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003 - Ron Carlson · The Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast

• paul: Welcome in to the Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast. Soon to be the world's number one concrete podcast. And this episode is brought to you by Command Alcon. Celebrating 50 years of innovation in the concrete industry, they're always doing what's best to look out for the heavy building industry. If you would like to learn more, please visit them at commando.com. 50 years is incredible. Look, I celebrate any company that's got 50 years in any business because that means you survived at least three generations going down and this and the company's still going strong. But what I found most interesting about Command Alcon when I was talking to their VP, Trevor Panis, was he reminded me that it's not just 50 years as a business, it's 50 years as a software company. Software, think about software 1976. What what did that look like? Pump putting punch cards in a mainframe? What are we doing here? So to be around that long as a software company and still be doing what they're doing, it is the most rarefied air of all rarefied air. So congratulations, Command Alcon, for being such an amazing company and making it this far. Thank you for supporting this episode of the Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast. With that, we'll move in to the first order of business, guys. I want I love doing this first segment of the show, right? So the for those of you that are new listeners and you're just coming in and maybe you didn't listen to the old podcast that we had and you're just tuning in for the first time here, just the way we like to organize it is to have a a front section with me, sometimes another person, and we'll go through some of the current events or hot topics and thoughts of the day and expound on some of those things and what we're seeing in the business. And then after that, we get into our interview, which is the main guest, and they come in with a point of view of the industry from whatever company they're at and what they're seeing, what they think is interesting, and we just have a chat around. For today, our guest is actually from the title sponsor, Command Alcon. Ron Carlson comes in. He's freaking awesome. His experience is incredible. Not a whole lot of guys running out there. They got 10 years as like truck driver level stuff, 10 years as a QC guy, 10 years in sales, 10 years in operations and batching. And he puts it all together and has a really nice view of the industry. And then to take that view of the industry and then work for a company like Command Alcon and be customer first. Is is super interesting. And and how he even got introduced to Command Alcon and got his role is just a fascinating story. So you everybody'll have to forgive him for being a Chicago Bears fan. Look, I can't help that. That's just who he is. But how he got to command and what he's leading over there is really fascinating. So I look forward to you guys hearing that conversation with Ron Carlson. And before we get to that, we're gonna have a chat about stuff that's in the news. The When you when you start looking at sites like construction dive and concrete products and you sort of see what's out there, what's being advertised and what's being written about, some of it's interesting, some of it's not. I'm interested in a lot of the mergers and acquisitions that are happening right now, but I think I'm gonna save that for the next episode. this episode, I've got to go back again and we have to touch on something about the the data centers. We've mentioned it. you know, a little bit in the first episode, a tiny bit in the second episode. but I've got a little bit more up close and personal with these things. And I just kept thinking and thinking and think I just couldn't get it out of my head about these about these data centers. And the question that I keep coming back to is are people behaving rationally about data center construction? Are people behaving rationally about data center construction? And the answer is I don't know if they are. And that goes for both the positive and the negative. But we have to live in rational space. Folks listen to this are primarily in the concrete business. Can't live in fantasy land in the concrete business. We're pouring mud, it's hard work, things gotta go right. That's concrete. And What kind of tipped me off about things not being rational is I have personal experience in my personal life of dealing with folks who had severe mental illness. And I saw a a therapist one time. I literally had one visit with the guy, he changed my whole perspective on life, didn't even have to go back. that's it. I'm fixed. Thank you. And when I was questioning Reality. It was like, why would someone behave in a way that is completely opposite of how they used to behave and how they proclaim they want to behave and have responsibilities in life that you think would preclude you from behaving the way they're behaving? He said something phenomenal. He said, You can't rationalize an irrational mind. That was the most profound thing. It has guided me so many times in my life when I'm sitting here thinking, what is the going on? And yeah, that's right. You can't rationalize an irrational mind. So as I see people who are so totally for AI and so totally against AI, and then it sort of comes to to into our world, the construction side. And I just have to ask myself, are these people behaving rationally? Do I have to try to rationalize an irrational mind? And it I I it it came to a head that all this thinking came to a head last week when I was traveling. I I was on a data center site. And due to NDA's, you can't go out and say where you were and who you were with and what you were doing. But I can tell you that I saw an operating data center. And it was so clean and so quiet, I didn't even think it was turned on. And all the people that I've talked to around the country that had all these things to say about data centers, it was always negative. Nobody had a positive thing to say. Now I listen and read to positive things about AI and data centers, but No like a real person that I've met in the flesh has ever said anything nice. I got we're gonna go through this in a minute on some of the arguments around these data centers and what may be rational, what may be not. And the first, you know, when I thought about are they being rational, I I kind of bucketed the argument into four pillars. And the first pillar was the argument against. Physical construction. So these are the people that are not in my backyard. You know, they're they don't want this data center anywhere near them. And I and I think this is the most visceral of all the pillars of the argument. here in my local town, we have an old steel facility. It cliffs owns the property. The building is not being used for really anything, it's just a storage site. Think about converting it into a data center site, sitting right by the river, so there's water. You're thinking, great. Easy access to water. We got lots of power here. You can build a small data center. It'd be a small one, too. It's not even a big one. Build a small one here. Be fantastic. my gosh. The organized opposition to this is absolutely unbelievable. And and they they put a flyer in my door trying to tell me it literally reads the tragic effects of data centers, the real cost to our communities, our health, and our future. And it is 60%. Points of why data centers are horrible and you don't want them in your community. Now, I I just could not believe that someone took the time to make this, and I don't know that it's even grounded in reality. I, you know, it's got it says that there's a lot of noise and the noise. is all all the time. And I talked to somebody in person one time said, you can hear it from three miles away. Well, I'm here to tell you that's that's not true. I was on a site and there's zero zero no I didn't even know if the thing was turned on. Zero noise. it's gonna destroy the the groundwater. Well I don't know if you know anything about the construction of these things, but they're using recycled water. So they're using minimal actual fresh water at all. much less than any farm or any golf course or anything else. So very, very minimal water. Immense damage to local roads. Why? Why? Why would why would that happen? Why would there be immense damage to local roads? I s it's some really silly stuff, but they get really deep into the negatives of the construction of this data center. So they're They're totally against it. Totally against it says it's gonna ruin your quality of life, increase cancer, contaminate the soil, hazardous materials, destroys agriculture. I mean, guys, I I don't know how much of this is true. It's certainly not true here in the town that I'm in, and it wasn't true on the site that I visited. So they're arguing against it. And for me, you know, my bias is toward the construction of these centers. Not just because of the SCM that we're manufacturing that's going to lower the embodied carbon of the concrete dramatically and at scale, but it's also because I like seeing construction jobs going on. I like things seeing things get built up and I like using artificial intelligence to make me better at what I do. So it's a net positive, and it's really not even close to me. To me, it's not even it's not even close. In fact, I saw an article written by the co-founder of Deep Mind, Google's Deep Mind. This guy was basically started the whole like quest to try to get to artificial general intelligence. And and I think he summed it up really nicely. And I'm gonna read what Demi had to say here. if deployed responsibly, AI would prove to be one of the most beneficial and transformative technologies ever invented. Artificial general intelligence cannot be compared to standard technological breakthroughs, not even ones as consequential as the internet or mobile technology. It is much more akin to the discovery of electricity or fire. If you stop to think about it, we've essentially found a way to make sand think, and it's miraculous. And and I I agree with that. I agree a hundred percent with that. is there always going to be Is there always going to be some type of downsides to a new technology? Maybe when the cars were invented, suddenly, you know, horse drawn carriages went out, guys who were farriers to horses struggled. but I don't I don't think like on the whole, anybody would ever say, Well, I wish we'd never invented a car to mess up the horse farrier. I also think with artificial general intelligence, you're not looking at the replacement of all human work, you're democratizing knowledge. And in order to democratize knowledge, which means we would make it available to everyone, regardless of your education level, regardless of your background, of any social class, you would have access to an elite knowledge worker. And anytime you can do that, now you've got people who have different perspectives and different ideas and different ways of working that that can then use knowledge To either create their idea, spur them on to the next step and and help them. When I went back to school and got my MBA from Villanova, one of the reasons I was so drawn to get that, for those that don't know, I tell it quickly. I had been promoted to a new role, a bit higher role, and was managing some stuff. And the new CEO came in and he was asking all these questions, asked me to give a re report on state of the division. And I and I did that state of the division. And he looked at me like I had three eyes. And he said, What the heck is this? I was like, it's what you asked for, you know, stated of it. And he was like, No, no, no, no. This is not at all what I wanted. And he said, Here's what I need. I need I need listed out like these 21 things. I was like, great. So I went. I was like, I can, you know, I can compile that report. I get all that together for you. Boom, boom, boom, put it all together, showed it to him. Looked at me again like I was insane. And I was like, This is what you asked for. He's like, No, this is not at all what I wanted. He started asking me all these questions. And I thought I was answering him, but it was like he was speaking Chinese and I was speaking English and we just were getting nowhere. And I felt so like so inadequate. I mean, dumb is like the right word, but it was just I wasn't equipped with the right language, the right knowledge, the right tools. I was like, I don't ever want to feel like that again. So I went and got an MBA and It was part of it was learning how to talk. But then the second part of it was about learning to write ask the right questions. I would sit with we had a guy in our company, David Copley, and he works in for the government now. I think he's in Secretary Bergram's like right hand man or something. You know, he's that type of guy. Smartest guy I've ever met in my life. Like brilliant beyond brilliant. And I noticed he was asking like certain questions, and then when I'd see him again You know, three months later and he'd ask have something else. He'd have like another set of questions. And sometimes he'd repeat some of those questions. And I realized like, I didn't even know to ask the questions he was asking. And so to get to go to business school also helped me learn what questions to ask so that I could solve the the challenges and problems that were in front of me. And I I say all that because that was pre-AI. Now with some of these AI models, When I encounter a problem and I go to it, I don't try to get it to solve my problem for me. I go to it and I tell it what questions do I need to be asking so that I can properly solve this problem? What questions do I need to be asking so I can evaluate this opportunity? What questions do I need to be asking so that when the engineer of record comes to me and says, your product, you know, I need to evaluate it for use in this job. Am I gonna put my stamp on it? Well, what questions do Is he going to be asking me? And I can prepare myself so that I can have the answer so I can go in the right direction, at least. And the ability to know what to even ask is such a huge leg up. And then to draft things for you and help you, it is such if you're a person of high agency, you should be absolutely crushing in the world of agentic AI. And so Beyond the arguments for or against physical construction, there's an argument right now about who's benefiting from the AI. So that would be the second pillar of this discussion, this argument about the data centers is who's benefiting from AI? Is it the trillionaire on paper, the head of SpaceX, or is it guys that are and gals that are leading small businesses that are the backbone of this country? Because if you're a small business owner, there is never Enough time of the day. You are the marketing department, you are the sales department, you are the operations department, you're having to manage people in crises. There is never enough time of the day. If at any moment you can go into AI and start telling it, have a relationship with an agentic agent. I don't mean the free version of Chat GPT. I mean the paid versions, get an agentic system. Find a harness you like. Yeah, it takes a little effort to figure out what all those weird words mean. But once you get it figured out, you essentially lay out the function of the business. Here's what I do. Here's what I'm trying to do. Here are the steps that I take to get there. What am I doing? What could I be doing better? What am I doing wrong? What are the things I'm missing that I didn't even know I should have? You know, I it, you know, but it's it's just it will walk you through it. And if you're a high agency person that says, well, I wanted a a CRM, but Salesforce is gonna charge me a thousand dollars a month for all the bells and whistles that I need to make this work and function. But I'm a small business, I I can't pay you a thousand dollars a month. That'd be the most expensive thing. I most expensive recurring bill that's not, you know, part of the plant. And I I just can't do that. Well, now you can just do it yourself. You can build a CRM with all the bells and whistles. Piece by piece, you do it all at once, do it piece by piece, however you want to do. And there's no ongoing maintenance fee. There's no ongoing subscription. As many people as you want can log into this thing totally secure. As secure as you want to make it, actually, with tiered access. And all your stuff is where you need it to be. Cost you twenty bucks, maybe, thirty. By the time you put all the bells and whistles on it, maybe you spent two hundred dollars and never an ongoing fee. I mean, it took It takes like an afternoon to get it done because what you're trying to do is describe what you need. And if you know what you need, it helps. And if you don't know what you need, you ask the questions. What do I need? And it walks you through. It's the most incredible thing. So to unlock knowledge for folks of all class backgrounds, democratize that knowledge, you get into the hands of small businesses, high agency people are going to win because. It used to be a huge gate to even know what question to ask, and then another gate to be able to execute and answer those questions. So we're in an age of knowledge abundance for folks that are willing to seek it. And in order to keep that going, we're gonna need data center construction. The third pillar of the argument where I'm wondering if people are being rational or rational or irrational about data center construction. It is the argument against digital surveillance. This is one where I think I gotta give it to the other team. This is one where I'm not sure I'm in the right. I'm just not sure. I'm not sure. if you are following any news stories on this type of topic, there's a company called Flock that makes digital cameras that are connected to AI learning algorithms. And if there's a flock camera in your or it wouldn't just be one, there would be a host of flock cameras in your city. They can tag vehicle license plates, run them back against the DMV, they can scan facial recognition, they can see people and they recognize who's committing crimes. They give that to the cops. Cops go out and start their investigation. So on the negative perception of that, sounds like some awful Skynet type of thing. On the positive side of that, my car got hit in a parking lot a month ago. And when I came out and the you know, there was nobody there. I was like, my gosh, like somebody hit me. I was in there for an hour. I came out, there's my whole driver's side doors jacked up. Call the police. Police come out and they're like, see who did it? It's like, no, I was shopping and come out and now my my car's jacked up. And I said, okay. Well, good news is we got cameras around this town. So we might find out who did it. Cause we knew exactly it was within like a one hour time frame. And sure enough, cameras that were monitoring that parking lot, plus cameras that were monitoring around the city caught the exact car that did the damage. Turned out they hit my truck. Sorry, hit my car, and then we're like, whoops, and then went and reparked somewhere else. after hitting me while pulling in. Like, whoops, didn't mean to do that. Went just chose another parking spot. So is that behavior a little bit psychotic? Yes. would I have ever found that person without these flock type cameras? No. We wouldn't have. But they were able to track them down. Got their insurance. Car's getting repaired next week. So that would be like the positive side of it. And you would so so I I I'm benefiting from that type of technology. Again, so it puts me on the bias side, but Let's take it out of the local communities and giving the police force a hand up on investigating crimes. Then you get to companies like Palantir. Giant, huge, scary word to especially to friends like mine. And really it probably would have been for me too, normally. And this is where I kind of give them maybe maybe I have to really concede the argument on this. The Palantir is a company that built digital services for the military and the United States government. And when AI really these LLMs really became advanced and AI technologies started growing, that one of the things they did was they were able to map all the government systems one to the other. And so when Doge came in, they tried to do the same thing and and they realized that so like social security was a giant vector for everything and everything just calls back to social security. But if you're in in the AI world, they have a phrase garbage in, garbage out. So if the data that you're putting into the model is trash, the output's always going to be trash. And so they realized that if the social security numbers couldn't be verified, but there was a social security number registered, but they couldn't verify that it was an actual person or it wasn't a duplicate or that it should even be there, then it you couldn't detect that like, hey, the Medicaid pay payment that's going out to that particular social security number is a good payment or a fraud payment. You just couldn't tell because you couldn't see that that social security number was good or bad. So they were trying to go in and say, All right, well, that'll let's try and verify that. Well, Palantir's doing s that, but like on the military side, where it's like, okay, DHS, law enforcement all their law enforcement operations could connect their technologies to all the civilian databases that are out there and cross reference you with some profile that they've gathered. If you've used AI, you know that's not always right. So do you want the government being able to dig into all of your digital identifiable personal information? I don't know. I don't know. I don't think I do. I really don't think I want that. we're gonna be able to stop that. Well, if you stop data kit center construction, yeah. Yeah, there's a chance. There's a chance. That you stop those systems from being as powerful as they otherwise could be? Or you make someone have to make a decision, a trade-off. Are we going to use the capacity that we do have to accelerate business and technology? Or are we going to use this to spy on our civilian population? So I think there's a really good argument there from what I would call the other side. Of maybe anti-data center side, because I'm on the pro-data center side. and I have to say that the argument against digital surveillance is is pretty strong. The fourth pillar of this argument can some can really have some scope creep. So I'm gonna try and do my very best to stick to our rule. If you're new to this podcast, we have two rules: you don't curse and you don't talk politics. This is not a place to talk politics. We do sometimes talk policies. but and frameworks, because sometimes that impacts us as an industry, but we are we do not care who you voted for. there is an argument by some on the data center construction. They try to they try to bring it in to say that it's an argument against a capitalist society's adoption of AI. A capitalist society's adoption of AI. So What would that look like? I in order to steel man their argument, I try to I try to like throw it in reverse, right? So if you're a fan of and I if you're listening to this and you're in construction, you most likely are. You're a business owner. If you're listening to this, you're probably a business owner you would like to be, or you're you have you're a high agency person running a QC department. You know, nobody's looking over your shoulder. You're out there doing your job on a job site at four o'clock in the morning. Because you're supposed to do that, because what you said you would do, you're that type of person. So capitalism likely appeals to you more than some other economic or socioeconomic system. But let's say for the sake of this argument, we're gonna flip it around, and we are all cap fans of capitalism, but I totally flip it around and say it's a communist society's adoption of AI. So If you were in a communist society and they suddenly were supercharged and superpowered to know exactly what you have, what you own, and what they want to confiscate. They want to seize the means of production, but now they know exactly what to do, where to go, how to do it, well, I I wouldn't be a fan of that. so let's say you're not anti-capitalism, but you're worried that unchecked or supercharged capitalism might be might pose a threat to the country. And I I don't necessarily fall in that camp, but I'm trying to steel man their argument, right? So a capitalist society's adoption of AI. One of the things that people will point immediately to are these massive IPOs. So SpaceX just had one, there's probably going to be one for open AI, which is a weird situation because it was supposed to be a nonprofit. and then anthropic people who make clawed. they're also looking at having an IPO, maybe even by the end of this year. All three of those companies could be trillion dollar IPOs. We've never had that. Now the value of money is a little bit less. So what's a trillion dollars a day wasn't a trillion dollars before, but a trillion dollars is insane, and we're about to have three of them in a 12 month span. that's that's crazy. That's a lot of money. Where's this capital coming from? Where where's the capital that's funding the listing of these companies onto the stock market? A trillion dollars? That's a lot of money. And the government hadn't been printing new bills lately. They did five years ago. They ain't printed a bunch lately. But why, you know, why would a company even want to go public? If you're familiar with the difference between accounting on a private company and a public company, they're not even close. When you're when you're a private company, you can plan for the future. You can invest and do things that are going to benefit the company five years, ten years down the road. When you're a public company, you file quarterly earnings and you better be doing what's good for the stakeholders and the shareholders in the immediate in the immediate future. If you want to do stuff long term, You have to sort of combine it. You have to say, all right, here's what we're doing today that's very valuable for you, Mr. Shareholder. And here's what we're doing in the future. You really gotta justify all that spending. When it's private, you just justify it to the board. And not that that's always easy, but the a board of 10 people is gonna be way easier than the collective shareholders. Like say you had 20 million shareholders. So why would anybody go through and change the philosophy of how they're gonna manage the accounting of their company, the reporting of their company. Well funding. You need funding. And the private markets are the amount of money available in the private market is a fraction of what's available in the public markets. And in order to tap to tap into the public markets, you launch your stock on one of the stock exchanges. That initial public offering allows you To be funded. Now, every share that's sold after that, after the initial tranche goes out, those can be sold and resold on the market. The company who listed does not get any benefit of the share of the shares that are sold in the secondary market. But they do get funding from the public for that initial tranche. They can later release more shares if they want and get more funding. But in this case, we're just talking, let's just pretend there's just a single, single day that these shares get. get put out there. And now these AI companies are using other people's money to go out and fund the construction of these data centers. But in that s type of society, in a capitalist society, you would you would hope that these companies are acting rationally, they're doing the right thing going forward. And then now we all get to participate. So for me, this is a an even bigger win. I want to participate. I think this is gonna be great for humanity. And there's a company called Thinking Machines and Miss Murati wrote a great essay and I'd like to I'd like to read what she says about it because I think she sums it up pretty good. This section of the essay is titled The Future Worth Building. The technology industry has made incredible progress in teaching machines to think. What they should think about must remain with us humans. What is worth wanting, what is worth making, what's the right use of the time that we have? We are not looking to hand down a single answer to the AI, but to give every person the ability to make their own answer. The current path of AI development pushing towards centralization and autonomy frames human involvement as a trade-off. Participation versus capability, ownership versus safe alignment. These are mere technical challenges to solve. AI that is more capable because it encourages human participation organizations that benefit in the long run from tailoring AI to their advantages, alignment that arises from diverse AI shaped by people. Who own them. Future is not a choice between human dominance and rapid obsolescence in the face of AI. Different roads mean to lead to many different futures, and we get to choose which one we take. We are building technology that lets the born and the made walk the road together. This world that we're entering into with the AI data center construction, it it's on it's the backbone. It's what's unlocking these things, these these These tools that enable high agency folks to go out and and achieve. And the people that are afraid that the capitalist society's adoption of AI is gonna lead to a massive bubble, it's gonna ruin everybody's lives, like the dot com crash. Well, there's a there's a massive difference because that really wasn't a dot com crash. That was a telecom crash. It's got it, it needs to be super important. I want to make sure this is really, really clear. And if you want to hear the the greatest orator about this, a guy named Gavin Baker is a big investor guy. And he he sums it up perfectly. And he says, he well, he was heavily invested in the dot-com era and lost a lot. So he r dug in deep on what was the real problem. And the real problem back then was something called dark fiber. So during the dot-compass, Bubble. What led to that was they said, everybody's getting on the internet. We've got all these e-commerce sites sites. The internet's gonna be the biggest thing in the world. In order to access the internet, everybody needs fiber optics so they can connect to high-speed internet. That was the belief. So it was funded. I don't remember if it was funded by the government or if all private is probably both. And they laid a ton of this fiber optic cable at the time of the crash. Dark fiber, meaning it was not connected to the internet. There was no it there was no traffic on this fiber. It was a if you build it, they will come. And they laid it all, thinking they needed it. But they didn't. They overbuilt. So here we are with data center construction. And people are thinking, my gosh, one company's trying to spend $100 billion this year to build A AI data centers. Another company just entered into contracts for $80 billion worth of AI data centers. We're trying to build hundreds of these in every state. This is the next dark fiber. And the difference why dark fiber was a bubble, and this may not be, is there is not a single dark GPU or CPU. The little backbone processors inside the data centers that are actually doing the calculations for the eye. There is not a single unused. GPU or CPU out there. We are so backlogged on those. The demand is so high on these tools that you have absolutely got the inverse of what led to the telecom bubble bursting with the dark dark fiber situation. So I want to see, I want to I'll wrap up this by saying. Although I respect all the viewpoints on the data center construction, I think that I think the anti-data center people are wrong. I think we need to be building as many of these as possible. I think we need as much knowledge generation as possible. I want to see people from all walks of life have access to this knowledge to be able to be creative, to be the best versions of themselves, whether that's learning. Through an AI program, whether it's building and creating through an AI program, whether it's managing yourself through an AI program, which one of the things I have to do. I I have so many undone tasks. And I'll have like a ta like sixty tasks that I need to get done. And I'm real guilty of wanting like wanting to do the thing that should probably be twelfth on the list. but that one looks like fun, so I do that one. so the AI tells me every morning, like, hey, here's Scan your emails, a scanner task list. These are the three most important things. If you could get three things done today, those are the three things you have to get done. So you deal with all the things that come in through the day and like, yeah, here's the three things you absolutely must get done today. And so I I want everyone to have that level of organization and put safeguards on themselves and make themselves be the most productive, the best versions of themselves, add value to our communities, the companies you work for, just I I just think it's an absolutely massive win. I I just think I think it's a massive win. And I think the people that are against that I think they're wrong. And With that said, I must alert you to one of our sponsors of the show, Rocket Start. Rocket Start is something that nobody can claim needs to be stopped. Our boy, Manny, he's the man. And he started Rocket Start with the idea that the specifically the drivers In a Ready Mix company. It could be a driver for any company, but he started in Ready Mix. And those folks were working hard and should be celebrated. I wrote a big blog post last week on the Slump Monkeys website. You can go to slumpmonkeys.com, M-O-N-K-E-Y-S, Slumpmonkeys.com. You can see the blog. It's titled The Mill Report. It's the name of the blog. And I wrote one about his company. It was not an ad. He did not pay me, he did not ask me to do that. I love his company so much. I think it was worth diving in deep about why it will significantly change the culture of any company that's got drivers that they depend on, drivers that they know are going above and beyond, and we can publicly and privately celebrate them through Manny's platform. It is the absolute best. If you would like to learn more, please go to go rocketstart.com. Ask for Manny. GoRocketstart.com today. All right. Let's get ready. We have the interview portion of our show. Ron Carlson is on deck. He's going to come in. We are not going to talk about data centers. I think we got that off our chest here. I appreciate it. My, you know, what's the old meme that men won't go to therapy, they just start podcasts. So I appreciate you guys. listening to me go through that. I hope we all learned something together. Our goal here is to be smart, original, funny, and authentic. And we we certainly captured a a couple of those today. please join me in welcoming Ron Carlson, Command Alcon. Paul: And welcome into the interview portion of the Slump Monkeys Concrete podcast. I am joined by the great and powerful Ron Carlson of Command Alcon. Ron, thank you so much for joining us. Ron Carlson: Yeah. thanks for having me, Paul. It's gonna be fun. Paul: No, it's gonna great. And it's cool that like, you know, Command Alcon's the title sponsor of the inaugural month of the show. And then they were, you know, kind enough to have you be available. It's funny, like when Carly was like, Hey, you should talk to our VP Ron and I was like, geez, I don't want a vice president. They're just gonna give me a bunch of corporate slogans and platitudes and jargon. And then we had our little pre call and I was like, no. Ron Carlson: Yeah. Yeah. Paul: Ron's legit. Ron's a legit guy. And I think it's important for people to hear your background, where you came from, that makes you a you know, a real person and not one of these freaking VP robots that are running around. Ron Carlson: Sure. I'd be happy to share that. I'll go I'll go as far back as right out of school. I got married, had a child, and I needed a job. I needed a job quickly. So I knew somebody I I'm from Chicago, by the way, born and raised in Chicago. And I th as a matter of fact, a friend of my father's said, Hey, I can get you a job pretty quick and Just fill out this big long application and and I'll get you in. I said, Well, w where where's that at? And they said, How would you how would you like to work in the Cook County Jail in Chicago? And I said, Well, I don't have a job. I'm 21 years old. I know nothing. I know better of nothing. So sure, let's do it. Where do I sign? Right? So I went ahead as a Paul: Yeah. Ron Carlson: Not knowing any better, and I said, Hey, look, it's it's with the sheriff's department, it's got benefits, it's got everything you need, it's a pretty prestigious job for the most part. parents were proud, friends were proud. Hey, he's a deputy sheriff and he's doing great things with his life, right? So if you know anything about politics in Chicago, I don't want to bring up politics, but it gets it it leans if you don't have a certain person backing you up, I sh sort of speak, and and to to move your career along. you pretty don't move you don't pretty much don't move along, right? So you get stuck in one spot, you're there for the rest of your life. So Paul: wow. Ron Carlson: Yeah, so I spent the first, I'm gonna say four and a half, almost five years, working in the Cook County jail. And like I like I told you before, Paul, the last year of my tenure, I I always say I didn't I didn't serve my country in the military, but I think I served my country well in the Cook County jail. So I s I served society as a whole. So the last year or so I you know, I found myself going I felt like I was going to jail every day when I went to work. So it's the walls started kind of closing in on me and I was still too young for all of this. And I said, It's time for a change and I just drove to work one day and got out of my car in my uniform and walked to work like I normally would in the doors and I I I said I I can't do this anymore. I made a beeline to this to this office and I said, here's my badge, here's my credentials. this is my last day. And I walked out the door and never looked back. And I was never happier for it. So so here so here I am, a young guy with a child, and I believe I might have even had one on the way. I did I didn't tell my wife I was leaving the sheriff's department. I didn't tell anybody. I made that decision on the way to work. Paul: my gosh. my gosh. Ron Carlson: So I said, what am I gonna do now? Okay, so I it's too late now, I can't back out. I got my car, very happy by the way, nervous but happy. Got back in my car and I started driving home. And I said, How am I gonna tell my wife? What am I gonna tell her? it I saw I'm I'm driving along and I get to a I get to a stop site, stoplight in the city, and I I looked to my left out of my car window and I saw an O Zynga mixer. Mixer right next to me, loaded with concrete on it. And I said, I looked over and said, I could do that. That's what I'll do. I'll drive a cement truck. A co excuse me, a concrete truck. And and at the time I probably said cement truck, but I said I I'll I'm gonna Yes, we all done. Yep. Paul: Yes, sir. As we all as we all did. Hey, we love to judge people about that. We all made that mistake. But absolutely. That that's that's great. You just quit on the spot and on the way home, you're like, My God, what am I gonna do? And you s and you heard the the crackling of a concrete. That is awesome, man. Ron Carlson: Absolutely. Absolut absolutely. That's right. That's what am I gonna do? Right. So yeah. I heard it. I heard it right next to me. As a matter of fact, I could I could s I could remember it so clearly, and this was you know thirty-five years ago. It had to be like a two-inch slump there, probably a poor curb. It it was really loud, right? You you could hear it. I could still remember it. And the reason I said I could do that is be i is is in the summer a couple summers prior I was I had an internship. I was working a summer job at a steel factory. And the the foreman at the steel factory said, Hey, hey kid, you wanna you wanna learn how to drive a truck and and deliver some steel to the job sites? And I said, Heck anything to get out of the warehouse, right? Middle of summer, I was welding, I was grinding down welds, just you know, just silly work, right? So I said, Yeah, absolutely I'll learn. So I went and got my CDL and I had it in my pocket, never thought I'd ever use it again. Never. But I had it. It's on my license, right? So I never thought I'd use it. But here we are, I got it. So I I I made a beeline straight to Ozinga and I went to I believe it was their Mokina operation because I was yeah, there was a Mokina operation. I went there, got an application. I didn't hear anything back for a couple weeks. I didn't hear I don't think I've heard anything actually. So then I went to Prairie Materials and Prairie said, Paul: Sure. Ron Carlson: Yeah, we got a couple openings here. They were going through a transition at the time. They bought they bought a company and there was kind of a kind of a lot of stuff going on and they said we'll give you a shot and I ended up working in Chicago for the next you know, four seasons driving a mixer. So Paul: That's great. And and for folks, if you've been to Chicago working Rady Mix, you know both those company names and they're both mo they're both monsters. And if you haven't been to Prairie's Yard thirty two and yard thirty three, then you're missing out. Those are pretty sick months. Ron Carlson: Yeah, perfect. Yeah, yeah. That's right. That's right. And I drove I drove out of yarding. I drove out of all those yards, but my home, my home base was in displays by the O'Hare Airport, which is probably the second busiest yard in the whole system. so yeah, so I did that and and some years go by and I'm driving, and you know, I if you know anything about the you know unions and stuff, that you it's all about seniority and the you know the more seniority you have, the longer you work throughout the season. So I was getting laid off, you know, every they at the time it was Thanksgiving was religious. That day was, you know, that that Monday you were done. Everybody kinda locked down the hatches and you're you were done, right? So the QC manager came up to me and said, Hey, you seem like a pretty smart guy. Would you you think you'd be interested in quality control? we're short two people. Would you would you s would this interest you? And I said, he asked me a couple of questions, kind of quizzed me on a few things. He said, All right, you passed. You're good to go. If you want the job, we'll we'll get you the job. So I said, Yeah, let's do it. I see these guys, they got they all got pickup trucks, they had their little office at the plant, everything was really peachy, peachy keen over there, okay? They they I'm not I'm not bashing you QC guys, because I was one for 20 years, okay? So I know all about it. You're waiting for a couple of loads to come out to test, and they might be four hours a Paul: That's good. Ron Carlson: part, okay, so we s we know what you're doing in the meantime. So so yeah, so I said let's do it and I I wanted to learn something new. I thought it was great. I could learn something new. I could use my head a little bit and and you know if you know quality control, it's technical and there's math and there's all kinda things and I was pretty good at all those things. So I spent the next ten years doing that for for for prairie Paul: That's great. Ron Carlson: and I really loved it. I really, really, really enjoyed it. I ended up taking a supervisory role with with QC with Prairie and that was a lot of a lot that was fun. Learned a lot about managing people and schedules and very beneficial. So my next stop was I was on a job site with Prairie and I had A gentleman from Mozinga come up to me and and and we've we kind of befriended each other on a couple of job sites and he says, hey, we're looking for a guy too. Would you be interested in joining our team? And I said all depends on how much you want to pay me. So I think me they wanted to pay me more than Prairie and at that time every dollar counted. I had another child on the way and I made the decision to thank Prairie for everything they've done for me and I moved on to Ozinga and I spent the next 10 years with their team, which was fantastic, right? Couldn't couldn't have been happier. But both of those companies are great. Ozinga was super special to me. They taught me a lot, gave me a lot of opportunities. so yeah. That was good. So I spent the next 10 and and I had some supervisory roles with with with Ozinga as well, in their western portion of the state. So that was that was good too. learned a lot, learned a lot. if you know anything about Ozinga, they're very technical, they're always on the forefront of everything. So I got to learn a lot, you know, through through them for sure. Paul: Were were were you in the quality department for Ozinger or were you on the operation side? College quality. Ron Carlson: Al always quality. Yeah, always quality. Yeah, yeah. So I worked in Chinatown. You all ever know it's Chinatown, the biggest yard out there, probably one of the busiest. And so if you don't learn from that, you'll never learn because everything every mix in the world comes out of that plant. From the you know, the highest strength to the lowest straight. So it was good. We learned a whole lot. I did especially, yeah. So with that said, I got a Paul: That's cool, man. Ron Carlson: A call from a recruiter one day and he said and he says, Hey, not my now remember my first my first go-around was in operations, technically, you know, as a driver. And I really loved the plants and the operation portion of things. I always did that. And there was an opportunity to become the vice president, executive vice president of a of a company, a smaller family operation in Madison, Wisconsin, called Wingrew Ready Mix and Stone. Like I said, family owned for a hundred years and went up I I gave it an op gave it a shot. it was ninety minutes from Chicago basically, and I said, Okay, here's a here's an opportunity to grow. And I took the opportunity and spent almost five years there learning operations from, you know, as an executive. And that's kinda where I got my, you know, cut my teeth there. And it was great. Awesome, another awesome family. And I And I couldn't thank them enough. the Shea family. They're fantastic. same thing happened on five years later. Another recruiter calls says, I have a even a bigger and better opportunity, a bigger market. And I said, Where's that at? And they said, Detroit, Michigan. And I said, I said, Well, I really like Wisconsin. It's it's a nice it's a nice place. Madison's a nice place to live. My family was happy. I had a house there, everything was good. And I said, Are you r you really want me to go to Detroit, Michigan? He says, No, no, you're taking it the wrong way. It's not really in Detroit, but you have some plants in Detroit and your office is in Farmington Hills, Michigan. And he said, It's a much bigger company, and there's much more opportunities to grow there, and it's it's the equivalent role. Paul: Yeah. Yeah. Ron Carlson: but just on a lar much larger scale, right? So at Wingra we had nine ready mixed plants and six or seven quarries. We were more of a stone company than I we were actually a ready mix company. I think that's where the bulk of our of our revenue came from. So I I went out to I went out to Michigan and interviewed there and Once I got there and saw what it was really all about, it would really that the whole Detroit picture kind of went away and I understood more what was going on. And it was it was a joint venture at the time from the Levy, Edward C. Levy Company and V CNA at St. Mary's, you know, cement. so it was a it was a I guess it was a joint venture and it was great. Everything was great. Learned a whole lot there. Learned just, you know, I already had five years under my belt, so I just kinda transitioned. So it was, you know, same job. more people, more plants, more problems, more headaches, right? So that's sort of a in a nutshell. Yeah. Paul: No, that's great. But now and now you're with command. So I think the most interesting transition you made was the last one. The one that got command. I I'm I'm actually very excited for the audience to hear not just how you got here, but actually in it actually is why you have the role you have. They basically created a position for you at command. So they never ran into this problem again, but they didn't know about the problem until you brought their attention. I think this is a fantastic story. Ron Carlson: Okay. That's right. That's right. That's yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, so I was you know, as as an executive at at at the Superior Materials in Detroit, I was having a few more than a few issues with our with with our with commands products. And I wasn't particularly happy at the time. So I asked our salesperson to come the our the command salesperson to come on down and meet with me in in the boardroom. And you know, I kinda expressed my displeasures of the company at the w you know customer service at the time and things weren't going very well, in my eyes. And at at that time, it was very well known, it's not a secret, that there like there was customer service issues within command. great people, don't get me wrong, when you when you got a hold of somebody, it was fantastic. the people were awesome, but it was just hard getting a hold of anybody and getting anything done. It was just, hold on, wait, we'll get you somebody, you know, that type of thing. And it was just getting to a point where it was too much. So I I I asked them to come down. I expressed my displeasure with what was going on. And you know, we spent about an hour of me pretty much on my soapbox complaining and you know, telling them why, hey, better be careful because your competitors are coming, and and you know, they they would always express to me when they came in to try to sell me their software was, hey, we won't be like command, so don't worry, right? We'll we're gonna be there for you when you need us, okay? So this salesperson who I am very surprised till this day actually went back after the meeting and she had a meeting with the CEO and and and he told him what I said, and which I would never think anybody would do, right? It wasn't a very good meeting. I was, you know, you think you kind of keep that under the belt and try to, you know, sweep that under the rug as much as possible, but no, that's not what happened. Paul: Yeah. Ron Carlson: So I don't know, sometime later, our our wonderful CEO, Martin Willoughby, gave me a call and said, Hey, I heard I heard about the issues you were having, which I was shocked that the CEO would even call me back, right? That's pretty unusual. And our CEO had it was right during a transition time where leadership was changing over from the old command to the new leadership. And and and and Martin Willoughby is just you know, he's a customer service guy one hundred percent. Everything we can't do anything until we get this right. And he was really on it a hundred percent. We had to change that culture, change that whole thing that was going on. So Martin had made some really good hires, just some really, really good hires that that really changed the whole culture in a very short period of time. So Long story short, Martin Martin and I kept the relationship going and my I think Martin saw a vision of I need somebody from the Ready Mix industry who actually lived it, worked it, knows everything about it from the ground up to be able to give that view to our company. Right? To be able to say, you know, if we're having an issue with a con with a a a company, I could go in there and say, I I get it. I've lived it, I can help you. I know I know your pain points. And this is where it it kind of brings the it kind of calms the room down, right? When you come in there, it's I'm just not a tech guy selling you software. I'm a ready-mixed industry guy for 30 plus years. All right. And I could I could talk the talk. And it seemed to work fantastic, right? So I built relationships with some customers and c other other executives from from, you know, so I was sort of an executive sponsor for the liaison between myself and the executive leadership team. so anything anybody from any company at a high level would wasn't happy what was going on, they would just call me and I would take care of it. And yeah. Paul: Well, and the fact that this role got started because you were the executive that was complaining. So I think there's there's another piece of the story that I I think is worth sharing for the audience. And that is that not only did Martin call you, the CEO of Command Alcon calls you and says, Hey, my sales manager told me you just you know, went off on for an hour in this meeting. would you be willing to come to an all hands and and chew out the whole company real quick? Ron Carlson: That's right. Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah, so Paul: Okay. Ron Carlson: so yeah, it was yeah, I'm not gonna call it chewy, but it was I just ex I expressed my in a in in a professional way, I think I expressed not only my displeasure for for command, it was just I think it was a it was an industry sentiment. you know, I know lots of people in the ready mix industry and it was it wasn't just me, it was across the country, right? So I was just kind of there, I was everybody's mouthpiece. everybody in the industry that I knew, I was just expressing what I know to be true, right? Which is There's a there's a shortcoming in the customer service part of this company. And sometimes when you get so large, you kind of forget what got you there, right? And Martin wanted to make sure we never forgot that and that we were gonna go back to that roots again and we're gonna start from the bottom, customer-centric first. And he hired the right people. And I I pr and I'm not just saying this because I work here, but I don't think I've ever seen a quicker turnaround in my career. Of some when you hire the right people, you get the thing you get things done pretty quick. And yeah. Paul: Well, I yeah, and I'm not I'm not gonna say I'm not saying that anybody that knows me from life or the previous podcast that we had, we're so thankful to have sponsorships on the new one. but just because you're a sponsor doesn't mean that I'll just like give praise where it's not due. But I can tell you I can tell you with command, like the customer centric attitude that has popped up over the last really like the last five years, kind of like in hyperdrive. Ron Carlson: No, absolutely not. No. That's right. Paul: It is so clear and obvious and thank goodness because there are competitors new competitors are popping up left and right and they have very interesting software and very interesting services. And you know, commands already got the customer base. So you you really have to stay on top of it. So you know, I hear that's one of the things that that you're doing is helping those folks stay on top of it. And what I what I thought was interesting is Ron Carlson: Mm-hmm. That's right. Paul: You're not a technical guy. So you didn't come to command to help them like modify how they're doing things on the back end. You gave to you came to give like a real world perspective. Like you can't talk to folks like this, or you have to, or better yet, you should talk to them like this and make this many contacts. And and you're you're a a support person for for everybody else in the company. What else is it that Ron Carlson: Sure. Paul: that you're doing to lead command on this customer facing front. Ron Carlson: Yeah, I think, you know, I think maybe not so much on the technical back end, but on the front end, technical front end, I like to call it. And hey, does this does this work? Does this software d you know doing this, is this something that's important to the ReadyMix business? Is this a feature within our software that's makes sense putting in, right? Or is it just something one or two companies will use and you'll never see it again, right? Those are type of things that they'll run past me and say, you as a former user, longtime user of our products Does this make sense? Does this something you'd want? Would it make your experience better? Would it make your operation run better if you have this module within our software? Right. So I give my my honest opinion on those things as well. So that's that's really important. So you're so some of the features you're gonna see in our you know our cloud journey s you know was you know run past me just to say, do you think this is good? Now I don't always win the argument, and I'm not always right, but but I will give you. Paul: Yeah. Ron Carlson: My opinion, right? So which is which is great that a company is is even doing that, right? I don't think our competitors have many industry folks actually putting their eyes on stuff and giving their honest, true professional opinion on do I think that's beneficial to the industry or not? So that's a plus. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Paul: Well, think I think that's a well, that's a business lesson we all can learn is that product fit matters so much and just and at a certain point you can't just you know yell and scream and and tell you blue in the face that you have the thing that's gonna, you know, change someone else's life or business. they have it has to be something that they want. It has to be a problem that you're solving. And if if you're not solving a problem that's gonna be really difficult. Ron Carlson: That's right. That's right. Paul: to get them to use your your product or in this case probably you know an add on or whatever. Ron Carlson: Yeah, no, for sure. No doubt about it. yeah, so that's that's one of the one of the my one of my roles here. I have been recently really helping out with the sales team, training new brand new brand new sales reps, area sales managers, and just giving them a a five or six course lesson on how to sell to an executive. What are the things that I want to hear or I didn't want to hear or How not to waste too much time when you're in the you know, in these calls with with w or meetings with executives or the champion, whoever you're selling to. and some of these, you know, s of course, you we're not all gonna have experience coming into to an industry. Everybody starts somewhere. So even our sales reps, you know, I'm I'm training one right now, just d didn't even know what a slump cone was or you know, didn't I mean know nothing about the industry, right? So in this particular case I had to put my syllabus aside and go, I really gotta go back to one on one, right? So it was like taking somebody that's never seen a ready mix truck and said, Here's ready mix concrete, this is what it does, right? So we have we I Paul: Wow. Did you did you like did you have some friends in the area? Did you were able to take them s to some plants and stuff and Ron Carlson: That's on that's part of that's gonna be part of the the whole training. Yeah. So I will do that and we will do a walkthrough and I'll be able to say, Hey, remember I was telling you about that, that was that, and that was that, and that's that. So that's exciting. I I and I really enjoy doing that. I to be able to give back all those years that I've been doing this, and to be able to train a a younger guy to say, hey, you know, welcome to the industry and let me give you let me give you thirty years in three days, right? So it's it's Paul: my gosh. Yeah. Well Ron Carlson: It's a lot. Paul: nothing's gonna be nothing's gonna beat actually being at the plant live and actually seeing like here's why it's important that our stuff works. And it doesn't matter if you're it doesn't matter if it's batching systems or cloud software or if you're the Admix guy, whatever it is, like if you're training a new person, you gotta see like what impact are you having on these people's lives. I mean it's there's nothing beats getting out there just making mud. Ron Carlson: That's right. Nothing. That's right. That's right. Right. That's right. Yeah, no, I I agree a hundred percent. So, you know, we always we we we like to get industry folks in the door when you can, but you know, that's that's far a few apart nowadays, right? It's just not I don't think it's a career, you know, not now with the CIM program getting as big as it is. That's fantastic. But I don't think it's a career where and I and I'm gonna blame the industry in a as a whole for this. And I've always complained about this. We do a horrible job of getting in the high schools and really saying, hey, there's a real career out there. It's not just it's not just a a concrete truck running down the road. There are Paul: Mm-hmm. Ron Carlson: fifty different aspects to this business you could go down, right? There's different avenues, sales, technical, pro you know, stone, say we'll keep on going forever, right? And no I don't think they know it. I really don't. I mean we may do a couple of touch a truck things here and there and you know but we don't I don't think we do a really, really good thorough job of getting the kids while they're young and saying, hey, there's a real career opportunity out here for you guys. You know Paul: Yeah, I you know, I've thought about that too. And so we've had a lot of discussions with CIM folks about what are they doing to go out and market the degree to the high schools. They're getting in the high schools, they're having a lot of those discussions. In like in Tennessee where the flagship university is for the CIM program, that's they're doing a pretty decent job there. They end up you get a lot of kids who maybe grew up on farms that were used to hard work and being outside and they're not scared by going and working for a concrete company. but you know the Ron Carlson: Yeah. Yeah. Paul: Concrete companies need HR folks. They need accountants. They need you need you need everything to be you need you need all kinds all kinds of stuff. But but you know, we were all told for a long time, man, that you you need to go to college and get a degree. concrete's one of those spaces that that might not always be true. Ron Carlson: That's right. Yeah. Right, dispatcher, maintenance maintenance folks, mechanics. Yeah. It's not true. Paul: And if you're someone who's looking for a direct path from high school to work and you've got a good work ethic and you've you've got a good head on your shoulders and you don't want to go a hundred, two hundred thousand dollars in debt and you want a good paying job with good companies, I mean it's a industry to certainly be looking at. Ron Carlson: No, f no no doubt about that. I I think I mentioned this on on a on another podcast, a career podcast, j j just just what we were talking what just what you're saying, is a lot of the kids, you know, we'll get interns in sometimes and and I think that's a g that's the best place to start. You know, minimum wage, just learn this you know, for the summer, come in for the summer and let's do a rotation. Let's put you through Quality control. Let's put you in the plant. Let's put you everywhere. And then at the end of your tour, come back and say, you know what, I really liked dispatch. I've I felt comfortable there, right? I don't think we do a good enough job with that, right? Grab me Yeah. Paul: So No, well hey, hang on. So there's a company. I just learned this this weekend. So I was talking to a buddy of mine and he actually started at Mashmire Concrete down in Florida. And they did exactly that. They did like this rotational program where you come in and for like two years, you take a couple months, you know, in operations, a couple months in quality, a couple months in, you know, dispatch and you know, maybe to have you driving a truck for a little while even. Because they wanted you to have every piece of this business under your belt before you start telling anybody. Ron Carlson: Great company. Yep. Paul: by you know what to do and you in in fact you might find that you like one thing better than another and you have strong suits in one spot or another and that's that's where you can gravitate toward. Ron Carlson: Yeah, no, that's good. It's and Mashmeyer is one of those companies that's always ahead of the game. so that doesn't surprise me at all. But I think I think even, you know, our larger companies, we need to start thinking that way because we're always, as an industry, we're always looking for people and we're always complaining how we it's hard to hire people, right? So that's the conversation you'll get with any ready mix. You put a bunch of ready mixed folks in a room and the first thing we're gonna talk about is I can't find any good people, right? Well that's but that's partly our fault, right? We're I don't think we're doing a good enough job bringing these folks in young. Paul: Yeah. Yeah. Ron Carlson: And putting them through the that, you know, what like Mashmeyer does. And giving them a taste of the business. And and and I'm you know, I'm talking about non-college graduates, high school graduates, very smart high school graduates that just don't want to spend the money, could have a wonderful career in this business. I mean and and be and make plenty of money. you gotta, you know, I always said you The kids that came into the door and smiled and enjoyed their internship and they, you know, the few that we got through the door and just said, Hey, I'll do whatever it takes. Just wh whatever it is, s just do it. Yeah, I'll do it, right? And they smile when they do it and they're happy to be here. Those are the those are the folks are gonna go all the way up to the top one day. Right? So Paul: Well, I mean nothing nothing beats work ethic. And I don't care how many degrees you get more degrees than a thermometer. But if you don't have yeah, it doesn't matter. You have to have the work ethic. It work ethic trumps everything, especially in a business like concrete where you can sniff out folks that ain't doing what they're supposed to doing so fast. Very, very quickly. I I wanna I wanna touch back on something else. Ron Carlson: It does matter. Right. very very quickly. That's right. That's right. Paul: You said much earlier in this podcast, you mentioned that you are a Chicago Bears fan. So anybody who's watching this on YouTube right now, they can see all the wonderful paraphernalia in the background there of the Chicago Bears. But I think the most important question regarding the Bears is how do you feel about the move to Hammond, Indiana? Big news out of the NFL, the Chicago Bears will not be playing as soul. Ron Carlson: I I I you know I'm a I am a business I'm a businessman, so I I understand the business, right? if if if you're a business person and you understood what they were giving the bears in return to go to Hammond, you'd say you're a fool not to take that. Right? Yeah, yeah. So so Hammond Indiana basically gave them everything you could possibly want. Paul: No, I d I know so I I don't so I I don't know. I'm just surface le I'm surface level on the bear so Ron Carlson: They're financing the stadium. They're gonna give it to them for a dollar after 30 years. They're gonna get all to be able to keep all the revenue. So imagine someone said, hey, hey, Paul, you wanna you wanna start this huge podcast business? I will give you everything. The studio, the microphone, I'll give you all your advertisers. You just do your job and you get to keep all the revenue. Don't worry about me. I want you to put your studio here though. All right? Just put it right here. Paul: Was that a was that an offer Ron, was that an offer? Are you trying to trying to buy the podcast already? Come on, man. Ron Carlson: So Yeah, you know, it's it was it's really hard not to. Now there's some a hundred and you know years of history with the Chicago Bears and Papa Bear Hallis and George Hallis and all. A lot of this is some smoke screen stuff going on. A lot of this is to keep the conversation going. It keeps the conversation going with the Illinois, the lawmakers. They don't want to be the ones that said we let the Bears get away. Paul: Wait, wait, hold on. This isn't this isn't like finalized. I thought it was done deal. Ron Carlson: It's not finished yet. No, no. It sounds like it's finished, but it's not. There was a letter that went out by the Bears that said, Hey, we're our board of directors have decided to move forward. Now be careful with the word move forward, right? That doesn't mean we are done. No more talking. We're moving to Hammond. We're going to move forward with more exploration, basically. Okay. So it was a little it was a little nudge to the Illinois lawmakers to say, we're getting really close. So you guys gotta come up with something here, okay? Cause you will lose us if you don't get moving on this, right? So now there's all kinds of other talk. Paul: Well well there's no there's no stadium there, so you you have to build a stadium so you're you're at least, you know, three to five years out. I mean at least at least. Ron Carlson: Or at least. So there's there's no big rush. You know, it's yeah. So I think they're gonna end up in Arlington Heights, Illinois, where they bought the racetrack. where they they already own the property. They're still in Illinois. I still I really think lately, as of the last couple of days, there's going to be there's a lot of talk now about putting them leave them in Chicago, in the this in the city. There are a couple of spots that are open, that needs some revitalization. It's an a a poorer part of the city that can really use that that oomph. And I think there's a that even might even end up happening. So who knows. Paul: I mean I mean I I hope the best for everybody involved. You know, there's a Chicago can get a bad rap on the internet for you know condition of parts of the city and stuff. But if you actually go if you if nobody's been and you want to take a trip, like go down to where like that weird bean statue is and just look and just take a look around. You're like, holy crap, this is a world class city. I can totally see why people live here. It is absolutely gorgeous. The food is unreal. Ron Carlson: Yeah, yeah. Love the pain. Yeah. Yeah. It is. Yeah. Unreal. Yes. Paul: And Chicago's right on the water. Like people just forget it's right on the water. Now you have the worst airport. O'Hare. I mean, you gotta go out of midway and it's not any fun either. But I mean O'Hare might be the worst airport I've ever traveled in and out of. So got that. Ron Carlson: That's one of that's for sure. Yeah, I I would agree with that. I would agree with that. Now I live in now I I I I don't know about if you know, but I live in Mississippi now and I live in Tupelo and spending my whole life in Chicago and up north. This is my first full year outside of the city proper or the n say the north, Chicago, Detroit. and I really enjoy it. I d what what I enjoy what I don't enjoy the most is the food. You know there isn't that food culture here. There's it's it's all about chicken strips. Everybody in Mi in Mississippi loves chicken strips. I don't get it. I don't understand it. How many chicken strips can you eat in your life? I mean it it's I you know, I can't get my favorite Italian food or my favorite this or that. There's just not here. I gotta just not. So when my kids come to see me, they still live in Chicago and one lives in Iowa, I make them stock up with groceries that I can't get here and bring on down to me. Paul: That's hilarious. That is so funny. Well, the hey, I mean, the biggest culture shock I felt you'd have was probably the pizza. I mean, Detroit Detroit and Chicago. I mean, there's gotta be like top five cities for pizza in this country. now. Now you're in Tupelo. Ron Carlson: for sure, for sure. doubt no doubt about it just no pizza here this this they like domino's pizza is a gourmet pizza here okay so there's no that Paul: I mean, I grew up in Alabama. That was gourmet of me when I was growing up too. And I was you know Ron Carlson: so you know you know how it is. They d and yeah and when the occasional new pizzeria pops up in town, the people just lose it and say, you gotta try this. It's unbelievable, right? And I'll say, let me go just do it. Right. So I'll I'll I'll try it and say what you don't know any better, you just it's it's good, right? It's probably good to you. I'm sure you're being honest, but it's really awful. Paul: That's so funny. man. The first Chicago deep dish that I had probably two thousand fourteen or fifteen and went like had to go like under the building into I I don't know remember I don't remember what the building was, but we're downtown and to go it was sublevel down. It was really yeah, downstairs. from the outside of the building had to go down the concrete sidewalk steps. Ron Carlson: Downstairs. Yeah. Pizzeria duay, it's called. You go right down the stairs from the street level. And it's it's yeah, it's it's red and white checkered cloth, tablecloth. yeah. Paul: that it actually I think that was I think that was it yeah yes my gosh it was so dude I'm telling you that it changed my whole perspective on what a pizza pie could even be I mean you you couldn't even finish a slice of it it had to be four inches flipping thick man it was heavy yes heavy's the right word you ate it and you felt like you had a brick in your stomach like that was heavy it was so good Ron Carlson: Yeah, it's it's heavy. Yeah, it's heavy. Yeah. That's right. Now I don't know if you I'm not sure if you know this or not, but but people who live in Chicago do not eat that pizza. That is not yeah, yeah. That that is tourist pizza. That's what Yeah, everybody but don't get me wrong, it's great pizza, but it's just too much to eat on a regular basis. So most Chicagoans will tell you this. It's we like our s round, square cut, cracker thin. Paul: no way. Where do y'all go? Well you got me. You got me. You got me. Gotcha, gotcha. Ron Carlson: It's called tavern style pizza. It's really thin. And it's just it's not that picking up and the cheese is going off on you know it's not that. So the majority of I would say I I would say nine out of ten Chicagoans will say we don't like that deep dish pizza. It's a touristy thing, right? Yeah. Paul: Okay, fantastic. Well, I I'm I'm getting hungry talking about it, I gotta tell you that. I gotta tell you that. So you're in you're in Mississippi now. but I mean you spend most of your time f you know, forward facing with with concrete plants and helping helping those guys. I just thought it was really interesting. I was really glad we were having this conversation because I it's it's super interesting to me that a company as big as command turned around and said, Hey, we hear ya. Ron Carlson: Yeah. I do. Paul: We hear you customer. There's a complaint here. We hear you. And just sort of look internal and said, Yeah, we should We should fix this and it's not gonna be just fixing your account. We're gonna fix the whole business and we're gonna make sure this is a priority. And now that you're there, like what what's that like? Like what's that culture like to be working in a place where they don't just say their customer first, like that's your that's every it's everything. And I don't know that you see that everywhere. So what's that what's that like? Ron Carlson: Yeah, it's it's it's it's it's different. You know, a lot of companies talk that talk and never really follow through with follow through with it. It's just I think they I I think they believe they wanna go that direction. I just don't think they have the proper leadership to to to to make that change. It takes real change agents to come into a company as large as Command Alcon, where we gotta reach around the world and to and to make these operational changes for the better. Takes a lot of work, right? It takes a lot of right people who are willing to do the dirty work. Because it's it's not easy, right? Anytime you talk about change within a company, that's the hardest part as an executive is to make any type of change. I don't I don't care if it's this little or it's global, right? Nobody likes it. Everybody everybody st seems to believe We've been doing it this way forever. It's it's fine. Look how big we got. The way just just the way we are, right? And they forget they start they don't start start to see the slide because they're not outside of it. They're still in the bubble, right? So they're not hearing the noise like like a person like me from the outside, a customer is hearing. They're not hearing it. They're tone deaf to it sometimes. So I think it's natural. I think it happens within big organizations, but it takes a true leader to come in and really say, No, this is real. This is happening. And before I could do anything else with the company, we need to fix this. Right? You know, I I believe I remember my my boss, Martin Willoughby, our CEO, he said he had a, you know, when he first got into his role as CEO with our company, he did sort of a world tour. He wanted to meet everybody, meet all the customers and get their feedback on what was going on. And he was hearing these things, right? So he he ha he had to know that there was something wrong somewhere. And some some change had to be made and and to his credit. He wasn't playing around. He got it done. And we and we got it done. As a matter of fact, I was at a a conference this over the weekend in down in Florida. it's called the Quad State Concrete Association. It's a combination of four states got together and had their summer convention down in Destin, Florida. sat down at a table and a gentleman I who I I did not know, he was a customer of ours, wasn't familiar with the company, introduced myself to him and my one of my sales reps was with me. And he just blurted out of nowhere, you guys have done some real fantastic work with customer service. I no longer have to wait on hold for an hour. It's it's five seconds. It's here, it's now. He goes, what did you guys do? And I was just like a little kid, like so nice to hear some feedback from somebody else and not have to get it out of them. Just blurt it. That was the first thing on his mind was I need to tell these command folks how great of a job they're doing, which is a big deal. Right? Who you don't hear that very often. So Paul: So so how did how did you change it? How did change the wait time from an hour to just couple of minutes? Ron Carlson: Well, w we hired some some good folks that knew how to do that. And a gentleman by the name of Brett Burts, he's our our chief customer you know officer and he he just had the know-how to to make these changes beyond you know his that's his expertise and and he did it. And well a lot of kudos to that team for sure. he he's the the the chief Paul: Wait, what was this t what was this title? Ron Carlson: Customer officer. So chief like he deals with all the customer implementation and customer service. that's Paul: Okay. Okay. Yeah. Normally normally when I hear titles like that they sound fake and made up. So it's Ron Carlson: No, this one's real. This one's 100% real. he's he's a rock star. He's done some fantastic work. I mean, not only not is the work good, it's just how quickly he did it. That's yeah. Yeah, no, it's a legit title. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Chief Customer Officer is in charge of making sure that our customers are happy and they're getting what they want, need, and and and and and a stake scale as as big as we are. Paul: Yeah. No, I mean I'm I'm I'm sure he's doing it. I'm sure he's a great guy. But you hear those titles and you're like, What does that guy even do, man? Ron Carlson: You you gotta have some know how 'cause you gotta do this around the whole world, right? It's it's not just localized or regionalized, it's big. And hundreds of employees have to buy on buy into this new new way of thinking, right? So he's got a whole team under him that does fantastic work and no, it's a good it's a good it's a g he did some great, great work. Paul: Do you do you ever go around and Try and get like the aggregate guys and the ready mix guys to like kind of agree. Like like it's people like in the same geographical area and be like, agree, like, hey, we should all be on this like platform because if we're all able to like connect with one another, then you'll see how much inventory there is of rock. You'll see how much inventory the guy at the Radix plant has and like all those shipments and everything can all be synced up really good. I see a lot of these like cloud systems that are out there and I'm like, man, if you can't see what the what's actually at the quarry, then a lot if felt like a lot of the stuff might be disconnected. And so I was curious, like from you, are you only talking to concrete guys or do you try to go out and connect your own Ron Carlson: Yeah. no, no, no. We yeah, I talked to everybody. ag producers, asphalt, you know, everybody. Yeah, that's the that's the that's the whole idea of our of our cloud, that that's the beauty of our cloud platform. Everything will be able to connect and sync up together where you know, a ready mix producer will be able to see, hey, I got this huge order coming in tomorrow. I need X amount of tons of of stone. does the quarry have it? Like, you know, they could turn and look at your just like that and say, we're good. I don't have to worry about Paul: Right. Right. Ron Carlson: I don't to order anymore. It's there, so I'm good to go. Those things weren't never happened in the past. So that's that's the beauty of the cloud. All that information is shared in one spot and it and it funnels down to all our platforms. So and that's what we're trying to get across to to companies now is you have the visibility like you've never had before. It's it's amazing. just as you know, even with KPIs, When I was, you know, when I was running ReadyMix, and that was just a couple years ago, I was always running my business in the rearview mirror. I was always a month behind. It's it's hard to run a business when you're looking behind. Yeah, you can make some changes a month later, but it doesn't really change the fact that you lost your pants on a project because you that your customer couldn't get your trucks back on time and you lost money. Now we're gonna have the opportunity to see it right now, today, exactly when it's happening on a job site. You'll see a bottleneck happening on a project that's going on right now live. And AI is gonna tell you, hey, you you got an issue over here. You need to address it rather quickly because at this moment in time, your margins are you're below your margins. You're losing money on this project. So now I can pick up the phone and start taking action. Which before I couldn't do that for weeks, right? Maybe a a week or two until I got the info back. All the data mined and I would call it my data mining, which takes forever. so as an operator now, as a ready mix or ag or any asphalt, you're gonna have that opportunity to run your business by the minute. And that's exciting. I I I really wish I would have had that opportunity. I did not. Because it it's it's just really you know, AI has just become popular here, what the next last year, few months actually, you know, when you really think about it. Paul: Well well I don't yeah, I don't know about in in the command world, but I think AI for all of us normally is like kinda popped on the scene when GPT Chad GPT that was twenty twenty two. And I was in business school, getting my MBA when chat launched and Ron Carlson: Yeah, we me too. Yeah. Paul: immediately you could see exactly which kids were using it and which ones which ones weren't and it was like so obvious and the unfortunately for the kids that were using it like you're just like guys I your answer is not right like the at that time it would be right like eighty percent of the time and it would just get like or maybe even ninety five percent of the time but that one thing that got wrong was so wrong and you're like okay and then it was it was funny to watch people trying to get an MBA Ron Carlson: Yeah, yeah. It got better. That's right. Paul: by just copying and pasting whatever the chat GPT said, but those those AIs are so much more powerful now than they're Ron Carlson: Yeah. Yeah. And and you know where the where the return on your investment's gonna come in when you when you do when everybody eventually, you know, moves over to the cloud in AI. embedded in the cloud is we all know in the past when you let and and I'll speak in ready mix terms, trying to hire a new dispatcher was very difficult. Dispatching ReadyMix is a very, very difficult job, don't anybody kid you. It's probably one of the hardest jobs of the business. And the guys that really know it and gals that know it really well are getting ready to retire. And it's all up in it's all up here and they're taking it with them. Okay, so there's nothing you could do about it. So you have these younger folks coming in tr And we're trying to train them to be new dispatchers. The old way was just it it would take months to get them comfortable with putting in an order and scheduling a certain time the next day. It's really an art. It's really an art. And those artists are going away. But now with with with the cloud and command, we're gonna have AI agents embedded in. in there that's going to give this new person a heads up and said and say, hey Mrs. Dispatcher, you don't want to put that order there because tomorrow you're going to have a conflict out of yard seven because you're sharing an order and you're going to hurt that job if you do this. Here's what I suggest you do instead. So instead of having that that super intelligent person who's no longer with the company, you have to have somebody telling these young folks what to do, right? And and giving them a heads up. Paul: Yeah. I'm Ron Carlson: So that's really gonna be cool. Paul: I'm a thousand percent believer that the AI is not gonna be replacing very many jobs. It's gonna be Well, I mean it might yeah, I mean it might free some people up. maybe even jobs that it will take. Ron Carlson: No, it's gonna replace anybody. I don't I don't well you know, some maybe Paul: Eventually they're gonna have robots that sort packages and people won't have to sort packages. Well, people don't sort mail in a mail room either. Like you know, not every job is is sacred. Do we even ask those people, do you wanna sort boxes for a living? They they probably don't. And we can move them to s we can move them to something else that's more fulfilling and maybe even higher paying. In the concrete world, it I don't see it as like, we have five people, we're gonna have to it, you know, put it down we get to put it down to one. You're gonna be like, these Ron Carlson: That's right. Paul: Five people can be four times more productive in either what they're doing or even if there was an elimination or role, find me a concrete plant that's not shorthanded. That they couldn't take that person and have them doing something else and adding more value to the company, maybe bringing more value to the person. And it's the whole thing is going to be incredible. And so for command, so you guys are gonna are jumping in on the AI. sounds like you're jumping in on the AI stuff too, then. Ron Carlson: That's right. That's right. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I I think I think you have to. I think there isn't a company out there that's gonna survive unless you know, you take that route eventually. You're gonna have to. and right and and for the good for the for the better, it's gonna be great. I think it's absolutely needed, right? This is a perfect time in the industry for this to happen where you could free up some folks because hiring is so difficult. d obviously drivers is the hardest thing to find. that Paul: man, drivers is so one of my one of my upcoming guests is Manny Tejano from Rocket Start. And I you know, the whole point of his business is to retain drivers. And it's the whole thing's awesome that he does. And I'm like, Yep. Like with the industry needs this so bad. Ron Carlson: Well you know what the you know what the problem is, Paul. The the the biggest problem, and I I was I was gonna write an article about this. by the way, if you guys haven't seen, I I have a I have an article on LinkedIn. It's a weekly newsletter called Industry Insights. If you're interested, just go on my LinkedIn page, you'll you'll find it. You can subscribe to it. I like to give some good topics every couple of weeks, something new in the industry. One of the topics I wanted to talk about are are states that allow the marijuana is legal, okay? I think there's gonna be a time where we're gonna have to do a better job of testing marijuana usage on the spot instead of you know how it can linger in your body for thirty days, whatever it is, and then you get caught and then you're fired. But you really weren't even high that day. But you you know what I mean? Just like alcohol, we have on the spot alcohol testing. I think the Department of Transportation federally needs to do a better job in finding a way to test these young guys for you know immediate usage, not ten days ago or a week ago. Because I think we're losing a lot of drivers due to that fact. They may not be coming to work dru on high, but they were, right? So Paul: Yeah. Right. So so you're saying that they're they're they're already employed, so it it but it could be it could be also be a barrier that it's like they would do right. Right. Ron Carlson: Right. Or or not employed or or not employed. They want to drive. They can't get in the door because they can't pass the drug test. And they say, hey, I'm not high. I I I I do it recreationally on the weekends or whatever whatever, right? Now I'm not advocating for marijuana whatsoever. I hope I wish no one would do it. But that's the let's just it's it's reality. A lot of states, it's legal. So your your pool has now shrunk from this to this, right? Because it is what it is. Paul: Yeah, that's super that's super in interesting. So so I don't know I don't know much about that whole anything. I'm a I'm a teetotaler. I don't do I have no vice no vices. But on the test so on the testing side, I'm I always submitted to drug tests when I was getting hired places. but but if Ron Carlson: Mm-hmm. Yeah, you have to you know, you have to pass Yeah. Yeah, no, yeah. I I can We it's we were used to it is what it was. Yeah. Paul: But if you test your drivers, it it can it goes back to like thirty days. So it doesn't discriminate on whether you're just having fun on a weekend versus like were you impaired while driving a rhetoric stroke. Ron Carlson: That's right. That's right. That's right. And it's it is a it's a federal regulation. It's not even a company policy. It's a federal regulation. If you own it, if you if you have a CDL commercial driver's license, it's a federally controlled driver's license. And it's their rules. And I I I do understand they are trying to come up with some better testing mechanisms where they could test where it's like within 24 hours and not 30 days. it's getting I heard it's getting better. I think when that happens, when you can take a random marijuana test for you know on the spot high if you're if you're on it, I think the hiring process will get a lot better. But in the states like I know Michigan, it's legal, Illinois, it's legal. A lot of states it's not legal, but you could have a medical marijuana card, which is not hard to get. Let's just face it. You go to the doctor, tell them your back hurts, and here's your card. So a lot of the young kids will go out and get them. They want them. It's just part of life now. And so I think that's a barrier that's gotta be looked into because we're having a hard time finding people. Paul: Not super interesting. I don't I don't know any concrete plant that's not struggling. Ooh, two double negatives in a sentence. Ooh. yeah. They're all struggling to get drivers too. Ron Carlson: Yeah. But no, we get it. That makes not struggling is right. There's not one in the country that says I I I could find drivers. I don't care how much you pay an hour. Doesn't it's not about the pay. It's if I can get in my soapbox a little bit and and I think we d here's another here's another thing we don't do very well. I don't think we incentivize our drivers enough and make things a little more palatable to wanna be a driver because Paul: Right. Right. Ron Carlson: If you work up north, now imagine this. I had guys, I'd hire drivers back in the day, and I'd be interviewing them, and they say to me, Sounds like a great job. How much do I make? it's like 30 bucks an hour? That's amazing, right? I'm saying, yeah, 30 bucks an hour. You get free health insurance, and for you and your family, you don't have to pay a dime for it. Awesome. another question for you. what time do I start in the morning? You know what I tell them? I really don't know that. how about what time do I work till? Can't tell you that either. Right? do I work on Saturdays? I don't know that either. Will I work all year round? Probably not. Right? So so that $30 an hour just went down to like $9 an hour when you take it and divide it by 12 months. Okay? It's it's not so appealing anymore. Okay, so there's no surety, you don't they can't go home to their kids' baseball game because they may have to work till seven o'clock at night, get caught on a job site somewhere. It's hard. It's hard. Who who wants to work under those conditions? I mean, when you could go drive a box truck for Amazon and make the same amount of money, but have a consistent income coming in every every week. that's that's a problem we gotta get better at. So either we we do a four-day work week. Paul: Yeah, that that Ron Carlson: You know, we invite it's incentivized that way where we do a rotating schedule, like four days on, three days off. Something like that. But we gotta start getting creative because we're having a hard time finding drivers. We got to do something different. Paul: Well, I mean that's not gonna that's gonna stop not gonna stop nightpours from happening. So it's it's still Ron Carlson: No, no, there's night but but night pours are not the the norm. They're they're they're they're they're not everyday. They're those are unusual. Those are you know just they're just not the norm. So and a lot of guys will volunteer for that anyway. So it's not like you gotta go get it, you know, somebody wants to do the night pour usually. I'm just saying your regular work week. It's just it's too all over the board. You you don't know if, you know, hey, do I work when it rains? No. How about when it's cold? No. you we it it's a lot of no's in there and not a lot of yeses, right? So the the uncertainty in your work schedule is important to a young family who wants to build a career, right? Now now if you work down south, the southern half of the country, it's a little different. Cause the weather's better and you and you work more, right? a lot of times these the southern state companies don't work on Saturdays 'cause they could get enough done during the week and they work all year. Right, twelve months, that contractors are not in such a hurry. Up north they have to they have to hurry up, get the job done, because all of a sudden the freeze is coming and I have to get this done. So I'm gonna work Saturday, Sunday, nighttime, every you know, to get it done so it's harder on the drivers, right? So Paul: Yeah, that's true. Well, and even down south, it depends on like what city you're in. Like if you're in Nashville or Charlotte right now where you can't build enough houses, they're working s they're working Saturdays there, it's all residential. Ron Carlson: It could. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Well sure, sure, sure. A lot of guys like working. So it's overtime. It's more money, right? And that's and that's usually volunteer work on Saturdays. They ask guys first. And then if nobody wants to volunteer, then they go from the bottom up and recruit ya. Paul: Well, this has been a fantastic conversation about you know, hearing from you, a guy who came in from the outside, came from the came from the prison system. That's incredible. And it made a life and a career For you and your family in all aspects of Ready Mix and now you're out there you know, paying attention to those guys and helping them with what they need and it helps command too. I just think it's great conversation for the audience to hear from a customer centric perspective that there are folks like you that are out there trying to make things better. in all aspects and they're there are nuggets from this conversation that we could all take in our own businesses and make sure that we're lending that same perspective to what we're doing. So man, I I really appreciate you coming on here and talking. Ron Carlson: Yeah. No, I appreciate you having been a lot of fun. I really do. I love this business and anything I could do to further its cause, I'm I'm going to be there for it as long as I could. I probably have another ten years before I retire, but I'm not really thinking about that quite yet, but it crosses my mind here and there. they will be. They'll be somewhere in Illinois, I I predict. Paul: Well, let's hope the Bears are still in Chicago, by the time you return. I didn't I didn't get from you. Are you a baseball guy? Are you a Cubs or White Sox? Cubs fan. Yeah. Big Cubby. All right. Well, Bartman is one of the like the seminal like one of the seminal like core memories in my brain as a child growing up. So this yeah. All right, man. Well, thanks for everybody tuning in. This is Ron Carlson from Command Alcon. Appreciate you guys. Take care. Ron Carlson: Come a clums fan. yeah, come a clums fan. We don't want to revisit the Partman days. Yeah, well mine too, trust me. It's it's burnt into my memory. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.