Latest / Contractor Business Builder Podcast / Why Most Construction Tech Fails and How Tyler Campbell is Fixing It

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Why Most Construction Tech Fails and How Tyler Campbell is Fixing It · Contractor Business Builder Podcast

0:10
Welcome to another exciting episode of the Contractor
0:13
Business Builder podcast. We have the honor of hosting
0:16
Tyler Campbell. He's the CEO of Field proof.
0:19
So Tyler's not just a contact leader, he's a self a 6th
0:22
generation builder. Pretty impressive who's lived
0:25
with or lived every level of the construction game from steam
0:29
steel detailing 120 plus Wawa gas stations to helping
0:34
international context startups actually succeed in the US
0:37
market colours on a mission to fix the broken relationship
0:40
between tech and construction pros.
0:43
So anybody you trying to use, you know, tech that's been
0:46
designed for different industries knows the pain of it.
0:49
Even ones that are designed for construction can often lead you
0:52
straight. So we dive into user
0:55
experiences, field test and strategy and the biggest contact
0:58
companies and what what the biggest contact companies are
1:01
getting wrong. So welcome here today.
1:03
Tyler, how you doing? Appreciate it, Derek.
1:05
I'm doing really well. Thanks for having me.
1:08
Right on. So 6th generations in
1:10
construction that that's quite impressive.
1:13
And you know, definitely got a heritage and lineage of, of
1:17
construction run into your veins.
1:20
Can you tell us a little bit about, you know, your, your
1:23
background and how things kind of evolved into what you're
1:25
doing now? Yeah.
1:27
So I started in the family business with my dad and my
1:31
brother back in 2012, family businesses, structural
1:36
detailing, SO3D modeling was kind of at the core of how we
1:40
get that done. So I would model structures in
1:42
3D all day, every day. And I did that for a decade.
1:46
And so when you're doing that, you get to see a lot of drawings
1:51
from the architects and from the engineers, and you get to
1:55
communicate with a lot of different project teams every
1:57
single day. And so it was kind of a proving
2:01
ground for me, made me realize things that could work, but also
2:08
things that are completely broken about construction as a
2:10
whole lot of times it's people that that caused the problems.
2:14
It's not the technology. So always come back to people,
2:18
but you know, it's, it was a great place to to learn about
2:22
the industry. And of course, I was able to be,
2:24
you know, mentored by my dad and my brother.
2:27
And, you know, being multi generational in the construction
2:31
industry is, you know, through no, no falter, no fault of my
2:37
own. It's it's kind of cool.
2:40
You know, it's, I tried to not go into the industry at one
2:44
point in my life, but then, you know, fell into it because I
2:47
needed a job and started with my dad and man, I just kind of fell
2:50
in love with it from there. I I loved intricate problems
2:53
that we get to solve and it's it's super challenging, but it's
2:58
super rewarding. And yeah, that's, that's kind of
3:02
the fun thing that you mentioned there with the Wawas.
3:05
So yeah, you guys are welcome for the sandwiches down there in
3:08
Florida, one of the one of the longest running repeat projects
3:13
that we did among a lot of other ones that we did.
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So I think the most Wawa is that detailed in a single day was 44
3:20
Wawas. So I've got Azure my
3:23
productivity in Wawa source. Cool.
3:28
Right on. Yeah, construction, a little bit
3:31
of acquired taste, I guess sometimes it's it's not for the
3:34
faint of heart. And I know I've been there too,
3:36
where there's so much happening you can get frustrated.
3:40
But at the end of the day, it's pretty special industry for for
3:44
many reasons, but yeah, not, not for the faint of heart
3:48
whatsoever. So, you know, construction, it's
3:51
difficult, it's messy, it's everything, you know, in between
3:56
technologies there to kind of solve the problem, make our
3:58
lives easier. But there, you know, often
4:00
there's a big disconnect. Can you, can you speak to that
4:03
of what our kind of, what do you feel are some of the disconnects
4:06
or, or things that tech companies can get wrong when
4:11
trying to implement or push new products to the construction
4:14
industry? I think a lot of times it's
4:16
assumption. It's assuming what people mean
4:20
versus doing proper exploration and discovery.
4:25
I've, I've started to learn more about this over time, which is,
4:30
and I'll go back to a product book called the mom test that I
4:34
recently chewed through and it kind of like it really
4:36
articulated this. It's if you bring an idea to
4:39
your mom and you say, hey, mom, I was thinking about doing this.
4:42
What do you think? What's she going to say?
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She's going to say, oh, that's a great idea, sweetie, good job,
4:48
you know, pat you on the head and send you on your way.
4:51
The real test is to go in and and ask questions of hey, mom,
4:55
how do you do that? Why do you do that?
4:58
How often do you do like all of these sorts of questions?
5:02
Questions can help you have a better understanding of of the
5:05
core why behind any sort of product.
5:09
And I think most of the time what ends up happening is you
5:11
get you can get founders, you can get product teams and it can
5:16
it can be a mixture. I mean, I know I've done it too.
5:19
You can kind of get blind to what you're building and
5:23
thinking it's the best thing ever and ask leading questions.
5:26
The best thing that you can do while you're building a product
5:30
is to keep an open mind and just continue to just ask why.
5:33
Why do you do it that way? Tell me how you're currently
5:36
doing it and trying to collect all of those data points.
5:39
Because at the end of the day, what you're trying to build is a
5:41
product that people actually find use in.
5:44
Because that's going to be the most sticky thing that you can
5:46
do and it's going to be the most helpful, but you, you're not
5:49
going to be able to just understand, uh, a need of a user
5:54
just by one conversation, right? You have to have multiple
5:58
conversations with them. You really need to dig into
6:00
those pain points. And so for me, I think often
6:04
it's just assumption that gets construction technology in
6:07
trouble. They assume that they know how
6:13
it's supposed to work or they make assumptions on a, on a flow
6:17
of how information gets passed. And they don't necessarily ask
6:24
or they might have asked, they just didn't ask in the right
6:27
way. And so there's a, it's, it's
6:29
really intricate. It's really difficult.
6:31
I have a lot of empathy for people that are building
6:33
products more so now than I ever have because I get it.
6:36
It's really tough. But at the end of the day, you
6:39
have to ask yourself, you know, my, my mission, I'll say, and
6:42
stepping back, actually it's, you know, my mission is to, you
6:46
know, be human centric in our design and human centred and,
6:50
and our solutions, right? So we want to make sure that any
6:54
product or anything that we're supporting comes out to the
6:56
field and the people in the field, the end user, whether
6:59
it's in the field or in the office and the construction
7:01
site, they look at it and they go, Oh my gosh, finally they get
7:05
it. They understand because what
7:08
that does is that causes those products to grow.
7:12
The word of mouth will start to spread, right?
7:16
If you can really understand the problems that your users are
7:20
facing, ask RAW questions that you know, you leave your
7:25
assumptions at the door and you just try to gain better
7:27
understanding. So I don't know if that answers
7:29
your question completely, but it's assumption, right?
7:33
Definitely very insightful and really can be like is, is useful
7:40
and necessary pretty much with anybody who's building, who's
7:44
providing a service or a product, like whoever knows the
7:47
client best wins at the end of the day.
7:49
Is, is what something I like to say as far as if you really
7:52
understand your client and what they need and how they use your
7:55
product or service and, and you know, their hopes, their dreams
7:58
or aspirations, and then also actually what their behaviors
8:01
are at the end of the day. Because it's easy kind of to
8:04
answer some questions sometimes for what do they actually do
8:09
instead of what they say they will do as well.
8:12
So what you said about asking the right questions, but also,
8:16
you know, what's what's the underlying, you know, behaviors,
8:21
I guess like there or the other. Yeah, underlying things that are
8:25
driving their behaviors to to use things.
8:27
Yeah. Yeah.
8:29
And I'll, I'll add to that because we're like right on this
8:31
path, which is often you'll see early startups, even later stage
8:39
startups, they'll go after a really broad swath of a market.
8:44
So you'll ask them, you know, who do you help, right, Who is
8:49
this for? And they'll say small, small to
8:52
medium businesses in the construction industry.
8:56
That doesn't answer my question. Alright, now if you tell me this
9:01
is for electrical contractors that are 5 to $10 million, OK,
9:05
that are doing commercial work and they are based in the
9:08
Southeast, what you're telling me is, you know, you're getting
9:12
clients really well and you know how they're extracting value
9:19
from the service or tool that you provide to them.
9:23
And frankly, I'm guilty of this. I missed this in my first
9:27
business. I tried to serve too many
9:29
things. I tried to serve the
9:31
construction industry. It's not niche enough.
9:35
What you need to do, along with not having assumptions, is to
9:41
identify where this product is best served to be and start
9:47
there, right? Go back to Crossing the Chasm by
9:51
Jeffrey Moore. You know what is your beach
9:53
head? What is the core focus and and
9:58
the main area that you're going to drive value?
9:59
Because from there you can start to conquer other things, right?
10:04
You can start to spread. But often you see early stage
10:07
startups get into this pickle where they start to serve.
10:09
Too many people are there. They're still fighting for their
10:13
identity. So I get it.
10:15
I understand, especially if you're still learning the
10:17
industry, trying to figure out the ins and outs of it.
10:18
That can be really tough. And so, you know, selfishly
10:22
speaking, coming as an advisor and saying, OK, have you
10:26
considered this specific niche, this specific type of company?
10:33
Because I think they will probably find some value about
10:35
this. Let's go ask them some more.
10:37
Let's go conduct some more discovery around this and let's
10:40
verify that tends to be the case with, you know, companies that
10:45
are entering the US. It's a different dynamic too,
10:49
right? So if you're coming from Europe
10:51
over to the States, concrete companies in Europe versus
10:55
concrete companies in the US are going to operate very
10:58
differently. And it's typically because of
11:03
some of the regulation that is in place, right, your safety
11:07
measures that are in place, just what you call things.
11:11
You could be up north where there's a lot more union here in
11:15
the States. You know, in the, in the US you
11:17
might have a ton a lot more unions versus in the South, it's
11:20
maybe not as much. And so I feel like too it's if
11:24
you're coming from overseas into the States, you can make
11:28
assumptions and you could have a great product overseas and like
11:31
be killing it over there. But you can enter the US market
11:33
and not have a road map and then you end up suffering as a result
11:36
of that too. So it all comes back to who is
11:40
the core person that we are going to serve first, and then
11:44
out of that, who is the next person and the next person.
11:47
And it's just continually discovering and making sure that
11:51
you're refining that product to serve those people as best as
11:55
you can. But you can't do that by having
11:58
such a wide view of the industry.
12:01
You can't just say, Oh yeah, we're we're GC's of all shapes
12:05
and sizes now. Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope.
12:07
Like that tends to be a warning sign for me when I, when a
12:12
client comes to me and says, hey, yeah, we're for these
12:15
people. And they're pretty staunchly
12:17
like, no, we're for GC's. You know, of any shape and size.
12:21
I'm like, no, you're not, but no, you're not because you've
12:25
got a lot of other competitors out there that are fighting for
12:28
each chunk of the marketplace. You gotta figure out who you're
12:33
serving and how you serve them and what their ROI is on their
12:37
investment with you. I don't know.
12:40
A lot of times that's just overlooked.
12:42
Yeah, for sure. And yeah, common mistake if you
12:46
will, of, of especially newer contractors or or newer
12:50
companies. I've done that myself where it's
12:53
a refining process. Like, yeah, maybe at first
12:56
you're a little bit unsure, but really one of your first jobs or
13:00
roles that, you know, if you're building a new product or
13:03
service is, is like getting rid of like everybody who's not a
13:07
good fit for it. Until you you kind of find that
13:09
that nugget of gold of like specific person, you know,
13:15
subset of the industry, location, size of business, size
13:20
of business and where they're going with the business.
13:22
Like there's a lot of dynamics there for sure.
13:24
And it's not that you are potentially like only going to
13:28
serve that specific person, like ideally you would, but you're
13:31
always going to get these like outliers and stuff like that.
13:33
But if you don't have that specific like that clarity,
13:37
everything else suffers. Essentially, you know, the the
13:41
product market fit the the marketing, the sales, you know
13:45
everything gets easier. Essentially when you when you
13:48
have a good strong niche understand it for sure, it
13:52
wastes a lot less time. And money, it's scary, isn't it?
13:55
Like when you, when you niche down like that, it's scary
13:58
because you almost feel like, oh man, I'm limiting and limiting
14:02
who I can talk to. Really not like you said, there
14:05
are outliers. Yeah, but you can still build
14:07
relationships with and and serve.
14:10
But at the end of the day, like you have to like marketing works
14:14
best when you are speaking to a specific individual, right?
14:18
It has to be very personal and you can only do that unless
14:23
you're like a HubSpot or like one of these massive companies
14:26
that can like, you know, make content for every single segment
14:32
of their audience and push it out using ads and like get it
14:36
completely directed as possible. But when you're a young startup
14:40
and you're a 12 person company, nobody has time for that or the
14:46
monetary resources to go out and do that.
14:48
So you're best served to just focus on one.
14:50
And it's nerve wracking because you're like, what if I get it
14:52
wrong? Oh no, that man.
14:55
Like it's made such a difference for me and it's hilarious too.
15:00
Had to go through this like anybody does in entrepreneurship
15:03
and figuring this out for myself.
15:05
And man, when it finally was said and it dawned on me, it was
15:10
one of those hand, face palm moments.
15:13
I was like, Oh my gosh, how have I missed this?
15:17
Made so much sense. But then I went to the point
15:19
where I was like, OK, now I'm going to execute it.
15:21
And there was a sense of like, yeah, I don't know.
15:26
Did I pick wisely? And so I I can empathize with
15:30
it. You, you don't necessarily want.
15:32
It feels counterintuitive. Fish in a smaller pond, but it
15:38
also makes a ton of sense when you start to think about it as
15:40
well. So I see a lot of people get
15:42
that jumbled and there's a lot of, there are a lot of venture
15:47
Capital Advisors out there. So if you've got investment
15:50
versus bootstrapping, with bootstrapping, it's a lot easier
15:53
to just say we're going after this market, we're doing this
15:56
because it's just you, right? You either live or you die by
16:01
that decision. With VC, a lot of times they'll
16:05
pour money in and they want to see a broader market fit, right?
16:08
So they do want you to go out and get those general
16:12
contractors, those subcontractors at large, those
16:15
SMB's into your ecosystem. It's not a bad thing.
16:21
It's you can't start there. You have to start somewhere.
16:26
And if you start everywhere, you're going to be confused and
16:30
you're going to be looking around.
16:31
You're going to burn a lot of time trying to solve problems
16:35
for everybody when you could just be solving problems for the
16:38
few, and that will get you the momentum to get to everybody
16:41
over time. Yeah, yeah, interesting.
16:45
You said that you would be confused by your, your, your
16:48
customer, your client is also confused, right.
16:50
If you're too broad and at the end of the day, you confuse, you
16:53
lose. As far as clients go, if they
16:55
don't know who you, what you stand for, what you do or who
16:59
you, you know why they should care, then yeah, they're going,
17:03
they're going to bounce for sure.
17:05
So we've we've talked about finding that market fit and, and
17:09
the ideal client and all of that.
17:11
How about where like the the rubber meets the road and
17:15
actually like testing the service or the product or the
17:21
user experience of, of whatever someone is selling.
17:24
How does, how does that come into play for, you know, a new
17:27
kind of tech company? Well, I mean, for a new tech
17:30
company, right, you're going to be building out first and
17:33
foremost, probably your MVP, right, which is going to be like
17:37
the worst it's ever going to be. Definitely.
17:41
Hopefully what you need to do at that point is you do need to
17:44
take it out to the field or take it to the people that are going
17:47
to be using it and, and try your best to sit down with them and
17:51
have them do one of the processes.
17:54
And OK, we're going to sit down. We're going to watch you add a
17:57
project. We'll say or tag A-Team member
18:01
in this or add a team member, bring them to the project.
18:03
However, however your product is structured, I'm using more of
18:07
like a software example, maybe for a hardware example.
18:10
It's OK, I want you to turn this thing on.
18:14
Tell me how you're going to turn it on.
18:16
And you're just doing observation, right?
18:18
This is user experience research.
18:20
This is your UX we're going to sit down and we're going to
18:23
watch them do this we're going to record it and we are going to
18:26
map out all the different areas that they found paint where they
18:30
messed up. I say where they messed up,
18:33
where they expected something to happen and it didn't happen
18:37
right? They don't mess up, they tell
18:39
you what you what they want through their actions.
18:42
And a lot of times they're trained on pre-existing things,
18:46
right? You know, our phones interact
18:50
consistently, like we're used to our phones interacting in a
18:54
certain way, right? So same thing like, OK, let's
18:57
say I take my iPad here and then I go out and I, I have a new
19:04
tablet that I'm implementing into this new robotic total
19:07
station over here. But this tablet is using a
19:10
different operating system and a different application that we've
19:13
coded into it. In my mind, I'm used to using my
19:17
iPad. I'm not used to using an Android
19:19
or Windows or whatever that is. And so they all have these
19:23
little biases and we all have these little things that we're
19:26
used to. And so you have to watch those
19:29
as people interact with them and try to course correct and say,
19:32
well, how can we make this easier?
19:33
How might we make this easier on that end user?
19:37
Why does it matter? It matters because if they're
19:41
frustrated, they'll tell their friends.
19:44
And so you have to be very proactive at the beginning to
19:47
say we're actively trying to make this better.
19:50
Show them that it's getting better.
19:53
Because if they see that it's improving over time, they're
19:55
just going to become more champions for you, right?
19:58
You're building champions for your product.
20:01
If you just hand it to him and say, deal with it and nothing
20:04
changes and it doesn't make their lives easier, it's just
20:08
more of a pain to use it. Or let's say there's a
20:14
difference between the person that purchases it, purchases the
20:17
software and the person that is then handed the software to use,
20:22
right? Person that purchases it a lot
20:24
of times will be like, Oh yeah, fine with the warts.
20:27
It's not perfect, but it works, right?
20:28
The user, the person that is maybe the employee of the person
20:32
that purchased the software is going to be like, dude, what is
20:36
this this, this slows me down, right?
20:39
And so we've got to go through that chain, say like, all right,
20:41
here's our purchase. A person who made that purchase,
20:44
our decision maker, let's go down another level.
20:46
And who's the person? That's just the user of it who
20:49
needs to log on and do a certain thing.
20:52
There's so many intricacies in products and I think often those
20:58
can get overlooked or we can become biased to our own thing
21:02
and think that the research is done right.
21:06
Oh, we've we've done a lot. Maybe you have done that, have
21:09
done that for years, great. But what have you become callous
21:15
to and accepted? So at that point, it helps to
21:18
have a third party come in and evaluate it and say, have you
21:21
considered this? Have you considered that?
21:23
Because they don't care. They have no emotional
21:27
attachment to it. So it's an iterative process.
21:30
You always have to be doing this and a lot of times people will
21:35
just, you know, the launch their MVP, they might make a few
21:38
tweaks based off of client feedback, but it's, it's not
21:41
really anything structured. It's more of a hey, Bill, how's
21:47
it going? Oh, that's that stinks.
21:48
OK. I'll make a note of it instead
21:51
of a longer conversation, which is Bill.
21:53
Can you walk me through how you do that?
21:56
Because it's that discovery process that really leads to
22:00
making the product better, not necessarily a hey, can you add
22:04
this button here? OK, I hear you.
22:09
But we got to dig in deeper and understand why you need that
22:12
button there because there might be a thing that I can do
22:16
downstream here to make that happen easy without you having
22:20
the button. Can we make it happen
22:22
automatically? You know, no button pushes
22:24
whatsoever. We can only understand that
22:26
stuff if we're asking the questions and we're, and we're
22:29
coming back into the discovery mode where, you know, we're
22:32
turning over all the rocks and we're looking underneath and
22:34
saying what's there, you know, yeah, we, we take, we, we will
22:38
glaze over UX a lot of times there's some companies, I'll say
22:41
that do this really, really well and they're very intentional
22:44
with it. And then others that a lot of
22:48
times they're younger, they may not have the resources for it
22:51
too. So it's kind of a it's it's a
22:55
dance, but you have to continually if, if you can't
22:58
hire somebody to come in and help you do this, you need to
23:00
become a student of user experience conducting research
23:05
and asking good product questions that aren't leading.
23:08
Yeah. So that you can enhance your
23:09
product overall. Yeah, for sure, yeah, experience
23:13
and expectations are so, so key for sure.
23:18
And if you can't set the, the good expectations of people are
23:22
making their own expectations and then the user experience is
23:25
not there again, it's just going to be a bad fit and it's it's
23:29
not going to go anywhere. All all necessarily boiling down
23:33
to the the client at the end of the day, right?
23:36
That knowing what they want and how they use it and their
23:39
behaviors. So I've, I can attribute this
23:42
kind of to like we build out systems and processes for
23:45
companies and definitely had this happen where I build
23:49
something. I think it's fantastic, right.
23:51
And then you actually start implemented and realized, ohhh,
23:54
well, no, people don't use it that way or they don't like it
23:57
makes sense for you, right? But when you actually get, you
24:00
know, have to provide this to people that don't have your
24:02
experience or don't have your viewpoint on things.
24:06
Or. Just natural tendencies, like
24:08
you said, because they're they're used to something else.
24:10
It's it, it can easily, easily go awry and, and realizing that
24:15
you need to pivot really quickly.
24:18
You may not pivot, but like implementing and switch things
24:21
up to, to facilitate. So I'm clients and, and be able
24:25
to build something that is useful for them and used by
24:29
them. Make it easier, right?
24:31
Because it's not easy. At the end of the day, they're
24:33
not going to use it. So can you, can you tell us a
24:36
bit about product and leadership?
24:38
And you know what that means in the context of world and how you
24:41
kind of guide the product Rd. maps without bloating.
24:45
You know them with features. I know I've used software where
24:47
it's like as you mentioned, they've got, you know, 100
24:50
different buttons for me to, to click around or different, you
24:54
know, things to open up and it just gets real complicated real
24:59
fast. You talk about.
25:02
So I'll, I'll pick on a client and he'll be OK with this.
25:05
I'm not going to call him out by name or anything, but over the
25:09
time he has been getting phone calls similar to what I kind of
25:12
expressed earlier, which is, hey Bob, how's it going?
25:15
You need a button there. OK, sounds good.
25:18
And then that button gets put in.
25:21
Real product leadership is less about just saying yes to every
25:26
single thing that the client wants or asks for and having a
25:30
more holistic picture, right? Having a more strategic picture.
25:34
It's taking that step back and saying yes, but why?
25:37
And is there a better way for us to get that same result to that
25:40
person without them having to do any steps?
25:44
That would be even better, right?
25:46
Like how can we automate this to where they don't have to do
25:48
anything at all or they don't even have to set it up?
25:51
You can only do that by, you know, taking that time to really
25:54
dig in deep and understand the pain and surreal product
25:58
leadership is not just saying yes to every feature.
26:02
It is culling through and saying what are the top features?
26:06
What are the top things that we can do right now to add the most
26:09
impact? Um, and why this matters,
26:12
especially like who I help with, like that specific, they're
26:16
coming over to the US right over in their market, things operate
26:20
a certain way, but here in the US it might be completely
26:24
different. And so we can't have that same
26:26
approach on both ends on both sides of the pond here, right?
26:30
You know, because everybody in the UK market says they need
26:33
this button and then everybody in the US market says they need
26:36
this button and they're two different buttons and they do
26:39
the same thing. So that product leadership is
26:42
taking both sides of the, of the pond, so to speak, into account.
26:46
Users get to that stage where you are servicing more types
26:51
that mixtures of people. That's where it starts to get
26:53
even more complex. You can see that within large
26:55
companies like Procore, like they've got entire teams
26:59
dedicated to just focusing in on what enhancements can we make to
27:06
this product so that it makes the maximum impact for the, for
27:10
the most number of people. And when you're young in the
27:14
game, it can often get overlooked and you can just be
27:17
the yes man or yes yes woman saying yes to every single
27:20
feature request. Real product leadership coming
27:24
back to great. Why is that important to you?
27:28
And at the end of the day, I think most of the time I'll see
27:32
softwares that, you know, get launched.
27:35
And I'm sure you've seen this, too.
27:36
You kind of expressed that before, which is like, you hand
27:38
it off to somebody. You built this really cool
27:41
thing. You thought it would be an
27:42
amazing idea. Like you were sold out on it and
27:45
handed over to the person that was your end user.
27:47
And they go, yeah, but why? Right.
27:50
So we got to start having, we're going back to Simon Cynic.
27:53
You know, we got to start with why.
27:54
We got to understand what is the purpose of this thing and is
27:57
there a better way that we could solve it with it with
27:59
pre-existing tools? You know, can we do this with a
28:02
monday.com versus having to build a bespoke system to do
28:05
this one task or a quick base or this that and the other.
28:09
And so a lot of times challenging people on is that
28:13
really necessary? Like is it, is it really
28:16
necessary? And you'll, you'll get to the
28:19
bottom of things just by challenging people and asking
28:21
why not in a mean way, but in a kind like I just want to
28:25
understand way. So real product leadership just
28:30
continually asks why? It continually talks to the
28:33
clients. It continues to talk to people
28:36
outside of their client base. And it takes user experience
28:40
into account. And it's very hard and it takes
28:43
a lot of work and a lot of time to get to the bottom of
28:47
everything. It's a lot of recording calls
28:49
and reviewing calls and better understanding what people are
28:53
saying and seeing all the different trends and data points
28:55
within. That's why if you're a CEO and
28:58
you're the one doing it, it's not something that you should do
29:01
long term because it is so challenging to keep up with all.
29:05
You need some help. It doesn't mean that you can't
29:08
make decisions, but you need somebody to be in the weeds
29:10
there to help you understand here is what people are
29:14
expressing and here is why we should look at prioritizing
29:18
these things. And here's why we should spend
29:21
money here, not here. So hopefully that helps you kind
29:26
of understand the product leadership side or it's it's
29:29
just refining what we're putting on our road map.
29:31
And yeah, I mean, it comes the road map comes from those
29:36
discovery conversations. We have to figure out what it is
29:39
that people want. And then we need to start
29:41
mapping that out and saying, all right, here's how we're going to
29:43
get there. Yeah, yeah, for sure that as you
29:47
mentioned that that process of taking the complex and and
29:52
making it simple and deciding, you know, prioritizing where
29:55
we're going to focus, what are we going to do.
29:56
I've seen some software that's really good at this where, you
30:01
know, construction industry is very complex and there's lots of
30:04
different types of GC's and, and builders and all this stuff.
30:09
And it becomes very easy to kind of like we want to include
30:13
everybody. So we, we add like all these
30:15
features and all this stuff and it just kind of becomes a mess.
30:19
Whereas if you know, other software where you can see there
30:21
are very intentional about, yes, it might be nice to have this,
30:25
but really it's only going to serve maybe 10% of our client
30:27
base. So to keep the other 90% happy
30:31
or keep things streamlined, you know, we're not going to include
30:33
this and, and being intentional with those kind of decisions as
30:36
well that, you know, just having the Swiss Army knife of, you
30:40
know, whatever isn't always what you need when you when you need
30:45
to, you know, maybe cut some wires, something you're not
30:47
going to be using the, you know, everything under the sun.
30:50
So, yeah, as far as, you know, texts of texts awash with, you
30:56
know, buzzwords and, and myths and things like this, any, any
30:59
that you're tired of hearing of or.
31:02
How much time do you have? I think the the the main one
31:06
that has been on my list for years is Game changer.
31:10
This is game changing. That is really just kind of
31:15
irritating because 999.9999% of the time it's really not a game
31:23
changer for many people. Most of the time, that's
31:26
marketing, hype, game changers. That's final answer.
31:31
That's the one. For sure, Like I can appreciate
31:36
that for sure. I know I've probably got a
31:37
YouTube video to you that's got game changer on it.
31:40
I'm sure we all do. For sure overused.
31:43
And yeah, so true that there's there's really few things that
31:49
are complete game changer, you know, in in the full sense of
31:52
the word, definitely. So, you know, it's been a
31:57
recurring theme here, but starting like, can you maybe
32:02
talk about a situation or client where they've started to build
32:07
this solution, what have you, but didn't really understand
32:11
maybe the problem or weren't like maybe once they got into
32:15
it, they realized that they weren't like they didn't have
32:19
the right problem or that they were unsure about what the
32:23
problem actually was. Does that make sense?
32:26
Yeah, No, that makes sense. You know, I've done some
32:29
exploration with some very, very young like seed level startups
32:35
that are still trying to figure out what their product is even
32:38
before they build it. I guess that would be more
32:41
classified as like pre seed. And so I know I was working with
32:45
these guys, golly, probably at the beginning of the year, we're
32:49
doing some interviews with some superintendents and at
32:54
mechanical, electrical and plumbing companies.
32:56
And they, it was interesting because these guys came in with
32:58
their assumptions and thinking that they had it nailed.
33:01
Like, this is what we're going to build and it's going to be
33:04
great. And watching the superintendents
33:06
give the feedback, completely obliterate any of the ideas that
33:12
they had floating around there. It's it's kind of fun to watch,
33:18
you know, just kind of, I guess it's a little bit sadistic on my
33:22
end, but it is kind of fun to watch.
33:24
You know, these superintendents crushed dreams.
33:28
But, you know, it was, it was as simple as like it was a voice
33:31
function on an app And it was, hey, what if we allowed you to
33:36
speak to this and it would do XYZ, right.
33:39
And hearing the Superintendent just Yeah, no, no, I wouldn't
33:45
use that. No, because it's noisy out on
33:48
site. It's loud now.
33:52
OK, there's some argument there that could be made on the tech
33:55
side. Maybe there are some microphones
33:57
and different things like that that could actually overcome
33:59
that. Maybe the superintendents
34:00
weren't, you know, they. But I think it was a confidence
34:03
thing. It's if I can't hear myself
34:06
talking, they're talking to this thing.
34:10
There's like a level of almost assurance that they need, right?
34:14
It's there. They need to be reassured that
34:16
they that they said the right thing or that it made sense.
34:20
Because I mean, if you're trying to speak over having earplugs
34:24
in, that can be a little bit weird, right?
34:27
And so there's just little instances where it was a young
34:30
startup. They had assumptions and we did
34:32
some interviews with some professionals and it broke their
34:35
assumptions and it was kind of fun to watch.
34:38
And as part of exploration, right?
34:40
It's part of trying to find your focus, which is you come in with
34:44
a hypothesis and then you gotta beat the snot out of it and and
34:49
hope for the best. I'm hoping that stands the test
34:51
of time, but you can't lead people to it.
34:53
You have to. You have to leave it open.
34:57
Yeah, for sure. I think I know I'm guilty of
35:01
this where sometimes you, you kind of feel you understand the
35:05
problem and you jump to a solution, but really you got to
35:09
kind of give the problem some space and, and like, you know,
35:13
what's the problem, What's the problems around the problem?
35:16
You know, is this the the right problem?
35:18
And, and it's as contractors and guys and whatever, you know, we
35:23
want to fix it, right? There's a problem, we fix it,
35:25
right. But realizing that sometimes you
35:28
need to like kind of get some better understanding to make
35:31
sure you're fixing the right thing or actually building a
35:34
solution that's going to work. This is where you you pointed
35:37
out there. I'm so guilty of this too.
35:40
I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll call myself out here, Derek.
35:42
I am so guilty of just assuming that I understand the problem
35:46
and just start, I just start talking.
35:49
And I had to have a couple people call me out and be like,
35:53
listen, you need to listen better.
35:56
And so I'm coming from this from the standpoint of being a, you
36:01
know, just an absolute yapper. Like you put me in a room by
36:04
myself, I'll be completely entertained.
36:06
I can have conversations with myself all day.
36:10
I'll just, I'll just start yapping about stuff.
36:13
And I've really had to get better at that overtime, which
36:16
is listen, the, the, the gold comes from listening.
36:23
It doesn't come through talking, right?
36:25
And there's a lot of wisdom and, and that is old wisdom that has
36:30
been passed down from generation to generation.
36:32
But it's easy to forget. And especially when you, you
36:35
know, you started a podcast six years ago, right?
36:38
And I literally trained myself to just keep talking and just
36:42
keep talking and keep talking. And you get really good at that,
36:45
that you almost forget to shut up and listen.
36:49
And I think that's like, at the core, it's like, if I could give
36:52
it found or any advice, it's, you know, just be slow, slow,
36:56
slow to talk and very quickly. And I know I'm guilty of that.
37:02
So just take that for what it's worth.
37:04
Yeah, great, great advice. So with any business, but
37:10
especially tech churn is is a huge deal.
37:14
Can you talk about how you kind of plan I guess to reduce churn
37:21
or or what a business can do in order to kind of provide long
37:28
term value and and continue to service or provide products to a
37:33
client and for the long term? So I think I spoke to a couple
37:39
people about a month ago and they were they were expressing
37:43
and a concern around turn was really interesting because their
37:49
close rate was super high, like they were closing deals left and
37:53
right. That is because they're
37:55
excellent at marketing, excellent, very professional at
37:59
that, amazing at marketing. They're amazing at branding.
38:02
They're amazing at their messaging and everything, man.
38:05
They would get people through the door.
38:07
They would sell them on this vision that they had for a
38:09
product and they were buying like you're close rate was like
38:14
above 50%. They were killing, killing.
38:17
They're like, yeah, but we're worried, like really worried
38:20
about our churn. You start digging into the
38:22
issues here and you realize that the vision of the product was
38:28
really feel good, right? It felt good on paper, but then
38:35
you start digging in a little bit deeper and you realize, yes,
38:38
but what is the return on that investment for the person that
38:42
purchased it? And what is the return on
38:45
investment for that person's employees who will be forced to
38:53
use it? What is that ROI for them?
38:57
And the answer was, we don't know.
39:02
Maybe it's this, maybe it's that.
39:04
But again, it's maybe it's this, maybe it's that.
39:07
It's a feel good story and so I think that can contribute to
39:12
churn. It's that you can sell like
39:16
really well, like these guys, but you can still have a
39:18
cheering problem in the back. At the end of the day, the thing
39:21
that reduces churn is consistently talking to your
39:26
clients about what they need, right?
39:28
So that's number one. But beyond that, having a better
39:32
sense of how do they make more money as a result of doing
39:37
business with us and using our technology?
39:41
Because if you can't answer, here is how much money I am
39:45
saving you by you implementing this system or here is what I am
39:51
preventing like a a massive expenditure because of of a
39:56
safety thing of a friend who. He does VR training for concrete
40:03
trucks, concrete truck drivers to prevent the truck from
40:08
turning over like when they're in a turn, when it's full, it's
40:11
very top heavy. And if you take a corner too
40:14
fast, it can flip and massive, massive insurance risk.
40:19
And that I think he quoted me up to, it was a half a million to
40:26
$1,000,000 or more of, of spend that could potentially come from
40:32
one of those incidents. And so he was able to go in and
40:35
say, listen, I'll train your guys for 5000 bucks and you
40:39
could prevent maybe $1,000,000 worth of risk.
40:44
And so that to them is like, OK, $1,000,000 and $5000.
40:49
That's a drop in the bucket on what I could spend.
40:53
So I'm going to, I'm going to take some prevention or take
40:55
some preventative measures here to keep that from happening.
40:58
And so a lot of times though, and that's that's kind of a one
41:03
off case, but a lot of times back to, you know, that that
41:07
other group that I was talking about with their product who
41:09
sold like crazy, they're kind of they're great at marketing.
41:14
But man, when it gets down to that thing functioning and, and
41:18
stuff, actually, you know what, it actually functions really
41:20
well. It, it looks really pretty, but
41:24
there's really no value that people are getting out of it
41:27
other than feel good. And so man, you got to dig
41:30
beyond just the the, IT has to be this like really holistic
41:36
picture overall like it has to be marketed well, it has to look
41:40
really good. It has to bring ROI that our has
41:44
to have an ROI for the buyer. And if you're not getting those
41:49
those elements in place, actually, you know what I'm
41:53
going to, I'm going to pull that back a little bit.
41:55
If you provide ROI, even if it doesn't look good, even if you
42:01
don't market it well, you're still gonna win.
42:04
If you show that you have a return on the investment, that
42:07
people when they buy you, that you will give them money back as
42:11
a result of XYZ. I've seen really crummy looking
42:16
products do really well because they had their fingers on the
42:20
pulse of the knees. But the companies that really
42:25
kill it are the ones that can do all three of those.
42:27
They can market it well, they can brand and talk about it
42:30
clearly, and they do deliver an ROI.
42:33
And those 3 rarely come together.
42:37
I think those are probably the biggest companies that are out
42:39
there that can do that really well.
42:42
Yeah, they've they've got that whole engine working for them
42:45
from from top to bottom. And it takes time.
42:48
As far as, yeah, as far as churn goes, like I think as you become
42:53
more experienced or mature in as an entrepreneur, you start to
42:58
realize that like obviously the branding, marketing super
43:02
incredibly important in sales. But ultimately that's just going
43:06
to be a hamster wheel unless you actually have a good product
43:09
that people are going to use long term and are going to come
43:12
back to buy from you again and again, right?
43:13
Because then you're kind of throwing all that marketing and
43:16
sales and and energy kind of out the window if they're just
43:20
purchased once and then they're never going to talk to you
43:22
again. So I'll, I'll throw this in
43:25
there. Their solution at the at the
43:27
moment of speaking to them was we need more sales.
43:32
Yeah, they saw churn and they said we need more sales.
43:37
We need to get more people through the door.
43:41
Pause. Awesome.
43:43
Why are you not keeping the ones that you have?
43:47
That needs to be the bigger question here.
43:49
Why man it and and it's it's it's stinks too because you can
43:56
get caught up in that vanity metric of like, Oh yeah, we had
44:00
like 50 leads come through the door and we closed like all
44:04
fifty of them. It feels really good but OK,
44:07
great. But we had a hundred of them
44:08
churn out last last week, right? Like we're going backwards.
44:12
What's happening? So you can really accelerate
44:17
your growth by just not just focusing in on the sales, but
44:21
servicing the clients that you already have and making sure
44:24
that you're delivering value for them.
44:25
That was a I'm going to use the word that was the game changer
44:29
for me, which was not just trying to sell the next thing.
44:34
Focus on the one that you have and make that word of mouth
44:38
spread by doing good, by doing good work.
44:40
Same thing in service businesses as it is for software, hardware
44:47
businesses, technology businesses do good work for the
44:50
few that you have and they will carry you to the next ones and
44:54
then we're going forward. Yeah, super important concept
45:00
there for sure of of recognizing that the turn kind of ratio and
45:04
how important that is for for a business.
45:07
Now I've seen a lot of new startups, they're coming more
45:11
and more prevalent, I think with especially on the software side,
45:16
but product side as well. It seems, you know, there's so
45:19
many little niches and products coming out and softwares and you
45:23
know, I mean the space. So I see a lot of them.
45:26
What, how would you approach someone who's like they're fed
45:31
up, maybe they're contractor or or in the industry, they found a
45:35
problem, bothered them for a long time.
45:38
They're like, I want to build some product for this or
45:40
software. How do you suggest they they get
45:44
started in that process and and get into into the space?
45:48
Don't tell people, ask people. Don't tell people what the
45:52
problem is. I think especially if you're
45:54
coming out of the industry, you think you know the problem,
45:56
which, hey, you probably do. I'll give you that credit.
45:59
You probably do know what the problem is, but you need to.
46:03
This is an insurance policy, this rule, which is I'm not
46:08
going to come and try to sell you on this idea, but I am going
46:12
to ask you questions to make sure it's also a problem for
46:16
you. So if I'm building a software
46:19
solution for me because I have this problem, here's the deal.
46:24
I need to make sure that it's also happening for other people,
46:27
not just me in my one company, right?
46:31
Because there's a lot of variance out there.
46:33
So you need to put your ego at the door and you need to say
46:38
listen, I'm I'm going to listen. I'm going to go out and I'm
46:42
going to ask Jim Bob over here. I'm going to go ask Tina over
46:48
there. What is your experience with X?
46:53
How often does that happen? Make sure that you get the data
46:57
points that it's happening for them too.
47:01
So what I'd say as well to learn how to do that, and I would
47:06
recommend that mom test book that I mentioned.
47:10
So look up the mom test as like a great product resource of like
47:14
here's how we need to think about our products and how we're
47:17
setting them up foundationally for success.
47:19
Second to that for like, go to market and how you're going to
47:23
focus is crossing the chasm. Jeffrey Moore, if you can do
47:30
those two things, you're going to be setting yourself up for
47:34
really a really solid path forward.
47:37
I'll stay and 90% of the technology founders out there
47:45
sort of look kind of those core things they think they
47:47
understand and I'll kind of pick on the contractor a bit.
47:55
I think, I think a lot of times, you know, let's say a kid comes
48:01
out of out of school, wants to build a construction technology
48:04
solution. They're curious, they're going
48:08
to ask the questions and they're actually a little less prone to
48:14
assuming then the construction person who knows everything.
48:22
And so I think there's a bit of, and I, I gotta say, I was, I, I
48:27
kind of got, I, I, I got pushed back on this idea for a while.
48:32
I was like, Oh no, it needs to be the people that are coming
48:34
from construction. Like there's benefit to that,
48:36
but there's ego that comes with coming out of construction too,
48:39
thinking that, you know, the solution to everything.
48:41
And I had to combat this as well.
48:44
It's OK. Great.
48:45
You have that understanding of how the industry works.
48:48
That is a massive weapon in the arsenal, but that can also be
48:54
your biggest reason for a flop is because you think you know
48:59
everything. You don't.
49:02
You need to ask. Yeah, one of the hardest things
49:06
is is getting rid of your ego and sometimes a apprentices mind
49:11
you know is is best suited sometimes to express.
49:14
Things and. A very straightforward way
49:17
without all the, you know, past experience or the hard headed,
49:22
you know, I have been in the industry for 30 years and I know
49:26
how everything works, right? Yeah.
49:28
So, so very true. Perfect.
49:31
Thanks so much time for coming on.
49:32
For everybody out there that wants to connect with you, we'll
49:35
put the website for field proof in the description of this, you
49:39
know, video, audio, wherever you're watching, you're
49:41
listening. Go check out the website.
49:43
How should people reach out if they want to connect with you or
49:46
or learn more about the work that you do with field proof?
49:48
Yeah. So you can get a field proof dot
49:51
IO initially get checked that out or focused right now, cuz
49:56
focus is everything is we're focusing on companies that are
49:58
overseas that are looking to come to the US.
50:02
They're looking to bring their their product to the US market.
50:07
But outside of that, if you just want to reach out for a coffee
50:10
chat, have a have a have a yap together, you can look me up on
50:14
LinkedIn. Tyler Campbell over there.
50:17
I'm the dude in a hard hat. Pretty, pretty easy spot.
50:21
So. Perfect description.
50:24
Definitely check out Field proof.
50:26
Reach out to or Tyler here if you're interested in learning
50:30
more. And thanks so much for coming on
50:32
here. You've been a wealth of
50:33
knowledge and experience and insight.
50:36
So yeah, really appreciate you coming on today.
50:38
Thanks so much, Derek.