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Conversations and rants about Civil Engineering with Denny Howell, P.E.
Alright. Here we are back on episode number 13 of the Bearded Engineer, Lucky 13. And I got my good friend and partner, Eric Smith here. There's a lot of cool stuff that we're gonna talk about today, but for those that don't know Eric Smith if we had if we could afford three headsets, we would've had the brains of the Operation Susan here as well, Eric's wife, but she will definitely be back when we have her new podcast room. But anyway, Eric, go ahead and tell us a little bit.
Speaker 1:I mean, you can go on about how we met and everything else.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, this is awesome to be here. This is fantastic to be a part of this. Denny, the idea that we met each other through a breakfast bumping kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Our good friend Chuck Swope Yep. Said, I got a guy you need to meet. Denny Howe. And I'm like, wow. This this fantastic.
Speaker 2:We need to meet. So we get to this point in life where people know other people, and it's they know you. And so we helped you engaged us with some services in the basement, like interior design stuff. And the next thing you know we were talking about website work and Yeah. Engaged the whole branding effort that we work through with customers and I grew to really enjoy working together Yeah.
Speaker 2:To the point and we had a lot of overlaps in people we know
Speaker 1:Yeah. Here Which helps a lot.
Speaker 2:In Chester County for sure and West Chester specifically. Yeah. And you definitely have a mind for marketing.
Speaker 1:Well, it might not be the right mind, but I I'm taking a shotgun approach yourself. But, yeah, like looking back at that time, I mean, I just I just talked with Andrew about it this morning at at Breakfast of Arcistry where you and I had our first meeting. Absolutely. And again, think people always say like, know, how did you know to do that? I'm like, I just I didn't really know to do.
Speaker 1:I just do do some things, but I kind of felt like we needed I felt like I needed you and Susan at the time and I felt like I needed marketing. I just didn't realize how at the time I think I'm lucky how much we needed it and how lucky we were. I don't want to say that we recognize it but we just kind of stumbled into it but now looking back, especially for my business, I don't see how you'll survive in a business today without doing some active marketing.
Speaker 2:Small business owners are challenged every day with doing the work, growing their businesses, and then trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1:market it as well. Right.
Speaker 2:You had made a commitment already by having a marketing person on staff. So we did. So you knew that already Yeah. Inherently, and that's a big deal. Where to go from there?
Speaker 2:How to get help and to do something that authentically fits who you are? Most small business owners, their own personality is what drives their organization. Right. And to figure out how to take that to the next level with marketing communications, with what's happening in social media, video based elements that are shared through podcasts Yeah. All types of communication through the web.
Speaker 2:There's really huge opportunities today for a small business owner to kinda define what makes them their own original entity.
Speaker 1:What makes them unique and what it should be. And and, you know, I think all this is business. If you're doing something, you think you're a marketing person and like you said, and we've had this discussion in the past, adding a marketing person to do some marketing is one thing. Engaging in an entire marketing strategy is quite another one. And I just I got a really good look back at this the other day.
Speaker 1:I finally made the gigantic step of going from two computers. I had my laptop and I had my office one and no matter where the hell I was at, I needed something that was on the other one. And I finally said, F it. I have one computer for it all and I went through a spent through a Saturday of like compiling files. And one of them was a marketing folder that I called marketing.
Speaker 1:It wasn't your marketing stuff. But I look back and I had in the recession, there was like a change in the FEMA maps, the floodplain maps and I made these cards, I still have them, I made like 10,000 of them and it was a car stuck like in a flooded road and I had like photoshopped jaws coming out of the water and it said don't get bit by the new FEMA regulations. And we went on to Chesco views, our county GIS website, I found properties that that touched streams and floodplains and I mailed these postcards to those people. Did it work? It did actually.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. We had like a I think we got 5,000 cards made and when we got slow in surveying, we would mail out 300, 400 of them. And you know, even sure you know the percentages, maybe you get 10% or something like that.
Speaker 2:Actually the goal with a direct mail campaign is 2%. So if you're getting a 5% return, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You're doing good.
Speaker 2:I think often small business owners make it more complicated for themselves because they really do know who they're speaking to. They knew they know who their best customers are. And the reality is how do you connect with them and make sure you're doing in a way that fits who you are. Right. Right.
Speaker 2:What's authentic to the Howell Group? You know?
Speaker 1:And we'll I wanna go back to how you guys started this business, but I think the interesting thing here between you and I is that when we when I engaged you, it was 90% for us to be able to hire people and to attract good talent people to our team and less about getting the work, although we knew it would have some effect. But anyway, let's go back to Eric Smith coming out of high school and like because I don't even know. I know some of this story, but I don't know all of the story. But I would love to hear how
Speaker 2:you're gonna do it. So I was a drawler, an artist, a designer kind of person from a very young age. My parents are kind of these interesting individuals who my mom was a bookkeeper who was really an awesome homemaker, designer, interior decorator kind of person. All those magazines laid around the house, they were things I liked reading magazines. My dad was a truck driver and a musician.
Speaker 2:And so you have this
Speaker 1:That's pretty interesting.
Speaker 2:Funky balance of blue collar, but also the aesthetic of what does something feel like, what matters, how does it look. Right. And so I was I had great uncles and great grandfathers who were great drawers too. And and both sides of my family, there were artists. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So that was a funky thing to kind of start to understand how what am I gonna do with all this? Right. And so college and a a really good teacher in high school who kind of persuaded me to take steps. Ended up at Kutztown and Kutztown was a great school for communications design. Right.
Speaker 2:And from there, I started learning the languages of design and marketing. Both Susan and I met at work. We landed a company in Lebanon, Pennsylvania that also had offices in New York and Connecticut. Okay. Susan was from Connecticut.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so we connected with each other. She would show up in the Lebanon office, and then we'd have events in Manhattan, and it was awesome. Yeah. And we this home product thing came to be, meaning the companies we worked for were high end cabinet manufacturers, wall coverings, hardwood flooring companies, fabric companies, and international companies in this crazy ad agency where Susan and met one So that on top of now, we've renovated five homes.
Speaker 2:We've done industrial design and and package design and product design for people. We we've really had amazing opportunities here in Chester County. We landed in West Chester in, like, 1995.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:'94. So it it the design side of things, you know, we we live in a region where we all all these amazing legacy design elements from the Andrew Wyeth and the Wyeth family to Wharton Asherick, who's just a rock star furniture maker painter designer to George Nagashima and New Hope area that built amazing mid century modern pieces. And Charles DeMuth in Lancaster, who was renowned painter and designer. So I started following those things and just couldn't get enough of it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And advertising, you know, the the idea of thinking differently, thinking emotionally, thinking uniquely, that's where Susan and I landed. But I was on the design side of things and Susan was on the storytelling side. She was a writer producer person. So now all these years later, it's great to be working together with that and helping regional companies in addition to other companies
Speaker 1:that we help with work as well. Yeah. Think it's so cool when the like you had just said, couldn't get enough of it. When you see people that are actually drawn to their business, I know it sounds kind of corny and I came through this a different way, but I really did feel like I was this is what I really wanted to do and I needed to do. And it didn't even today, even though I have dreamed I'm back at my old office sometimes, I never really minded.
Speaker 1:I actually enjoyed going into work and there's no question I just sat with a guy at breakfast morning and there's you know, there's ups and downs of any business at all. Someone quits or you don't get a big project and you feel like a gut punch or you make a bad move or decision or you drop the ball, which all happens. And, you know, if you don't have a way of just liking or enjoying solving the problem or working your way through it, then it will show. You'll just be a person doing a job as opposed to a person who's like enjoying what they're doing.
Speaker 2:I feel like I've lived a dream. The reality is I found something that fit who I am, who Susan is, and what we're capable of doing. And we love doing it.
Speaker 1:We love working. And it shows.
Speaker 2:I always have loved work. Yeah. Even at a young age, which had nothing to do with design. It was like Yeah. Mowing yards and worked as a mason tender to put myself through college.
Speaker 2:I watched my cousin's masonry company from when I started there at 15 to when I graduated from college when I was 21. That company went from nine people to, like, a 130. Yeah. So I was learning stuff that I didn't know what I was learning about entrepreneurial ship, you know.
Speaker 1:You're just absorbing it. Right? You're being around it. You don't even realize you're learning it.
Speaker 2:Totally. I designer for the first ten years of my life, no question whatsoever, work wise, meaning from 1990 till 2000, I worked at four different companies Yeah. As an employee. And then late nineteen ninety nine, we started freelancing. I went out on my own and Yeah.
Speaker 2:Was working for a top 10 agency in Philly called Earl Palmer Brown, and they were one of the biggest internationally known agencies you could work at and I was working there as a freelance person. Yeah. Because I had never worked in a big agency I thought well that's the thing I didn't do yet. Went and did that and it was not the dream I thought it might be. That's when we
Speaker 1:That happens.
Speaker 2:That's when we started Smith Works at that point.
Speaker 1:So what year was that?
Speaker 2:That was was 2000.
Speaker 1:In 2000?
Speaker 2:Smith Works started.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So you Smith Works started right about when I did. I started in 1999.
Speaker 2:Very similar, very similar. We lived through some funky times for sure the downturn in September.
Speaker 1:Mean the downturn in 08/1213?
Speaker 2:Went for a very long time for us. Had we had some customers, big international company went bankrupt during that time frame and it was not the kind of thing where you could just go out and replace them with a new customer. So we lived through some funky stuff that being self employed was a very different effort. I had learned great things from a bunch of mentors who I still have, you know, the Yeah. Guys I still have lunch with that are ten years, twenty years my senior, and now they're getting older.
Speaker 2:Right. But now
Speaker 1:you both have the battle scars that you can trade and discuss. I know.
Speaker 2:And they are the ones I have that unique experience with Yeah. Where they'll go, this guy, they remember my energy and enthusiasm from back then. So now where we're at, it's a little different. Now it's a little more patience and hopefully more grace.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. We definitely get a different a different look back at what we did. Yeah. We built this building that we're sitting in right now today in 2008, which could have been a disaster.
Speaker 1:I mean, I can't even look and to believe looking back now that I even decided to build a building. I made that conscious decision in like late two thousand and seven when I think anyone would have been like, what are you what are you doing? We needed it. And I blame Greg Newell knows he's gonna be on here soon. I blame Greg Newell for this because I went down to his office in King Of Prussia and I sat in his conference room and I thought to myself, Bryce, this is a nice place.
Speaker 1:I need to have a nice office or I'm never gonna be able to be like Greg Knowles. So I went out and built this building. But yeah, twenty it'd be twenty seven years of experience and look back at how our print how how our industry has changed.
Speaker 2:Yeah. All of our everything's changed. Everywhere. We we found ourselves evolved early 2000, we were doing work for four or five multinational, like, companies that were worldwide. We were dealing with time zones in England and customers in Manhattan and DC.
Speaker 2:And for us, it was very, very exciting. Yep. The reality is when we hit that 09/2008, 09/10 thing, those big companies pulled back massively. Yeah. And when this secondary level of customers, which were all entrepreneurial trade based companies, even even makers.
Speaker 2:There were makers in there for sure. And that those guys stuck with us through kind of a weird time. Yeah. And we came out the other end and realized that's who I wanna work with. Then the web development
Speaker 1:I was just gonna say that, like
Speaker 2:Changed everything.
Speaker 1:Right. To just John Hubicki, our IT guy that's in here, he came to me in 01/00/2002 I was told this and as a CAD drafter, but he also could design websites. And I literally was like, John, websites are for like weirdos and freaks. We have an ad in the yellow pages. We don't need a website.
Speaker 1:That's stupid. But luckily for us, he was like, I'm just gonna do one and we had a website early on when really no one had a website. And now imagine today, what business could survive without the Internet today?
Speaker 2:Hardly anything. There are companies that weirdly can exist with without the Internet for sure. Meaning social media. They land there and they can do a Facebook thing and get away with not having a website for one reason or another. A big picture wise, if you don't have a real web presence, your company is missing value in its Yep.
Speaker 2:Actual bottom line. What's it's it's equity. It's equity in the company.
Speaker 1:And we're selling to different, know, I hate to say this and datas, but we're selling to different age group. In the recession, the Mainline Builders Association, which I belong to, we would have our monthly meetings at Applebrook or Applecross a luncheon. And we had one person come from Lake Berkshire Hathaway and talk to us about how people are going to shop and buy houses. And he went through a big thing how, you know, they're not gonna get a cup of coffee at Wawa and drive around and see what neighborhoods have houses for sale. They're gonna search on the Internet by the school district, by the price point, by the size, house, number of bedrooms, you name the filter.
Speaker 1:And that's how they're gonna pair it down. And they said the same thing about cars because we do a lot of car dealerships. And I mean, I'll tell you that every one of us in that room, me being the younger of most of the people that were in that room looked at each other and said, they never gonna happen that way buddy. I don't know what you're on, That's not gonna no one in America is gonna shop that way.
Speaker 2:Meanwhile, your shoes, you know, company massive companies at Boats. Oh, you're gonna buy shoes online. Well, no. You can't do that.
Speaker 1:How does that work? I gotta step in that little thing and have my width and my length measured. They fixed it. Walk around.
Speaker 2:And then food stuff for dogs. Now now your pet things online. How is this gonna happen? Where everything's mail order. You're shipping 50 pound bags of dog food.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No one ever thought that would work. I I'm driving a car that
Speaker 1:didn't exist. He didn't buy the car dealership.
Speaker 2:No. Like, I didn't even go to the car dealership. I'm driving something I
Speaker 1:I haven't gotten to that one yet.
Speaker 2:I couldn't test drive. Right. Before I bought it. I showed up and drove it home for the first time on the way home. So we're getting to that point where people are way more comfortable with the experience.
Speaker 2:There's also new expectations set with that, like free returns, you know, all the the support mechanisms. There was a point where FedEx and UPS were kinda starting to dwindle. Yeah. They were taking each other's business away from one another. They were beating up on one another.
Speaker 2:There were some some issues with those companies being able to be super profitable, and then all of a sudden that thing called Yeah. Online stores happened.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that just marketing is gonna be a huge thing because these companies don't I mean, I certainly I will tell you that when we make moves here or when we're thinking about making a move, like a good example is gonna be, know, bought this tip for our drill rig that we can advance down through the soil. It's very expensive. As it's being tapped down through, it's giving readings back like moisture content and density and other things we would have to get by going back to the lab. But as exciting as it is to have it, I'm just equally as excited to market it about it, you know. And if you just bought it and we're out there using it and hoped for the best, that's not when you're buying it and you're actively marketing which is what you guys have just added a whole another dimension to what we do.
Speaker 1:There's a another dimension.
Speaker 2:You're also not trying to sell pizzas. Right. Like you're selling something that fits your brand, that fits what you know, fits your knowledge, you're offering services that are extensions of what you do. Yeah. And so when it's authentic, when it comes from somebody who's already an expert in an associated field, that's much easier to communicate.
Speaker 2:So But
Speaker 1:you have to be communicating in a You
Speaker 2:have to proactively communicate. That's what strategic marketing is, proactively reaching out to customers, but being authentic to who you are. Yeah. I think if you're in a situation where you're trying to communicate based on price and most of our customers we are not really trying to market someone who is trying to be the lowest cost opportunity. No.
Speaker 2:No. Almost Yep. Almost that that doesn't work for us as a marketing partner. It's not who we are.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I would agree. And we don't want to be marketed as a lowest cost engineer, but we're a little bit different than most of other professions out there in the sense that I've said this before on here. It's one thing for me to be $100,000 in engineering. But the real bigger picture which we explain to clients all the time isn't just what I cost to draw it. It is what is it going to cost to build the plan that I draw for you.
Speaker 1:And really, like I said, in simple math, if I'm a 100,000 but my plan costs, you know, 2,000,000 to build that's 2.1. Someone could be $50,000 but be 3 and a half million dollars to build and you've not saved yourself a penny. And you're not gonna get that bad news until you've spent two years in approval. That goes to the storytelling. Yeah, that goes to the storytelling part about what about what your wife does, which is incredible, which is explaining why we think we're the best.
Speaker 1:Totally.
Speaker 2:And and I I think the reality for you guys too is that timing. If there's any savings in timing, that cost me.
Speaker 1:Oh, god. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It costs money to go longer. And and us high end builders, high end architects, high end design, landscape designers, interior decorators. When you're selling a personality, you're selling a type of emotion and energy that in theory, the goal is it's a signature element. When you guys do a project, it's got the house signature. Yep.
Speaker 2:And most of our customers are really trying to convey that kind of brand effort. And we are.
Speaker 1:We are. Totally. We we wear this badge proudly. We want those plans that you've spent. God only knows how much money on us drawing and how much time you spent us getting to the township.
Speaker 1:We want that when you send them out to your contractor, your site contractor to build our plans that they're not coming back to you pointing out 20 different ways where you could have saved money or now you're gonna go back three years. Yep. Like that is the exact story that we want to be able to continue to you know market and push consistently to tell because it's a good story to tell.
Speaker 2:It's a great it's an authentic story.
Speaker 1:It's what we
Speaker 2:do. It's what's real.
Speaker 1:It's what's real.
Speaker 2:And if you can be real, on the other side know that. The referrals then end up happening and then they see the marketing efforts that support that same kind of attitude. We've talked about this all the time the next generation where things go and your personality, you've not only had to be a good engineer, but you'd have to you've had to be somebody who could communicate, who could be persuasive, who was knowledgeable enough face to face to read the situation in a room. And that's one of those things in this time that we're in right now is a bit of a challenge. The next generation has spent more time with screens and more time in their own defined environments in ways that they've wanted to be where pushing them out in front of customers and people that help them implement it.
Speaker 2:It takes that effort to get out in the field.
Speaker 1:It does. Right? It does because they have not had to like I said before, they haven't been out there, you know, when we would play pick up games in football when you're the smaller smallest kid, you're getting your ass kicked and you're getting beat up and you're learning conflict resolution at that point in time, which we always harp on. But but that is what has to be pushed out there and trying to convey that message. Being part of a team.
Speaker 1:A real team. Yep. So the other we were in here the other week and we were talking, I thought it was interesting talking about, know, firms gone from a long time ago, thirty years ago to a Yellow Pages ad and no website, right? And now we've transformed from no Yellow Pages ad to a website and then an interactive website that doesn't just have like our name and location and what we do and words and now it's got video and videography and pictures and it's interactive. But then we also touched on having that marketing done, you know, internally and using the Internet to where I thought it was interesting how like the Internet is so broad and there's so much and will people become numb to just 40,000,000,000,000 things being thrown at them every day?
Speaker 2:You've heard I have. Mind venting social media. I think we're at a point where the Instagrams, the LinkedIn, the Facebook, we're in a position where the actual reality, what's real, what's honest,
Speaker 1:what's the truth? What's honest?
Speaker 2:What's the
Speaker 1:truth? We've all bought shit on there. This is not what I wanted to buy. This pisses me off so bad.
Speaker 2:And the more those those issues come up, whether social media can be truth, honest, and real, that causes issue, you know, overexposure is a challenge no matter what. Too much Too
Speaker 1:much of anything.
Speaker 2:Constantly. But now it's it's feeding people exactly the kinds of things they only wanna hear. Yep. Exactly what they're looking for. Yep.
Speaker 2:If they're not hearing two sides, they're no longer being objective. Yep. You're only hearing what you want to hear. At some point, will that devalue that communications effort. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So in other words, will Facebook, you know, Instagram and LinkedIn be devalued because of the lack of truthfulness that's there.
Speaker 1:And we don't mean the value of the actual platform. It's not much the value of the information that it's pushing. Look, we've already touched on it with I thought when you said this the other day, I was like, I really thought about like, we've already been on it. We're not gonna go down this rabbit hole of like the news and fake news being pushed. And now no one really trusts exactly, you know, where their news is coming from because it could be getting pointed, targeted by what your, you know, what your beliefs are.
Speaker 1:But I think that same thing's happening on the retail side. I mean, I'm a big Formula One fan. So I go on and I'll get like, you know, hey, you should get this shirt like Max Verstappen wears and I did fall prey like a fucking idiot and order one of one time and I got it. Was like, this is stupid. Like, it's not even it's not even the right size.
Speaker 1:It's like European size and it was like made like it was made from like a literally like a bath towel. Was like I was wearing a towel. It's hanging in my closet. With I gotta wear
Speaker 2:negative side of that, there's positive sides because now small single individuals in a room can make a living by selling something
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:To the world. Right. For a while. For a while. The reality is you can make a lot of money, but are you building a company?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Are you building a a value in exchange that's worth something? We've talked about, you know, social media media is fantastic for music and arts and the communications that you may bump into something that you have never seen before too if you are looking for
Speaker 1:looking for it.
Speaker 2:That's the challenge.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think getting back to that genuine thing, I mean, at least for me, been bit a few times. Of course, I'm older, so I'm not as, you know but like, I just wanna not be screwed. Right? I know that if I wanna buy a shirt or a race car helmet or whatever I want to buy, but I want to be able to go someplace where look, are we going am I going back to shopping for something online than going to a store that actually has it so I can touch it?
Speaker 1:I mean, maybe I might are we is it is the pendulum swinging slightly back that way?
Speaker 2:I think it oh, no. It is.
Speaker 1:I don't wanna go to King Of Prussia Mall and walk around until I buy something.
Speaker 2:That mall is gonna make it. It is. Because it's it's They're one of
Speaker 1:our clients too, so it has a very good thing.
Speaker 2:Well, and that that mall is continuing to do new and unique things that are more cutting edge like the whole Netflix experience Right.
Speaker 1:We did all that.
Speaker 2:And then that Rivian and Tesla both had, you know, viewing ownerships there, vehicles that you could buy in a storefront. That's crazy. And and I think there's people still wanna buy quality. I think everything's a circle. Me too.
Speaker 2:We see things move. It's
Speaker 1:coming back around.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think the idea of buying something, a great watch, you know, a well made shirt, something people are willing to spend money to get something Yeah. Good. And that King Of Prussia Mall is a perfect example of a place where you've always been able to get good things. Good things.
Speaker 2:Exactly. You want unique stuff. So that brand, that the King of Prussia Mall brand Right. Still has value and is it a reason that people are still go there?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I wanna go there and not be, you know, preyed upon to buy junk and feel like I'm buying something walking off the super duper looper at Hershey Park. Yep. I wanna buy something good. Yep.
Speaker 1:Do I shop online with it good and then I go someplace? Maybe. But I think the way that we're buying not only our goods but also our services is what's changing. How I'm deciding to hire a builder, how I'm deciding to hire a home improvement company, how I'm deciding to hire an engineer or a marketing company. Yes, they're going online and they do wanna see that we have some kind of organized presence, but they also wanna meet with us
Speaker 2:or hear our story. Totally. I know for a fact we have three new contracts with new customers in the past ninety days. Yeah. Those customers were referrals, but they were referrals that then we met discussed what Yeah.
Speaker 2:We could bring to the table and then said, here's some of our best experiences in the past. Here's some individuals we've worked with in the past. Let them tell you. Right. And Right.
Speaker 2:They'll be honest with you. They'll tell you the reality of what it's like to work with us for Yep. Ten years, fifteen years. That is the coolest part about where we're at is, you know, we have customers. I talked about my cousin and his masonry company.
Speaker 2:We have customers where we've engaged with them back in 2006, and they had five employees, and now they're a 126 employees. Yeah. So how to grow with them and help them communicate their difference Yep. In that that huge time frame gap. Things have changed massively and so teaching their Internal staff because now they have marketing teams in house that we've taught how to do their jobs right and then they're teaching us stuff too, which is fantastic We always want that cause we're learning things that are more specific to each of their audiences.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So Yeah. Well, when you have the growth like that, it's funny to bring that up because this is something that I like I agonize over. You don't want you know, we started I started the company, me and Joe Rosella, wanted to do engineering. We would work Eli Kahn and Jack Lowe and for Ryan Holmes and I had my good clients and then like everything, there's a good South Park about this actually where the store just gets bigger and bigger and bigger, you know, and then becomes like a Walmart and then it just blows the whole town up and shrinks back down to nothing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You know, have a 130 employees across the companies here. We try very hard and I think we do a pretty good job of not going down that rabbit hole of just, know, doing every job of everything for every person regardless of like the consequences of the cost. We try to stay in our lane, do what we are good at doing and keep that do what we are good at doing work coming in the door. Not try to go out there and be something that we're not in order to feed a machine that we've built that needs that.
Speaker 1:So you know, we don't always I don't wake up every morning just wanting to hire more people, but we try to walk that fine line of getting the work that we want, being in the lane that we want. And if we need to add to our team in order to do that better then we'll do it. But we're not trying to all of an outside world look like that. We're not trying to just be something that we're not being. But in order to do that, we have to market strategically to the places that we want to be.
Speaker 1:Totally. Right? And for us, expansion isn't as much into other realms of engineering as it is into other geographic points, right? So it's nice to be able to Andrew and I had breakfast this morning and we talked about, you know, do we push towards the Lancaster area? Do we push towards Delaware?
Speaker 1:How do we do that? What does that look like? And that's that's really the part that's fun. The plan. That's what I like to do.
Speaker 2:What is the plan? What is the strategy? What are the goals? What are the dreams? Yeah.
Speaker 2:It really is that if you can have dreams and the crazy part is most small business owners entrepreneurs who are successful are fulfilling some sort of dream,
Speaker 1:you know. I would always all my banker friends when I would be moved my banking to another bank, The bank would keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger and then they would I always get very frustrated like why can you just stay a regular freaking bank and not just you know get bigger and bigger and get absorbed? Like why do you have to continually move? And you know one of them was like, we're not moving, we're dying. And I'm like, I don't really understand that.
Speaker 1:What that means, I think you should be happy with the clients that you have. But then looking back at probably what they were experiencing, you know, ten years before us is that if you are not moving, you're kind of dying and you need to at least be moving into can you make yourself better, can you make your company more diverse and things like that. And if you don't enjoy doing that, then you're not really gonna enjoy running a business like a lot of these quote unquote entrepreneurs want to be.
Speaker 2:Cars are a key thing that tie us to each other. We both like Yeah. Lot. But what's interesting is, let's say, you look at a RAV four. That's a inexpensive Toyota SUV.
Speaker 2:They have upsized that every year Yes. Since it was introduced because it's growing with that loyal fan base. Yep. Banks need to do the same thing. So they do need to alter and change over time because your expectations are changing.
Speaker 2:Whether you know it or not Exactly. Why do I not have this technical advancement that I should have? This comes from a guy, one of our banks, you know, we live through local banks here that evolved, sold themselves, the whole thing. Right. Meanwhile, I'm still dealing with my same hometown bank for thirty five years.
Speaker 2:Yep. There's honor in that for sure being able to but I also don't go there for everything. Exactly. I can't. Mean, that's You know?
Speaker 2:So there there are expectations where us as individuals, there are reasons things market to the loyal customers they have and then evolve with them. But banks are an interesting They are. Yeah. I don't
Speaker 1:wanna knock on my good bank friends, and I love them all. But I kind of view it as cardiologist. Just when they come in the room, I'm not sure if I'm gonna get good news or bad news or I try to make it good, but I never really know. So as we evolve on, like, I I guess myself this all the time, like, where is my profession going? Like, where do you like, do you see the marketing world and profession?
Speaker 1:I mean, obviously, discussed huge changes from the yellow pages to Facebook mean, to enter to web websites, the other ways of doing business and how and like, I mean, I look at it. I see you, your profession marketing companies that never had marketing before, but they've seen that they've got to have it whether they see it for the reason that I thought, which is in order to attract other people for your team or whether you're trying to attract more clients or better clients. I mean the HVAC companies are the biggest example. They're just every time I drive around there's like a new loud van with, like, a bird on the back or a fish or something different. Totally.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Came into work this morning when you saw the same billboard in five different billboard locations on the same street from the same customer. I was like, well, that's a waste of spend for sure. But I I what's funny is we've spoke quite a while. Yeah. And we haven't spoke about AI.
Speaker 2:AI know.
Speaker 1:I was gonna
Speaker 2:And AI is is going to change everything that everyone does. We are tiptoeing around it, meaning we touch it daily. There are things that we are doing in different platforms. We're challenging our team members and who we are. That's not an easy thing from the designer side of things.
Speaker 2:Designers are purists. They want to make their own stuff. The last thing they want to do is just put it in something and have it auto generate it. But I can speak to back in the very beginning when desktop publishing happened, and that's a scary thing to think that I'm old enough that that happened during my career. There was all of a sudden a style that happened in the first six years that was driven by the fact that you could do things on a computer.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And then that all evolved. Technology evolved, Photoshop, the evolution, illustrator, and the elements, the technology that enabled you the equipment that you were using. Well, that's what AI is. Yeah.
Speaker 2:AI is the new equipment. So the idea that there's now AI billionaires and millionaires out there, guys who have sat down and don't know anything about coding but could put it into an AI generator Yeah. Say, code me this. Yep. It codes them software that they can then use to create a company to make money.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's a whole different side of things coming. Now, they'll still have to market it. And so what's the authenticness of that? Right.
Speaker 2:Right. What is the reality? What's at the core? Why did they do that? If it was just done to make money, there's lots of ways to just make money.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And there always will be. Yeah. But in building a company, that could be challenging because where the core values, what does it mean? Right.
Speaker 2:The why, the real why. What what is the why? And I think AI can be used for that if you start with that why. You answer the why, but it's a little questioning right now. That is the future.
Speaker 2:There's no question whatsoever. I also think that people are gonna buy good stuff. So handmade elements pieces things. We're now at a point like you've you've invested in your digital three d printing system and yep, and we have the ability to use that to do presentations and our team can be manufacturing parts and anything we want. It's really still driven by the individuals and the people who are running the things.
Speaker 1:It is. I'm thankful at least I think our professions definitely require the human part of it. I just saw on the news this morning, there was like a blues singer who went to the top of the charts singing some songs. His song I forget his name, but he said, like, you ever heard of this this person? He's like the new the new artist and the song went to the top of the charts and like the blues and bluegrass or something.
Speaker 1:He's not even real person. It was an AI person singing, an AI voice. The guy behind it defended it by saying, I actually am writing the songs and I'm making the I'm composing the music. I'm just not singing them. And I don't look like the person that was singing them, who looked very much like they were from that era.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, you look at it like like I was duped. I wasn't listening to him, but when I saw it on the news, I thought it sounded really good and thought I'm try to put this on my Spotify. Got a real person.
Speaker 2:Well, the concept that you could use AI to create your own music channel Yep. That will then generate music that's similar to the kinds of musics you
Speaker 1:like. Right.
Speaker 2:I know. So who gets paid for that?
Speaker 1:Who gets paid for that? Right?
Speaker 2:No one. Same thing for anything else.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's Yeah. Could you have an AI football game where it's like around on TV or
Speaker 2:just watching do? Right. Do. That's where I think the engagement of real life, you know, I'm I'm we we have a daughter we just sent off to Alaska. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And she's in a world where that can't be replaced by AI. Right. Right. What she's doing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's exciting. It is. But it's also a strange time where experiences, all of a sudden, they you put the visor on and are are you actually experiencing something? You generated your own trip.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:You know, I I wanna spend two months in Alaska. So you sit in the corner of your house for two months and with it. I know. I'm at that point.
Speaker 1:I mean,
Speaker 2:I I don't know. There's things coming that are gonna be very interesting. I think if you're still a maker, I think if you create things, I still think there'll be value in those created things. Yeah. That a custom suit may still mean something.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yeah. You know? Go ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. A restored old car, something that has value, an old wooden canoe. Yes. Things that Yep.
Speaker 2:Had value and you can go experience them. That's where how will the future change that? I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Look at the like the singer Porsche thing. I just watched. I'm a huge I definitely fall prey to things on YouTube. So but not I I like to watch different documentaries but I can definitely get caught up in, know, how it's made and things like that.
Speaker 1:And there was one on I watched yesterday about the Masters golf tournament which I gotta tell you, it is one of the coolest things of how the Masters things these are things I didn't know. Things like they made a commitment to keep food The legacy. At the same prices. So when you go to the Super Bowl and you buy a shitty hot dog and a beer for $28, at the Masters, that's $3. And they capped it and that's the end of that.
Speaker 1:And then and not that not that I'm not down in the Super Bowl, but just to make comparison, if the Super Bowl, think, had something like thirty two minutes of commercials per hour, The Masters is capped at four minutes per hour and they won't do any more than that.
Speaker 2:I think you're talking about the two opposite extremes Yes. Of American capitalism right there. Yep. Perfect example. NFL versus, you know, the Masters.
Speaker 1:The Masters.
Speaker 2:That's a perfect example of the two opposite ends. Something that's grace Yeah. And the other one's purely commercialized. You know, 100%. Yes.
Speaker 2:It's like, what can can we sell, you know, the glasses that dude's wearing while he's walking across the screen versus the masters, which is a very different experience.
Speaker 1:And I and I'm the I'm kind of of the the spirit of I'm sure the NFL makes more money than the masters, but I would I wanna be the masters. And that's what I wanna be like and what they do. And I thought it was I'm gonna watch another one on it. It's fascinating of all the things that they've done. I would agree.
Speaker 1:Whoever thought about doing it and the way that they did it was brilliant and it just gave you a whole another level of it. So but I'll give you my one way, one AI plug on our business while it is good engineering to design data centers. My hope honestly and selfishly and my municipal engineering friends will hate my guts, I mean I want to one of my major pet peeves is to spend a lot of time designing plans, submit them to be reviewed, a peer review which I think is important, essential. But to have that peer review being done by someone not licensed, maybe not even a degreed engineer, maybe not even much experience and nothing pisses me off more than just have a letter written critiquing my engineering design and makes you look like an idiot. If I wrote a letter critiquing all of your marketing no matter what I did, you wouldn't like it.
Speaker 1:I mean, no one likes to be critiqued.
Speaker 2:No, that's totally No
Speaker 1:one likes to be critiqued, no one likes to be critiqued in writing and even hate to be critiqued in writing so that you are you know, you look like an idiot to your client, to the regulated community where you're trying to get approved. I would love to see AI do an engineering review, right, of the plans. That's what's important. And then we don't really need your opinion on whether or not you think I should be doing a Hooters or a 55 and older community or a Starbucks. Let the opinions be taken up by the elected officials.
Speaker 1:That's why they're elected And go that way. But it doesn't in my business it doesn't happen that way. So I will tell you that I do hear a lot of AI stuff like you said, but I secretly hope that it changes my business somehow.
Speaker 2:Oh, I think there's opportunities for AI massively and we're gonna see it in the next three, two, three years, next five years. How we function daily could be changed drastically And that's very exciting.
Speaker 1:It comes back to if you're not moving, you're gonna be dying. So I mean, we have our eyes keenly on AI, its possibilities, how we could use it to make our business better. But to sit back and say, I hate it. It's going to increase my electric bill. I'm not going deal with it.
Speaker 1:You're it's it's foolish. Bullish.
Speaker 2:Change is the only constant. Exactly. The reality is anything big, if you ask the populace, they're gonna say no. Yep. Any big change.
Speaker 2:Yep. Any. Almost always. And but if they can see the value, if you can get to the point where you build it, that hole will build it, and they will come. It's one of
Speaker 1:my favorite movies, by the way.
Speaker 2:It's a It really is. Fantastic.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:That is a perfect example of you create an atmosphere and energy around it. Yeah. People will reach. Yeah. They will reach out to make those things happen.
Speaker 1:One day we might be marketing it. Alright. We gotta we have a building to go look at next door. Cool. So thank you, buddy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So much stuff we didn't talk about. No.
Speaker 1:Well, that's that's where we're gonna get back. There's a lot of stuff to do. Alright. Thank you for coming on. You got it.