind of engineerings.
We always joke with the clients and say, we arelike oncologists.
People come to us when they have a big problem.
You know?
They don't come to us because they got a cold.
They usually go to this, you know, to the othertier of consultants out there.
(36:46):
We get a lot of jobs where they've alreadytried that and it didn't work.
So it's second, third time around, theirbuildings had a problem, and they've tried to
fix it, and they just didn't really quite getresolved.
So they come to us.
So I got a question then because this isobviously very detailed, specialized work,
(37:07):
which requires then having a lot of one on onetime in order to be able to get someone to be
more autonomous and self sufficient.
Right?
How do you get people to that level of, youknow, autonomy and self sufficiency without
having to do that for decade?
(37:28):
Training, training, training.
Chris will tell you, we have a spreadsheet forevery one of our positions.
We have requirements on training, which goesway beyond what licenses typically require you.
Most people who are licensed in engineering,they're required to take like one or two days
of training every year.
We train a ton more than that.
(37:51):
Number one, we encourage and in some casesrequire people to be involved in industry
organizations.
Chris would go to a lot of meetings, to a lotof seminars.
A lot of our people serve on these committees,whether they're technical committees or
organizational committees.
They're required to write papers.
(38:13):
They're required to give technicalpresentations.
They're required to read magazines and articlesabout this stuff.
We have internal training where if somebodylearns something new, we share that with
everybody else.
So we really have very, very intensive trainingbefore even the one to one starts.
(38:34):
We have several binders of standards andmaterials that we give the person who walks
into the office the first day, we hand thatover to them and go, try to learn this in the
next two months.
Yeah.
It's You know?
It's it's a lot.
It's overwhelming, but it's also meant to guidepeople into that in that direction.
You know, the when you talk about at least, youknow, starting point day one, you know, we have
(38:58):
a internal review process where I would write areport and, you know, commie would mark it up.
And if you're familiar with track changes onword, I, I would get something back that would
have mostly red and very little black on it.
So that was that was the story of my life.
And all of us lived in.
We're like, man, we're never gonna get thisright.
But it's it's more of a tough love approachwhere it's very specific on how we how we want
(39:23):
to
shape works.
Know what, after a while, I mean, you read whatChris writes today and you read what I wrote.
You can't tell who wrote them.
People do learn.
I mean, these things, but it takes time.
It just takes repetition.
It takes time.
The one thing that you can't teach is theattitude that this is the right way.
(39:44):
We've had employees who never bought into thisculture and some of them were very smart
engineers, but they didn't, they thought 95%was good enough.
And we're like, no, it's gotta be 99.9% right.
I have a joke that I tell, well, it's reallynot a joke.
It's reality.
(40:05):
What I tell most fresh graduates is in school,90% is an A.
In our business, 90% is a lawsuit.
You know, building can fall down.
You know, you can work on a building that leaksagain.
We didn't fix it.
And the client spent $5,000,000 doing what wetold them to do.
(40:25):
It's a lawsuit.
So you better be about 99.9% right.
And kinda going back to what Kami mentionedwith, you know, constant training and
certifications and industry involvement.
You know, Justin, you kind of started off with,wow, that's a lot of acronyms and a lot of
alphabet soup, right?
Oh, yeah.
(40:45):
That never stops.
I mean, look at the wall behind county.
I mean, that's only a portion of some of hisaccomplishments.
Mine, I just bought it at Walmart for $5.
Make it make it look like I had somethingimportant.
But, you know, I despite commies long last nameto begin with, all his certifications, he's
already on he's on a second line on hisbusiness card.
(41:07):
Granted, his last name is long to begin with,but that's what he's talking about is continue
it it never stops.
Always learning, always additionalcertifications to be had, you know, always
advancing your career and not just beingstagnant.
That's love that.
It's about one of our core values is continuousimprovement.
So it fits well in line of how we see the worldand
(41:28):
how we see Yeah.
Then the last part of the whole training is beleaders in our industry.
A lot of us not only obtained thecertifications, but being involved in
developing the certifications for thesedifferent organizations.
For years and years, I used to go out and teachclasses to my peers, to my competitors on how
(41:52):
to do our work.
And a lot of people told me, you know, why areyou doing that?
Why are you training your competitors?
And the reality of it was that many times someof those competitors got a call from somebody
who said, I have this complicated problem.
They go, you know what?
We can't handle it, but I think Kami and BTCcan do it because I learned a lot from him.
(42:19):
So we've, we've put a lot of value in trainingour competitors, our industry, just elevating
our industry helps us because now we arecompeting with, with people who are better
trained.
And as a result, their fees are also a littlehigher.
We're just elevating the entire industrytogether.
Yes.
(42:39):
All rising tides raises all boats, right?
Like that's
right.
That's the concept which, no, better together.
I love that idea.
When we, a couple of weeks ago, we had an eventand that was a big message of it, right?
Bringing a bunch of architects, engineers,construction leaders into one room who could
definitively be competitors for each other,especially when you're in the same geographical
location.
(42:59):
That's an, that's inherent.
But the concept is like, yeah, but if you allget better, like if you all increase your
level, you should see that at the bottom line.
Essentially when you roll this out far enough,that's what occurs.
Everybody gets a little bit more, which isamazing.
So I wanna go back for a quick second before wemove forward.
There was a portion that I kind of skipped, andI think I wanna talk about that now.
(43:24):
You talked a little bit about incentives andalso shareholdership.
And there's a concept that I'm hoping that wekind of cover, which is how do you measure,
right, how well, let's say leadership is doingin their roles.
Right?
How do you measure that?
And do you have metrics?
Like, you more of a metric driven or gut drivengut driven decision making or the combination
(43:48):
of both?
How do you how do you do?
I can tell you my perspective.
I'm an old fashioned business person and for asmall firm, keep in mind our philosophy is I'm
involved in a lot of projects.
I work one to one with a lot of people in theoffice.
When you run your business that way, youintuitively will know or subjectively will know
(44:10):
how everybody is doing.
So that kind of a gut feeling and that kind ofa read on what the company is doing is a lot
more valuable than any metric you could havebecause you can pick out things that metrics
typically don't pick out.
Metrics will tell you how profitable you are,how much backlog you got, this and that.
(44:34):
But in our business, we always say the goodwillof the company, the reputation is the most
valuable thing we have, and we still haven'tfound a good metrics to measure that.
So there are things you're gonna have tointuitively understand about your business that
I don't think the metrics can easily measure.
(44:56):
Now I'm sure somebody's going to come up withsome AI model to do it down the line, but for a
small company for us, it's been a lot ofsubjective stuff.
We have tried to bring in metrics a lot moreinto measuring performance.
We have always tried to ask employees how theyfeel about management, what they would do
differently.
(45:17):
One of the comments I always used to get is hedoesn't communicate enough because I'm just
short.
I don't have time.
Right?
Not enough time with us, or they don't saythank you enough.
Those are the two common things.
Chris, what's your perspective on metrics andon management success is measured?
Well, I mean, we are incorporating metrics moreto get a gauge on what some of that some of
(45:43):
that activity translates to.
Sometimes there's a disconnect.
You know, there are certainly qualities thatyou can only gain from that one on one
interaction.
But then once you die to the numbers, sometimesthose things don't always add up.
There has to be some understanding of what'shappening in the background with profitability
and efficiencies and contributions to otherparts of the business and not just worried
(46:07):
about billable time.
So we've tried to incorporate those.
And we're I mean, it's four years in now on anew bonus structure that I think we have enough
data to we're gonna tweak it a little bit, butit is still, you know, partially metric based
and partially subjective, you know, criteria.
(46:28):
So it's it's a matter of balancing both.
But what Kami is saying is correct.
I mean, in a smaller company, usually, the faceto face, you can gain a lot more, a little bit
more about some of that interaction just on howtheir performance is from that.
I I think, to to your point, about there's athere's a piece of this that is just kind of a
(46:52):
gut feeling.
Is it interesting with leadership?
Because I I think a lot of people miss, whatleadership is.
Right?
Like, Chris, I'm sure you can attest this,well, both of you, but certainly now more where
it's like, I used to just do a lot of technicalstuff.
I used to I used to be an engineer all thetime, and now I also do things that are not
engineer work where it falls in these otherscope of things.
(47:14):
Like how are my people doing?
Like what's the temperature of the room when wewalk in the office?
All those different things that, how do yousay, are they feeling this and like, then doing
something about it?
That's not easy to say, okay.
Let's put a scorecard together and know ifyou're hitting these metrics or not.
That's that's managing personalities.
I mean, that's Correct.
That's the psychology part of it, which is awhole another level.
(47:37):
And I remember Josh mentioned that years ago,and I I didn't understand what he meant until I
was in this position, and then I got it.
You are it's much different people, you know,not everybody's gonna react the same way to the
same thing.
So it's there's a lot of psychology involvedthat I had no idea until I was here.
Yeah.
No.
That's leadership.
(47:57):
Right?
So it's a people job.
It's just how do I manage people?
Right.
But what one very interesting that you guys do,and I know you mentioned this, you know, 90% is
a lawsuit.
Right?
So obviously, you wanna do work at a 99.9% orbetter level.
So y'all handle litigation.
That's a thing that you handle.
(48:18):
Not necessarily just, you know, because of yourwork, but just, Hey, you bring, you come in as
an expert and say like, yeah, this is who is atfault or, you know, what is at fault?
What's that look like?
How does that work and how does that play asyou're also trying to get business to do work
throughout the industry?
Well, first of all, I don't think you could bean expert if you don't do the regular stuff,
(48:39):
right?
How you become an expert.
You can say,
I've done
exactly that.
I've been in those shoes.
I know how that task is done.
So it is great that we have a good mix oflitigation work versus regular engineering work
where we go out and solve problems for buildingowners.
(48:59):
I know some other engineers, I know a lot ofgood friends and peers who say we would never
do litigation work because it's so stressful.
And to some it is.
If you're not confident about what you'resaying, it could be very stressful because in
a, you know, in a regular type of a project,you do your engineering, you issue the stuff,
you're responsible for it.
(49:21):
You really aren't going to have to answer a lotof questions about what you did.
You just did this is what you designed.
This is what gets built.
The contractor might ask a few questions hereand then you tell them this is the way it is.
Just do it.
Right?
In litigation, it's not like that.
You'll say something.
I guarantee you there are 10 other lawyers and10 other experts who say, oh, no.
(49:42):
That's wrong.
Here's why you were wrong.
And now you have to justify your answer and youhave prove to them that what you said isn't
just BS.
It's not speculation that you have a goodreason to prove what you said is correct.
And that's what really hones your skills verywell.
(50:02):
It's amazing how many standards even to thisday, I still remember certain standard numbers
or certain standards because I've had to readthe whole thing to make sure that when I say
they violated the standard, they did violatethat standard.
You learn so much more by doing these highstress litigation projects because you 99.9%
(50:28):
isn't enough.
It's got to be a 100%.
Right?
Yep.
You took me back to my days of when I was in aclassroom, and now I realized I connected the
dots between proofs and proving Yeah.
There you why you had to do that.
I totally just connected the dots just nowafter two decades of being out of
Well, look at that.
More lessons taught by Kami.
(50:50):
Look at that.
Yeah.
Well, I'll send you an invoice for that.
Well, look, gentlemen, it's been awesomespeaking to the both of you, which means that
we've come down to our last question.
So we'll start with Chris and then go to Kami.
So Chris first.
(51:11):
If you're to go back twenty years, what advicewould you give yourself?
What would you tell yourself?
It's always a great question.
Have you know, everybody has some misstepsalong the way.
And I I I don't know that I necessarily hadmistakes or chose the wrong paths or would do
it differently if I had an opportunity to do sobecause I think all those were great
(51:34):
experiences, whether it was I I didn't evenmention it at the start, but I actually started
out in an architecture program in school.
And due to a combination of, I don't know,immaturity and inability to handle the
subjectivity of an architecture program.
I had to basically,
it was a do over.
(51:55):
I had to start.
I came back home and then regrouped and thenwent to Milwaukee School of Engineering for an
architectural engineering degree.
It was a big switch.
Yeah.
That was a mistake to start off, But I don'tknow that I would go back and trade that I
think it was a it was a good experience.
You know, there's certainly some things that,you know, that was a big financial burden on
(52:16):
me, because it was my school was going to bevery paid for, and then my parents said, nope.
You're on your own now.
So that was a huge learning lesson.
And certainly, financially, had I known thatahead of time, I probably would have approached
a little bit differently.
But, I think they were all important steps ingetting me to to where I am now.
But I I would say if there's one thing, that Iwould tell myself twenty years ago or even
(52:39):
longer is read more.
Believe it or not, I think that's one of thethings that would have helped me a lot longer.
I it helped me quicker along the way because II still to this day don't love reading.
I obviously read to do my what I need to do.
But I look at my kids and they can't put a bookdown.
I have to fight them to go to bed because theywanna keep reading their book.
(53:00):
And I that's a quality I've never had.
I think I had I instilled that in myself a longtime ago, I think I'd be a lot better off and I
probably would have gotten to this point alittle bit quicker.
Very interesting.
That's a very unique answer.
I love that.
Thank you.
And, Kami, what about you?
If you were to go back twenty years, what wouldyou tell yourself?
What advice would you give to yourself?
(53:22):
You know, I think things have turned out okay.
But the one thing I would probably advisemyself not to do anymore is worry.
The first fifteen years in this position, Iworried all the time.
We always were profitable.
We always made great money, but I still worriedabout it.
I still worried about where the next projectcame from, worried about whether this client is
(53:44):
going to be unhappy, worried about whether thisemployee was going to leave or not.
If I look back and I had to learn or givemyself an advice or learn not to do something
would be to worry all the time because thatreally chisels on your happiness quite a bit.
Don't get me wrong.
(54:04):
I've had a this has been just the experience ofa lifetime creating a company and see it
flourish and now I transition to a newgeneration.
But I remember a lot of nights laying in bedworrying about different things.
And in retrospect, a lot of them just workedout.
Well, those are some great insights.
I love that.
(54:25):
Especially Nat, you know, going throughtransition.
Right?
I love that perspective.
So thank you for sharing.
Justin?
Yeah.
I I I don't know if I'm more blown away of theworry because obviously it's natural.
Owner, that's very natural, but it's we've notheard that.
Like, don't worry.
Like, you're it's gonna be okay.
You're gonna be good.
Or that Chris was, you know, a rebellious 18year old.
(54:48):
That also is for me, is from what I know ofyou, that is, like, so far from my imagination.
So it's it's amazing to hear that, oh, no.
There was a whole That's
good that I apparently have corrected thatsomehow.
Yes.
Course corrected for sure.
I'm gonna throw all your, social media and allthat fun stuff in the show notes.
But if somebody wanted to get ahold of you,what would be, the best way for them to do
(55:09):
that?
Visit w.btc.expert.
Both of our contact information is under theteam set tab.
Right?
You have our emails and everything else.
And LinkedIn is a great way as well.
I try to be a lot more active on there, but Icould certainly do a better job.
So more people are reaching out.
It gives me more excuse to go on there, Isuppose.
(55:30):
There you go.
And once this episode's released, you'll havetons of content to push out to your network.
So they'll everybody will be reaching out.
Thank you.
Awesome.
Yeah.
No.
For sure.
That's all for us.
Is there anything else you wanna say to thepeople before we say goodbye?
Nope.
I don't think so.
I think we've covered a lot.
Cool.
This was a blast as as Will had mentioned, anduntil next time.
(55:51):
Adios.
Adios.
Alright.
Take care.
Thanks for listening to building scale.
To help us reach even more people, please sharethis episode with a friend, a colleague, or on
social media.
Remember, the three pillars of scaling abusiness are people, process, and technology.
And our mission is to help the AEC industryprotect itself by making technology easy.
(56:15):
So if you think your company's technologypillar could use some improvement, book a call
with us to see how we can help maximize your ITcybersecurity strategy.
Just go to buildingscale.net/help.
And until next time.
Keep building scale.
You know, you're 67.
(00:01):
What do you mean you're thinking about it?
And the other thing you gotta understand, andunfortunately, we had this experience.
My my first transition plan was Josh.
You've you've heard the name Josh.
Josh was my first partner who came in inFebruary after we got started.
And as they always say, man plans God loves.
(00:22):
Josh got sick and he passed away at an earlyage.
So that plan didn't work out.
So if you don't start planning things veryearly on, you'll never have time to catch up if
there is something that doesn't work out theway you planned it.
Have you ever wondered how successfularchitecture, engineering, and construction
(00:45):
companies scale their business?
Or have you ever wanted guidance on how to getmore growth, wealth, and freedom from your AEC
company?
Well, then you're in luck.
Hi.
I'm Will Foratt.
And I'm Justin Nagel, and we're your podcasthosts.
We interview successful AEC business leaders tolearn how they use people, process, and
(01:05):
technology to scale their businesses.
So sit back and get ready to learn from theindustry's best.
This is Building scale.
Hey, listeners.
It's Will here.
Our mission is to help the AEC industry protectitself by making technology easy.
If you've ever listened to our show, then youknow that the three pillars of scaling a
(01:28):
business are people, process, and technology.
So if you suspect technology is your weak link,then book a call with us to see where we can
help maximize your company's IT cybersecuritystrategy.
Just go to buildingscale.net/help.
Today's guests are Chris Katra and KamiFarmanpur from Building Technology Consultants
(01:51):
Inc, also known as BTC.
Kami is the founder and principal consultant atBTC with over forty years of experience in the
evaluation, design, and repair of buildingenclosure components.
He is a fellow of both the InternationalInstitute of Building Closure Consultants and
National Academy of Forensic Engineers.
He also holds multiple industry certifications,including RBEC, CCS, and CCCA.
(02:18):
Kami is licensed in 23 states and has managedover 900 projects involving facades, roofing,
and waterproofing systems on existingbuildings.
Chris is the managing principal of BTC withover twenty years of experience in structural
evaluation, repair, and design.
His expertise includes critical facadeexaminations for the city of Chicago, parking
(02:39):
garage evaluations, and resolving businessenclosure deficiencies.
Chris is a licensed professional engineer inthree states, a registered exterior wall
consultant or REWC, and a certifiedconstruction contract administrator, CCCA.
Both Kami and Chris are actively involved inprofessional organizations like II, BEC, SWR
(03:03):
Institute, and ICRI.
You got more acronyms than we do in the techspace.
It is wild.
Super happy to have you, and gentlemen, welcometo the show.
Thank you.
Thank
you for having us.
Just to be clear, I'm the old guy.
Yes.
The old guy.
So it'll be easy when they they watch thevideo.
They'd say, oh, I'm the older one.
So that that's it.
We'll just use our eyes to know who's who.
(03:24):
But, Kami, tell us, about the beginning stageshere.
Obviously, Chris came on, later, but what wasthe original story when you started BTC?
Sure.
So it was back in February, the year February,when I started thinking about having my own
firm and usually people have differentincentives for wanting to start their own
business driven by money.
(03:47):
You want to make more money.
You want to probably get away from politics ofa larger firm, or you may want to just have a
vision that you want to implement for your owncompany.
In my case, money was not the incentive.
I even remember telling my wife at the timethat if we can make 70% of what I make, we can
still get by and we'll be okay.
(04:08):
So money was not the reason I started thecompany.
What I really wanted to do was to start acompany that focuses on building and closure
and get away from the office politics that Iwas faced with in working for a, it was about
120% firm at the time.
And I also wanted to be able to control thedestiny of my career and be able to do whatever
(04:31):
I wanted to do with my career and go towhatever seminars I wanted to go without having
to get approval from somebody else.
So that's how we got started.
We got started in February on the same day thatGeorge W.
Bush was flown in actually.
Wow.
Very presidential of a day to start a business.
That's right.
(04:54):
What about you, Chris?
Like what how did you come along?
How did you find yourself to this situation?
So out of
school, I started with a structural engineeringcompany that specialized kind of smaller
commercial buildings or, you know, largersingle family homes.
And I worked there for four years.
It was I enjoyed it at the time, but hadanother opportunity with a family friend that
(05:17):
kind of led me in a different direction.
It was an interesting company that specializedor their their main clients were banks, and
they did a lot of due diligence work.
And it seemed like a company that was growing,and it just kind of aligned with some of my
interests.
So I took that job.
But unfortunately, I took that in the February,shortly before the economy crashed.
(05:38):
And with a company that had a client base ofmainly banks, things didn't didn't fare too
well for that company.
I think the best environment.
No, not
exactly right.
And, you know, I did make it through a couplerounds of layoffs, but I finally was let go and
found myself searching for a new opportunity.
I landed four interviews very quickly afterthat.
(06:02):
Three of them, I got job offers almostimmediately.
The fourth one was BTC.
And that was the one I really wanted afterafter interviewing with Kami and Josh.
It was that it was a niche industry that Ididn't know anything about really until I met
with Kami.
And although I didn't get an opportunity rightaway, about a month later, I did get a call
(06:24):
from them saying that they had the opportunityand the availability to train me, because
that's one of their their cool or always wasone of their core missions was to make sure
they had the right amount of time to trainpeople when they bring them on.
So I started at the beginning of 02/2009, andI've been here ever since working my way up the
ranks.
So when you were hired, obviously, you weren'thired as the managing principal
(06:48):
Correct.
Initially.
So, you know, did you see yourself being in theposition that you're in today when you first
when you?
Well, that's an easy one.
No.
No.
It was never something I ever imagined or orreally dreamed of.
It was never a lifelong goal.
(07:09):
You know, I think one of the main reasons whenyou're starting out as a as a junior engineer,
you don't don't really know a lot.
Right?
I mean, you know, when you see, you know, thethe wealth of knowledge that other people have,
you're just down at the ground floor startingup that, you know, my main mission was just to
(07:30):
be able to be, you know, at a competent level,let alone being like at, you know, at this
level, or, you know, being considered an expertin the industry or something like that.
So, no, it was never really an aspiration.
It just became more and more of a of apossibility.
And then Kami and Josh decided to incorporate.
(07:52):
That gave opportunity to buy in for everybody.
And, I mean, it was a great opportunity.
And I think that led us to get, you know, alittle further down the road where I I saw that
this was a possibility and possible.
K.
Kami, this is for you.
When we talk about transitions, ownershiptransitions, whatnot, I would argue that you
(08:15):
are starting early.
Relatively to other people that I've seen outin the industry, I've seen, like, 80 year olds
start this process.
Okay?
Yeah.
Why why are you deciding or why you decide totransition earlier than a lot of people, let's
say, in the industry do transition?
And and then what made you decide that Krispmight be part of that transition process?
(08:42):
So great questions.
In my mind, a transition is exactly exactlythat.
It's a transition.
It's not a switch you flip and you go, I'm 65.
I'm gone.
You guys take over or this other person isgonna take over.
It's a very, very long process.
You don't not only have to transition thebusiness itself and ownership of the business,
(09:05):
You have to transition your clients.
You have to transition the the culture in thecompany.
You have to before you get to that point whereyou can transition ownership, you're gonna have
to develop interest.
I I just listened to Chris for the first timesaying he originally had no interest in being
an owner or didn't think about it.
(09:27):
One question I always ask everybody weinterviewed was, where do you see yourself 10
from now?
I think of probably 75 people I've interviewedwith that question.
Maybe two or three of them have said ten yearsfrom now I want to be an owner.
Very few of them would see themselves ten yearsfrom now an owner.
So it takes ten years for you to not onlyinstill the skills in them to be able to take
(09:50):
over, but also instill the interest.
It will take a long time for people tounderstand that boy, ownership could be fun.
Ownership could be beneficial from a financialstandpoint or from a, you know, career
standpoint in general.
It's a very, very long process.
(10:12):
I always felt that if we didn't starttransition, when I was 50 years old, I was
behind.
And you're right.
I talked to a lot of friends and businessowners who are 65, 70 years old.
I'm like, so what's your plan?
They're like, well, we are thinking about it.
I'm like, dude, it's too late.
(10:32):
You know?
You're 67.
What do you mean you're thinking about it?
And the other thing you gotta understand, andunfortunately, we had this experience.
My my first transition plan was Josh.
You've you've heard the name Josh.
Josh was my first partner who came in in02/2004, three years after we got started.
And as they always say, man plans got lapsed.
(10:55):
Josh got sick and he passed away at an earlyage.
So that plan didn't work out.
So if you don't start planning things veryearly on, you'll never have time to catch up if
there is something that doesn't work out theway you planned it.
You always have to start early so you canrecover from any unexpected bumps and still
(11:17):
make the plan work.
I think one part, if I can add to that, thatKami's leaving off of that is, you know, this
is this was his baby.
BTC was his creation, and he wanted to see thatlegacy live on.
And I think his plan to do so was to make sure,you know, he could hang around long enough to
(11:37):
to make sure that that happens and that itcontinues along his vision instead of to, you
know, stop working immediately, like he said.
Oh,
there's the idea of how transition works, andthen there's how transition actually works.
We
laughed a little bit about this before.
Can you talk can you both speak to this?
I think you both have kind of perspectives onthis.
(11:59):
So, Kami, I'll let you start first, and thenChris, if you wanna add, you know, do your
part.
So, yeah, I think from my perspective, thefirst step towards transition is identifying
those well, you gotta decide whether you wannasell or you wanna transition.
You know, a lot of people go the route ofselling their business outright.
(12:23):
And over the years, we were very successful.
We had a good reputation for small firms.
So we would get calls all the time from biggercompanies who said, we just want to buy.
We decided very early on that's not the way togo for us because I have seen far too many
times where those, you know, and beer companycomes in and buys you and they want to change
(12:43):
your culture.
They want to change the way you do everythingand things just don't work out that well.
It would have been the easy way out for me toget money out of the company.
But I think after that, I would have beenmiserable because I would see, as Chris said,
my baby being handled the way I don't like tobe to have it handled.
(13:04):
So my decision was, we wanna really transitionfrom within.
We wanna create a culture where people canstart buying in, and there was a number of
reasons for it.
Number one, it was a great way to retainpeople.
Right?
People came in here and said, you know, boy,you're in a small company, but this is the only
(13:26):
company that I can actually become an owner in.
It's a way for you to feel that you're part ofthe family, that you can share in the success
of the company.
So that was one benefit of doing transitionfrom within.
There were a number of other benefits for ittoo, but gradually we started to realize that,
(13:48):
okay, we want to do it from within.
And now you got to sell the idea to everybody.
You got to make sure that people who just wantto come to work nine to five and go home and
spend their weekends with their families andnever have to worry about work, that they would
see the benefit of ownership because all theyhear is ownership is a pain in the butt.
(14:11):
Right?
So we started to come up with a number ofdifferent ways to show people how successful we
were and allow them the opportunity to see forthemselves that, gee, know, if I own 5% of the
company, this is how much difference it's goingto make in my bottom line.
So transparency was the first thing we did.
(14:34):
Well, you know, we would have meetings everyyear at the end of the year, I will say, here
are the numbers.
This is how much we spend on rent.
This is how much we spend on this, on that.
And here's the profit that Josh and I tookhome.
You know, for two people, we probably took amillion dollars.
There was one year we took a million dollarshome between the two of us.
(14:56):
And that was very eye opening for these youngerpeople who are making maybe in the 6 figures or
just below the 6 figures to say, wow, I couldhave a chunk of that million bucks going to me
if I were an owner.
Right?
So first you develop that interest in them.
Then after that, you got to find a way to makeit possible for them to buy it.
(15:20):
So we came up with formulas about valuation ofour company that if you had, let's say you had
spent $10,000 on buying stock, your rate ofreturn would have been 25, 30.
It was pretty good.
Right?
So they would see the value of buying it.
And you had to make it easier for them to dothe first purchase because a lot of them are
(15:42):
just not saving a lot of money.
They're putting money into their four ks's,they have young families.
So we also came up with an initial stage of astock purchase where the stock prices were just
like half of what they would typically be.
Rate of return would be 70% and they justcouldn't refuse it anymore.
(16:02):
And there were a few people who just couldn'tafford it and we would help them out.
We would finance it.
Just for clarity's sake.
Okay.
Because you talked about multiple, you know,employees.
Is this an ESOP or did you consider an ESOP?
We did consider an ESOP.
ESOPs would have been great for me and Josh atthe time because of taxes and everything else.
(16:27):
There were two reasons we didn't go for ESOP.
Number one, ESOP meant the company would owemoney, and we were financially very
conservative.
Everything we owned was paid for.
We didn't want to owe money.
Right?
And number two, ESOPs are complicated andexpensive to implement.
They work much better for probably a 100 plusemployees versus us who are twelve, thirteen
(16:49):
employees.
We were told by ESOP consultants that it wouldcost 2 to $300,000 to set it up.
And then we would have to go out and get a loanfrom the bank to finance the ESOP, which meant
the company would owe money.
And we didn't want to do that.
So what we did was just a straight purchase.
(17:11):
We came up with, you know, our lawyers wroteagreements for purchase of the shares.
We didn't have a different classifications ofshareholders.
So every shareholder had the same rights as Idid, you know, that would be entitled to the
same dividends and the same benefits that everyeverybody else was.
(17:32):
We tried to keep it simple.
I I always believe in simplicity, especiallyfor smaller companies.
So you, you also mentioned one of the benefitsor one of the things that drew you to opening
up your own shop was the politics of a largerfirm.
Just what that looks like.
So you also were offering the fact that like,hey, you could be an owner, but you also are
(17:54):
not dealing with that.
Can you break down some of that for us?
What is a big firm politics?
What does that mean?
What does that prevent you from doing asleader?
That's a good, it's a good question.
In a larger firm, I was part of a firm thatwas, it was a wholly owned subsidiary of a
nonprofit organization.
Okay.
So even though I was called a principalengineer, I was not an equity principal.
(18:17):
I had no equity in the firm.
A lot of other people were also principalengineers, but they had no equity in it.
So the incentive level was different.
I also felt like everybody was just kindaracing to the top.
There were too many chiefs and too few Indians.
Everybody was trying to get to the top, andthey were more worried about their own careers
(18:38):
than the good of the company.
I remember there was one particular individualwho would get happened to get an inquiry call
from a big client.
This was their opportunity to write a proposal,get the job, and now they manage a big project.
Well, they would sit on these calls until theday before the proposal was due.
(19:02):
And on that day when they decide, gee, I can'thave time to write this proposal, they'll go
hand it over to somebody else and go, thisproposal needs to go out this afternoon.
Well, that's people thinking about themselves,you know, putting themselves ahead of the good
of the company.
And I just hated that.
I couldn't deal with that.
And to that end, the culture we tried to createwas we tried to incentivize company performance
(19:28):
over purely individual performance.
Obviously we want to reward individualperformance, but the good of the company
overall was always given a big emphasis.
So we always worked as a family, as a team.
We have a saying the greater good of theorganization.
Right.
(19:48):
What that if you just keep focusing on that,things will come to you individually, right?
Like if you just keep like, what is in the bestinterest of us creating an amazing
organization, your culture stays thick.
Like obviously people increase their wages.
Like all of these things occur because theorganization is the blood of how we all survive
essentially
in a
(20:09):
business sense.
What's your take on that, Chris?
Well, so I would say, you know, talking aboutthe structure of large companies or something
along those lines, one thing that really, Ithought set BTC apart from that concept is I
feel like larger companies have a very setorganizational structure, meaning you can't
(20:33):
advance until there's a position available, youknow, somebody clears out of that spot, then
you can move into that.
One of the philosophies philosophies of BTC isto really, if you're, you're promoted on merit,
not on what's available.
And you work your way up based on what you'veaccomplished yourself and how the company has
(20:56):
done.
And if there wasn't a position necessarilydefined, they would create a position.
And I and we've maintained that process.
Because, I mean, I think as we look at mecoming into this role, my goal was to keep
things the same.
I very much bought into I was drinking the KoolAid on how Kami and Josh put this together, and
(21:22):
I thought it was a perfect system, not aperfect system, a great system that I wanted to
keep going, not come in and just change.
And I think other, you know, larger corporatestructures, there probably would not be that
kind of opportunity.
At least that's my perception of it.
Got it.
You didn't have to come and make the waves.
Right?
Like, you can come and say, like, what we gotgoing on, it's pretty good.
(21:42):
Well, is.
And let's take her let's take her with this andthat, but, like, we got a good thing going.
Let's let's keep it rolling.
Exactly.
It was not our intent to come in and, you know,take a wrecking ball to it.
It was to maintain it and, you know, evolvewhere necessary where the times require it, but
maintain those same core values and keep going.
Okay.
So not so not ESOP, just to circle back aroundto the original topic.
(22:08):
So not an ESOP.
So this would be would this be consideredshareholder financing, essentially owner
financing?
Yes, it is.
So we had a simple stock purchase that wasfinanced by me personally with certain
guarantees.
And one of the conditions was I could work aslong as I wanted to work.
(22:28):
Right.
I couldn't be fired.
That's an important part of the bylaws, by theway.
That's right.
But other than that, it's a relatively simpleagreement.
Yeah.
We refinanced it over ten years.
Figured, you know, I'd done my math and Ifigured if these, these people make as much
money as we did, they're going to be able topay the payments every year and still have
(22:54):
money left over to enjoy their lives and, youknow, realize the benefits of ownership.
Sure.
Are you two the only leadership structurewithin PTC?
Or how does this
Well, Kami, it takes a lot
of leadership at all.
Yeah.
Kami does.
He's only a part time employee, technically.
That's right.
You just can't fire him.
(23:15):
It's just part of
the Right.
It takes a lot to fill Kami's shoes.
And so, really, four of us were the ones thatwere coming up through the ranks to take over.
And so, really, that ownership I mean, there'sstill other smaller percentages, but, really,
the four of us took over as, you know, mainowners with the three of them voting me to be
(23:37):
the, like, the the prince the managingprincipal in that regard.
But
Yeah.
By the way, they asked me, who would youappoint as the president?
And I said, I don't wanna get in the middle ofthat fight.
You guys are gonna have to decide amongstyourselves who's gonna be the president.
Boy, first first major decision.
You
have turned out to be not a big deal at all,though.
(23:58):
Honestly, the four of us work great together,and we do divide and conquer.
We each have kind of our avenues to focus on sothat way there's not just one person working on
every aspect.
I think we have we're able to divide andconquer and accomplish a lot that way.
By the way, of those four people, three are thetechnical people like Chris and Mike Wisconsin,
(24:20):
Charles Seedman.
They are the technical consultants.
And then the fourth person is the officemanager.
We we hired an MBA about a year and a halfbefore the transition, and she's been wonderful
in just looking at a big picture and being ableto be part of that management team and do it.
Right.
Well, think regard Sorry.
(24:41):
Was gonna
say she's so much more than that.
I mean, it's she's she wears many, many hats,and that's one of the she's the glue that kinda
keeps us together in that regard.
It's we have a great relationship, and her andI bounce each other bounce stuff off each other
all the time.
So
By the way, when it comes to making decisions,one of the things we did as part of the first
(25:01):
stages of transition was Josh and I sat aroundand said, you know, a manager makes we make so
many stupid decisions every day.
You know?
What are we gonna have our office party nextyear?
What are we gonna get for holiday gifts?
You know, we we came up with a list of a 100different decisions like that that we have to
(25:22):
make on a routine basis and we divided it upamongst the staff.
We said, you are gonna have these, you know, 15different things you're gonna have to decide
on.
Your responsibility.
Just don't drive us bankrupt.
Don't get us into a lawsuit.
As long as you do that, you're fine.
And we set some budgets for certain things.
(25:43):
And that was a very interesting process becausewe had younger folks who have grown up in the
new education system where homeworks are doneas a team.
And they would hold the meeting for three hoursto decide where the next company party is going
to be.
And then we would calculate how much billabletime we just lost because we had that three
(26:05):
hour meeting with five different people in it.
But that was a learning experience for them.
They had to go through it to startunderstanding ramifications of decisions,
understanding that forecasting nation is notgonna pay.
It's gonna cost you money.
You better off to just make a decision and gofor it.
(26:25):
And every once in a while, you're making thewrong decision, but you can recover from it and
keep the company moving.
I mean I know this time is a resource.
That is Yeah.
That's a valuable lesson.
Yep.
Very much.
Well, and, you know, we are in a serviceindustry.
Right?
We don't sell widgets.
If you sell widgets, you can you can go golfhalf a day and come back and sell a million
(26:48):
widgets in the afternoon, and you're stillokay.
We are in a service industry.
We sell time and expertise, and there are onlyso many hours a week you could build to your
clients.
If you're wasting that time making decisions onwhere to hold the next company party or what
company gear you're going to buy next time,you're not going to be able to make money.
(27:11):
Figuring out all the small decisions, and ifthey take a very long time, that, you know, you
can't get the big things done.
So it makes sense.
That's right.
But important to have the right people, right?
Right people on the bus.
What's y'all's philosophy on hiring?
What does that look like?
Is it we take them green and we build them intothe ideal engineers that we want?
Or is it the opposite?
(27:31):
Like, no, we need to have somebody that hasmore chops to them already when they walk in
the door.
I'll tell you our first principle, and thenI'll let Chris tell you where we hire these
days.
Our first principle was we hire when we have anopportunity to hire a good person, not when
there's a job opening.
We learned very quickly that when you're busyand you need more people, it's a wrong time to
(27:56):
hire someone because when you're really busy,you don't have time to train them.
So we were going to hire just because we needmore bodies to do work.
We decided we're to hire if we find the rightperson, even if we didn't have work for them.
We would let them do different things aroundthe office, go to meetings with other people so
(28:17):
they could learn.
But if we only hired when we were busy, wewould have hired a lot of wrong people.
And don't get me wrong, we've still done that.
So that's our first part of our hiring processand our hiring philosophy.
I'll let Chris talk about who we hire thesedays.
Well, no.
I was gonna echo that, and I'm I'm kinda casein point on that.
I said I started in January 2009 when, youknow, economy was down.
(28:42):
That was not a a great year for the company.
But they hired me, they saw something in methat they thought it was worth the investment.
And we've tried to carry that same philosophyall the way through where it's, you know, we're
not hiring just to hire.
We're hiring people that fit.
Right?
And we'll weather a storm that if we're toobusy, we'll find a way through it and not just
(29:06):
add people to add people.
That's exactly what Kami's talking about.
We've tried to carry that same philosophy.
As far as where we're finding that talent, it'sit's been a challenge of late.
And I I I don't know if we're, you know,barking up the wrong tree or what the case
might be.
But, you know, mid to high level people, we'vehad a lot of trouble securing those.
(29:30):
So we've had a lot more success actually, withyounger, you know, coming out of school and
even actually interns.
Interns, several of them have actually stayedon and become full time.
So I think that's been our best path right now.
And I think one of the tricky things,especially when you're talking about, you know,
mid level and higher level, and and Kami wouldtell you this too, is that it's kinda hard to
(29:52):
teach an old dog new tricks.
Right?
And we have very specific ways on how to dothings on our writing skills.
You know, these are all the things that set usapart as, you know, as experts in the industry.
So to focus on those things is is crucial.
And so if somebody's used to a certain writingstyle or doing things a different way, it may
be a big change for them to come here and learnthose new ways and and, you know, fit in the
(30:16):
right way.
It's not to say they can't, but I do wonder ifthat's why we're struggling with that because
we are a little bit picky in that regard.
But like Tommy said, we've been successful, sothere's no reason to really change everything
completely.
But it would our best success has been throughyounger engineers coming right up.
Yeah.
And and hiring has always been a challenge forus because we we are not like a typical
(30:40):
engineering firm.
Right?
If you're just a typical design firm, you go toschools, people get trained on structural
design or whatever.
You can throw them at one of these projects andthey'll do their calculations.
They've they've been trained in it.
What we do, though, is very niche.
Very
specific.
And when I teach classes to architects orengineers about what we do and I ask them how
(31:02):
many hours of training did you have on thistopic in school?
Usually, zero hours to maybe at the most threehours of training.
Yeah.
So people aren't trained in what we do inforensic engineering and building enclosure.
So, but 90, I would say 95% of what people doday in and day out here is experience based,
(31:25):
not education based.
One thing I've told people actually, especiallyyounger people is, you know, school engineering
school will teach you how to think like anengineer, but only experience will teach you
how to actually be an engineer.
Like, there's there's nothing that couldreplace just having the experience of doing all
this, you know, hands on in front of us.
(31:48):
Experience is king.
That I we see that all the time where Ifrequent there's books behind me, books behind
Will.
We frequently say, like, you could read a athousand business books, but that doesn't make
you a business person unless you lived it.
Like, it's so much there's so much passion andconviction and understanding when you've
actually done a thing compared to, well, youdid a lot of schooling about this or you read a
(32:11):
lot of books about this.
Right.
But it actually kind of brings me full circlehere.
So, obviously, we're not trying to become a bigfirm.
Like, we're not trying to become a big firmproblem politics.
However, we're adding mouths to feet in regardsto profit.
So you do have to, you know, hire, get bigger,you know, grow that way.
But we're also gonna not hire when we're busy.
We're gonna hire off busy so we can train them.
(32:31):
It's hard to find people.
How do you make a balance of all these things?
Like that seems like you're really trying tothread the needle, perfect person, right skill
level, right time, all of those things.
That seems like a hard
thing to reason that we've stayed small, right?
Couple of things.
Think about it in service industries where youhave specialties that require a lot of
(32:56):
experience and knowledge like ours.
How many people you could hire depends on howmany people you have to mentor them.
And, you know, when you're our size and out ofthe thirteen, three of them are admin people,
you have 10 technical staff.
You need about one principal or one mentor perevery two or three employees.
(33:22):
If you go beyond that, you're not gonna besuccessful because that mentor also has to do
their own work.
They have their own clients, they have theirown project load, and they have to mentor all
these other young people and oversee theirwork.
We have to review every report that goes out.
We have licensing requirements that, you know,if we write a report, a licensed engineer is
(33:43):
gonna have to review it and stamp it.
You have all those requirements.
So practically speaking, although a lot ofcompanies do it, which is to just hire people,
throw them at these jobs, and one principaloversees maybe 20 people, we have refused to do
that.
And that's really what sets us sets us asidefrom a lot of other people in our firm, in our
(34:07):
industry is because we can keep the quality ofwork that high.
We always tell clients, you're not gonna justsee me when I'm sending you the job.
I'll be at the meetings.
I'll be doing the work.
I'll be writing the report.
If it's testimony, I'm gonna be doing thetestifying when we do forensic work.
Right?
(34:27):
So they get that quality of work from us, andthat that's how we can maybe charge a little
bit more than most of our competitors and keepthe quality high, but you cannot it well, I
gotta take that back.
There are firms out there who get very big andthey have kept the quality pretty high.
(34:48):
Honestly, I don't know how they do it, but forus, we've had to keep the firm small, profit
margins higher and more comfortable.
And that way you don't, you're not underpressure to take every job every time.
Right?
We can turn down clients.
We, and we have, we have fired clients who wedon't like to work with because they either
(35:10):
don't pay on time or the expectations areunreasonable from us.
And we have said, you know what?
We don't want to work for you because we don'tneed we don't have we only have 13 mouths to
feed.
Right?
We don't need every job out there to keep thecompany going.
And that's the advantage of staying small and aboutique firm.
(35:31):
I think one of the things that impressed me themost when I was a junior engineer in my first
few years here is we would compete againstcompanies, you know, some of our competitors
are one is like close to a thousand people, youknow, another one's like 80 people.
And there's a couple more that are up in thatrealm too.
And yet we win jobs over them.
I was always impressed with that and didn'tunderstand it until later on when I understood
(35:57):
how much the the quality meant to people andhaving that personal interaction like Kami's
talking about.
By him being involved in those projects, that'swhat gains us that that trust with those
clients.
Yeah.
I think, especially with engineering quality,it's everything.
Right?
Obviously, communication is super crucial,important in any business, but like the actual
doing of what you do, you have to have highquality because it matters.
(36:23):
Right.
Some places you buy a t shirt, it doesn'tmatter as much.
But when you're doing engineering, it's likethat is it's crucial.
Especially our kind of engineerings.
We always joke with the clients and say, we arelike oncologists.
People come to us when they have a big problem.
You know?
They don't come to us because they got a cold.
They usually go to this, you know, to the othertier of consultants out there.
(36:46):
We get a lot of jobs where they've alreadytried that and it didn't work.
So it's second, third time around, theirbuildings had a problem, and they've tried to
fix it, and they just didn't really quite getresolved.
So they come to us.
So I got a question then because this isobviously very detailed, specialized work,
(37:07):
which requires then having a lot of one on onetime in order to be able to get someone to be
more autonomous and self sufficient.
Right?
How do you get people to that level of, youknow, autonomy and self sufficiency without
having to do that for decade?
(37:28):
Training, training, training.
Chris will tell you, we have a spreadsheet forevery one of our positions.
We have requirements on training, which goesway beyond what licenses typically require you.
Most people who are licensed in engineering,they're required to take like one or two days
of training every year.
We train a ton more than that.
(37:51):
Number one, we encourage and in some casesrequire people to be involved in industry
organizations.
Chris would go to a lot of meetings, to a lotof seminars.
A lot of our people serve on these committees,whether they're technical committees or
organizational committees.
They're required to write papers.
(38:13):
They're required to give technicalpresentations.
They're required to read magazines and articlesabout this stuff.
We have internal training where if somebodylearns something new, we share that with
everybody else.
So we really have very, very intensive trainingbefore even the one to one starts.
(38:34):
We have several binders of standards andmaterials that we give the person who walks
into the office the first day, we hand thatover to them and go, try to learn this in the
next two months.
Yeah.
It's You know?
It's it's a lot.
It's overwhelming, but it's also meant to guidepeople into that in that direction.
You know, the when you talk about at least, youknow, starting point day one, you know, we have
(38:58):
a internal review process where I would write areport and, you know, commie would mark it up.
And if you're familiar with track changes onword, I, I would get something back that would
have mostly red and very little black on it.
So that was that was the story of my life.
And all of us lived in.
We're like, man, we're never gonna get thisright.
But it's it's more of a tough love approachwhere it's very specific on how we how we want
(39:23):
to
shape works.
Know what, after a while, I mean, you read whatChris writes today and you read what I wrote.
You can't tell who wrote them.
People do learn.
I mean, these things, but it takes time.
It just takes repetition.
It takes time.
The one thing that you can't teach is theattitude that this is the right way.
(39:44):
We've had employees who never bought into thisculture and some of them were very smart
engineers, but they didn't, they thought 95%was good enough.
And we're like, no, it's gotta be 99.9% right.
I have a joke that I tell, well, it's reallynot a joke.
It's reality.
(40:05):
What I tell most fresh graduates is in school,90% is an A.
In our business, 90% is a lawsuit.
You know, building can fall down.
You know, you can work on a building that leaksagain.
We didn't fix it.
And the client spent $5,000,000 doing what wetold them to do.
(40:25):
It's a lawsuit.
So you better be about 99.9% right.
And kinda going back to what Kami mentionedwith, you know, constant training and
certifications and industry involvement.
You know, Justin, you kind of started off with,wow, that's a lot of acronyms and a lot of
alphabet soup, right?
Oh, yeah.
(40:45):
That never stops.
I mean, look at the wall behind county.
I mean, that's only a portion of some of hisaccomplishments.
Mine, I just bought it at Walmart for $5.
Make it make it look like I had somethingimportant.
But, you know, I despite commies long last nameto begin with, all his certifications, he's
already on he's on a second line on hisbusiness card.
(41:07):
Granted, his last name is long to begin with,but that's what he's talking about is continue
it it never stops.
Always learning, always additionalcertifications to be had, you know, always
advancing your career and not just beingstagnant.
That's love that.
It's about one of our core values is continuousimprovement.
So it fits well in line of how we see the worldand
(41:28):
how we see Yeah.
Then the last part of the whole training is beleaders in our industry.
A lot of us not only obtained thecertifications, but being involved in
developing the certifications for thesedifferent organizations.
For years and years, I used to go out and teachclasses to my peers, to my competitors on how
(41:52):
to do our work.
And a lot of people told me, you know, why areyou doing that?
Why are you training your competitors?
And the reality of it was that many times someof those competitors got a call from somebody
who said, I have this complicated problem.
They go, you know what?
We can't handle it, but I think Kami and BTCcan do it because I learned a lot from him.
(42:19):
So we've, we've put a lot of value in trainingour competitors, our industry, just elevating
our industry helps us because now we arecompeting with, with people who are better
trained.
And as a result, their fees are also a littlehigher.
We're just elevating the entire industrytogether.
Yes.
(42:39):
All rising tides raises all boats, right?
Like that's
right.
That's the concept which, no, better together.
I love that idea.
When we, a couple of weeks ago, we had an eventand that was a big message of it, right?
Bringing a bunch of architects, engineers,construction leaders into one room who could
definitively be competitors for each other,especially when you're in the same geographical
location.
(42:59):
That's an, that's inherent.
But the concept is like, yeah, but if you allget better, like if you all increase your
level, you should see that at the bottom line.
Essentially when you roll this out far enough,that's what occurs.
Everybody gets a little bit more, which isamazing.
So I wanna go back for a quick second before wemove forward.
There was a portion that I kind of skipped, andI think I wanna talk about that now.
(43:24):
You talked a little bit about incentives andalso shareholdership.
And there's a concept that I'm hoping that wekind of cover, which is how do you measure,
right, how well, let's say leadership is doingin their roles.
Right?
How do you measure that?
And do you have metrics?
Like, you more of a metric driven or gut drivengut driven decision making or the combination
(43:48):
of both?
How do you how do you do?
I can tell you my perspective.
I'm an old fashioned business person and for asmall firm, keep in mind our philosophy is I'm
involved in a lot of projects.
I work one to one with a lot of people in theoffice.
When you run your business that way, youintuitively will know or subjectively will know
(44:10):
how everybody is doing.
So that kind of a gut feeling and that kind ofa read on what the company is doing is a lot
more valuable than any metric you could havebecause you can pick out things that metrics
typically don't pick out.
Metrics will tell you how profitable you are,how much backlog you got, this and that.
(44:34):
But in our business, we always say the goodwillof the company, the reputation is the most
valuable thing we have, and we still haven'tfound a good metrics to measure that.
So there are things you're gonna have tointuitively understand about your business that
I don't think the metrics can easily measure.
(44:56):
Now I'm sure somebody's going to come up withsome AI model to do it down the line, but for a
small company for us, it's been a lot ofsubjective stuff.
We have tried to bring in metrics a lot moreinto measuring performance.
We have always tried to ask employees how theyfeel about management, what they would do
differently.
(45:17):
One of the comments I always used to get is hedoesn't communicate enough because I'm just
short.
I don't have time.
Right?
Not enough time with us, or they don't saythank you enough.
Those are the two common things.
Chris, what's your perspective on metrics andon management success is measured?
Well, I mean, we are incorporating metrics moreto get a gauge on what some of that some of
(45:43):
that activity translates to.
Sometimes there's a disconnect.
You know, there are certainly qualities thatyou can only gain from that one on one
interaction.
But then once you die to the numbers, sometimesthose things don't always add up.
There has to be some understanding of what'shappening in the background with profitability
and efficiencies and contributions to otherparts of the business and not just worried
(46:07):
about billable time.
So we've tried to incorporate those.
And we're I mean, it's four years in now on anew bonus structure that I think we have enough
data to we're gonna tweak it a little bit, butit is still, you know, partially metric based
and partially subjective, you know, criteria.
(46:28):
So it's it's a matter of balancing both.
But what Kami is saying is correct.
I mean, in a smaller company, usually, the faceto face, you can gain a lot more, a little bit
more about some of that interaction just on howtheir performance is from that.
I I think, to to your point, about there's athere's a piece of this that is just kind of a
(46:52):
gut feeling.
Is it interesting with leadership?
Because I I think a lot of people miss, whatleadership is.
Right?
Like, Chris, I'm sure you can attest this,well, both of you, but certainly now more where
it's like, I used to just do a lot of technicalstuff.
I used to I used to be an engineer all thetime, and now I also do things that are not
engineer work where it falls in these otherscope of things.
(47:14):
Like how are my people doing?
Like what's the temperature of the room when wewalk in the office?
All those different things that, how do yousay, are they feeling this and like, then doing
something about it?
That's not easy to say, okay.
Let's put a scorecard together and know ifyou're hitting these metrics or not.
That's that's managing personalities.
I mean, that's Correct.
That's the psychology part of it, which is awhole another level.
(47:37):
And I remember Josh mentioned that years ago,and I I didn't understand what he meant until I
was in this position, and then I got it.
You are it's much different people, you know,not everybody's gonna react the same way to the
same thing.
So it's there's a lot of psychology involvedthat I had no idea until I was here.
Yeah.
No.
That's leadership.
(47:57):
Right?
So it's a people job.
It's just how do I manage people?
Right.
But what one very interesting that you guys do,and I know you mentioned this, you know, 90% is
a lawsuit.
Right?
So obviously, you wanna do work at a 99.9% orbetter level.
So y'all handle litigation.
That's a thing that you handle.
(48:18):
Not necessarily just, you know, because of yourwork, but just, Hey, you bring, you come in as
an expert and say like, yeah, this is who is atfault or, you know, what is at fault?
What's that look like?
How does that work and how does that play asyou're also trying to get business to do work
throughout the industry?
Well, first of all, I don't think you could bean expert if you don't do the regular stuff,
(48:39):
right?
How you become an expert.
You can say,
I've done
exactly that.
I've been in those shoes.
I know how that task is done.
So it is great that we have a good mix oflitigation work versus regular engineering work
where we go out and solve problems for buildingowners.
(48:59):
I know some other engineers, I know a lot ofgood friends and peers who say we would never
do litigation work because it's so stressful.
And to some it is.
If you're not confident about what you'resaying, it could be very stressful because in
a, you know, in a regular type of a project,you do your engineering, you issue the stuff,
you're responsible for it.
(49:21):
You really aren't going to have to answer a lotof questions about what you did.
You just did this is what you designed.
This is what gets built.
The contractor might ask a few questions hereand then you tell them this is the way it is.
Just do it.
Right?
In litigation, it's not like that.
You'll say something.
I guarantee you there are 10 other lawyers and10 other experts who say, oh, no.
(49:42):
That's wrong.
Here's why you were wrong.
And now you have to justify your answer and youhave prove to them that what you said isn't
just BS.
It's not speculation that you have a goodreason to prove what you said is correct.
And that's what really hones your skills verywell.
(50:02):
It's amazing how many standards even to thisday, I still remember certain standard numbers
or certain standards because I've had to readthe whole thing to make sure that when I say
they violated the standard, they did violatethat standard.
You learn so much more by doing these highstress litigation projects because you 99.9%
(50:28):
isn't enough.
It's got to be a 100%.
Right?
Yep.
You took me back to my days of when I was in aclassroom, and now I realized I connected the
dots between proofs and proving Yeah.
There you why you had to do that.
I totally just connected the dots just nowafter two decades of being out of
Well, look at that.
More lessons taught by Kami.
(50:50):
Look at that.
Yeah.
Well, I'll send you an invoice for that.
Well, look, gentlemen, it's been awesomespeaking to the both of you, which means that
we've come down to our last question.
So we'll start with Chris and then go to Kami.
So Chris first.
(51:11):
If you're to go back twenty years, what advicewould you give yourself?
What would you tell yourself?
It's always a great question.
Have you know, everybody has some misstepsalong the way.
And I I I don't know that I necessarily hadmistakes or chose the wrong paths or would do
it differently if I had an opportunity to do sobecause I think all those were great
(51:34):
experiences, whether it was I I didn't evenmention it at the start, but I actually started
out in an architecture program in school.
And due to a combination of, I don't know,immaturity and inability to handle the
subjectivity of an architecture program.
I had to basically,
it was a do over.
(51:55):
I had to start.
I came back home and then regrouped and thenwent to Milwaukee School of Engineering for an
architectural engineering degree.
It was a big switch.
Yeah.
That was a mistake to start off, But I don'tknow that I would go back and trade that I
think it was a it was a good experience.
You know, there's certainly some things that,you know, that was a big financial burden on
(52:16):
me, because it was my school was going to bevery paid for, and then my parents said, nope.
You're on your own now.
So that was a huge learning lesson.
And certainly, financially, had I known thatahead of time, I probably would have approached
a little bit differently.
But, I think they were all important steps ingetting me to to where I am now.
But I I would say if there's one thing, that Iwould tell myself twenty years ago or even
(52:39):
longer is read more.
Believe it or not, I think that's one of thethings that would have helped me a lot longer.
I it helped me quicker along the way because II still to this day don't love reading.
I obviously read to do my what I need to do.
But I look at my kids and they can't put a bookdown.
I have to fight them to go to bed because theywanna keep reading their book.
(53:00):
And I that's a quality I've never had.
I think I had I instilled that in myself a longtime ago, I think I'd be a lot better off and I
probably would have gotten to this point alittle bit quicker.
Very interesting.
That's a very unique answer.
I love that.
Thank you.
And, Kami, what about you?
If you were to go back twenty years, what wouldyou tell yourself?
What advice would you give to yourself?
(53:22):
You know, I think things have turned out okay.
But the one thing I would probably advisemyself not to do anymore is worry.
The first fifteen years in this position, Iworried all the time.
We always were profitable.
We always made great money, but I still worriedabout it.
I still worried about where the next projectcame from, worried about whether this client is
(53:44):
going to be unhappy, worried about whether thisemployee was going to leave or not.
If I look back and I had to learn or givemyself an advice or learn not to do something
would be to worry all the time because thatreally chisels on your happiness quite a bit.
Don't get me wrong.
(54:04):
I've had a this has been just the experience ofa lifetime creating a company and see it
flourish and now I transition to a newgeneration.
But I remember a lot of nights laying in bedworrying about different things.
And in retrospect, a lot of them just workedout.
Well, those are some great insights.
I love that.
(54:25):
Especially Nat, you know, going throughtransition.
Right?
I love that perspective.
So thank you for sharing.
Justin?
Yeah.
I I I don't know if I'm more blown away of theworry because obviously it's natural.
Owner, that's very natural, but it's we've notheard that.
Like, don't worry.
Like, you're it's gonna be okay.
You're gonna be good.
Or that Chris was, you know, a rebellious 18year old.
(54:48):
That also is for me, is from what I know ofyou, that is, like, so far from my imagination.
So it's it's amazing to hear that, oh, no.
There was a whole That's
good that I apparently have corrected thatsomehow.
Yes.
Course corrected for sure.
I'm gonna throw all your, social media and allthat fun stuff in the show notes.
But if somebody wanted to get ahold of you,what would be, the best way for them to do
(55:09):
that?
Visit w.btc.expert.
Both of our contact information is under theteam set tab.
Right?
You have our emails and everything else.
And LinkedIn is a great way as well.
I try to be a lot more active on there, but Icould certainly do a better job.
So more people are reaching out.
It gives me more excuse to go on there, Isuppose.
(55:30):
There you go.
And once this episode's released, you'll havetons of content to push out to your network.
So they'll everybody will be reaching out.
Thank you.
Awesome.
Yeah.
No.
For sure.
That's all for us.
Is there anything else you wanna say to thepeople before we say goodbye?
Nope.
I don't think so.
I think we've covered a lot.
Cool.
This was a blast as as Will had mentioned, anduntil next time.
(55:51):
Adios.
Adios.
Alright.
Take care.
Thanks for listening to building scale.
To help us reach even more people, please sharethis episode with a friend, a colleague, or on
social media.
Remember, the three pillars of scaling abusiness are people, process, and technology.
And our mission is to help the AEC industryprotect itself by making technology easy.
(56:15):
So if you think your company's technologypillar could use some improvement, book a call
with us to see how we can help maximize your ITcybersecurity strategy.
Just go to buildingscale.net/help.
And until next time.
Keep building scale.
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