Latest / Young Guns / From a $70M Software Exit to Buying Trade Businesses | Young Guns Ep. 01

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From a $70M Software Exit to Buying Trade Businesses | Young Guns Ep. 01 · Young Guns

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Young Guns Podcast.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Ryan Park.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: This podcast is specifically for the younger guns, the younger generation of Idaho that's a business leader, a young executive, a young entrepreneur that wants to get out there and buy a business, start a business, or consider scaling your business.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: This is your podcast.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: Today I'm sitting down with Aaron Davis, who's the founder of Gem State Builders, who's acquired several different companies here in the Treasure Valley in landscaping in concrete.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: He comes from a background of software sales, software startup.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: He's been through acquisitions.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: He has seen it all when it comes from transitioning to the professional lifestyle into owning and operating a company, especially in the trades.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: Aaron founded Gemstate Builders in 2023 with the goal of acquiring established Idaho trades companies and transforming how they operate.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: Today we talk about how he integrates his knowledge from the software industry into running the trades here in the Treasure Valley specifically.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: And we are honored to have him on as our first inaugural guest.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: It's a great episode.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: Aaron Davis, you are the inaugural guest of the Young Guns Podcast.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm honored.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks for coming.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: So we started this up with the idea to leave young entrepreneurs and other people here in the Treasure Valley with an idea of what they could do with their life that may be different than the conventional way of doing it, right?
1:22
SPEAKER_00: And just to put a little bit of fire under them, we're riding a huge wave right now here in the Treasure Valley, which I'm sure you've experienced.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, but really just want to get your insight because you've done it.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: You're here, you're doing it.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: You are a young gun here in the Treasure Valley.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: So what made you want to do it?
1:36
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about your history a little bit.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
1:38
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'll I'll try to keep it somewhat brief on my on my background, but I've been all over the place.
1:43
SPEAKER_01: I started out in childcare way back in the day.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: I watched two uh 16 two-year-olds for eight hours a day for about three and a half years.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: I went into pest control after that, did crawlspace renovation, and then I took a sharp left turn into software.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: And so I went to uh T-Sheets in Eagle before they had sold Intuit.
2:02
SPEAKER_01: You know, I was part of the early sales team at T-Sheets.
2:04
SPEAKER_01: In that space, um, you know, I learned a lot about technology.
2:07
SPEAKER_01: My dad was a Salesforce architect for years and years and years, and so I know I knew a lot about it in theory, but in practice, I got to learn a lot about it there at T-Sheets, which was great.
2:17
SPEAKER_01: Um, we sold after T-Sheets sold to Intuit, I decided, hey, I need to find a company that's much more early on, you know, that I can actually be a part of and grow.
2:25
SPEAKER_01: And so we found I found this company, Sling Scheduling, out of Iceland.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: Um, I jumped on there as the chief revenue officer, and we've over four years built that from pre-revenue to a$70 million exit to toast the public company point of sale device when you go to a restaurant and check out there, right?
2:42
SPEAKER_01: Use it every day.
2:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
2:43
SPEAKER_01: So um, we were the scheduling portion, and that was our that was our exit.
2:47
SPEAKER_01: From there, uh, we were really trying to figure out what was next.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: All right, I didn't want to continue in the software game.
2:54
SPEAKER_01: Um, this was right post-COVID valuations started to dry up a little bit in the software world.
2:59
SPEAKER_01: Um, this was before AI was really a big thing.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: And so um we figured, hey, we need to get into, we think the money's gonna shift back to the trades.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: And so this was, you know, we had trade shortage of skill, like there was not a lot of skill in the trades.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: We saw that happening.
3:15
SPEAKER_01: Um, we saw software probably drying up at some point, even without the context of AI, and decided, yeah, we're gonna go, we're gonna go buy some service companies.
3:23
SPEAKER_01: This is this is the new play.
3:25
SPEAKER_01: And this was kind of before it became a popular trend on social media.
3:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you see people on YouTube all the time, right?
3:30
SPEAKER_01: Now it's Ecode Sanchez.
3:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, all the things.
3:32
SPEAKER_01: That's it.
3:33
SPEAKER_01: So now it's kind of the thing, but this was before I didn't even know what private equity was.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know what MA was, mergers and acquisitions, I didn't know any of this stuff.
3:39
SPEAKER_01: I just said, this makes sense.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: Like to go and buy something that's tangible, you know, software has so many intangibles, it's it's all IP.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: And so something that actually made sense, something that I could then come back locally and see things that were actually building in the valley.
3:55
SPEAKER_01: You know, I was so used to working with, say, restaurant owners in Germany or whatever in Brazil or whatever, and like I didn't see any value of my work in the software world as much.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I've got four kids and I wanted to do something that was actually tangible, that I could drive around town and say, hey, we built that or we did that.
4:10
SPEAKER_01: And so yeah, we we moved into the into the trade.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: So in uh February of 2023, we started Gym State Holdings, and the intention was we're gonna go buy a service company, and then we're gonna use our our our technology, our software skills to be able to layer onto these companies that are underserved in tech and be able to make them more efficient.
4:30
SPEAKER_01: And so that was our our hypothesis going into it.
4:32
SPEAKER_01: So that's that's how we got here.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: Man, what a cool story.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you think about it, you've got, I mean, so Boise State University, part-time Harvard, you had a little bit of experience there, right?
4:42
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: So during that phase, what made you want to get into software?
4:46
SPEAKER_01: Man, it was I mean, pest control.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: I didn't I didn't grow up saying I want to be in pest control my whole life, you know, that wasn't my childhood dream.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: And so the opportunity was there.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: I was like, I got to do something.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: I was, I was about to get married.
4:57
SPEAKER_01: I had to do something that was more career-oriented.
4:59
SPEAKER_01: And I was on LinkedIn and I saw this job opportunity coming for a sales representative for T-Sheets in Eagle, Idaho, and I'm like, that's the one.
5:05
SPEAKER_01: So I messaged at the time Matt Rissle and Bill Ayer, the two leaders there over T-Sheets, messaged them on LinkedIn and jumped into that.
5:12
SPEAKER_01: But um, I had to take a shift, right?
5:14
SPEAKER_01: Because I was about to start a family and pest control doesn't really pay the bills the way I needed it to.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: Well, and one might argue too, that sales bone that you have, that's probably the one that's driving everything, right?
5:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you think about it, you were doing sales and pest control, I'm assuming, right?
5:28
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: And then you take a look at another opportunity, and software is a big thing, then that sales bone is probably the one that's driven you where you are now.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: It might just be an opinion of mine.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, let's talk about that a little bit.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: Your sales.
5:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm a salesman.
5:40
SPEAKER_01: And I I I I again it was wasn't something that I set out to do.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: Um, I found that I had a knack for it.
5:45
SPEAKER_01: I've just I I sit across the table from somebody, they have a need, and if I can fill it, then I can I can fill it.
5:50
SPEAKER_01: And that's a pretty rewarding thing to be able to do.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I never got into the the hard sales, right?
5:56
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't a car salesman.
5:57
SPEAKER_01: I never did cold calling, like that stuff's not in my in my bones, but helping people find a solution to their problem is, and I really enjoyed that.
6:05
SPEAKER_01: So it's very consultative, is really what I found a passion in.
6:08
SPEAKER_01: Um, and also, you know, I had a drive that I wanted to make a lot of money, and sales at the time was the only way I knew how to do that.
6:14
SPEAKER_01: And so that was my focus.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: So that's a that's a really good transition point.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: You probably learned a ton from the software industry that does translate over to the trades.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: What did you see that translated?
6:26
SPEAKER_00: What did you see that didn't translate, especially when you're trying to integrate something with a historically kind of old dog industry where you're a new young gun coming in with a software background and you're trying to integrate these things?
6:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, and this is just business in general, but it all comes back to relationships.
6:42
SPEAKER_01: Everything that you do comes back to how either transactional you are with somebody or how much value you provide that person with nothing in return.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: And that translates across any industry that you're doing.
6:53
SPEAKER_01: And so that was an immediate bonus, I think, in the trades.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: The trades are all over the place, right?
6:59
SPEAKER_01: I think it's one of the last served industries in terms of professionalizing and technology and all of these things.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: Um, but sales cuts through all of that, right?
7:07
SPEAKER_01: Your relationships cut through all of that.
7:09
SPEAKER_01: And so that translated immediately.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how to pour a slab of concrete.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: I don't, I didn't at the time know how to build a valve box and landscaping or whatever it is.
7:19
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I knew how to build relationships with people, I knew how to build trust with people, I knew how to provide solutions to people when they had problems, which was really the only reason that this worked out in the first place.
7:29
SPEAKER_01: Right.
7:29
SPEAKER_01: And the same thing, if we're sitting across the table from somebody who wants to sell their company, well, they're selling it to a guy who doesn't know the the specific trade that we're trying to buy.
7:37
SPEAKER_01: So why did they trust me to do it?
7:39
SPEAKER_01: Well, one, we're local, right?
7:41
SPEAKER_01: We're here in Idaho, we're keeping the money local.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: Huge selling point, huge benefit.
7:45
SPEAKER_01: Um, and and two is like we we built that trust.
7:47
SPEAKER_01: Like it wasn't just a transactional conversation over the year that we did diligence or whatever it was.
7:52
SPEAKER_01: It was it's sitting there and making sure that we're both in a win-win scenario, right?
7:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: So I want to talk about that a little bit for a minute.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: There's obviously the guy that knows how to pour that slab of concrete, right?
8:03
SPEAKER_00: And he's probably been doing it for 30, 40 years.
8:06
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: So when you step into a position where you're now leading him in these charges to go out and do more here in the Treasure Valley, what does that look like when you take a look at this guy pouring the concrete that knows how to do it and you're thinking to yourself, I don't know how to do it, but he does.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: I need this guy's respect.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: Oh man.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: If you've got a story, share it.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I've got so many.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: The imposter syndrome is is at a max, right?
8:27
SPEAKER_01: When you do something like this.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: Like if you're coming from software, buying a company, and then all of a sudden, over literally one night, it's announced that you're the leader over 50 people who are industry experts in what you're doing, and you have no experience in that.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: Like the imposter syndrome's real.
8:42
SPEAKER_01: And so there's a challenge.
8:43
SPEAKER_01: It's like some of these people won't respect you because they know that you don't have that background.
8:47
SPEAKER_01: They know that you don't you haven't done the grind for 20 years of working in August heat laying slabs 15 hours a day, right?
8:54
SPEAKER_01: Um, so there's endless amounts of story.
8:57
SPEAKER_01: But again, it goes back to the relationships and the value you provide and being honest about that.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: So you sit down with somebody who's been doing concrete for 30 years and you don't try to hide the fact that you're not the expert.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: You give them the credit and you you give them the authority of their expertise while you try to take the authority of yours.
9:13
SPEAKER_01: So I, you know, you sit sit them down and you say, I'm not gonna tell you how to do your job.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: I will never be able to tell you how to lay that slab or pour that foundation or plant those trees.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: But you trust me that what I'm gonna be doing is making your life easier and more valuable because I do know how to build the business.
9:28
SPEAKER_01: I do know how to implement the tools and the systems to make your life easier and be able to provide for your family better.
9:34
SPEAKER_01: And if you can just have that relationship and that conversation, all ships are gonna rise.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: One question that comes from that is, and I think maybe some of the younger entrepreneurs that have this drive to maybe go and do what you want to do or do what you've done, is well, what if I buy this company and everybody leaves because I'm just this younger guy and they don't trust me and then I'm I'm stuck doing all the work.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: Did you did you fear that when you first got into it?
9:59
SPEAKER_00: I still fear it.
10:01
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't go away.
10:02
SPEAKER_01: Naturally, right?
10:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we've got over a hundred employees now, and I still have that fear, you know.
10:06
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's it's natural and it it is a real risk.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: It's not something that's made up.
10:11
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, because I think one of the things is typically, you know, private equity will come to a company and they're gonna they just wipe it out, replace that's that's kind of why they get a bad rap, right?
10:20
SPEAKER_01: There's a reason they do that, it's because they're just they're they're hedging against the risk of that happening, and they're putting the players in that they know are gonna do the job the way that they want it done.
10:28
SPEAKER_01: We don't like to take that approach, right?
10:31
SPEAKER_01: There are gonna be some things when we come in, we implement some new processes or procedures some people won't like and they're gonna leave.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: That's just an that's just incompatibility though, right?
10:39
SPEAKER_01: Um so excuse me.
10:44
SPEAKER_01: Um what was what was your question?
10:48
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: So when when you've got that situation where you're where you're taking over a company and you've got all these people been working for probably the same guy or family for a long time.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, like with that fear of them leaving and you stuck with all the work.
11:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, when and and it has happened.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: Uh it it not everyone, not a hundred percent of the company, but it has happened.
11:06
SPEAKER_01: We've had times where we wake up one morning and our leadership team is completely changed because somebody quit and we got to replace this general manager within three days or whatever it is, and that just happened to us recently.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so you know, the the the way that you hedge that is is recruiting.
11:21
SPEAKER_01: You've got to be good at recruiting.
11:22
SPEAKER_01: You've got to be able to find a bench of people who believe in what you believe in or have the skills that you need, and you can call them at any point and bring them on.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: And if you're not having that flywheel of recruitment before you even start this venture, that that fear that you have will keep you up at night and it will potentially come to fruition at some point in the near future.
11:40
SPEAKER_01: So it's it's it's a if you're thinking of doing this, that is the number one thing that I would say start with is recruiting and have your team ready before you jump into it.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: I and I love that approach too.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: I hadn't even thought about that, the significance of recruitment here in the Treasure Valley.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you think about it, we have a lot of people moving here, but we do have a solid base of people that already live here.
11:57
SPEAKER_03: Yep.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: And so let's talk about your recruitment process a little bit.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure it looks a lot different now than it would than it did when you first started this.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: What is what are some of the things that you've seen are key when you go out and recruit top talent?
12:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I mean, to differentiate yourself in the trades is not terribly difficult.
12:13
SPEAKER_01: I I I'd say that with respect, but it's true.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: Um, so for us, it's it's as simple as keeping recruiting systems on at all times.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: So if you're if you're talking a laborer, right?
12:23
SPEAKER_01: If you need if you need concrete finishers or you need some landscapers, that should just be a constant recruiting mechanism that you have job postings on through indeed, Facebook groups, whatever it is, constantly have some feelers out there.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: I think there's a lot more willing labor out there than people give credit to.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: I think when we say they have a labor shortage, I think there's some validity to that.
12:41
SPEAKER_01: But I also think they're not doing the the things that they need to do to find these people.
12:45
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
12:45
SPEAKER_01: Because if you get in the trades, you realize most of the skilled labor just gets shared amongst the companies over and over and over again.
12:52
SPEAKER_01: So I have a guy who works for me for 10 years, he gets a dollar raise at a competitor, he works for them for five years, and then I'm saying, oh, I need a back, here's another dollar on top of that, and he just bounces back and forth.
13:01
SPEAKER_01: That's typically how it's done.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: And so when they say there's a labor shortage, it's like, well, we're just sharing the same pool of guys or girls the entire time.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: It's like, no, you need to have people you're pulling outside of that shared circle.
13:11
SPEAKER_01: And you're gonna have some misses, right?
13:13
SPEAKER_01: It's not all gonna be perfectly skilled and placed labor from day one.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: But that's number one on labor.
13:17
SPEAKER_01: Just have your recruiting mechanisms in place and running at all times, whether that's a small budget of five bucks a day and Indeed or zip recruiter or whatever it is, up to whatever your budget is, have something running or for free.
13:27
SPEAKER_01: Go pay some post on Facebook groups once a week, right?
13:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:31
SPEAKER_01: Something simple.
13:32
SPEAKER_01: Then you have your office staff.
13:33
SPEAKER_01: If you're trying to scale a trade company, right, you you're gonna start taking on additional overhead, your estimators, your accountants, your uh maybe even drilling that down into ARAP people.
13:43
SPEAKER_01: Um that that approach looks a little differently.
13:45
SPEAKER_01: The way that we've taken that approach is um, you know, through LinkedIn, we're we're finding the talent that's on LinkedIn currently because typically they'll have they'll have that career advancement bone if they're on LinkedIn, is what I've found.
13:58
SPEAKER_01: Um, if they're not on LinkedIn, they they could still be really skilled, but they're really content where they're at, right?
14:03
SPEAKER_01: And so if they're on LinkedIn, they're they're most likely have some sort of aspiration to go somewhere.
14:07
SPEAKER_01: And so I found myself scrolling four, five, six, seven pages of LinkedIn people when I'm trying to search a specific skill set and I'll start reaching out to people that I think are a good fit.
14:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:16
SPEAKER_01: And we've found some of our best office staff that way.
14:19
SPEAKER_01: Um, we just hired a COO this way uh about four months ago, right?
14:22
SPEAKER_01: And you'd be surprised at how many people are willing to look at something new.
14:25
SPEAKER_01: I just don't think there's that intensity of recruitment in the valley that is really driving people to move jobs.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: They're just content where they're at because they don't know there's something else out there.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: So that's a great point.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: Have you found that that approach of reaching out, like almost cold calling, to get an employee is more effective than the traditional interview process, blast this out on Indeed and let's just bring in a pool of people to interview?
14:46
SPEAKER_01: It has been for us.
14:47
SPEAKER_01: Now we haven't been doing this terribly long because this was a new learning for us probably six months ago.
14:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:52
SPEAKER_01: So this isn't something this I'm I'm speaking from the failure, not so much from hey, we did this from day one, right?
14:57
SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, we about six months ago started our recruiting process.
15:01
SPEAKER_01: And I found because if if you can be very specific about who you need to hire, right, have your job description ready, have all of the metrics that that person needs to meet ready before you start recruiting, it's gonna make finding that person much easier, right?
15:13
SPEAKER_01: If I just say I need a general manager for landscaping, well, there you can you're not really drilling down what you actually need, right?
15:20
SPEAKER_01: Or I need somebody who is really good at managing employees, I need somebody who's really good at driving revenue in our business, I need somebody who has a little bit of a marketing bone in their in the in their past, whatever it is.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: Get really specific on who you want.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: And when you're going through those LinkedIn lists, you're gonna just those people are gonna pop out to you because it's gonna be in their headline, it'll be in their experience or the description of their previous jobs, and it'll just make that that filtering instead of the normal interview incoming process so much more efficient.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's almost like a top-down type approach where you're going in and you have a deeper filter in in what you're looking for, and then you find what you need because of that filter.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would say the last thing too is of course just networking, right?
15:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the valley's it's the largest, smallest city you'll ever be in, right?
16:02
SPEAKER_01: It's growing, but everybody still knows everybody somehow.
16:04
SPEAKER_01: Right.
16:04
SPEAKER_01: And so you just go meet people, you know, brush elbows.
16:07
SPEAKER_01: That's of course another huge way to win that's always been here.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's how I met you.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: I was literally at a breakfast meeting with someone that I knew, and he's like, Hey, you want to go swing by Gem State Holdings, Aaron Davis?
16:16
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, sure, who's that?
16:17
SPEAKER_00: Let's go, let's go say hello.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: That's it, man.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, so and then that's how it's kind of flourished between the two of us.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's awesome.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: And so one part of that too, so there's recruitment, right?
16:26
SPEAKER_00: And that's such a key aspect of getting good people on your team.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: And then the relationships aspect too, right?
16:32
SPEAKER_00: We do a lot of that here is where we've got relationships and they come on board with us, and there's that level of trust prior to the employment and the dollar signature.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, the next part I would say is retention, right?
16:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's kind of a competitive nature here in the valley, especially with Micron coming to the valley.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: There's so many employment opportunities there that are high-paying jobs for entry-level positions.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: And so, what are you doing to hedge against that?
16:55
SPEAKER_00: How has that affected your business?
16:57
SPEAKER_00: Somebody could just go pop over over to Micron real quick and make 38 bucks.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: It absolutely happens, right?
17:02
SPEAKER_01: We had just two weeks ago, um, we had 12 labor high-skilled laborers who have been here for 20 years with aggregate construction.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: You know, they were like, hey, we're out.
17:12
SPEAKER_01: And we retained all 12, 12 of them, luckily.
17:15
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
17:15
SPEAKER_01: But that happens, right?
17:16
SPEAKER_01: Success.
17:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 100% success.
17:18
SPEAKER_01: This is it's just a normal part.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: You you will have people who leave, you will have people who threaten to leave, right?
17:24
SPEAKER_01: Um it's a challenge on retention.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: But what I have found, and I I don't know if this is perfect or this is really the the way, but what I have found is is vision matters.
17:34
SPEAKER_01: Where you're going matters.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: And I think people don't give enough credit to the guy who is finishing the slab on where he wants to be.
17:40
SPEAKER_01: Some people are content, right?
17:41
SPEAKER_01: Some people don't want to get into management or have career growth.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: They're just good where they're at.
17:45
SPEAKER_01: But the majority of people that I've worked with, they have a desire to go somewhere still, right?
17:51
SPEAKER_01: I think it's human nature by default that we we want to strive, we want to build, we want to grow.
17:55
SPEAKER_01: Right.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think we give enough credit to the actual field staff that they have those same desires, or we don't know how to get them there, right?
18:04
SPEAKER_01: We're just kind of content and the business the way it is, and all of our focuses on the new software or whatever it is that benefits the office.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: And but like, go learn what these people want.
18:13
SPEAKER_01: Where do they want to be in 10 years?
18:15
SPEAKER_01: Have they been here 20 years?
18:16
SPEAKER_01: Have they been there two years?
18:17
SPEAKER_01: Are they young?
18:18
SPEAKER_01: Are they older?
18:19
SPEAKER_01: What do they want?
18:20
SPEAKER_01: And if that aligns with your vision and where you're going as a company, they're gonna stay around.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: But communicate that to them, right?
18:26
SPEAKER_01: My mistake the first two years was I didn't communicate our broader vision of Gem State Builders to our employees.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: It was it just stayed within that portfolio company that we had, and it didn't expand beyond that.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: Once we started talking about the broader vision of keeping businesses local, rolling them up, getting more efficient in our services, layering on technology, giving career advancement to these people, their attention went up.
18:49
SPEAKER_01: People wanted to stay more because they saw a vision of where they can go and why there's benefit for them staying here versus jumping to Micron for an extra four bucks an hour.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that makes total sense.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: They can buy into that vision and see that there's maybe a roadmap for themselves.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: So operationally from the top level down, how does how does that look?
19:07
SPEAKER_00: Do you bring people in for interviews?
19:08
SPEAKER_00: Do you talk with them about what their roadmap could look like?
19:11
SPEAKER_00: Do you have a standard roadmap that they can follow?
19:13
SPEAKER_01: Man, this is an area we need to be better at.
19:14
SPEAKER_01: Like we're trying to figure out what that actual framework looks like.
19:18
SPEAKER_01: Um, and this again, this is kind of the recruitment and retention of employees as a newer, newer venture for us in the company because we're recognizing how valuable it is.
19:27
SPEAKER_01: So and so what we're focusing on right now is we do want that initial interview experience to be very transparent about where we're going and make sure there's buy-in to the vision.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: Um but beyond that, the current staff that's just coming from getting getting in the field, right?
19:41
SPEAKER_01: If if anybody who's listening to this is thinking about buying a company and getting into this, it's like I had a false sense of, hey, I can sit in an office and run a trade company from afar, which is so false, right?
19:52
SPEAKER_01: Like get in the field, go meet your crews, go on job sites, go do some of the work with them, and that's how you're gonna do it.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it the start to the interview process, sure.
20:01
SPEAKER_01: But if you already have a staff of X amount of people and you need to get them to buy into it, go meet them where they're at.
20:06
SPEAKER_01: Don't expect them to come to you and try to preach to them about where you want to go.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: That's just gonna go right over their head.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's almost a principle of life, right?
20:12
SPEAKER_00: Like if I want to go make a new friend and he's really interested in snowboarding, I should probably go snowboard with the guy.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: That's a great example.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: And I think that that translates really well across all industries, and it's kind of a tried and true concept that we've always had.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: Um, so you've got over a hundred employees now, right?
20:28
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: You obviously have a trusted team as well that works with these employees because it's dang near impossible to go and visit 100 employees as frequently as every month or every quarter, right?
20:38
SPEAKER_00: So, how do you handle that?
20:39
SPEAKER_00: What does your leadership structure look like?
20:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, this is another area that we've had to refine over and over and over again the last almost four years.
20:46
SPEAKER_01: Um so but currently where we're at is um we have a general manager, essentially what is a vertical CEO over each line of business.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: And so we have our concrete division, we have a general manager over that, we have our landscaping division, we have a general manager over that.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: And then up at the holding company level, we have shared services.
21:02
SPEAKER_01: So we're we have um we have a finance leader, right?
21:05
SPEAKER_01: We have an accountant over each line of business, we have myself and then a COO.
21:10
SPEAKER_01: Um, we even have an innovator position, which is strictly around building technology and meeting the needs of the companies where they're at.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: So those are kind of the shared services model.
21:18
SPEAKER_01: But in terms of each individual company, yeah, it's essentially a CEO and down.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: So the GMs are in charge of everything in their organization.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: And so they're really the front line to what we see up on the holding company level, right?
21:30
SPEAKER_01: They're in charge of the PL, the balance sheet, the marketing, the sales, the retention, the recruiting.
21:35
SPEAKER_01: I mean a high level of accountability.
21:37
SPEAKER_01: A high level of accountability, yeah.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: And it has to be a high, and so when I say we have a GM quit, like we essentially had a CEO quit three weeks ago, right?
21:44
SPEAKER_01: So it's a big loss.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: Um, but finding somebody who's good in that role is a challenge.
21:48
SPEAKER_01: But man, once you get somebody in that who really will take that line of business and own it, it's a game changer.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: Um and so does that answer your question?
21:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 100%.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's such a cool concept, and what a cool structure, too.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: I, you know, wouldn't have thought.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Man, the GM over this specific area is technically the CEO that runs everything and rolls up to the portfolio.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: Have you been doing that structure for quite some time?
22:08
SPEAKER_01: No, so this structure came out about this year.
22:11
SPEAKER_01: So this was another identity crisis we went through is like, how do we structure a holding company when we're not we're we're an active holding company, right?
22:18
SPEAKER_01: A typical holding company, they'll just buy an investment.
22:20
SPEAKER_01: They might place their people in it and then they just do quarterly check-ins and see how it goes.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: Like we're so involved in the companies.
22:25
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we we all work in the same office, right?
22:27
SPEAKER_01: We're nothing's hidden.
22:29
SPEAKER_01: Like we're we're doing daily meetings together.
22:30
SPEAKER_01: We're we're very much running it as a company, but with the holding company structure.
22:34
SPEAKER_01: And so we went through several iterations and I, like I said, identity crisis is on who are we and how do we structure this and who reports to who.
22:41
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it was kind of a mess the first couple of years.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, but going into this year, we found this structure works most effectively.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: But the the main thing that makes it work is that accountability piece and making sure that the expectations are set out very, very clearly.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: I am highly confident that one of our listeners is going to be somebody that recently acquired a company, a trade company, or maybe somebody that's in the trades that leads a company.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: What advice could you give to that person that just has one and not a portfolio of companies, but just one?
23:09
SPEAKER_00: How can they operate more efficiently?
23:11
SPEAKER_00: Man.
23:13
SPEAKER_01: More efficiently.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: If we're speaking efficiency, I would say find a translator.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: That's the way I'm going to say it.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
23:21
SPEAKER_01: So we live in a world today where we have two big transitions going on macro transitions.
23:27
SPEAKER_01: We have the transition of business ownership from one generation to the next.
23:32
SPEAKER_01: And then we have a transition from software, well, in in trades, spreadsheets and carbon copy paper, right?
23:38
SPEAKER_01: To uh software and maybe if you're really advanced, some AI, right?
23:41
SPEAKER_01: So we have a technological reimagination of our world.
23:45
SPEAKER_01: In the trades, the default is to go to how things have been done for decades, right?
23:51
SPEAKER_01: It's pen and paper, you might have an estimating software.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're on QuickBooks Online now, right?
23:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: That's your that's the advanced trade company of that size.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: Um if you're not adapting into the software and the artificial intelligence and the way that to do that, I think I think there's a good chance that your efficiency won't meet what is required over the next five to ten years.
24:11
SPEAKER_01: The challenge with that is you can go educate if you're an owner or you're leading a construction company, you can go find and learn how to do AI all day long.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: You can build really cool systems, you can even have agentic AI software and you can do all these things.
24:23
SPEAKER_01: But how does that translate to the field, right?
24:26
SPEAKER_01: If you build all these things in the office, it changes nothing for the guy who's planting trees or the guy who's framing or roofing.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: Oh, 100%.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: So what we've found is we've been really good at the software side because we're software guys, right?
24:38
SPEAKER_01: We've been really good at the tooling, but we've been really bad at how to actually get that in the field to be used to make the business more efficient.
24:44
SPEAKER_01: So what I'm calling them is the translator.
24:46
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
24:46
SPEAKER_01: Somebody who sits in between, who can reach over both sides of that fence and connect the two dots.
24:51
SPEAKER_01: And so somebody who knows the trades, who has the respect of the guys, but also has that innovative, software-driven mind to be able to translate from what we're building to how it actually impacts the guys in the field positively or negatively.
25:04
SPEAKER_01: If you can connect those two dots and do those two things well, the business is going to be efficient and you're going to stay competitive.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: Even for the owner operator, it's got a team of 12 guys, maybe, and it's just a single landscape company.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: I could see how that would be really beneficial, right?
25:18
SPEAKER_00: Because you're almost like in the position that this person hypothetically is in.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: They're running the books, they're running the back end, they're also probably out on the job when two people are out sick, right?
25:27
SPEAKER_00: And so these tools, and that was one thing that I loved about the stuff that you sent in was you're hyper focused right now on integration of software with an industry that historically has never really been too keen on software.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: Right.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: Right.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: And so, how do you handle that with people that are probably a little bit resistant to it, but you know that it's necessary moving forward?
25:47
SPEAKER_01: I have actually been pleasantly surprised at how receptive they have been to it.
25:51
SPEAKER_01: There's been the pushback, right?
25:52
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: We have a couple employees in their 50s, 60s, 70s who could don't even use the Google Calendar that we have for that have been there for 10 years.
26:00
SPEAKER_01: So there's there's resistance there.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, but man, when you figure out how to translate that this is going to make your life easier and this is going to maybe even make you more money, it makes it so much easier.
26:11
SPEAKER_01: But it has to be, it has to be simplified to the point where it's not complex.
26:16
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't interrupt their day.
26:17
SPEAKER_01: These guys just they want to go pour concrete, they want to go frame.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: That's what that's their skill set, that's their life, right?
26:22
SPEAKER_01: They're they're experts in that.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: So you don't want to layer on processes and procedures.
26:27
SPEAKER_01: So just make sure whatever you're implementing into the field is refined enough to where they get all the benefit with none of the extra work.
26:33
SPEAKER_01: And that's a challenge.
26:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
26:34
SPEAKER_01: But it's doable.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: Have you seen at all in in your companies?
26:37
SPEAKER_00: Have you seen anybody that's concerned about AI taking over what they might do or pushing them out of their field?
26:43
SPEAKER_00: Have you heard any of that?
26:45
SPEAKER_00: No, not in the trades.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: That's what that's what I thought.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it could be it could be some ego too, right?
26:49
SPEAKER_01: Like no one can pour a slab as good as I can, right?
26:52
SPEAKER_01: For sure.
26:52
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of that.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: But no, I and I would agree with them that I don't I don't see the writing on that wall at all for the next 10 years, right?
26:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: Unless robotics come out and they're just wild or whatever.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: Like it's not happening.
27:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
27:04
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, if we're talking office staff, that might be a different thing with the gen tics coming out, you know, being able to automate estimating or something like that, like that or accounting, right?
27:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: Anything that's inputs and outputs is at risk.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to the trades, actual infield, skilled labor, it's just not, I don't think it's happening.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: Every year with Alquist, we host a big giant meetup with all of our large partners and industry leaders here.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: It's called kerosene.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: And one topic that we talked about there was the fact that AI is so integral to what we're doing in the future, but also to the effect that it's not going to replace the employees, but the employee that knows how to work it better is probably going to replace the employee that doesn't.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: Right.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: And so it's almost that garbage in, garbage out aspect that we've been talking about for years.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:47
SPEAKER_01: Well, and in addition to that, the employee that does know how to do it well can probably do the job of five of them.
27:51
SPEAKER_01: Right.
27:52
SPEAKER_01: Right.
27:52
SPEAKER_01: And so it's it's not like the goal in anybody who is an ethical operator of a company, the goal should never be to replace your staff with artificial intelligence.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: It should be to enable them to do the best work they can and focus on the areas of their job where a human is required and their skill set and expertise is emphasized.
28:10
SPEAKER_01: Right.
28:11
SPEAKER_01: And then take all the junk that they hate doing out of it through your agents, through your AI.
28:15
SPEAKER_01: That's that's the key, right?
28:16
SPEAKER_01: So it's how do you make the people more efficient?
28:18
SPEAKER_01: Don't go replace them, don't go fire people.
28:20
SPEAKER_01: There's this race to the bottom right now where people are just trying to save money by AI using AI and implementing it.
28:25
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's such the like you might win it, you might win the race to the bottom, but you're gonna be at the bottom, right?
28:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
28:30
SPEAKER_01: It's like, no, keep the skilled people that you have invested into for years and years and years and just enable them to do better, more efficient work.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: And so have you seen that with your top level, or I guess even your GMs, have they been keen to wanting to integrate AI into what they do?
28:45
SPEAKER_00: How's that been?
28:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's been phenomenal.
28:47
SPEAKER_01: Cool.
28:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we've been we've been putting some pretty cool tools out there.
28:50
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's been pretty wild to see.
28:52
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I mean, like I said, in the trades, it's a lot of it's estimating, right?
28:56
SPEAKER_01: That's a big one.
28:56
SPEAKER_01: Like, how do you how do you do your takeoffs?
28:58
SPEAKER_01: How do you actually spit a bit out in almost real time that's accurate, that's actually going to be profitable?
29:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
29:03
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of challenges like that in the trades.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: Um, and we've been able to tackle most of those, I think, which has been really cool to see our GMs adopt stuff like this because it's just made them one more informed on the business.
29:15
SPEAKER_01: They understand the business better because of these tools.
29:18
SPEAKER_01: They can ask questions in real time instead of having to go to the accountant, pull a PL, analyze it for a day, try to figure out where the holes are.
29:25
SPEAKER_01: Like we we can simply just query an agent and get their questions answered in real time at any point that they want of any of our data.
29:32
SPEAKER_01: Right.
29:32
SPEAKER_01: So centralization of that data is key for that to work.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: But um, these guys can essentially do anything single-handedly that they need to do.
29:40
SPEAKER_01: They can get an estimate out.
29:41
SPEAKER_01: They can even design stuff, right?
29:42
SPEAKER_01: They can query our QuickBooks to figure out exactly what they need to do or how do they tweak this quarter to hit their goals?
29:48
SPEAKER_01: It's been really cool to see, and they've adopted it very well.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: And how cool for your customers too, right?
29:53
SPEAKER_00: To get a bit out like that so quickly or a quick little estimate for your customers or partners.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: Have you seen an uptick in your relationships with them because of what you're implementing at your company?
30:02
SPEAKER_01: I think the the theory is interesting to them, right?
30:05
SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's fully translated there yet.
30:07
SPEAKER_01: Now, on like residential landscaping, it's it's fully there, right?
30:10
SPEAKER_01: We're we're getting stuff out the door quickly.
30:11
SPEAKER_01: That's we're doing design build, we get stuff out the door.
30:14
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we've been able to use a lot of cool tools, even even just AI rendering, being able to get them some visualization of what they're doing is is key, right?
30:21
SPEAKER_01: People want to know what they're buying.
30:22
SPEAKER_01: The commercial side's a bigger challenge and it's more long-tailed.
30:25
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna take some time for them to fully recognize what we're doing and for us to really have the tools that benefit the commercial side that much.
30:31
SPEAKER_01: And so that's what we're working on now.
30:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
30:32
SPEAKER_01: Um, but when that happens, that's the whole, that's the whole thesis of Gem State Builders is that we're going to make the subcontracting and the trades more efficient, which benefits the GCs, which lowers costs, makes us more competitive, and allows us to actually meet the housing demand that's or and the commercial demand that's happening here in the valley.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, we see it all over, right?
30:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we have a massive, I don't think we talk about this here internally because we kind of see what development's going on.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: We have that almost class ball, if you will, into the future, kind of into what's going where, which tenants are moving into which buildings, and you know, what companies are actually looking at coming to Idaho, um, because they ask developers, they ask us.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: And one thing that I don't know if everybody fully comprehends is the impact that Micron is going to have on this valley.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: It's huge.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: And the fact that they're expanding so much here and investing so much into Idaho, it's gonna bring a lot of talent here, which injects a lot more dollars into the economy and businesses are gonna thrive.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I mean, just but people that live here are gonna thrive because of the new money that's in the economy.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: Um, I want to talk a little bit about, so we focus on, you know, the younger generation, 20s and 30s, that are really interested in getting into the trades or owning a trades company.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: But I want to also talk about the younger generation that's coming into the workforce, someone that's coming up at they're a senior in high school and they're thinking to themselves, Am I going to college or am I gonna go learn a trade or am I gonna be stuck in my mom's basement forever?
31:55
SPEAKER_00: You know, what do we what do we tell to them and what would you tell that guy or gal?
32:00
SPEAKER_01: Their parents are gonna hate me, probably.
32:03
SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
32:03
SPEAKER_01: This is the place to do it.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: I I personally think college is pointless unless you're gonna be probably a doctor.
32:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: Even then, I mean, look at AI and where it's going.
32:11
SPEAKER_01: Precision with robotics, right?
32:13
SPEAKER_01: Surgeons, things like that.
32:14
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's there's a gap there.
32:16
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna take years for that to happen.
32:17
SPEAKER_01: But unless you're gonna be a doctor or a lawyer, even lawyers right now.
32:19
SPEAKER_01: Like my attorney disagrees with me, but I'm like, I feel like a lot of the legal stuff's gonna be automated, right?
32:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
32:24
SPEAKER_01: Um, but man, even more so than that, education is free now.
32:28
SPEAKER_01: If you just want to put in the time to focus on a subject and learn it, you can learn it A faster.
32:33
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think you can learn it more in depth, and you don't have to pay 40 grand a year to go do it, whatever college costs these days, right?
32:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's expensive.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: Like with 40 grand a semester, depending on where you go.
32:43
SPEAKER_01: It could be, yeah.
32:44
SPEAKER_01: And so my take, and you know, I I tell my kids ask me this all the time, well, I'm gonna go to college and I'm gonna do this.
32:49
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, that's great.
32:49
SPEAKER_01: Like I support you fully.
32:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:51
SPEAKER_01: But when you get a little older, I'm gonna explain to you kind of like what's what's happening right now in the macro environment of this world.
32:57
SPEAKER_01: And I just think you can go learn anything as as early as you want.
32:59
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to wait to graduate.
33:00
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to do it like whatever you if you know what you want to go do, don't wait for some professor to tell you you're approved to go do it.
33:06
SPEAKER_01: Just go do it.
33:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:07
SPEAKER_01: Because this there's so much opportunity happening right now, so much access to be able to learn what you want and go do what you want without having to go study under somebody.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: Right.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: I think there's been over the last, you know, 10 years or so, there's been this big push of like college sucks, right?
33:20
SPEAKER_00: Like, don't go to college.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: It's not worth your time.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: But I think that for some people, like you said, it may be worth their time to go and learn how to learn almost because you get to be in that environment where people are kind of teaching you how to learn, how to go study and figure something out.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: Um, but at the same time, it seems like it takes forever to get the same knowledge base that you could get by spending maybe 12 to 15 hours on YouTube each night, like or not each night, but you know what I mean, like each week just spending some time on YouTube and figuring out a way to learn what you want to learn.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: Now, these 18, 19, 20-year-old kids sometimes they don't know exactly what they want to get into, but they know that they want to get out and make money.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: Right.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: What is have we been overselling or underselling?
34:01
SPEAKER_00: Have we been overselling college?
34:03
SPEAKER_00: Have we been underselling the trades?
34:04
SPEAKER_00: What's your opinion?
34:06
SPEAKER_01: I think so.
34:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
34:07
SPEAKER_01: I think I think I think the push to college is just a we're used to this advice and we haven't really thought outside the box.
34:13
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I was pushed to go to college, I did for two and a half, three years.
34:16
SPEAKER_01: I dropped out because I was doing what I wanted.
34:18
SPEAKER_01: Um, I didn't see the the value in it anymore.
34:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, but then you look at these young guys who are getting into the trades right out of high school or even in high school, right?
34:28
SPEAKER_01: There's 17, 16, 17-year-old, and before they hit 20, they're making 40 bucks an hour as a welder or something like that.
34:34
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, I think people have this misunderstanding that when you graduate college, magically the salary range that your advisor gave you when you were a freshman just appears out of somewhere, right?
34:44
SPEAKER_01: And the job offers do these people start reaching out to you, and you know, you get job offers left and right because you've graduated.
34:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: It's like you really start back where you were out of high school, you just have this piece of paper and some experience that shows, hey, I'm qualified to do X, Y, or Z, but you still have to then go do the legwork to find the career, to go find the job, to go network, to do all the things you could have been doing for four years anyway.
35:04
SPEAKER_01: Right.
35:04
SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, for the trades, it's like if you can get an apprentice apprenticeship somewhere and learn under somebody who knows what they're doing, I think your speed to career earning money is much faster than the college route.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that makes total sense.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: And you can see it out there, right?
35:20
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we see the changes, the changes that people experience as they're walking in and out of people that may have gone to college, leaving college and going into a trade.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: They know that exact difference, kind of like you did.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: I have a very similar story.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: I went to college.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: Um, I dropped out of college to go to a trade school to learn how to program, computer software programming.
35:38
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
35:38
SPEAKER_00: And then I did that for about three years, and then 2020 graduated college.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: I went back to college.
35:43
SPEAKER_00: It's actually how I paid for college.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: I say I dropped out.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: I almost got kicked out of college.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: I had really bad grades, and it was it was at that point where they're on the verge, and I just dropped out and I went to go learn how to program.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: And um then I got into programming.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: I had a work-from-home job and I did that for a few years, and then 2020 hit, 2021 hit, and I saw kind of the writing on the wall, like, oh man, programming is gonna be a thing where someone just puts an input, like, hey, go build me this app, and it's gonna go do it and reiterate on what you're what you've already tried to build.
36:14
SPEAKER_00: And I left that industry too to get into real estate.
36:17
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and now here we are, right?
36:18
SPEAKER_00: But I I saw that and I thought to myself, man, that was a trade.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: Because I thought to myself, man, college is gonna take a long time.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm learning business management, which is great, but I need to go do something that's gonna make me some more money sooner.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: Um, and once I got into it, I was like, oh, this is great.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm making money, this is awesome.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but then I almost I almost limited myself because of the trade that I chose.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: And so when we talk about the trades, there's all kinds of different trades out there, right?
36:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you could go and get into landscaping, plumbing, elect electrical.
36:51
SPEAKER_00: Um, in your experience, have you seen the younger generation in landscaping thrive or hate it or love it?
36:59
SPEAKER_00: What have you seen?
37:00
SPEAKER_01: I've seen both.
37:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
37:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, I you know, we've had some young guys come in and and and do very, very well, right?
37:08
SPEAKER_01: Um, the the challenges is one, you gotta have thick skin.
37:11
SPEAKER_01: Like if you're coming in as a young guy, there's gonna be the older guys there giving you a hard time, right?
37:15
SPEAKER_01: You gotta be okay with that.
37:16
SPEAKER_01: That's just the name of the game, right?
37:18
SPEAKER_01: Some guys don't like that, they can't handle it, they want to go back, so they leave.
37:22
SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, you've you've got to just be able to work your tail off, man.
37:25
SPEAKER_01: And that's that's the nature of it.
37:26
SPEAKER_01: Like at the end of the day, it's still physical labor.
37:28
SPEAKER_01: No matter how much you talk about all these theories and everything, like it's still physical labor, right?
37:32
SPEAKER_01: You gotta be willing to go bust tail to make it happen.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: And and I mean, you'll you have to compete against these six-year-old guys who can go lay a mile of irrigation in no time at all, you know?
37:40
SPEAKER_01: Right.
37:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, I mean they they have thrived.
37:42
SPEAKER_01: And then we have there's one guy in particular that I've actually brought back to the company.
37:47
SPEAKER_01: Um, because man, I'll tell you this.
37:49
SPEAKER_01: If you are a young person who wants to get into the trades, you can separate yourself with ownership and advance your career so quickly.
37:56
SPEAKER_01: If there is an opportunity now to advance quickly, it's this.
38:00
SPEAKER_01: If you are a young person and you get into the trades and you have a technological bone in your body, go start your first week, start your first month, your first six months, and find somewhere to increase efficiency.
38:11
SPEAKER_01: Especially if you can layer on some technology to that.
38:13
SPEAKER_01: Like if you if you can find ways that your your foreman who has been doing this for 25 years to make it better and you can communicate that, like, don't be afraid to share that with whoever it is, the supervisor GM, like that will advance you so quickly because that's really what I wish I had more of was these young guys who will come in, find the inefficiencies in the field without me having to go work on a crew for you know a a week to figure out myself and bring that to ownership or GM and help them build that efficiency.
38:40
SPEAKER_01: Like if you have that bone in your body, this is a huge opportunity.
38:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's such a cool insight.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: And I hope that everybody listening to this actually takes that into heart because what that really speaks to is culture.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about a couple of different things.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: You got to work your tail off, right?
38:55
SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna be in this industry, you gotta be willing to go do it.
38:57
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's true for almost every industry, but especially ones like these.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: And then the other side of it is when you find an inefficiency, have the ability and the courage to step up and communicate it, right?
39:06
SPEAKER_00: And so there's two sides of it.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: There's one, the willingness to go out and communicate, but then the other side of it is the culture that allows that communication to happen.
39:14
SPEAKER_00: Big time.
39:15
SPEAKER_00: And I think, from what I understand with your suite of companies, you have that culture where people can communicate freely and give insight and give recommendations on how to streamline, how to work more efficiently.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: And that's part of their buy-in to that roadmap that you're talking about with all of your employees.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:30
SPEAKER_00: Um so my question with that is how do we build that culture in the companies that we run here in the Treasure Valley?
39:39
SPEAKER_01: In a single word, trust.
39:41
SPEAKER_01: Um one of our core values is innovation.
39:45
SPEAKER_01: It's very important to us.
39:47
SPEAKER_01: And the relationship from ownership to employee in the trades, historically, at least in my experience, my short experience, has been very transactional.
39:54
SPEAKER_01: It's almost like you're a 1099 employee and this is an employer, and hey, if you have work for me, I'll show up for you.
40:00
SPEAKER_01: That's kind of been the historical culture that I've seen here locally.
40:04
SPEAKER_01: Um but with us, innovation is huge.
40:06
SPEAKER_01: And so when I say trust, it starts at the interview process.
40:09
SPEAKER_01: And so every time we interview somebody, we match them against our core core values, innovation being one.
40:14
SPEAKER_01: But in order to innovate, you need to be you need to be trusted and you need to be you need to be um you need to be fully welcomed and feel like you fit and fit in with the company, right?
40:24
SPEAKER_01: And that happens through making people feel welcomed.
40:27
SPEAKER_01: And so um there's a good book, uh uh Culture, Culture Code, that talks about this, where it's like the the ability to get people to be creative and innovate and move all starts with their ability to be comfortable in their environment and be trusted enough to, or I should say, trust their leadership enough that they can fail and they're not gonna be reprimanded for it, right?
40:47
SPEAKER_01: Creativity comes out of freedom, it doesn't come out of uh trying to drive people for more efficiency or laying down the hammer, right?
40:53
SPEAKER_01: It comes from people feeling welcomed and like they're part of a family.
40:56
SPEAKER_01: And typically I don't like the word family in business because it's so overused.
41:00
SPEAKER_01: It's overused, right?
41:01
SPEAKER_01: But I I say that because of that feeling of ownership.
41:03
SPEAKER_01: Like there's nothing that could separate us, right?
41:06
SPEAKER_01: Um, I I know that they have my back and I have their back, type of type of mentality.
41:10
SPEAKER_01: And that hasn't historically been the case in the trades.
41:13
SPEAKER_01: It's like if you mess up on one little thing, you're gone, right?
41:16
SPEAKER_01: And so I think that's a big culture shift that can happen is if you allow people to feel uh safe enough to fail, you know, to a certain degree, obviously.
41:25
SPEAKER_01: You know, you can't go burn down the building, but like safe enough to fail, um, and you give them that ability to innovate, then they're gonna return that tenfold to you to be able to make new things.
41:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and they'll feel safe to do it.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: And I love the the fact that innovation is one of your core values.
41:42
SPEAKER_00: It is such a cultural thing to allow people to innovate.
41:45
SPEAKER_00: And some companies really almost want to hold that innovation to the chest, like top leaders, they want to hold that to the chest and like put their stamp of, you know, almost beat their chest with the fact like I'm the one that integrated this, you know, I'm the innovator here, and I'm the one with the good ideas.
41:58
SPEAKER_00: But the good ideas, I mean, historically, if you look at civilizations, good ideas from come from every which way you can look, right?
42:05
SPEAKER_00: Like if you take a look at just Boise alone, there's so many people there with great ideas.
42:09
SPEAKER_00: Some of them aren't executed, but some of them are.
42:12
SPEAKER_00: And you take a look at a company almost like a civilization, sometimes you can see that somebody there, no matter who it is and what position or title they hold, may have an innovation that is critical to the company.
42:24
SPEAKER_00: And it's so crucial to allow that person to talk about it freely.
42:27
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
42:28
SPEAKER_00: So that's cool that you're doing that here in the Treasure Valley, and thank you for doing it because I think it's such an important thing, especially for people coming up that want to be a part of these companies and learn the trades.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: I think it's important for them to know I'm not gonna go and just get my ass kicked walking in the door up with these old guys.
42:43
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
42:43
SPEAKER_00: You know, I just I want to go in and I want to learn this, but I want to feel like part of the team, not just like a young guy that's like, eh, you're here and you're gone.
42:49
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
42:50
SPEAKER_00: Not a number, not another number.
42:51
SPEAKER_01: Right.
42:52
SPEAKER_01: You want to be involved in something bigger.
42:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
42:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we want to create that environment for people.
42:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, I really appreciate all the insight that you've been able to give us today.
42:59
SPEAKER_00: I've got a couple of kind of final questions here that I just wanted to ask.
43:03
SPEAKER_00: And I think this is kind of a recurring theme, especially for the audience that I think is gonna listen to this.
43:07
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you're the first guest to come on, but I think we're gonna have people that are interested in the trades listening to this.
43:13
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have also younger people that are really interested in building something with their life, buying a company, building a company, starting a brand new company with the intent to sell it.
43:22
SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be those people that listen to this.
43:24
SPEAKER_00: What do you do when you want to give up?
43:28
SPEAKER_01: Uh I've joked about this before.
43:30
SPEAKER_01: Sign a personal guarantee because you can't.
43:33
SPEAKER_01: Traps you right in there.
43:34
SPEAKER_01: You're trapped.
43:35
SPEAKER_01: Uh no, but in more reality, it's like you've got it.
43:38
SPEAKER_01: Uh Simon Sinek says it all the time.
43:40
SPEAKER_01: Start with your why, right?
43:41
SPEAKER_01: What is your why?
43:42
SPEAKER_01: And I know I I think that's a really commonly used phrase, but it's it is very true.
43:47
SPEAKER_01: What got you into this in the first place?
43:48
SPEAKER_01: And if you're before you've started this, trying to figure out what that why is, make sure it's worthwhile.
43:54
SPEAKER_01: Make sure it is legitimate and it's not a vanity metric, right?
43:57
SPEAKER_01: Don't get into this for cars or money, or it's like that's not enough.
44:01
SPEAKER_01: That's not gonna take you through the tough times.
44:03
SPEAKER_01: There's gotta be something bigger that you're trying to accomplish, right?
44:06
SPEAKER_01: Um, I think that serving a higher purpose, uh, whether that's in your community, um, whatever that is, is is vital.
44:14
SPEAKER_01: Like you've got to have something outside of yourself you're trying to accomplish.
44:17
SPEAKER_01: Or else the times that get tough, and there will be times that are tough, and oftentimes in my experience, it's more tough than not.
44:23
SPEAKER_01: Uh you you've got to have something that's gonna drive you through it.
44:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
44:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
44:26
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, and that's that's a personal mission.
44:28
SPEAKER_01: Like if you don't know what that is, your first step is to figure out what that is.
44:31
SPEAKER_01: If you do know what it is, that's gonna keep you going.
44:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can imagine that evolves over time sometimes, but your core value of why you're starting something, that doesn't change, right?
44:39
SPEAKER_00: Your core that you feel, why you get into it, that keeps you going.
44:43
SPEAKER_00: It does.
44:44
SPEAKER_00: What are you betting on today?
44:46
SPEAKER_01: What am I betting on today?
44:50
SPEAKER_00: What are you betting on today that you may think is gonna happen in the next 10 years that other people might not think is gonna happen?
44:56
SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
44:57
SPEAKER_01: Um that other people may not think is gonna happen.
45:00
SPEAKER_01: That's a that's a tough question.
45:05
SPEAKER_01: Do I have a second to think about this?
45:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
45:07
SPEAKER_01: It's a tough one.
45:08
SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a big one.
45:09
SPEAKER_01: So what am I betting on?
45:10
SPEAKER_01: Explain that one more time.
45:11
SPEAKER_01: What am I betting on that other people I d aren't gonna think is gonna happen?
45:14
SPEAKER_00: Maybe specifically in your industry, kind of what are you betting on in your industry that you know you just know with your core that is gonna happen or that's gonna be important in 10 years that maybe other people are like, eh, I don't know.
45:24
SPEAKER_00: That's yeah.
45:25
SPEAKER_01: I do think people, and this is just because my experience in technology, but I think in the trade specifically we talked about this earlier, people are uh are underestimating what AI can do.
45:36
SPEAKER_01: And I like I said, I don't think it's gonna come take jobs, but I think that people dismiss it because either they don't know it, uh, they don't want to learn it, or they think it's just kind of a buzzword right now, right?
45:46
SPEAKER_01: I would say that that's not the case.
45:48
SPEAKER_01: I would say if there's anything that you could do to differentiate yourself, it's go go learn how to uh dive deeper into AI.
45:57
SPEAKER_01: Go learn about repositories, go learn about how to uh have local memory that's gonna be benefiting you in 10 years, right?
46:05
SPEAKER_01: There's different layers to this AI game, go learn about that because um people who are gonna be innovating on that are gonna differentiate their themselves over the next 10 years and it will separate the game.
46:14
SPEAKER_01: So it's not something to be ignored, but you don't have to be fearful of it either.
46:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, love that answer.
46:20
SPEAKER_00: What would you tell 20-year-old Aaron today?
46:25
SPEAKER_01: Keep the foot on the gas.
46:27
SPEAKER_00: All right.
46:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's it.
46:29
SPEAKER_01: There's been many times where I've sat down and I said, I took a wrong turn somewhere.
46:34
SPEAKER_01: And uh I'm a man of faith, and so I have to believe that that God has me on whatever path I'm on for a reason.
46:41
SPEAKER_01: Um but there's been many times where I felt like I've taken a wrong turn somewhere, you know, and so uh my my response to Aaron in at 20 would be you're in his will, you're gonna continue to do hard things, but don't take your foot off the gas.
46:56
SPEAKER_00: Love it, love it.
46:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, hold strong to that, share that with as many people as you can.
47:01
SPEAKER_00: Aaron Davis, founder of Jim State Holdings.
47:03
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming on Young Guns.
47:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thank you.
47:05
SPEAKER_00: I appreciate it, man.
47:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's been great.
47:07
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
47:07
SPEAKER_00: Yep.