Join Host Chad Prinkey (Well Built Construction) and Co-host, Stacey Holsinger, (Steel Toe Communications) every Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. EST. on LinkedIn as they interview top A/E/C industry experts. Guests can participate in the conversation live!

Transcription:

Okay, I am updating our title here, but so. So what do you guys. What are you guys doing for. For networking in the coming holiday networking rush? What are the ones not to miss, Mark? 

S

Speaker 2

00:23

Well, WBC event is always one not to miss at Congressional Country Club. I call it the. The Electrical Contractors Reunion, because every electrical contractor in town is there, and. And you get to talk to all them, and it's usually. Usually their top leaderships there as well. So that's always good. And. And Congressional is a great venue. ABC's event at Manor is always a great event. It's rule number one. Stay mobile at Manor. 

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Speaker 1

00:58

Yeah, no kidding. Manor's got a lot of nooks and crannies. I found myself going to that event and getting trapped in the. In the. In a handful of great conversations, but in one room, in one corner. 

S

Speaker 2

01:10

Yeah, and there's. There's about 10 different rooms and venues. You can be in there also. Both those. The after parties are always good. 

S

Speaker 1

01:21

After parties, Mark. There's after parties of the holiday parties. 

S

Speaker 2

01:26

Yeah, there's after parties. 

S

Speaker 1

01:28

I had no idea. 

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Speaker 2

01:30

So in. In the basement of each of those venues, there are bars, and they're member bars. And. And because it's a member has to sponsor the event for the. For the association have it there. Usually there are members that go down there, and the party will go on till the member bar closes. So. Well, Debbie and gang will roll up their stuff and. And Steve, Kenton and Rito roll up their stuff, go downstairs and find a bar. 

S

Speaker 1

02:01

If you go to the after party, I'm thinking that's the point at which you'd want to make sure that you've taken an Uber. 

S

Speaker 2

02:07

You want to take an Uber? Yes, yes. Or have your sleeping bag in your car so you can sleep in the parking lot. 

S

Speaker 1

02:16

There you go. All right, guys, we're gonna go live here in. In just a few seconds if you're starting to join us. Thank you. I've got some. Some folks I can see, you know, joining us on the. On the LinkedIn live stream. But we'll hold off until 8am proper to. To officially go live to allow folks, you know, to get here in that last little bit. I think for those folks who attended last week, this is what it's supposed to look like, which is a live Stream. Right. On LinkedIn, rather than having to reroute you to zoom. And all of this will naturally record and be available for those of you who weren't able to get here live. So this is what the norm is so, all right, good. It is eight. We're going to start right on time. Good morning. 

S

Speaker 1

03:09

Thank you for joining us on the morning huddle. My name's Chad Prinke. Today, our normal partner, my normal partner, Stacy Holzinger is out. She's got a whole week of intensive leadership training that she's going through right now as a part of the ABC Metro Washington experience. And so we're going to miss Stacy today. But we're lucky enough to have our friend Cody Wilcox joining us. Cody is from Malloc Mechanical. Cody, thank you for being here today. 

S

Speaker 3

03:39

Yeah, thank you. I'm excited to be here and for everybody to join us. 

S

Speaker 1

03:43

Thanks, man. How are you? 

S

Speaker 3

03:45

I'm good, I'm good. I'm getting used to daylight sabins a little bit, but besides that, I can't complain. 

S

Speaker 1

03:52

Yeah, I always like an excuse to get into my pajamas early, so that's nice. And I also like that I don't feel like I wake and go to sleep in darkness only, at least not until somewhere around February. It's nice to be greeted by the sun at least somewhat close to my wake up time, so. Well, cool. Cody, you're going to be playing the role of capturing our questions. So all attendees who are here with us live, please make sure that you're sending in your questions throughout the course of the conversation. We're not going to answer them as we go. We're going to answer them at the end. But go ahead and type them in along the way. That way, you know, while they're fresh in your mind, we have an opportunity to, you know, to get your best questions on the line. 

S

Speaker 1

04:37

So Cody, I'm gonna put you know, kind of move you to the side here until about 8:20 and we'll pull you back in. 

S

Speaker 3

04:43

Good. Okay, sounds good. 

S

Speaker 1

04:45

Thanks. Mark Drury is today's guest. Mark, thanks so much for being here. 

S

Speaker 2

04:50

Good morning, Jad. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here and join your crew. Who's who signed on here and listening and watching along. 

S

Speaker 1

05:02

Thank you so much for being here. I, you know, Mark, you and I have known one another for quite a while at this point. And you know, were, when were kicking around, you know, running this, you know, having you on the morning huddle. One of the things I'll tell the audience for weeks, this slot just said need to determine title. Because I think the truth is, Mark, you and I could talk about anything together. And in fact we have. And so when were preparing for today's discussion and Exploring topic areas we could cover. We really tried to sort of narrow things down. This idea of small business and growth and getting to the next level continued to come up between us. I know it's something that we're both passionate about. 

S

Speaker 1

05:46

So that is today's title, which is grow and balance your small business. So let's start by defining. First things first. Mark, you know, tell us a little bit about your story, give us a little on your background, like you know, in a minute or so. I know that's okay. 

S

Speaker 2

06:06

I'll give a brief. Okay. So I recently, in March I retired from employment and I started up an llc because I'm, I've got several, a few board positions that are in the industry, in the non profit sector that require me to be a business member. So I started an llc. Now for years I've mentored company owners and company leaders in different companies and I'm continuing to do that and I'm doing some consulting. So I'm talking to business owners, helping them build their business, helping them improve, helping them expand, helping them through issues. Learning the ropes basically. So I'm still doing that. 44 years in the construction industry, 18 on the general contracting side and 26 years as a mechanical subcontractor. Started Shapiro and Duncan back in 1995. 

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Speaker 2

07:02

They're about 4 million, $4 million a year, 40 people when I left in March is 140 million a year and 400 plus people. So been in the business of building and building businesses. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. 

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Speaker 1

07:19

That's an awesome story. Yeah. And along the way, and what you don't have time to talk about and you know, anybody who knows Mark knows this is that, you know, Mark's had, you know, educational experiences in the design build world. You know, more leadership experiences and leadership training experiences than one could, you know, try to fit into a lifetime and all those different types of things. It's a part of the reason, Mark, that you and I can talk about literally anything together. So if I can try in our limited time that we have together. Right. Keep us focused on small business. I'd like to try as a starting point to you know, define small business. What is that? What does that mean for it as a contractor? What's a small business? 

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Speaker 2

08:07

Well, I think it depends on what trade you're in and what your market looks like whether you're a small business or not. I mean you could be an 8 million dollar countertop company and be the Largest countertop company in your region. Or you could be a 8 million dollar mechanical contractor and be a considered a small business. So it really depends on, on what your trade is, what your work is, what you're doing. The government defines it by trade and GC etc and they have, you know, average revenues for the last three years. And some of them are pretty big mechanical. 17 million for the last three years. I'm trying to think. GC I think is 33 million for the last three years. 

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Speaker 2

08:55

And that's, you know, if it's under 33 million, you're defined as a small contractor. Well, a lot of $10 million contractors, a lot of $25 million contractors wouldn't think of themselves as small. Possibly. 

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Speaker 1

09:08

Right. 

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Speaker 2

09:09

Depending on the market they're in. So I mean small, you're struggling, you're growing. Well, I'm not going to say you're growing because I think everybody should be growing all the time. But you're small and you're struggling. You don't have a lot of resources. You know, you may be a mom and pop shop, you don't understand necessary, you may not have a lot of systems and processes in place, procedures in place, you may not have brought in the right softwares, etc to do job cost tracking, etc. 

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Speaker 1

09:40

So one of the things that I think about when I think about defining a small business in the construction industry is that in fact, while I know the government has its definition, when I think about a small business, I simply think about operating in a resource constrained environment where it's not like being a part of, you know, Coca Cola or Toyota, where if, you know you can turn and throw massive amounts of resources at a thing and not break the bank. But, but where you're operating in a resource constrained environment where you're making decisions that on a daily basis either, you know, make or break the company financially. And, and you know, almost by definite, if I use that as a definition, I would say the vast majority of the construction industry falls into the small business category. 

S

Speaker 2

10:37

Yeah. Even when you're making $600 million a year, you still make decisions day by day, correct? 

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Speaker 1

10:42

Yeah. Because, because at the end of the day, you know, the way that the construction industry is set up is so diffuse and it's so hyper localized and. Right. You know, based on, you know, exactly what's going on in a geography that the majority of the building industry is small businesses. So anyway, I'm hoping that the content that we talk about today isn't just relevant to that company that's 6 to 8 million, but that is relevant to that company that's 250, 500 million. You know, because ultimately operating in that kind of resource constrained environment, making decisions on a day to day basis that could make or break the business, I think that relates. So, but with any, I would. 

S

Speaker 2

11:26

Say, Chad, that the discussion should pertain to any business, regardless of size and revenue, that has a vision for the future and can take a look at where they are today and establish a baseline and then create a vision for the future and then back map down to put your roadmap together your strategic plan to get to reach your vision. 

S

Speaker 1

11:50

All right, so let's, let's start there. Let's. You know, one of the things that you and I have talked a good bit about is with a lot of the small businesses, we both talk to one of the things that they, you know, mention on a somewhat regular basis as kind of like a, you know, a gut response to, you know, their vision. They talk about doubling. 

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Speaker 2

12:14

Yeah, doubling. I want to double my revenue next year. 

S

Speaker 1

12:17

Right. I want to double my revenue next year. I want to double my revenue over the next two years. Or what, or whatever that looks like. What do you say to folks who talk about doubling? 

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Speaker 2

12:25

Well, I say, what do you think it takes to double your revenue? Is it just a matter of bidding more work and bringing more work in? What about, what about your team? I mean, you gotta look at your team. You gotta look at your staffing if you want to double your revenue. You know, doubling your revenue when you're $500,000 a year is not that hard. You know, you might be adding one person to give you that capacity, doubling your revenue. When you're $40 million a year, you might be adding 30 or 40 people to your team to do that. Now where do you get those people? That's the resource. People is our biggest resource. You know, our people are everything in terms of building your business and executing projects. So doubling. 

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Speaker 2

13:09

Yeah, I mean, it's a nice thought, but you need to look at what's it going to take to double and what kind of team does it take? Because doubling your revenue if you don't execute is, is the way to the back to the basement. 

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Speaker 1

13:26

So, so you got to be ready for growth, right? How do you know you're ready for growth? What, what are some of the things that you would be really, you know, confident about to determine you are ready for growth? 

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Speaker 2

13:44

Well, I, I think you need to be attuned to the market. You need to know what the available work is in the coming year, the coming two years. You need to know what your back current backlog is and you need to know what your pipeline is for bringing resources in. How am I going to bring in the resources to get this done? Is it hiring people? Is it subcontracting? Is it breaking it out? 

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Speaker 1

14:16

So, so let's pause there for a second and do a little bit of a deeper dive on that topic because I think that's the one that I hear the most from contractors considering growth is the chicken or the egg question, should we achieve growth and then hire to meet those needs or should we hire to be prepared for growth? 

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Speaker 2

14:42

Well, I'm a big proponent of hiring to prepare for growth. And it can be done in a somewhat linked environment. It doesn't necessarily have to be one and then the other, it can be happening together. I mean you can be pursuing work and have a good handle on it and pursuing resources at the same time. I mean, realistically bringing on some, a new hire, if you can bring on somebody in a month, that would be really quick. You know, you're not going to be able to bring on people in a few days. And one of the keys to success in bringing on the right people is to get them engaged in the project from the start. 

S

Speaker 2

15:30

And too many people make the mistake of they hire after they get the job and that job starts moving very quickly in terms of contract submittals, scheduling, all those items are happening quickly and then you bring on the team to get it done and they're already six weeks behind and it's not, it's not a, it's not a good formula in my eyes. 

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Speaker 1

15:54

No, I, I, so that's answer that's very similar to one that I give, which is don't take on work and then try to figure out how to get that work done. Especially when you're at that small business stage. When I, this one, I'll go with the government definition, a small business. Right. Like you're, you really are a, you know, extremely limited in your personnel capacity. That's a, it's a surefire way to make sure that, you know, either the next couple years of your life are living hell or you know, that, you know, because you keep up with the work, you know, to Keep up with the work or you fail to keep up with the work and it's even worse, right? So it's a lose. 

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Speaker 1

16:38

But what would you say to the companies that, that say I can't afford to make the hire before I secure the work, I need the work to make the hire and that, you know, hence the chicken or the egg. What would you say to those companies? 

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Speaker 2

16:53

Well, I mean, if you can't afford, maybe you haven't been investing in your company like you should because as you've been going along, you need to be, keep retaining your earnings. You need to be building your capital because cash is king. And you need to make sure that you have the resources to take your growth steps. And the resources usually are capital. You need to have that capital to invest back in your company and bringing on the right people, bringing on the right software, bringing on the right process, bringing on the tools, that's all investing in your company. You know, too many people make the mistake of they get some money in the bank, they did a couple jobs, they've been in business for three or four years and you know, I got a little break in the action. 

S

Speaker 2

17:37

So I'm gonna take this forty thousand dollar vacation for three weeks to Costa Rica or wherever. You know, I'm gonna charter fishing boats. I'm doing all this stuff because I got all this money in the bank. Well, that money in the bank should be company money and it should be looked at. You know, too many owners look at it as that's my money. Instead of thinking I need to keep investing in the company. 

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Speaker 1

18:01

That's a fan. I mean, I love that point. And I found myself, I wish I could attribute this quote, honestly, I can't. But I've used it multiple times, you know, which is if your business isn't where you want it to be and your income is where you want it to be, you're, as an owner, you're out of balance, right? If you're paying yourself like you know, I'm where I want to be, but your business isn't where you see it going, you're ultimately not going to be able to get the business to where you see it going. So I think what you're saying is have the discipline to keep the money in the business, to reinvest in the business, which enables you to make those types of investments. 

S

Speaker 1

18:46

And if you're finding that you're not able to make those types of investments, the first place to look is probably, you know, what are you taking out of the business? 

S

Speaker 2

18:52

What are you taking out of the business? Yeah. And what are you doing with it? Are you taking money out of the business and putting it in a stock portfolio? And I say to that owner, I said, so you're not willing to invest in yourself. You're not going to invest in yourself. You're going to invest in companies you have no control over, whereas your company you control and you don't have the confidence to pour the money into that man. 

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Speaker 1

19:17

That's a really good point. We all get, you know, so in our mind, like you got to be reinvested, you got to be investing for retirement. It's really good advice. But if you're in a business owner mode and you're prioritizing, putting money in your 401k and then, you know, 501 plans for your kids and all that type of stuff, while you don't reinvest in your business, you, I mean, that could be a miss. 

S

Speaker 2

19:38

Yes. A huge mess. 

S

Speaker 1

19:40

Interesting. Is there one thing that every small business owner, every small business should be doing if they haven't been doing it already? If you, when you really think about like the, if I could give one piece of advice to small business, what would it be? 

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Speaker 2

20:02

I would, I would say have a vision for the future. Be a leader. Look, look beyond your, you look beyond your fence lines, you know, look beyond the pasture that you're feeding your cattle in right now. Try and look towards the future. And that's how you grow. That's how you plan, be in touch with your industry and always be in a learning mode. There's a lot to learn out there every day. I mean, I learned every day. I've been doing this forever, but every day I'm, you know, I'm engaged in research and looking at things and reading articles and finding out what's new in the industry. You got to be on top of it. Things are moving fast. You need to have a, you have your finger on the pulse of where markets are going. 

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Speaker 2

20:51

You know, if you're in the high rise residential market, you know, is it getting saturated? What's the competition like? What's your margin like? You know, if you're doing health care, all those things, and diversify your portfolio, you know, there's a lot of different ways we can apply what we do in a lot of different markets that each are affected differently by the economy and the Ups and downs of the world. So, you know, diversify. It's great that you love doing restaurants, but, you know, if you were doing restaurants 20 months ago and that was your bread and butter and all you were doing, I'll bet you've had a rough 20 months, right? If you were just doing hospitality, if you were doing, you know, just look at things like the pandemic that hit and it's not the first time. 

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Speaker 2

21:53

We had the residential boom in 2008 when that crashed, which didn't hit the commercial market till about 2010, 2011. But, you know, it really had an effect on the industry and having a diverse portfolio of work and being able to go to different markets makes a big difference. 

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Speaker 1

22:17

So, so if I could kind of, I don't know, summarize what you just said to my ear, I'm hearing you say, step back, take the time to like, don't just let your business happen to you. Yes, but, but evaluate your environment, decide where you want to go and you know, set a course and be intentional and make sure that course includes good diversification. Make sure that course includes plugging into your community and right into the building industry community around you. Things along those lines. I think that guys, I think that's incredible advice. Who's watching it? That, that's spot on. 

S

Speaker 2

23:21

Good. Build relationships. 

S

Speaker 1

23:23

Build relationships. Yeah, no doubt. All right, we're at that sort of 10 minute remaining mark, and I want to open up the floor to the audience, make sure that we get an opportunity to hear some questions. I'm going to pop our good friend co Back up Cody. What do we have from the audience today? 

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Speaker 3

23:46

Yeah, we've got a few questions here. I'll start with the one that will build off the conversation that we just ended there with. But you know, when you talk about working in the business and on the business mark and you look towards the future, how far ahead should you be looking as far as a timeline specifically? And when you have things that come up unexpectedly like the pandemic, how are you able to quickly pivot and change as well? 

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Speaker 1

24:16

Well, so how far should you look ahead? Let's start with that. 

S

Speaker 2

24:20

You know, I, I, I, I think five years is a good outside vision. I think looking at five years and then what you want to do is you want to back map that back to three and one. So, you know, if you look at five years, I want to be here in five years, then back map it to, you know, if I can get there in five years, at three, I should look like this. At one, I should look like this. Okay. And then you got to go back and you got to do your market research to see where the markets are and what the prognosticators are saying, what the economists are saying, where things are going. You got to look at your relationships, you got to talk to your, your contacts in the industry about what they're looking at. 

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Speaker 2

25:06

One thing I did is I established some relationships with some of the utility folks early on. Engineers at Washington Gas, at Pepco, etc, because I had a mentor that told me that those are the folks that developers go to first. When people have an idea and there's a cocktail napkin discussion about a development, they need to go and see if the infrastructure is there. So they contact the big utilities to see if the infrastructure is available for the dream that they have. And that's when it becomes a lead and then you start tracking it. So, you know, looking further out, that's how you look further out is look for stuff that's way down the pipeline. Yes. 

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Speaker 1

25:55

What I'm, what I'm hearing there is long range vision and then mid and short term milestones. 

S

Speaker 2

26:04

Yeah, I mean you gotta have a long term vision and then you have to map it, you have to back map it and you have to set up the milestones and then you have to fill in with all the tasks. It's like doing a CPM schedule, you know you're going to start the job and you got to finish it and you know, each of the stages that you got to get through. You know, you got top out the building, you got a bam, bam, rough in the mechanical, all those things. 

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Speaker 1

26:27

This is such a funny, I mean like how many times have you and I said that, you know, it's like you would never start a construction project without a plan, you know, to know exactly how long, when, by when everything's got to happen. Why are you running your business that way? Right. It's crazy. Wonderful. All right, Cody, what else we got? 

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Speaker 3

26:49

And I've got another question here. I'm sorry I'm unable to see the name, but it says, Mark, Statistics show that over 40% of all businesses in the construction industry fail annually. What do you consider to be the top three reasons for these failures? 

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Speaker 2

27:04

Wow. The top three. The number one reason for failing in small businesses is billing. They fail to bill small businesses startups. Your Your wonderful craftsman that decides they want to be their own business person. They fail to build, they fail to invoice for their work. I can't tell you how many times I got called by a subcontractor saying, why haven't you paid me? I said, did you send me an invoice? I said, why would I send you an invoice? You gave me a contract. I said, did you read your contract? No. I said, your contract says how you bill me. You have to bill me. You have to give me an invoice so I can pay you. Well, that seems like extra work, you know, why do I got to do that? You gave me a contract. Just pay me. 

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Speaker 2

27:45

Well, that happens to a lot of people. They don't, they don't build. The other thing is not knowing, not knowing where your costs are. You have to know what stuff costs in order to put together an estimate. You can't, you can't just throw numbers at things. You have to have some realistic view of what it's going to take to get the job done and what's going to cost to get the job done and understand where you need to be in terms of covering your overhead. You got insurance, you got all these other things you got to cover and you know what your profit margin should be. So not knowing your cost is another big failure. What I say, billing cost. The other thing is overextending yourself, taking on projects you don't have the resources to handle. 

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Speaker 2

28:36

You know that's a quick road to failure. You know the number one business startup failures is restaurants. They have the highest failure rate. Contractors is number two, and number three is accounting firms that handle contractors and restaurants. 

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Speaker 1

29:00

That's great. So real quick on this point, this is one, I think those are three really fantastic answers. And I think the only concern that I have is that sometimes when you think about particularly that third point, overextending oneself, that it might create, as valid as it is, it might create some fear of growth. And I don't know about you, Mark, but I see a lot contractors that are afraid of growth that they almost, you know, internally they say a lot of things like, you know, we're right where we want to be, we just want to stay right here. And you know, those different types of things. And I think that while we certainly read about and hear about the companies that overextended themselves and had a big explosion, right. 

S

Speaker 1

29:53

And that's how they went out of business, what I don't think we hear about are the multitude of contractors that spend decades providing meh jobs to people and profit for an owner at the end of a 30 year run, they look at and they're like, man, I should have worked at a grocery store, you know, and not to knock the grocery industry, but you know what I'm saying, It's just a, it's, you know, where these. So I think there's a, there's another risk that is extremely important to note that is actually not going out of business, but sucking over the long haul. 

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Speaker 2

30:41

Yes, yes. And not having, not having a continual improvement mindset, not having a always moving forward mindset. You know, I like to say once you stop growing, you start going backwards. You know, in Montgomery county, we had the county council and everybody going for zero growth. In Montgomery county, there was a whole bunch of no growth people that were looking for zero growth in the county. And then the recession hit in 2008 and I said to the county council, I said, how's this zero growth thing working for you? Pretty good, huh? I call it recession. 

S

Speaker 1

31:20

Spot on. And so how would you respond to this thought that companies should shift their focus perhaps from focusing on revenue growth to just focusing on becoming a better company every day and allowing the revenue growth to kind of follow that? What would you think of that? 

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Speaker 2

31:42

Well, I, you know, I've been in the business development side of the business for a long time and people always said, well, you're a sales guy. Said, no, I'm not a sales guy. I'm working on developing the business. And that's what you really need to do, is you need to make your business the best it can be and the sales take care of themselves. You know, if you're, if your folks perform and execute, if your team is professional, if you're always moving forward and taking on challenges, if you're on the front edge of, of technology and you're adopting things and you're always aggressive and moving forward, people see that, people realize that and the opportunities come your way and that's business development. Build your business, Build your business first. 

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Speaker 1

32:29

I think that's such a different way of thinking about business development compared to the norm. I find it to be a much more rewarding look at that term. So thank you for sharing that. I think we have time for one more question, Cody, can we fit that in? 

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Speaker 3

32:47

Yeah, of course. So you talk about growth, Mark. And I want to know, based on the question that we have here, is when you're hiring for growth for your small business. What sort of characteristics should you seek in search when hiring? Because you also mentioned, you know, your people are your resources and they mean a lot. 

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Speaker 2

33:08

I mean, for me, that's easy because I, I, I have my rule of hiring. You know, first you go with the three A's. You want the right attitude, you want ambition and you want aptitude. I can train the rest. You know, if you come to the table with those three things, that's great. A passion for the industry. That's another thing. I mean, a lot of people miss out on young people that are trying to get into this business that went through two or three years of high school training in H vac, carpentry, masonry, whatever, and they get out and they want to go to work. And the contractor says, well, I need somebody with five years experience. 

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Speaker 2

33:56

Well, if you need somebody who's with five years of experience, you should have started five years ago with a high school kid, right, that came out of a masonry program or came out of an electrical program and then you would have that five year experience person. 

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Speaker 1

34:08

Oh, man, Mark, I can feel another episode or six coming out of that. 

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Speaker 2

34:13

Work the pipeline. Work the pipeline and look for the three A's Attitude, ambition and aptitude. 

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Speaker 1

34:19

That's, that's awesome. That's awesome. Hey, here at the morning huddle, we try to finish on time just like any good contractor, right? So, so I'm gonna bring our conversation to a close. As much as I would really like to just continue chatting with you. Mark, thank you so much for joining. 

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Speaker 3

34:39

Thank you. 

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Speaker 2

34:39

Thank you, Chad, for having me. Appreciate it. 

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Speaker 1

34:41

Yeah, it was awesome. So real quick, next week we have Justin Panzer coming to talk about technology in the field. Come in and check that one out. It's going to be in particular focused on risk mitigation, cost savings, and just kind of the simple stuff that organizations should be thinking about when it comes to putting the right tools in the hands, the right technology in the hands of their folks in the field. And what else? That's every Tuesday, 8am Be here. We don't have a recurring invite, so I'll say the same thing that I said last week, which is if this is something that you want to make a part of your weekly routine, shoot us an email or I'm sorry, shoot us a private message. 

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Speaker 1

35:34

Shoot me a private message with your email address and I will add you to a mailing list so that you get a weekly, you know, email reminder to join. You'll also get a. A link to the recording of that week's session or, I'm sorry, show so that you can, you know, refer back to it if you missed anything or what have you. So, mark, any final words for our audience before we sign off today? 

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Speaker 2

36:02

Well, I would say continual improvement always look to grow. Don't be afraid of trying something new. Change is painful, but it's very rewarding. 

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Speaker 1

36:13

Thank you, Mark. That's awesome. Cody, thanks so much for stepping in for Stacy this week. You did an awesome job, and we look forward to seeing everyone next week. 

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Speaker 2

36:21

All right, thank you. 

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Speaker 1

36:22

See you guys. 

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Speaker 2

36:23

Bye.