Building Legacy with Innovation: The Future of Independent Lumber Yards with Mark Blickenstaff

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Stefanie Couch (00:00):
That's what you should be worried about, not AI
taking your job.
It's worried about the personwho uses AI.
That's gonna be 80% faster thanyou, or two times faster than
you, coming in and taking yourjob.

Mark Blickenstaff (00:11):
Even my most seasoned salespeople.
Now I'm fortunate I've got aguy that's been in the industry
for 51 years now.
I mean straight out of highschool went into the industry.
We brought him on board withChatGPT not long ago.
You know, old dog, new trick.
But he embraced it, we rolledit slowly and now he's in love
with it.
He does know the answer, butsome of these newer products and

(00:32):
whatnot he's like I don'treally know.
Hold on a second and it giveshim every technical document he
could possibly need, summarizesit and he can give the customer
response so much faster.

I actually tell mine to treat me like I'm a
complete idiot that's never doneanything before in business and
doesn't know how to read a P&L,and give me things that I would
never have thought of and tellme why.
You can either learn this oryou can watch as everyone else
learns it and you can be the onewho doesn't know how to use it.
That probably does lose yourjob because you can't use AI.
Welcome to the Grit Blueprintpodcast, the show for bold

(01:09):
builders, brand leaders andlegacy makers in the
construction and buildingindustry.
I'm your host, Stef anie Couch,and I've been in this industry
my entire life.
Whether we're breaking downwhat's working in sales and
marketing, new advances in AIand automation, or interviewing

(01:29):
top industry leaders, you'regoing to get real-world
strategies to grow your business, build your brand and lead your
team.
Let's get to work.
Welcome to the Grit BlueprintPodcast with Stefanie Couch.
I am excited today to have MarkBlickenstaff.
He is the Divisional Directorof Revenue, growth and Marketing

(01:52):
at Moore Lumber and Hardware.
They have seven stores and theyhave been a trusted staple in
Colorado since 1947.
You guys have been around along time legacy business and
Mark and I had a conversation atIBS in Vegas.
That really excited me becausehe is shaking things up around
more lumber.
It may be a longstandingtraditional business, but he is

(02:13):
bringing AI and automation intothe mix and today I'm really
pumped to talk to you about thisProbably the first person I've
ever heard that actually knewwhat an AI agent was in our
space.
So I nerded out pretty hard.
Welcome to the podcast, mark.

Thanks, stephanie, it's good to be here.

And we are going to break it down today and talk
a little bit about that AI.
But I want you to tell me aboutyou and, kind of, how did you
get into this industry, what'syour journey been like and what
is your role today at MooreLumber.

Sure.
So I'm fortunate I actuallygrew up around the industry,
grew up in a small logging townin Idaho, so spent my whole
childhood watching loggingtrucks come in and rail cars of
lumber leave from the BoiseCascade Mill.
Yeah, and, honestly, graduatedhigh school and swore I'd never
get into the industry.
That was not for me.
So off to college I went.

(03:03):
I actually started in theindustry pushing a broom at a
nursery at our local home centerwhen I was in college and 16
years later I kind of woke upand I realized I'm in the
industry, so progressed all theway through all the ranks at the
home center and just kept ontrucking.
And just kept on trucking andthen coming to more lumber.

(03:23):
That happened in 2019.
And the legend Ken Keene gave mea phone call and said, hey,
I've got this opportunity.
I was like awesome, I've neverbeen to Colorado.
That sounds great.
So I took a phone call from theownership here Bill and Aaron
and, just a natural fit, athree-hour phone call seemed
like two minutes, so greatconversation.

(03:44):
Got down here to visit it andwhat really drew me in was the
appreciation for the people thatBill and Aaron have, and then
our contractors and our DIYers.
They're all just incredible.
So first couple of years solelyfocused on ops and sales, and
then a couple of years ago,added marketing into my
repertoire and now yeah, I'mblessed, I get to serve and

(04:05):
oversee a lot of it now as adivisional director.

That's awesome and you have a cool title
divisional director of revenueand marketing.
Tell me what your day to daylooks like.

Oh, my day to day.
My day to day definitely startsvery early Checking our trucks,
making sure we've goteverything on the road we're not
gonna disappoint any customerstoday.
Making sure that my salespeopleare all lined out, they have
quality leads to work, whattheir pipelines look like.
I transitioned from there overinto the marketing side to make

(04:36):
sure my marketing people aredoing what they're supposed to
be and they always do a greatjob.
So really it's a lot of feet upon bond eating.
You know it's a lot of feet upon bond eating.
You know it's pretty kosh.

Yeah, that's what I was actually hoping you
would say is a lot of justdwindling your thumbs around and
just you know, no big deal.

I've got good people.
I'm bored yeah.

That's amazing, though, when you have a
marketing team, that's strong,because a lot of our people in
our industry don't reallybelieve in marketing.
You guys have a littledifferent stance on that.
Tell me a little bit about that, like, what does marketing mean
to you in this business and howdo you and your team do that?

Sure.
So I mean it is fun becausewe're taking a lot of that old
school service and we're givingit a dash of some new school
thinking, and I really do enjoydoing that.
You know I'm a millennial and Igot to be real.
You know we're special ducks.
Yeah, we are special ducks andyou know we'd like to be
communicated to in a differentway and we do thrive on

(05:31):
partnerships.
So for me, marketing isn'tnecessarily you know, we've got
cheap lumber, we've got cheapnails.
Marketing to me is hey, we'rehere to help you grow your
business.
I've got resources, I've gotskills.
You can go build a house andyou're incredible at it.
We can market.
Let's go ahead and collaborateand I'll use my resources.
You go do what you do best andI'll go do what I do best.

(05:53):
And so through that partnershipwe've really generated some
neat programs to help ourbuilders grow, which, in turn,
we grow as well.
So marketing is a lot ofoutbound is what we have nailed
it, my friend.

I mean congratulations because I talk
to a lot of people in thisindustry and I don't know anyone
who has quite figured that outof hey, we, if we can make our
customers money and we canreduce friction in their
business Because I don't knowvery many contracting companies,
especially small guys in atruck or two, that even think

(06:26):
about that type of thing theirbrand, their marketing but you
are using your resources to helpthem grow their business.
Oh, smart, this is really smart.

What are some ways you're?

doing that for people?
I mean, are you doing likedirect mail?
I don't want you to give awayall your secrets, but I'm just
curious because it's sodifferent.

I'm an open book.
I mean, honestly, I'd love more, more independent lumberjars to
jump on board with me.
Yeah, no, we do everything fromtraditional marketing, which
I'll deem, into the direct mail,newspaper ads.
So you know, we've got graphicteams.
We can certainly help with that.
We can help with your logodesign.

(07:04):
Our, our great partner,develops websites for people.
We we essentially came out witha 72 hour website program.
Oh my gosh Very inexpensive forthem to get into.
So it's like most of these guysdon't have a website.
You know they they might have aFacebook page that hasn't been
seen in three years.
But yeah you know that's theextent of their, their digital
presence.

So I love it.
Yeah, and that's a lot of whatwe're doing for people in, you
know, in our business at Grip,blueprint is figuring out how do
we we actually have somecustomers that we're trying to
get to do things like this.
So I mean, I can't.
I didn't know.
You just shocked me.
I didn't know we're going to gohere.
I'm so excited right now I canhardly contain my little nerdy
marketing door window lumberyardheart.

(07:43):
But this is it, man, you got tofigure out what they don't want
to do.
But they need to do and do itfor them.
And this is it.
And the money is a part of it.
Look, there's a fixed cost,there's a real cost on building
a website.
But if you can do it fast, youcan do it for them and they pay
a little bit or maybe don't payanything and that's a part of

(08:05):
your service.
That is it.
So I think you guys have nailedit.
Now I just need to come toColorado to see this in real
life.
But your company has obviouslychanged a lot over the last
decades.
1947 it started a certain way.
You're distinguishing yourselfthat way with marketing.
How else are you guys standingout in this competitive market?

(08:25):
Because the independentlumberyard and hardware store
sometimes gets overshadowed inthe media by all these amazing
things that are acquisitions andall the big getting bigger.
How's the independentlumberyard and hardware store
win today?

Great, yeah, I mean, we were.
We were one location, baileyColorado, 1947, now up to the
seven locations.
At the end of all of it, it'sstill to our roots.
Integrity, service, trust,community focus those are our
staples.
We're always on those is, youknow, our ability to be the

(09:04):
local shop, but withcapabilities of a much larger
operation.
Yeah, you know, our prices arevery competitive because we do
have very strong relationshipswith manufacturers and
wholesalers.
We were more nimble as well,and that's one of our biggest
advantages not knocking the bigguys because they're damn good
at what they do.
But you know, we can pivotreally really fast and with

(09:27):
seven different locations, I'vegot seven different markets
really.
So tastes are different andpreferences are different.
So it's like cool, I can pivotthat store, just that one, I
don't need to pivot the entirecompany.
That's true.
Having that nimble attitude isincredible for us.

Yeah, that decentralized model, man, that's
a competitive advantage if I'veever seen one.
You know, I used to work at areally big distribution company
and they won that way.
That's really what I thinktheir competitive advantage is
is that they allow theirmanagers in market to make
decisions.
My old boss used to say all thetime, if we want to sell
lemonade and pins, we could selllemonade and pins, and I'm like

(10:04):
I don't know if corporate wouldbe OK with that or not.
But you know what?
Honestly, I'm not so sure.
I always wondered if he wasgoing to be on the sidewalk with
a lemonade stand one day when Icame into work, just so he
could say that story was true.
But you know, it's like that ishow you win in your market is

(10:27):
being able to let your managersand let your people do the
things that their customersreally need and want in
day-to-day market and thatchanges so rapidly.
It's hard nowadays to have atrue competitive advantage.
I think your people arecompetitive advantage as well.
Tell me a little bit about yourteam.

My team, small teams.
We run really small teamsthroughout our company.
Actually, we have outside reps.
Not a single one of them has atruck, though you know we rely
on that relationship very, verydeeply and they have a personal
relationship and the biggestthing we're driving home is, you
know, these aren't justcustomers, these are partners.

(11:00):
When we fail, we're delayingtheir livelihoods, the shoes for
their kids, the meals on theirtable, whatever you want to call
it.
So I mean we all take it very,very personally.
We try to take it morepersonally than our contractors
do, and they take it extremelypersonal.
So that's our biggest focus is,you know, just maintaining we

(11:20):
are that true partner, that weare invested in their success.

Yeah, and that's the thing you know people talk
about.
We're about to transition tothis conversation about AI.
You know, what I love about AIis that it makes us faster on
the things that don't reallymatter from that personal
relationship side, the stuffthat's really just like a data
execution or an automationthat's faster so that we can do

(11:47):
the things that only humans cando, which is really what matters
in our business.
But the thing is that a lot oftimes, our humans are mired up
in these little tasks that couldbe done automated or by AI and
they can't spend the time doingthe things that really matter.
So that's what I love aboutthis.
So much is that I do think it'sgoing to allow us to do more of
the really good stuff as humansin our relationship building

(12:09):
cycle of customer service.
All right let's dive in.
This is an old school industry.
It's like scary AI is here andthey don't necessarily know what
to do.
So you and I had a conversation.
Actually, I interviewed AaronMoore and we had a great
conversation in Vegas at the IBSshow and while we were talking

(12:30):
about AI he said hey, mark isbuilding some really cool stuff.
What inspired Moore Lumber toactually go in and explore AI
automation technology?
I'm guessing you personallywere interested in this, but
what are some of the problemsthat you're like?
I wonder if we could fix thiswith these tools.

Yeah, and so I again, I'm blessed.
You know, I've got twogenerations of the family still
working in the company, sogeneration two was actually one
of the larger spearheads on usgetting into AI.
He's at an age that youwouldn't expect it, but he is
all about it and he supportseverything we do with it.
So really, it all started downto.
You know, how can we serve acustomer better without losing

(13:12):
what makes us special?
You know, how do we not losepersonal contact but still make
us more efficient?
So that's where, when westarted to digest into it, it's
like, well, we've, realistically, we've been using AI for years,
decades even started to digestinto it.
It's like, well, we've,realistically, we've been using
AI for years, decades.
Even, um, we just called themalgorithms.
Right, well, an algorithmreally is AI.
We just didn't call it that yet.

(13:32):
So now, with the advancementsand the more responsiveness and
the broader depth of AI, likegreat, that means everything we
do can get broader.
Yeah, so we've been using itforever for, you know, supply
and demand, keeping our supplychain full, keeping our
inventory levels, appropriateseasonal changes, all those
things, and so now we canactually take those and go even
do a deeper dive and I canactually pull in forecasted

(13:55):
weather.
You know like, hey, why not?
We know weather impacts ourindustry every single day.
We just got, you know, 12inches of snow today here in
Colorado.

It's 82 degrees here in Georgia.
I don't even understand that.
Okay.

We were 75 yesterday, so I don't know Wow
that's crazy.
So you know it's looking atthose and going, okay, I can do
so much.
Now I can take a weatherforecast and I can impact my
inventory levels.
I can impact my staffing levels.
I can impact, you know, I canexpect a traffic flow, what my
cash flow is going to be for aday, all these things I mean.
Any question I really want todive into and find an efficiency

(14:31):
.
Ai just allows us to do that.

Yeah, and I just saw this week so I mean talking
about fast moving like holy cow.
Every week something huge comesout.
So Google just released and I'msure you saw this already where
you can go into a Google Sheetand now, instead of having to be
a wizard that can do pivottables and formulas which
there's some broken hearts rightnow that I know of because

(14:54):
they're pivot table wizards butnow you can just type into
Google Sheet formulas, find thisthing that I want to understand
and it literally will just doit.
Yeah, it's incredible thing thatI want to understand and it
literally will just do it.
Yeah, it's incredible thatright there, holy cow, like you
know, summarize this plus thisand then tell me, based on
seasonality, this thing, and itcan just do it in Google sheets.

(15:17):
So if you think you have to besome sort of AI genius that can
program and do all this stuff,that is not true.
It's something you should startto just try.
So you know, I will say thebiggest thing that's changing
right now is from chat GPTcoming out in 2022.

(15:37):
At the end I think it wasDecember 2022 is when I started
messing with it it just come outto the masses.
You could write an email, youcould do all these things, but
right now, what you can do isbuild AI agents.
So agentic AI for someonelistening, that is like I have
no idea what she's saying.
It's basically building acustomer service person or a

(15:59):
person that works for you to doa task and instead of you having
to type in the prompt, you kindof tell it what task and you
program some paths through itand it starts to do that
automatically.
So you guys are actuallystarting to use that for
something you mentioned about apaint agent.
So tell us a little bit aboutthat.
I want to hear about this paintagent.

Tell people how you're using this yeah,
we're extremely excited.
So we partnered with a companyit's actually called PaintPal
and of course, ai is in paint.
So that works out great, yep,and what we've partnered with
them to do is we did a timestudy on a phone call to order
paint, and paint is a very largesegment for us.

(16:39):
We're aligned with BenjaminMoore and we do a good amount of
volume there.
So what we started looking atwas it doesn't matter if the
customer is ordering one gallonor 100 gallons, it's still about
a 12 minute phone call.
Well, 12 minute phone calls,times X amount per day that's a
lot of time.
So we started to shift a littlebit to text to order, and it

(17:00):
was just old school you justtext.
You know one of my paintsalesmen and they are paint
people and that was great.
What we found was OK, it gets alittle bit of a bottleneck to
it.
So how can we make this evenbetter?
And so, partnering with PaintPal, we developed we call her
Ashley and she's our agent andshe knows everything about paint

(17:22):
.
I mean, she knows technicalspecs, she knows colors, she
knows what colors you can use iton exteriors and what colors
you can't.
She knows the Sherwinequivalent in a Ben Moore color.
She can cross reference, shecan do all of it, and so we
programmed her to have a naturalconversation via text, and so
our paint contractors just sitthere and text with her, just
like you or I, and they have noclue, unless we had had told

(17:43):
them that it was an AI agent.
So, at the end of the day, whatwe have is this beautiful text
conversation that's stillpersonable and still has a
personality to it, and at theend of it we've got a concise
order formatted in a way that'scompletely makes sense to
everybody.
And we have the records and wehave everything else that goes
with it, and it gets emailed andblasted to the paint team.
They mix it.
And we have a else that goeswith it, and it gets emailed and

(18:04):
blasted to the paint team.
They mix it.
And we have a very high servicequality standard.
So we're a two-hour window fromorder to job site.

That's awesome.

So time matters to us, so all of this
can happen and I save 12 minutesof time for a real person.
Now, I'm not replacing thatreal person by any means.

I'm just making them more efficient at what I
need them to be doing.
Truly, yeah, that's something Iwant people to really think
about is like these are thetasks that we don't have time to
get to, that we're automating.
You know, 68% of business smallbusiness phone calls reportedly
go unanswered, and any personthat gets voicemail unanswered
and any person that getsvoicemail 80% of those people
never call back.
That's a big number in a retailbusiness like yours, if you

(18:57):
could capture 100% of your phonecalls instead of 34% or 32%,
that is a big deal.
Like that's a lot of peoplethat are now getting answered,
that are getting helped, thatare getting sold, and so that's
the type of task we're going togive AI to do.
It's this paint stuff that's sotaxing, and if that person texts
the wrong thing, or if youdon't know someone that has been

(19:20):
selling paint for 30 years,they probably don't know what
Ashley knows anyway, even textedas a human.
That's the thing is.
There's so many ways tooptimize this process where the
human is still there, they'restill employed, they're busy
talking to people in real lifethat are in the store, and that
Ashley is still working on theback end doing what she needs to

(19:40):
do.
Oh man, that's like.
Every angle of that is a plusfor me.

Right, and a lot of it truly came out of
COVID, right, I mean COVID.
We all forgot how to besalespeople during COVID.
We became great order takersthough oh my gosh, we could take
orders all day long.
Well, now it's that transitionback.
You know, especially in amarket like right now, things
are a little challenging acrossthe nation.
We have to actually sell again.
Yeah, so that takes time.

Yeah, for sure.

Taking a paint order doesn't need to be
one of those things that's justorder taking.

I think that's so important.
What do we, what do we want ourhumans to be optimized for?
And even when I think aboutsales, so I love this.
This is a sort of off AI, butyou know, talking about sales, I
think that's one of the biggestproblems we have in our
business is that every customerI have every single customer at
Grit Blueprint.
They wish they could sell more.
People want more revenue andthey wish they had more

(20:35):
salespeople that really weregood at going out and hunting
and selling every single one ofthem.
And I'm curious, like, how doyou solve that problem?
You know, the next generation weall, we all fuss about the
older people are like now we'rethe old guys and gals, the
millennials, like Gen Z, justpick up the phone and they don't
know how to sell.

(20:55):
And you know these kids out ofcollege, they can't do anything.
I don't really feel that way,but I have a lot of Gen Z
amazing people on my team, but Iknow there's a perception there
.
But even millennials, it's like, oh well, they can't sell, they
just want to do everythingonline.
What's the answer to that, mark?
Like, because that's a loadedquestion.
But how do we get salespeopleto be educated in the products.

(21:17):
Some of these things are sotechnical.
You guys sell windows and doors.
You know, and doors, you know.
That's my love language.
There's like 500 differentthings you need to know to sell
a door.

Right.

Like I mean literally there's 500 things,
because there's so many productlines, there's different types,
there's different swings andhands and all that different
stuff no-transcript.

Well, that's a loaded question, you're right.

Give me the exact answer.

Yeah, let me jump right on that.
But I am going to loop in AI.
So even my most seasonedsalespeople.
Now I'm fortunate I've got aguy that's been in the industry
for 51 years now.
I mean straight out of highschool went into the industry.
You can do the math on how oldhe is now.
But that I, we brought him onboard with chat GPT not long ago

(22:04):
.
Yeah, like you know, old dog,new trick, but he embraced it.
We rolled it slowly and nowhe's in love with it because he
already he does know the answer.
But some of these newerproducts and whatnot he's like I
don't really know.
Hold on a second and it giveshim every technical document he
could possibly need, summarizesit and he can give the customer
response so much faster.

Yeah, and it's written in an email format or a
text format or whatever it iswhere he doesn't have to, maybe
he's not a great writer, ormaybe he's not a good speller or
none of that matters anymore.

It's losing some potency, that's for sure.
Yeah, but I think for theyounger generation it's going to
be as big of a tool, becausewhen I think about my personal
upbringing, I came up at a timewhere Google became a thing and
the instant result was always goGoogle it.
Well, now it's go AI it or gochat it, so we can do that and I
think bringing that newgeneration and letting them know

(23:04):
okay, it's okay to utilize atool because it is just a tool.
Again, that's all it is, justlike a nail gun.

I mean, that's when people are really upset
about it with me.
They're like this is going totake over the world.
It's like, yeah, just like passload nail gun.
I have no affiliation with passload, that just happens to be
what I grabbed.
So don't get mad at me, hadachior whoever, but at the end of
the day, like that is what thenail gun was to the hammer, it's
what the farmer's tractor wasto the horse.

(23:32):
You know, the car to the horseit's the same thing and it's not
going anywhere.
Like that's the truth of it is.
You can either choose to be theperson who now decides to learn
this, at 60, 70 years old or at20 years old, it doesn't matter
how.
Where you are in the workforceage, you can either learn this
or you can watch as everyoneelse learns it, and you can be

(23:54):
the one who doesn't know how touse it.
That probably does lose yourjob because you can't use AI.
That's what you should beworried about, not AI taking
your job.
You can't use AI.
That's what you should beworried about, not AI taking
your job.
It's worried about the personwho uses AI.
That's going to be 80% fasterthan you, or two times faster
than you coming in and takingyour job.
That's what we should beworried about as a workforce.
I think that's huge that youguys are training people to use

(24:17):
that.
One thing I hear a lot and soI'm curious on your end how you
mitigate this is what aboutmisinformation from AI?
So maybe especially on aproduct line, like if you sell a
certain type of Windows or acertain type of Trex decking and
then it pulls from TimberTechor whatever line you happen to
sell, how do you mitigate thatrisk?

So we have a hard, fast rule it's 85-15.
It's 85 percent correct.
15 percent of it's still gonnarequire your time, energy.
So, end of the day, we do.
We rely on our people havingthe knowledge and going oh, that
doesn't smell right.
Let me go back to that one.
Yeah, now, at the same time,you know, chat GPT is the model
we use has gotten a lot moreadvanced with putting citations

(25:02):
on everything yep, and you knowwhether you have to ask it to or
not, your choice but has gottena lot more advanced with
putting citations on everything,and you know whether you have
to ask it to or not, your choice.
But ours is automatic.
We tell it to cite everythingso that when it does kick
something out, it's like okay,well, that came from Wikipedia,
let's go check that one.
Just to make sure I have noaffiliation with Wikipedia.
It's great, I love it.

If you want to sponsor me, hit me up.

Yeah, yeah, crowdfund, that one too.
But you know, so I, we, we dorequire the citations to be
there.
That way Our customer or ourteam does have some confidence
on where it came from.
But again it's, it's 85, 15,which is great because we've
always worked with 80, 20 rules.
Right, well, I love 5% more.
That's even better.

Yeah, I'll take the ratio plus five.
Is that what we're going tocall it?

Pretty much.
I love it.

And you know, with perplexity which I don't
know if you've used perplexitymuch, I just recently started
using that when I need to doresearch, like I really need it
to be legit legit no-transcript.

(26:28):
But even this week, I meanChatGPT OpenAI just came out
with a new model 4.1 that's forcoding and some different things
.
That is substantially betterthan it was last week.
I mean like exponentiallybetter.
This is the nerdiest episodeI've ever.
People are going to be like wethought this girl wore a pink

(26:49):
hat and was a branding person.
What the heck is going on rightnow I'm in the alternate
universe, but this is likereally so amazing how different
things are going one week to thenext.
Just nuts.
So people are like how do youkeep up?
How do you keep up, mark?
I mean things are changingevery week.
What do you do to keep up withthis?

Well, sleep is optional, so I mean, let's
just throw that out there.
No, I do spend a significantamount of my time.
It's a priority, right?
So it has to become a priorityfor you, otherwise you'll never
be able to achieve success withthis.
So if you're going to implementit, make it a priority and then

(27:32):
do dedicate to your priorities.
So for me, it is a priorityfinding a way.
You know, labor markets aretough.
They're always going to betough.
We got to find moreefficiencies, so it's a high
priority for our company to beextremely efficient.
So I spend as yeah, I would sayaverage of two hours a day just
trying to keep up with the news, latest releases, you know, and

(27:53):
everybody's coming out withsomething.
So it is.
There's a lot of garbage outthere.

Yeah, for sure.

But once you lock into a platform that aligns
with you and you know meetsyour criterias, whether it be
security or usability, whateverit is integrations you know,
once you lock into that, stayfocused on that one.
That's how I stay up to datewith it.
I read the garbage briefly.
I read this other stuffintently.

Yeah, for sure, and you can actually program.
So, since we're talking aboutAI, I have made an AI agent to
program what I want on theupdates.
So I have multiple newslettersthat I read every day.
I have all these differentthings.
So it can scrape the mostimportant information that's
pertinent to whatever you'redoing.
So you basically hire someonethat's an AI person to do that

(28:39):
for you.
So the way that you can findand sort through all this
information doesn't have to bemanual.
I mean you can do that, butthat's one thing.
We're about to come out withthe group blueprint.
I'm going to start doing like aweekly update, maybe a video,
I'm not sure, because this stuffis so like reading it just
doesn't quite, it's hard tounderstand it.
So maybe I do AI update weeklynewsletter for us nerds that

(29:05):
want to know the deep dive.
That's a video.
But it is just changing so muchand my husband is the one that
doesn't sleep.
He just me and him both lovethis stuff, but he gets in there
and just builds these newthings and he's learned to code
Python and all these things.
So maybe you talk to GripBlueprint about doing some of

(29:25):
this crazy stuff you really wantto build.
But a lot of this stuff you canjust chat GPT, you know.
It's really cool.
I love it.
All right, give me a few moreexamples, because this is hard
to theorize for a lot of peopleOperations, customer engagement,
sales.
How do you see this?
Either you guys are alreadyimplementing it, or give me some

(29:46):
examples of ways you think thiscould work in an independent
lumber yard and hardware store.

Sure, you know one way that I actually use
it, and some people might callit cheating, but I actually dump
my P&L into it.

Okay.

And I say hey , summarize it, show me
opportunities for improvement.
And it's surprising thesuggestions it comes up with.

And are you doing this in chat, gpt pro or
chat?
Which which version are youusing?

I'm in pro and I'm using 4.0 right now.

Ok, so pro for those, those listeners that
don't know is a paid service.
They have a different models.
They have a twenty dollar amonth subscription.
I think it's called plus.

I think yeah.

And then pro is two hundred dollars a month and
then the model you're using isfor oh.
So if someone wants to mimicthat, that's what I would
reference.
As well as you do want to paythat two hundred dollars a month
, you can't pay anyone thatwould do enough work for two
hundred dollars a month to getwhat you could get out of it.
It is worth the money.
So that's awesome.
Okay, and the type of promptthat tell me a little more about

(30:50):
what you're telling it.

You want from the P&L?
Yeah, so, and for those of youthat are security conscious, you
can turn off upload information.
So my P&Ls do not go to theworld.
Nobody gets to see them, but mePNLs do not go to the world.
Nobody gets to see them but me.
That's a great point.
That is a feature I highlyrecommend you turn on.
And I do operate in multiplelogins as well.
I have one that uploads anddownloads, and I have one that
never uploads and only downloads.

And what that means for people who don't know
is uploading and downloadingmeans it remembers your
information and it's trainingthe model basically.
So it's training its world outthere to learn on what you're
giving it.
So you can basically stop thatand if you're like really scared
of that, then you can stop italtogether where, like he's
saying he has a login he's goinginto that never learns anything
, basically.

So it'll stay local to me only.
So a prompt for that one yeah,I mean literally, it's just as
simple as summarize this, showme increases and decreases and
then show me suggestions fordecreasing controllable costs.
Yeah, and it will kick me out,probably a 10 page document, and
I'll go through the fullsummaries.

(31:56):
It'll tell me which divisionsare up and which divisions are
down.
And it took a little training,but not much.
I mean it's pretty impressivehow smart it just picked up on
everything.

One of the things that I like to tell my
chat GPT.
So a pro tip here is I like totalk to my chat GPT instead of
typing it, because you can justtalk to it.
Like me, and you were talkingright here, my chat GPT has a
name.
Does yours have one?

I call mine Darren OK.

Darren.
Ok, so mine's, mine's, gritbot,that's what she named herself.
My husband is Echo, that's whathe named himself.
But Darren and you I'm surecould do this as well.
But if you talk to it, you canadd a Chrome extension and just
talk to it back and forth.
But I actually tell mine totreat me like I'm a complete
idiot that's never done anythingbefore in business and doesn't

(32:46):
know how to read a P&L and giveme things that I would never
have thought of and tell me why,and so it gives you just a
little more breakdown and thenyou can also tell it to talk to
you like you're a third grader,you know those types of things,
because sometimes I feel like itcan give you an answer and
you're like that's great, but Ineed more to understand even

(33:07):
where that context came from.
And telling it to treat you likea complete idiot, cause,
honestly, sometimes the things Iask it about I am a complete
idiot, I do not know crap aboutthis.
So really I need you to reallyact like I don't know, and then
it'll give you just somethingreally awesome and you can keep
prompting, and I think that'sanother thing is one time is not

(33:30):
going to be a lot of timesenough to extrapolate the things
you want, but if you keepasking it as you would a person.
So if I ask Mark a questionabout something I know nothing
about, he's going to answer me,and then I'm probably going to
have a follow-up question.
Well, that's how you shouldthink of your conversations with
any kind of AI model.

Absolutely so .
That's the financial side.
Marketing side oh my gosh, weuse it all the time, every time.
So on the marketing side, we'veactually uploaded our vision
statement, our mission statement, our value, our value statement
, our company history.
So it knows everything about us, so you can go out and get more
information from the web, butat the same time, it has a
memory of who we are, what weare, where we're going and so

(34:13):
are you saving that as projectsin chat GPT?

is that how you're making sure it remembers
okay?

yep, yep, and also we do utilize logins a lot
, so which we try to keep thebrains a little bit separate.

There's some crossover.
Someone in marketing is notremembering the financial stuff
and all that.

Right.

Yep.

Yep, so we'll utilize that.
And then we give it ourpriorities.
You know what are our campaignpush is going to be so okay,
this month we're really focusedon well, normally it'd be sunny,
but you know but we're focusedon deck planning and things like
that.
So, ok, we really want tohighlight our deck specialists.
We really want to highlightTrueFrame, because that's what
we use for KDAT.
We really want to pushdecorators and timber tech this

(34:53):
month, and so we give it thoseprompts and we say, hey, develop
whatever it is social mediaplan, a LinkedIn plan, direct
mailers, you know all thosethings and it will kick out and
again, 85-15, it's not givingyou the full answer, but it's
putting you down a path.
That makes it a whole lot moreattainable than me just sitting
there and writing everything out.

And in a world where we're all very busy,
there's 15 different platforms.
If you, you know, if you thinkabout all the social medias and
all the different blogs andnewsletters and every touch you
could have in a marketing world,you can get, like you said, 85%
of the way there on all 15,instead of having to do 100% of

(35:36):
the work and then from there yougo in and say, okay, this
LinkedIn post is spit out, it'spretty good, but the hook sucks
and this needs to be shorter,and then you can either
re-prompt it or you can writethat by hand.
And that's the beauty of thisis, you're not again doing all
of it, but you're getting wayfurther than I.

(35:57):
Don't know any person that hasa marketing team big enough to
do everything that you should bedoing in marketing.
I know people that have milliondollar a year content teams not
in our industry that would be.
I would love to see it one day.

I'm praying.

But you know, they have a guy that follows
them around with a camera allthe time, records everything
they do.
They're spending $80,000 amonth on content.
They still don't have enoughfor what they really want to do
everything they want to do soyou'll never get there.
But do best with what the toolsare out there, and you can get
further.
So I love that.

(36:32):
What's the biggest hack thatyou think has really changed the
game for you guys?
Like something that was justunobtainable before that.
Now you're able to do with AIand marketing specifically.

That's a really solid question, I would
have to say.
Getting specific as a crossoverbetween the marketing and the
inventory load yeah, because nowagain with the forecasting and
everything else and our and ourtrends over the years, we can
input all of that and we can getyou know within days proper or
good inventory loading for goodcampaigns yeah, and it's really

(37:09):
fine tuned how we do that andhow we push something out to the
market.

Love it and you know when you're thinking about.
One thing I don't think peoplethink about all is the ability
to create images on AI.
So you know it's hard to getjob site photos, it's hard to
get product photos.
What I'm waiting and maybe Ijust build this myself because I
haven't gotten it yet but youknow we do a lot of photography

(37:34):
and videography like real life.
You know we're out there with aphotograph, you know, from this
job site to say, here's thechat, here's the prompt we want
to make and all these differentthings.
But it doesn't look like thedoor that you sold because it's
like AI's got you know somerandom door that's not even real
.
Like you know, it gives yousome weird panel layout that no

(37:54):
one would ever order in reallife and it's real obvious.
It's not a real door.
You want that door.
That's actually the brand thatyou're selling.
So if you can figure out how todo that, that would be amazing.
And I've worked on it a lot.
I've spent a lot.
I've actually not slept hourstrying to get that, you know,
lincoln aluminum clad, black,slimline door to be on this
house I just created in AI.

(38:15):
Haven't gotten it to be perfectyet, but I think we are so darn
close to that and if we can dothat, that would be huge.
But think we are so darn closeto that and if we can do that,
that would be huge.
But if you're just trying toshow like a craftsman door with
lap siding on it that looks likesome sort of brand that's fiber
cement siding the brand shallgo unnamed.

you can do that today in an image maker and
it looks pretty darn awesomeyep, I mean, yeah, obviously
people it still struggles with,you'll end up with six fingers
or something like that.

It's really hilarious that was always how I
could tell when I made ai in thevery first days.
They look like dracula right,it's like don't give them teeth,
just close the mouth, smile,because that looks scary as
could be.
It was like lex luther orsomething like oh my gosh, this
is crazy.
This is going to be so terriblewe can't put this on it on a
social media post.
We're getting there, thoughUsually it's a little bit less

(39:05):
scary.
Now they I mean some of them, Ican't tell their AI people.
The eyes is kind of where youcan tell like it's a little
soulless.
But on an AI headshot you cansometimes tell.

Yeah, no, it's gotten to the point where
you actually have to reallystare at it.
I mean, it's like checking theMona Lisa right, and it's like
what am I looking for?
There's something wrong.
I can't figure it out.

I love it.
Well, I'm curious how do yousee?
Because I know there are a lotof people listening to this,
especially independent businessowners.
They're like I don't have twohours to spend on this a day,
mark, like I'm drowning.
I don't have time to even doanything to respond to emails.
Well, my first answer to thiswould be answer my own question
build an AI agent, do that crapso you can do other stuff.

(39:48):
But how do you see that Likesomebody can just get started in
this?
What's a way to solve one easyproblem, to just try some things
out in AI?
What would you say forindependent retailers?
Hardware stores, lumber yards?
What would be a way to start?

I mean just as simple as adding an agent to
your inbox.
That would be a heck of a start.
Most people that are on anoperational level within
independent yards, you knowthey're bombarded by sales
emails, order emails,confirmation, so on and so forth
.
It's like just throw an AIagent on your inbox alone, it'll
draft a response to 90% of youremails and all you have to do

(40:27):
is proof it and send it.
So, okay, I just gave you backprobably three hours of your day
right there in that little step.
You know, it's just.
It's those trivial tasks that wecan't ignore, but they are
still trivial.
You know, we have to read the,we have to go through them,
helping it, having it help youwith your calendar, you know.
You know, tell the AI agent,hey, I need at least two hours a

(40:50):
day blocked off of my calendarso nobody can schedule it.
Yes, we can do that manuallynow, and we probably should, but
we don't.
So I mean just small littlesteps like that.
But then take it to the nextlevel and just start asking it
questions.
You know, for our sales team, amassive one is technical
documents.
You have to read an entire 18page technical document to get

(41:13):
to one sentence for the answeryou were looking for.
Well, throw that document inthe AI and ask it the question.
Review this document, tell mewhat the specific gravity is.
Ok, your answer is there in 30seconds.

And then show me exactly what page it was on.
Exactly so I can screenshotthat exact thing to them.

Bingo, yes, and your customer thinks you're
a genius because you found it sodarn fast and they have to read
the whole thing.
You just saved yourself 15minutes, you know, and so it's
not.
There's no one thing, in myopinion, with AI that's going to
say there's no silver bullet,it's just continual, incremental
time savings.

A lot of golden BBs.
There you go, and you know.
It's beautiful to me that youdon't have to really know a ton
about tech to be able to do this, because, really, with the and
you don't even have to know howto prompt it, necessarily
because you can tell it I don'tknow how to get this information
, so I don't know how to promptyou.
So this is what I'm looking forWrite a prompt that would work

(42:11):
and it'll talk to itself to tellit what to do.
It'll give itself instructions.
It's the thing you wish yourwife or husband would do.
I love it, my husband and I.
It's really funny because weobviously work in the business
together.
He is a techie.
I'm honestly pretty techie onthis stuff and we work a lot

(42:32):
with this.
And people will say like, well,yeah, of course you guys can
use AI, like you're techie andwe work a lot with this.
And people will say like, well,yeah, of course you guys can
use AI like you're techies.
And I'm like, yeah, but that'snot what this is, this is basic
stuff.
You tell it what you want andit will give you back pretty
good what you need.
So I think the training I meanlike if I had to say what's the
hardest thing is that I've beenin this industry for my entire

(42:54):
life and a lot of this weirdlittle stuff that I know is
because I've been hearing itsince I was five.
But AI can pull all thisdifferent collaboration.
So what if you took theknowledge of those people that
have been working for you for 30years and you recorded it?
So you just listen to themtalking back and forth to their

(43:14):
customers and all this and saidtake away the little things that
this person just said thatmaybe you wouldn't know about.
You know decks or you wouldn'tknow about windows or hardware
or whatever.
What if you started to figureout how to do that and then,
when that person retires, you'vegot their knowledge?
Like, we could do that.
Today we have a little recordercalled Applaud.

(43:34):
It's like a credit card and itrecords everything that you say
when it's turned on and givesyou a transcript.
And what if you put that into aknowledge base?
Now we're cooking with gas.
Like now we can save ourselvesfrom this entire exodus of all
the knowledge base that's gonnaretire.
We could capture that.
So I think there's so much wecan do.

(43:56):
I mean, it excites the heck outof me.
I'm betting so big on itbecause I really believe this is
the way we can do more,especially small businesses,
independent businesses, peoplethat need more from every
resource.
This is how we get it.

Well, you touched on such an important
thing too, and mentorship is nota strong suit within our
industry.
It never really has been.
I don't see it changing anytimesoon.
And so we do.
We lose a ton of knowledge toretirement and phase out and
burn out and everything else.
So it's like I love the idea aslong as it doesn't go to HR.
I'm on board.
Yeah, might get sticky.

Well, and that's the thing is like we've got to
figure out a way.
I mean, listen, I'm notnecessarily by trade a rule
follower.
I'm more of a contrariandisruptor.
If you ask anyone that knows me, they'll probably laugh and say
that's a little bit of anunderstatement.
I stay legal.
Let's just make that reallyclear.
I'm ethical and legal, but I dolike to push boundaries of
what's OK.
So we got to figure out how tostay compliant on stuff like,

(45:01):
like you said before, you don'twant to put your entire P&L and
all your trade secrets into anopen AI.
It's called open AI.
That's company like.
They are training this modeloff of what people are searching
, just like Google is trainingoff of what you're searching.
There's a reason why when youtype a question into Google, it
gives you the four or fivethings after that because enough

(45:21):
people have searched that thatthey know there's a good
likelihood this is what you'regoing to say next.
That's been trained by whatpeople have asked.
So just know you got to protectyour data and there are ways to
do that.
And if you want to know how,ask ChatGPT and she will tell
you.
She'll tell you you could turnoff the remembering, you could
put it in this and there areactually ways to do closed

(45:44):
knowledge sources.
So there are people that canbuild those for you where you
have a closed hub that is notgoing to ever go anywhere, and
there's like a lot of really bigservers that you could build
just for your internal team.
But the problem is it's notgoing to go out and grab things
like OpenAI will.
So if it's not on that server,then it's not going to know the

(46:05):
answer.
So you give some and take somewhen you do that.
So I mean it's just got to bebased on what you need it to be.
But I mean the limits don'texist.
I mean they just don't exist.

It's yeah and there's a lot of Our
comprehension, and ingenuity isour limiting factor on this one.

Yeah, exactly, it's based on first principles,
thinking of if we forgoteverything we've ever known
about this industry and howwe've done it for every day
since 1947, when more lumberopened.
If we forgot all of that, thenwhat could we do?
And that's pretty much what thetrue answer is that it's

(46:43):
unlimited.
I think that's a good place tostop, Mark.
I feel like we've hit it.
I mean, I could literally talkabout this for five hours.
No one would listen, except theother AI nerds that are right
now like oh my God, this isexciting, and everybody else is
like I don't know whetherthey're even talking.

Yeah, no, I was looking at the counter going
, oh, this is.
This has been 10 minutes.

Oh wait, no, it hasn't it's like what else could
we dig into that we could fix?
I mean, I think it's so much.
Maybe we have to do a secondepisode, because next week it'll
be something new.
I want to come out there andmeet you guys and see this in
real life.
I think you may be one of themost innovative people I've ever

(47:23):
talked to in the industry.
I think More Lumber is doingsomething that is really
stinking cool.
Seven stores open since 1947.
A leader in independenthardware and lumber in Colorado.
If you don't know who MoreLumber is, you've got to check
them out.
Mark is on LinkedIn, aaron's onLinkedIn.
You actually post a fair amount.

(47:46):
You're pretty active onLinkedIn.
What should people do ifthey're in Colorado?
They want to know you see.
You come visit.
What should they do to find you?
Where are you located?

So I operate I office at a Castle Rock, but
you're welcome to any of ourstores Bailey Pine, aspen Park,
evergreen, bennett, castle Rock.
Reach out to me.
I'm always happy.
I try to be as transparent as Ican, especially if you're an
independent operator.
Boy howdy, I have no secretsfrom you.
We love what we do, we lovebeing independent and we're

(48:23):
passionate about keeping as muchindependent as we can.
So please reach out and I guessyou know, stay curious, right?
Don't assume the way you'vealways done it is the way it
needs to be done.
There's always connections thathave to stay in place, but we
can disrupt markets.
So find the tools that alignwith your mission.
Stay strong with them.

Yeah, and don't don't let the fact that you're
you know, I hear a lot like,well, I'm old man, I don't, I
don't have time for this.
It's like that does not matterwith this tool.
I mean, it doesn't just likewith the Internet.
You know, my hundred year oldgrandmother could do the
Internet.
You could do anything you want.
It doesn't matter how old youare or how young you are.

(49:02):
And that's another thing I hearis like well, I'm only 20.
You know, I can't I can'treally do this job or I can't do
this.
The thing that I love the mostabout AI is it pretty much
allows if you're hungry and youwant to learn something.
It just about levels theplaying field for people, and
that should be both encouragingand scary as hell to everyone
that's listening.

It is, but it's all about the mindset.

It is because the people that do this and
really capitalize on thisopportunity as business owners,
as leaders in our industry.
The people that choose to dothis will be the same people
that are reading books, that areasking questions, that are
going to conferences, thosehungry people, the ones that
really want to innovate and growand change.

(49:46):
They're the ones that are goingto take this bull by the horns
and go and win with it.
The rest of the people are justgoing to stay just the same.
They aren't going to listen toany of the ideas and try to
innovate them and put them intotheir business, and they'll be
okay, but they eventually mayturn out like Kodak.
They may be the one that's beenthere for years that now is

(50:06):
extinct, which makes me reallysad when I think about legacy
businesses in our industry.
You know my family had a lumberyard and still does have a
lumber yard in Georgia, and itmakes me think really sadly
about those, because the bigdogs are doing this Like they
are investing millions.
You know QXO, brad Jacobs.
He's just entered the space,he's here.

(50:28):
He's here to play big.
He's got all the dollars andall the cents and he's got the
people to back this up.
You don't have a trilliondollars.
Honestly, I don't even know howmuch money this cat would put
in.
It's unbelievable.
But what you do have is ahungry, hungry ability to go
learn yourself, and that'senough For an independent

(50:49):
lumberyard.
That's all it takes to reallywin with AI.
You don't have to have atrillion dollars.

And keeping that.
You know, you said it earlierand I want to reiterate it's
like keeping.
The focus is you're notreplacing people, You're
enabling them to have more timeto build those relationships.
You're just giving time back,and that's one of the things
that we can never manufacture.

Yeah, and if you think about the biggest
problems in your business, a lotof times the biggest problems
that really hold us back they'relittle, mundane tasks.
It's not the big thing.
That's like you.
What you think is like thepeople problem.
It's the little emails.
It's the little, tiny, tinythings.
That's what's easiest toautomate with AI is the little

(51:29):
tiny things.
It's knowing the data pointsfrom that P&L that could help
you grow.
It's knowing from yourinventory and your turns and all
of that of what should we focusmore on in this particular
store and different thing inthat particular store.
And it's knowing that in like30 seconds I mean it is
literally almost instant.
So I love it.

(51:50):
Well, Mark, thank you so muchfor coming on the Grit Blueprint
.
I mean one of the funnestconversations I've ever had on
my show.
I'm so excited about this and Iwill definitely have you back.
So thank you so much and I hopeyou join us on the next episode
on the Grit Blueprint.
That's it for this episode ofthe Grit Blueprint podcast.
For more tools, training andindustry content, make sure to

(52:14):
subscribe here and follow me onLinkedIn and other social media
platforms To find out more abouthow Grit Blueprint can help you
grow your business.
Check us out at our websitegritblueprint.
com.

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