For companies and project teams that have embraced prefabrication and other concepts from manufacturing, the results are undeniable. To bring these ideas home to more contractors, we at the Huddle want to showcase more stories!

The Queen of Prefab, Amy Marks joins The Morning Huddle to continue her mission of advancing industrialized construction. Her role at Autodesk puts her in a position to meet and interview some of the industry's most successful leaders in Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA).

We get to hear her real-world stories of Prefab in action and hold a Q&A for practical tips for our audience.

Transcript:

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00:00
Speaker 1
Sam, it.

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00:57
Speaker 2
Good morning. It's morning huddle time. Hello, Stacy and Amy. How are you two today?

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01:04
Speaker 3
Doing great. How are you?

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01:06
Speaker 1
I'm great. Good morning.

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01:08
Speaker 2
Good morning. Good morning. So Amy is joining us from San Francisco, but correct me if I'm wrong, you live in Jersey, so when we initially booked this, weren't thinking. We were asking you to join at 6am but here we are.

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01:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, well, all the construction workers are up anyway at the job site, so I figure it's really not that early, to be honest.

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01:26
Speaker 2
Well, that's true. Yeah. 6:00am is kind of not. Not an abnormal time in our industry. Yeah, no question. Well, good. So. So what are you. Give us a little bit of background, Amy, Sort of. Obviously, we know you as the queen of prefab. We know you as the creator of all this amazing content on, across all social media platforms. I only use LinkedIn. I'm trying to catch up, but I've seen you all over the place. Stacy and I have talked about you for quite a while and were super excited when you agreed to come and join us on the show. But talk a little bit about, you know, sort of who you are, what your background is, that type of stuff.

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02:04
Speaker 1
Sure. I work at Autodesk. I'm actually the vice president of industrialized construction now at Autodesk. But before that, I really, I grew up in construction and owned a couple different companies that were anything from one of the largest manufacturers of steel and concrete volumetric mods and assemblies like bathroom pods, to you know, then opening up a consultancy that was optimizing industrialized construction around the world for governments and big customers. And then really, you know, Autodesk found me and it's such a great opportunity for me to come here and work with some of, you know, the largest customers around the world and, you know, helping Autodesk with the way we are looking at things and the way customers are looking at things every day.

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02:50
Speaker 1
So I get to, I get to do what I love to do with some of the coolest people around and the smartest people around, which is great.

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02:58
Speaker 2
That is great. I mean, I think, you know, were talking about just sort of this dream job for somebody like Stacy or I who are just kind of nerds and love learning and being around, exposed to what all these sort of leading companies are doing and how people are doing things differently and better all over the country. You get an opportunity to do this at a really high level, which is. Which is amazing.

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03:21
Speaker 1
I do. Good morning, Mark Jury. I see some friends out in the audience. That's great. Hope you guys are going to join up this morning. It is. It's really a great job. You know, I think a lot of what we do is it has to. We have to be seen, right? People need to see other people that look like them, that talk like them, that are talking about things they're interested in. So it's one of the reasons why I rarely say no, you know, to people, because I want to make sure that, like, everyone has the opportunity to see other people that look like them, not just every day on the job site. And I think social media is such a great way to get that across, aside from the work that, you know, to talk about the real work that we're doing.

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04:00
Speaker 2
Yeah, agreed. So. All right, well, let's. Let's kind of orient ourselves a little bit with our objective today. I think we talk about prefabrication. What it really all kind of fits into, I think, is something that you and I were talking about is, you know, calling it the industrialized revolution in the construction industry. And, and it's. It really is a different way of thinking about looking at construction and how are we doing something that, you know, pulls in best practices from other industries and innovates and takes, you know, really, construction to a whole new level of productivity of, you know, creativity and, you know, effectiveness, safety, so on and so forth. So I. I'd like to, I guess, get a little bit of an orientation from you on this idea of what is the industrialized revolution, you know, in. In the building industry. What?

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05:08
Speaker 2
Describe that. A little bit.

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05:11
Speaker 1
Well, I think first we have to recognize that, you know, there are a lot of industries, individual industries out there doing great things. We're not really one industry. I think the first thing we have to recognize is that we're an ecosystem of, you know, 17, 20 different industries all trying to get a building out the door. And, you know, typically the way that we've worked historically is it's been a real cash for chaos type environment where people made money off of the misinformation or lack of information, you know, out in the job sites. And by the time it got there, you know, my dad used to say, walking around job sites, those guys over there looking in the ceiling, like, we're either making money right now or we're losing money. I can't tell which. But something's going on, like.

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05:50
Speaker 1
And I think that's one of the reasons we're seeing a little bit of a change now that, you know, it's not going to be we can't be just an industry can be disrupted from the bottom up, as you know, Clayton Christensen said. But we're an ecosystem that needs connection at the very top levels as well. And that's what's really been missing, that it's not just about the outcome of getting a wall panel on the job site. It starts much earlier in things like, you know, how we're thinking about conceptualizing these buildings and reuse of these building components and, you know, what we're doing that will result in an outcome of having industrialized construction out on your job site. But it's so much more than the physicality. It's about the data. It's about, you know, connection of the information. It's about the cloud.

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06:35
Speaker 1
It's about, you know, things like turning the eye and building information modeling into more intelligence so that we have things like manufacturing informed design now as a category of information that needs to be influencing our buildings. So it's just so much more than what I think meets the eye. And that's. That's part of what people have to get over in the beginning, that it's not just about.

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06:56
Speaker 2
I love that way of describing it. We're not just our own industry. We're not on an island. We're not sitting over here, you know, by ourselves. I think, you know, when. When I look at other industries, when I look at. When I look outside of what many of my clients, right, who are awesome, middle market, for the most part, general and subcontractors, some larger. But, you know, we're in a little bit of a bubble, right? We're in a little bit of a bubble. When we look outside of that bubble, what will we find? What will we find? What's happening? That is so exciting, I think.

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07:40
Speaker 1
Well, first of all, I gotta. I gotta answer, Henry, who, like, is out there saying, like, it's been a long time since I've had to introduce myself. But Henry, the point is that I want to introduce you to new people, new faces, new young people that are out doing podcasts and not the same old. You know, I think. I think what's different out there right now, it's a really different time, right? Like, it's not that we're in a place that things are happening that are so great. I think, look, change happens when there's first dissatisfaction with the way things are. And when you see that there's a potential vision that you want to reach, but you just aren't there yet.

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08:12
Speaker 1
So I think we're seeing that now in the world that, like, there's not enough housing, there's not enough hospitals, there's not enough digital infrastructure. And, you know, we also don't have the same labor that we used to have. And we have to make sure that we're capturing a lot of that craftsmanship and knowledge in things like technology and people so that we can pass that along to future generations. But it's a time of great pressure. And I would say, look, it's been at emergency levels for the fact that, you know, I don't know, 10 years ago, people would say, like, don't talk about this prefabrication stuff where you're taking jobs away. And I'm like, okay. Two years later, they're like, no one's applying for these jobs.

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08:47
Speaker 2
Right.

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08:48
Speaker 1
And it's not going to be the great resignation that people are talking about that is happening. It's stuff like, you know, Gary Vee, I'm a fan of Gary vee actually on TikTok and things is that people are not going to apply for these jobs like they are. Young people are thinking about where do I want to work, where I can get known and see what's going on and people can see what I'm doing and they're used to an expected experience of life that we're not offering. They're used to being digital natives. They're used to being able to portray their lives and see other people in their businesses. And, you know, were talking earlier, you said 3% of people are providing content on LinkedIn.

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09:22
Speaker 1
Okay, well, if you're under 25, that number is much higher on things like, you know, TikTok and Instagram, it's like everyone creates content. And you know, look at, even on TikTok, there's 6 billion hashtags about welding right now. And yet there's, I can guarantee you there aren't a lot of companies that have social media accounts on TikTok looking for welders, but we need to, you know, we do.

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09:44
Speaker 2
I, I, okay, so you, you touched on something that I, I always key in on. I can't help it. It's one of my most favorite discussion points is just this idea that any time we stand in the way of progress for fear of what that might do to, you know, people's jobs or what that might do to this person's income bracket or what that might do anytime we stand in the way of progress, it, number one, it delays the inevitable because it's coming. You're not going to actually stop it. So you're just gonna, you're just putting yourself on the wrong side of history.

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10:25
Speaker 1
Right.

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10:26
Speaker 2
But, but then number two, if you know, if you learn actually to embrace it, you not only do you, okay, from on a company by company standpoint, do you put yourself in a potential possibility to, you know, to be a, a market leader. But that aside for the industry, if we learn to embrace it, you actually create more opportunity. It never ceases to amaze me. People freak out about self driving cars. What about all the truck driving jobs? They will find other jobs, right? Other things will show up. There will be. We innovate. That's what we do. When the horseless carriage disappeared, everybody freaked out. They did, you know. I'm sorry. When the horse drawn carriage that is disappeared, everybody freaked out.

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11:10
Speaker 2
It was, there were, you know, hundreds of thousands of jobs cleaning up horse crap in cities all across the United States and everybody was like, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? All these people, they're going to be out of jobs. They find a new. We innovate, we create better things. What are the things that people are. And I'm not asking you to call out anybody who's, you're standing in the way of it, but what's the progress that's actually being impeded right now? Is there anything that you're seeing that people are actually trying to slow down in the construction industry?

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11:39
Speaker 1
And if, I mean, look, I've been known to call people out, so that's fine, I don't mind, you know, like I, I'm an equal opportunity offender and I think that's important. First of all, I say that because you have to have agents for change around this world, right? If you don't have an agent for change in your company that you know, is asking the hard questions, making you think differently, that's constantly thinking how you're going to go out of business. You probably are missing somebody on your senior leadership team. So I think sitting with the same people and talking about the same things and then one day waking up and realizing all the things you were doing to keep people working have now eliminated your company and got rid of all these great jobs.

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12:15
Speaker 1
I mean, look, I have a real love for the trades and I believe in the trade contractor. I believe in the fact that we are creating work for families. And if you're not thinking about how to protect these families by evolving your business and evolving what you're doing, you're actually putting them more at risk and I can prove that and say that, you know, think about the future state of the expected experience, right? Like, and what I mean by that is like, I could go on my Apple watch right now, I could order a pizza, customize it on my watch, figure out when it was going in the oven. They would give me transparency as to when it was leaving. I would see the license plate of the car and the make and model and a picture of the face of the driver.

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12:55
Speaker 1
And on my, you know, ring doorbell. I would see them walking up so I could come to the door before they would ring the doorbell, right? That is my expected experience in life from for anything totally down to ordering a pizza. Yet in our space, the only certainty 95% of people have on job sites is to call somebody to see if their equipment is going to show up. Who has to call somebody else? Who has to call somebody else? Who has to call somebody. Like, even though the technology exists because you have it for pizzas and we have, you know, geolocators and you can, you don't even have to scan things anymore to know where they are if they got on the ship. Like, I have lots of friends, you know, that have different technology, but not enough of them, right?

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13:32
Speaker 1
Like I was with somebody the other day and they were pulling up on their phone where their equipment was on the ship, and he's like 1.001% of my, the world that I know that's tracking equipment on his phone, right? Like, he doesn't have to call anybody. But the expected experiences is that one day you'll be able to know about things on the job site, design things, if you're an architect, to find things online and be able to incorporate them into your design without having to understand how that thing is made. Because the tools are not allowing you to do that right now anyway. So it's like we have very static data and listen, like, there's no secret. We have margin on top of margin on top of margin that is created because of this disconnected waste.

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14:17
Speaker 1
How many $14 trillion ecosystems still exist in the world that somebody doesn't want to disrupt and wipe those people off the face of the earth and take that margin over combining those things. I think, I wouldn't say there's anyone necessarily stopping it right now. It's more that they're turning a blind eye to that it's happening. So if you don't realize that is happening and you don't know your future value in that new future state of the expected experience, you probably want to step back. Like I had a guy recently as were talking and he was like, you know, I talked about the fact, you know, conducting things online and architects the vision of being able to see in real time things that are available to them where they can understand the sustainability outcomes at a touch of a button.

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15:01
Speaker 1
Just like I do when I order anything on prime, right where I set my own parameters, I could find the products available. I can even do bundling on there I go, oh, you should buy this shoe, these shoes, this shirt and the socks. Why don't I have. You should buy this assembly designed for this, for these outcomes when you're looking for them. We don't have that option. And a gentleman who was in his, I would say 70s, 60s, who is the owner of a big mechanical contracting firm said, well that'll never happen to my Craftsman. Like you'll never buy a pipe spool online.

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15:29
Speaker 1
And I was like, wait, you do realize like in 2019, Amazon had 145,000 different private label products under 45 different brands that I was like, listen, I put in my mouth and on my skin and hair and in my baby's mouth, skin and hair. Like you think your pipes full is so special that one day somebody's not going to be able to configure a pipe in your. And again, like we are. You are kidding yourself if you think that, you know, if you can't provide value that you won't exist. And that's what I think is really happening.

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16:03
Speaker 2
Okay, so that, and like you just said exactly what I, I was just writing furiously as you were talking, so I didn't forget. I, I think what occurs to me is if you're afraid of innovation hurting your business, then get better. Right? Bring more value. That would be the answer. You know, I, I was one time I was talking to an insurance agent who was really freaking out about, you know, what self driving cars were going to do to his industry. I mean, what value is a broker going to have if self driving cars never crash? You know, oh my God. And I, and I immediately responded by saying like, look, if your only value is connecting people to car insurance, you should go away. I'm sorry.

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16:47
Speaker 1
Right, right.

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16:47
Speaker 2
Like that's, that you're not adding value. So if, you know, if you're worried, do something, better, bring more value to the market. And what you're saying is, look around the ecosystem that we're in. I think I'm getting, you know, if I'm getting you right, assess what innovations, what's happening in your space that's relevant to you and start proactively trying to figure out how to make your company better today rather than turning a blind eye to it, rather than saying it'll never happen.

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17:22
Speaker 1
Right.

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17:22
Speaker 2
You know, there's lots and lots of examples of companies that turn blind eyes that, you know, went away. Right. Blockbuster and I mean, we could make a list.

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17:34
Speaker 1
There's no one left on the, you know, top 500 companies from like 20 years ago. So I think if you think about it like that. And again, it's not, I don't like fear for fear's sake. I like fear for a motivator. It's that dissatisfaction that makes. Look, if you don't have money in your pocket and you're growing up and you need to eat like, you will figure out a way to make some money. You know what I mean? Like right now, your family's families are not going to eat like that you employ. And that fear drives me to better. Like, it drives me to understand where the value of what my core capabilities are.

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18:07
Speaker 1
Like you should start asking yourself, how many things do you do that you get paid on because of some upstream wasteful process like redrawing things that have already been drawn, re estimating things, value engineering things, you know, designing things that have already been designed, pricing things to people that will never win the jobs transactionally. The transactional waste of a project is now at about 40% and it's. The answer is not only going to be about, well, go to an IPD contract. I see some of my friends from the Lean Congress that were with me last week. That's not the only situation. Right. Like, we have to start thinking about different measurements of success. Right. And we have to start thinking about where value is going to exist today.

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18:49
Speaker 1
Where it exists today and where it's going to exist and what matches up with what you know how to do. Like, I love the trades because I think they have a lot of make information. But they're not the only people that know how to make things. The building product manufacturing side knows about products already. They know about how to productize things. They know how to inform design with the actual productization that we talk about for construction. We have like some people are really in the infancy in construction trying to get into a place where we have products that can inform design so we have some certainty. Well, there's a whole category of groups that already know how to do that think about a skid. When a skid is made industrialized construction. Think about all the manufactured piece parts that are on there.

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19:28
Speaker 1
They're not being made by subcontractors, they're being aggregated by subcontractors and maybe the skid is being fabricated. So you're the guy that makes all those really complicated things that's on that skid, and yet you're even further downstream than these guys. Isn't it in your best interest to start making the skid and aggregating your own manufactured products? Like, we have to recognize that's a risk to some of the guys that are assembling other manufactured products. Right. That if that's not of a real value anymore and somebody else can do that besides you, that is a risk. And we have to recognize that it's not like these, it's not like manufacturing doesn't exist outside of construction. Like we have to reinvent it. That's. That's not true.

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20:07
Speaker 2
Agreed? Yeah, agreed. So here's a question, really direct one. Are we going to see considerable consolidation over the next 10 years in the building industry? Are we going to see companies, you know, are we going to see that the number of companies dwindle and potentially the size of companies grow?

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20:30
Speaker 3
Yeah.

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20:30
Speaker 1
Let me ask you this. Have you already seen it upstream with the owners? Aren't you seeing more serial owners, guys that, and women that don't own one building, they own 40 or data centers that aren't one data center, it's now 50 data centers. Or this hospital that's aggregated into this system, like we already see it happening. Do you think that those people that have now aggregated the information and certainty, programmatic certainty is more important to them than savings because they don't make the money on the building, they're making it on the services in the building, whether that's pharmaceutical or manufacturing or data. Do you think they're going to want to keep doing business in the fragmented, disconnected way now that they have consolidated upstream?

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21:10
Speaker 1
I can't imagine that it doesn't happen like that because it's more important for them to know what they're doing than it is. And the certainty around that, it's just so much more important now because everything else is connected in the expected experience that I think we have to recognize that it's coming. So think about this. I know guys that are doing contracts now, owners that want to name multiple partners from like, you know, a three building contract. So they're looking for the price to go down over that time, but they want named people in the Contract that are come coming from project to project because they don't want to relearn everything over and over again. That's happening already around the world. So I think you'll see some people that'll actually get consolidated.

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21:52
Speaker 1
But I also think there'll be some categories where if you're not providing any value, that entire category of types of businesses will be wiped off the face of the earth. It just won't exist anymore. You know, think about the people that you.

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22:03
Speaker 2
Any predictions? Any predictions on which categories?

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22:05
Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean I've had this conversation in the past. Like most of my contractors will say, and this is not me saying it, this is them, if they don't figure out how to become more like systems integrators. My dad used to say, as a contractor, just take great meeting minutes, Amy, and like make sure we get the best prices from subs. Okay, well those days are over. So like unless you can figure out like what value brings. If you're just getting. If you're just the middleman now for something, I think you've got to be really scared. I think on the other side of the business, if you are just distributing things and you're not actually, I mean, look, distributors these days are so far downstream, but they are providing some credit and financing and logistics. I don't know.

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22:45
Speaker 1
There are big companies on this planet that do pretty good logistics, right? They wanted to microfinance, they could.

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22:50
Speaker 2
That's exactly what I'm thinking. Yep. I agree.

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22:53
Speaker 1
I believe the distribution model. But here's again, I always say expect experience. When I shop on Amazon.com I see manufacturers, resellers and distributors all in the same query. They are. They figured out a way to provide some value or no one buys from them. But. But they are up there, right? Like think about what you're doing. You know what I mean?

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23:10
Speaker 2
Yep. Yeah, I think you know, if I'm. If when you talk about if you're being a middleman, right. Or middle person, you know, as a part of a value chain, that's a potential risk. If I'm a general contractor, my ears just perked up. Right. If I, if I've, you know, embrace the model of self performing absolutely nothing doing pure construction management and being that, you know, sort of logistics person. As the, as the owner gets more and more information, as the owner gets more and more power in the market, which is what will happen. It's just what does happen. General contractors models have to shift to what are we bringing to the table?

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23:47
Speaker 2
When an owner doesn't need us to buy subs when an owner doesn't need us to shop, when an owner doesn't need us to figure out whether their buildings are constructible, when an owner doesn't need us for V when an owner. All those different things, what do we, what do we stand for? What do we do? And I think you know what become.

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24:06
Speaker 1
What is estimating if you know the price as part of the criteria, right? Like, I mean think about these guys. Like right now, I saw Mark, I saw your question. Like we've been trying to standardize for many years. Standardization is only part of it. That's why it hasn't succeeded. I had a bathroom pod catalog. Look, my daughter's 14 before she was born, right? Like, but if you don't have a way for some, if you have to sell your standard product with your mouth or your feet these days, that's a problem. And until we connect the ecosystem with where you can place your standards in the cloud in real time and have it be updated in real time with the data backbone for your product.

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24:40
Speaker 1
And unless I can see analytics the way I do when I put something in my cart that people can market to me and they can change the price and they can see my wish list until I have that, standardization is only part of it and it won't succeed. Like you're basically a catalog in the dark. You know, if you're, if somebody is still drawing a geometric box and not being informed by those standards that you're creating. And I believe the standards will be created by the market, not necessarily one authority or you know, they'll meet code. But I don't think it's anyone's place to look at Amazon like what's what. I keep going back to expected experience. Look at Alibaba, what standards are being created by them.

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25:17
Speaker 1
It's just the data standard of being able to place your product in the, in the online catalog. Right. It's not, they're not telling me what I, how I have to make something. They're just allowing me to be there if I meet the requirements for someone to consume that data and to aggregate the data with other data. Right. Like so I always like to say yes, a revit button is amazing. You should all think about auditor's platform services to create great apps. And that's the, I think it's the beginning of the Internet right now with the way in which auditors platform services has been open to having any developers come and make the secret sauce. I like to say like look, right now there's no ways or WhatsApp on the Autodesk platform in totality, yet.

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25:55
Speaker 1
You could create your, take that domain expertise that's now in jeopardy and make something out of it that will be far more valuable than, you know, getting the next job. And I think we have to recognize if you're a young person in this space and you're into technology, or if you have the domain expertise, partner up, because you can literally make the next Waze, which is worth, I don't know how many billions on. And by the way, on my Apple platform lives, Waze, Google Maps, Apple Maps and probably 10 other, you know, directional capability apps. We, we have like, I don't know, 4,500 apps right now on Autodesk platform services, but they're growing at like, I don't know, 200amonth right now. So this is the beginning of the Internet.

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26:32
Speaker 1
If you were too young to make money at the beginning of the Internet, this is your time, right? So I think that should inspire you to want to come to this space and be an entrepreneur, because there is nothing but opportunity right now in the expected experience of how this is changing.

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26:48
Speaker 2
That's awesome. Wonderful. Okay, so now I have to ask a question on the counter end of this and sort of say, but how do we keep from getting totally lost in the wilderness of all that there potentially is out there? And how do I sort between. How do I sort the wheat from the chaff?

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27:15
Speaker 1
You know, I think, look, not. That's one of the reasons I came to Autodesk. I came here to help customers get on this journey. I think people are very good at seeing vision, right? Like, it doesn't take much to be like, an army of robot dogs is going to be on my job site one day and like, people predict that. And I go, yeah, that could happen. But let's take it step by step. In that formula of change, you have to do some first concrete steps of action. So assuming you have one robot dog, what does that dog want to eat? How do you charge it? Where does it go? Where does it stay? How do you interact with it? What data do you have? So it's like, take a first concrete step of action.

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27:51
Speaker 1
And for a lot of people, that's going to be digitization of what they have. Like just getting it up there to see what it is so you can use technology to sort it. You can't sort things in people's brains. You can't organize metrics. If you're not measuring things. So I would like just start to visually collect and so that you can digitize things that are only known to that one person that you are afraid if they leave your company. Right? And I think that's, that's the first concrete step of action you can take is to take an assessment of your readiness, of your culture, of your tools, of your technology.

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28:26
Speaker 1
Like, you know, in my Lean Friends, like do a little bit of a Shingo to like understand what assessment you need to do to see like what could be your value in the future state. What are your risks, what are your, you know, dependencies right now. Start there, take a little stock to make sure that you're ready for the future state and be really honest with yourselves. And sometimes that helps to bring in a third party to do that assessment. What's your technical health right now? What's your digitization of? What is your prefab readiness health right now? Like if this happens, there are people that can actually come and help do that, not just from my company, but others that we partner with.

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29:00
Speaker 1
Because look, at the end of the day I always say you can afford to potentially buy a 6 axis arm robot, but you probably shouldn't in your fab shop unless you're ready for that future state. Like it'll just get dusty or make scrap faster like my treadmill these days. You know what I mean? Like don't do it. Don't buy toys. Don't buy toys without understanding like why.

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29:21
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think that's brilliant advice. One, one of the biggest where I oftentimes start with my clients is let's. Before we start improving your processes, can we just write down what we do? Can we just write down how we currently do it? Just taking stock of what you currently do and actually just setting the standard for. Okay, at least we've assessed how things currently work. Now we can, now we can really prioritize what needs to be innovated, where we need to integrate technology and so on, you know, but it's not until you really take stock of what you have. So I think that assessment is a fantastic recommendation. Stacy, do you have any questions either yourself or from the audience? While we still have Amy, I want to start to wrap her up here soon.

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30:10
Speaker 2
I'm sure she's got plenty of other things happening today.

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30:13
Speaker 3
Amy, do you have any experience with, I guess giving some advice on how to establish an innovation committee within your organization like you were just talking about? You know, don't just go out there and grab a robot and then it sits in the dust because you don't have that team that can really take the time to start playing, you know, and integrating whatever virtual or technology, any technology, and kind of experimenting with it. Is there anyone out there that's doing a good job at, you know, implementing something new?

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30:50
Speaker 1
Interestingly enough, I was just talking to a company that's doing some 3D printing. There are a couple of young guys, right, and they were talking to me about a board seat with them. And I was like, they asked me the same question actually, Stacy. They're like, you know, they want to move from one type of the part of the business to like, they don't even really know what's out there. As an example, like what could be in 3D printing these days. And I was like, the first thing you need to do is stop asking the same people that have been in your place in your company for advice. Like, you have to go out. Anybody can create an advisory board. Like, it's not expensive. And mostly you can find people that would volunteer for the experience.

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31:26
Speaker 1
To be honest, there are boards that are created, that are real boards as well as, like, you know, that have paid board positions. But when you look for those people, look for people first that are going to ask the hard questions. Some of them that challenge you. And I think second, that people that have different experience from other places around the world and also that have seen things being done that maybe you haven't seen before. So it's like, you know, I often say, like, people ask questions like, well, when. If we could just do that. And I'm like, that's done every day. Like, I literally say that probably three times a week. Like the thing you're hoping for happens in this place. Like these companies are already doing that thing.

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32:03
Speaker 1
The fact that you don't know about it and you're trying to, you're not building on the shoulders of what information, what learning, what people know by bringing in outside perspectives. Again, I love diversity and perspective. Yes, we should all hire people that don't look like us and don't talk like us and that are creating, you know, diversity in the population. But diversity and perspective is almost even more important, right? Like I have a reverse mentor, actually, because I don't. I'm 51. I don't know what a 23 year old these days, what their true expected experience is, right? Like, you can have all the Tik Tok accounts as a 51 year old. Like I do, but you need to Actually know, like how somebody, I ask my 14 year old all the time, like, what do you, like what does that mean?

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32:43
Speaker 1
What's that, how you do that? And you know, it's like we need that diversity perspective so that our expected experience becomes something new. Right.

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32:53
Speaker 2
I love that. I think that it's so rather than looking at an internal innovation committee, look at external voices, opinions, and I think that's one of the biggest takeaways I have from this conversation. Amy, is exactly what you said. It's like what you're thinking about potentially trying to do. Somebody's doing. Yes, somebody is doing. You have to expose yourself to that information. If you were to rattle off sort of like, I don't know, top three to five resources that people should tap into to get exposure, aside from like building their own advisory board, which I think is great, but you know, whether it's publications or associations or, you know, what would you. Here's an opportunity to talk about.

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33:36
Speaker 1
So, I mean, look, I'm not, I'm the ambassador for the Advancing Prefabrication show for six years. It's a, it's one of the, I think it's coming to be like the largest show on not just prefabrication, but there's like seven different tracks. And, and it started really, I would say, with my personality. Like people ask hard questions even from the audience and there's workshops and there's CEO day and there's like, you know, market applications University is a great opportunity to go and find out some of those things. But I would say, you know, they're again, somewhat self serving. Like, I don't sell software and I don't sell consulting at Autodesk. But we do have an amazing customer success group that if you're buying our software, you can go and get resources for help.

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34:20
Speaker 1
A lot of people don't realize we're agnostic to the proprietary software you might have or competitive software. We're interested in the customer's business being successful. So you can go to like just the people you deal with at Autodesk and ask for some help. And believe me, I believe we should just ask for help. That, that's a, that's an. We should normalize that. We should normalize asking for some help.

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34:41
Speaker 3
Yeah.

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34:42
Speaker 2
Awesome.

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34:43
Speaker 3
Perfect.

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34:44
Speaker 2
All right, great. Stacy, anything else for Amy before we wrap it up today?

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34:50
Speaker 3
Nope, we're good.

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34:52
Speaker 2
Awesome. Amy.

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34:54
Speaker 1
I love seeing you guys, by the way. I love seeing young people. I love seeing you know, women that are out there. Doing their thing. I think it's really important for us. Expected experience. Remember, I think we want to see ourselves in places in this ecosystem. So the more you can get out there and be visible, if you have a diverse perspective, you know, whether that's quietly or even on social media, just do it, like, get out there and be seen. Be your authentic self.

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35:19
Speaker 3
Thanks so much for joining us. So fun.

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35:23
Speaker 1
Thanks for having me, you guys.

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35:24
Speaker 2
It was a blast. It was. You're very generous with your time this morning as well. Sorry we ran a few minutes past, but I hope that you have a wonderful day, enjoy your trip out in San Francisco, and I hope that you'll stop by and see us again soon.

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35:37
Speaker 1
Of course. Thank you, guys. Thanks so much.

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35:41
Speaker 2
So, Stacy, that was awesome. Thank you so much for, you know, being relentless and finding Amy and running all that down. I think that was. She was a joy to have on. So next. Oh, hey, what do you have for the Steeltoe Communications marketing ticket?

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35:59
Speaker 3
Yeah, real quick, very easy. I'm seeing this a lot with contractors when they're giving me some marketing pieces just to look over. They're always forgetting their call to action or normally. So a call to action. If you're doing a brochure, a flyer, a video, whatever it is, make sure you have an end goal. Once someone watches their video, where do you want them to go? Do you want them to email you? Do you want them to watch another video? Do you want them to go to your website call you just make sure to include that call to action with any marketing piece. It's pretty key.

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36:35
Speaker 2
I always forget that part. I'm sitting here like, okay, right. Reassess all marketing. Thank you yet again for a good reminder, Stacey. So, all right, so next week we have a fascinating conversation coming up. It's one that actually ties into some of the other stuff that we've talked about over time here. And we're going to be talking about human trafficking on the, on job sites. And we've got Meg Huey from Freedom Network usa. She's done some speaking for different associations around the construction industry. How I got some exposure to her and really wanted to bring Meg into the conversation about what we can do to not only spot, you know, infectious fix human trafficking as we see it in the, in the building industry, believe it or not, it's happening. It's not.

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37:28
Speaker 2
When we think about human trafficking, we always think about sex trafficking, which is a thing and horrible. Right? It's terrible, but it's not. It doesn't Always take that form. And it's actually happening a lot in, in the, in the building industry way more than we. Than we know. So Meg's going to help us to see that and also to maybe consider some of the conditions that we have in the industry that are contributing to it that we could, you know, kind of stop it at its source. So I'm really excited about that conversation. I hope that everybody enjoyed today. If you have any, if anybody, just as always, you know, I got toss this up on the screen.

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38:03
Speaker 2
If you want to get added to our weekly mailing list so that you're not reliant on getting the invites through LinkedIn mixed in with everything else that you're getting, shoot us an email. Shoot it to Stacy. Stacy h.steeltoe calm.com and Stacy will make sure that we get you added to our weekly newsletter. It's not spammy, and it's really specific to making sure that you're teed up for the show, so please do that. And then, as always, we don't say this enough.

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38:31
Speaker 2
If you or someone, you know, has an important story to tell about creating positive change in the industry, like the story that we just heard from Amy or stories that we're going to, you know, that we hear every single week, please let us know we're building our guest list for the winter at this point and would love to build that guest list with people that you know and that you think are doing an amazing job. So reach out to us. Stacy, anything else? Did I. Did I miss anything?

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39:02
Speaker 3
Go Phillies.

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39:04
Speaker 2
Yeah. So I'm gonna have to say go Astros.

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39:08
Speaker 1
I understand.

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39:09
Speaker 2
Yeah, I know I've got. I've got some clients down in Houston that I love dearly and who. This is like, their entire life right now. So I. But it has been for. It's, you know, the Phillies are the underdogs, right. Coming in, and I have a hard time not rooting for the underdogs, and Philly's like an underdog town, so it is hard to root against. I'm not rooting against Philly. I've just. I just want to see my friends be heavy now. Stacy, I want you to be happy.

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39:38
Speaker 3
You better. I'm your partner here. You better be on my side or I'm not showing up next week.

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39:43
Speaker 2
You guys can have game one. I. I hope. I hope that. That's tonight, right? Game one tonight?

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39:49
Speaker 3
No, I think it's Friday, actually. They have.

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39:51
Speaker 2
Why the delay? What are we. We're going to be playing baseball on, like, November 20th.

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39:55
Speaker 3
I know.

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39:55
Speaker 2
Crazy.

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39:56
Speaker 3
I know it is.

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39:58
Speaker 2
Stacy, have a wonderful week, all right, you too. See ya.

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40:00
Speaker 1
Byebye, guys.

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