βSomewhere along the way in your entrepreneurial journey, running a business got way more complicated than it needed to be. Between the advice that's built for eight figure companies, systems that felt unnecessarily heavy, and strategies that sounded smart, but didn't actually fit the way you work, you probably ended up putting in a whole lot of effort without getting better results.
Listen, business is hard enough. Can we not make it harder? So welcome to the Can We Not Business podcast. I'm Sam and I'm all about uncomplicating the strategies and work of running a business so it can not only be profitable, but also enjoyable At Oxo Business Services. I work with visionary doers who like to be busy.
But want that effort to create momentum instead of more noise. We're a back office agency that helps founders build support systems that actually work through US-based virtual assistants, recruiting for key roles and tough love strategies that turn ideas into execution. Now, this show is for founder led businesses.
With small teams, or even no team at all yet, we're gonna talk about the behind the scenes decisions and real day-to-day work that shape your business so you can stop chasing the shiny objects, get out of second guessing spirals, and simply be more profitable. So let's get into it.
β π All right. Today's guest is the infamous Bryant Solomon, and I say β π infamous because he, man, he does wonders in one of the hardest industries, I think, which is construction tech. And if there's any industry that can so easily overcomplicate the crap out of something, it's tech and then it's tech for construction.
So I am super excited to have Bry on. He also has big bro energy. So Bryant, I mean like we met. I think maybe 2024, like end of 2024 or like beginning of 2025 is when we first connected maybe. Yeah.
it was, yeah, we, we, I think we had a coffee
Okay.
as, as Megan would call him.
Yeah, and I mean, I always, I'm like Lorelei Gilmore for any Gilmore fans here. Like I always have my coffee.
Um, and so we did a pod, uh, an episode for our previous podcast, construction Trailblazers, and then we met in person at Converge, which is one of the best summit conferences, hangouts I've ever been to. Are you going to converge this year?
Yeah.
Let's,
going to converge. Um, I'm, I'm always excited about, about Converge. There's a, it's just a good, good vibes, good group of people that go to
yeah.
can't wait.
Anyone in the construction world that's doesn't have their ticket already, I am like, what are you doing with your life? Like, do you not care? Like, come on man. Uh, but at Converge it was like, there, there, there are times where like, oh, does someone have the same personality from when you meet them in like on a.
Virtual call and like, they're probably gonna disappoint you in real life, you know? Uh, and then we met and I was like, no, this person is the coolest kid in class. We were like the, the cool kids in the back of the class that should have been separated.
Yeah.
It was like, I, I need to stop making jokes 'cause I'm being extremely rude
Yeah.
now.
It was awesome. Oh man.
that there were some, there were, there were some there that, that were, um, surprised by the amount of energy that you brought to the conversation, and I was just like,
Oh,
like Sam has, like, she, like the energies that she brings into the, into the meetings is, is there, but when it's in person, it's like,
hopefully not too obnoxious, but yeah, I mean, this is the time to pick on Josh Luebker who I will never stop picking on him. No. Thought about the names, we'll tag him and everything. Uh, he thought that I was like very corporatey. And you know what? Shout out to his insult because it did inspire me to like shift my content a bit.
'cause I was like, if someone thinks that I am corporatey, I mean, I'm definitely not like up in the clouds. Woo. Dropping f-bombs all the time, but I think I'm fun. And so I was like, if my content doesn't tell you that I'm fun, that I'm doing something wrong. So shout out to Josh for making me feel like a crappy, boring accountant.
Yeah.
Ha ha.
for the weird backhanded compliments.
Yeah. Right. Uh, okay, so let me get back on track. 'cause speaking of accountants, uh, and we talk about what ControlQore does, which is Bryant's company. In the construction tech world, you guys bring some kind of order to the accounting side of construction, and that's all that, that the whole thing of ControlQore is how do you replace the crappiness of QuickBooks for the construction world, which has a very complex, uh, bookkeeping meets, right,
yeah.
So, break down the i the idea there and then break down kind of really what you guys do for your client.
Yeah, so, um. ControlQore. It was built out of necessity, uh, by, myself and my brother-in-law, jd who, uh, you, you met from Converge. And we have great stories about jd, um, and, uh, as, as a general contractor and, uh, we understand the accounting world very well, especially in the construction space and felt like. I, I was, I thought you were about to say that, that construction has a complicated relationship with and I actually would say that it has a toxic relationship with QuickBooks because, um, is not a construction specific tool, yet it is the most widely used, uh, software in like the most unanimously used software in small construction companies.
Yeah, and I would to like to.
software, go ahead.
To pick on that a little bit. I think also like you don't, I don't always argue that you have to find a piece of software that's built specifically for your industry. I also think like, hey, sometimes you can find a workaround for a software and that's okay. Like the way I use HubSpot is also for an applicant tracking system as well.
So I use it for the CRM purposes, but then also to like track our virtual assistant candidates. So it's totally okay to have a workaround in tech sometimes. But you're absolutely right, like the relation, like it's not just workarounds and QuickBooks. It's like they've assumed this is the only option and yeah, I'm just gonna deal with the hell that it brings into my business and it's, it is extremely toxic QuickBooks.
And if we're gonna keep throwing names out there, I'd throw Procore into that mix as well. But yeah. Okay. So we're building this out of necessity because of how much QuickBooks sucks take. Yeah. Continue on that journey.
Yeah, and it's not just QuickBooks, it's in general. There's, there's a lack of, of innovation on the ERP side of, of our industry. So there's a couple of, of big ERPs that are for the small and midsize guys that know, haven't innovated in. years, um, their systems are still the same. And so there's just a need.
Um, there's β π a, there's a way to simplify. A lot of the construction accounting systems. I think that that's probably one of the biggest things that we ran into is, is like we got over complicated. As a gc we had probably seven or eight different applications that we needed to run, uh, to truly close out our month end and, and see how our company and project profitability was doing. You know, and so if we're talking about complication like that, right there is just. You know, seven or eight applications, all of them have to have the same sets of lists. All of them have to align. Uh, you have to train everyone in each of those particular technologies, β π which doesn't go well if you just have Ethel running the front office,
Poor Ethel.
or Ethel. Um, and so that, like, that, that's what ControlQore is. It's, it's meant to be a new, consolidator. Like there is, like we can replace. At least five technologies with one of ours, uh, for your accounting exec stack. And so the idea is like we, we want it to be simple from a technology management perspective. Now granted, there's, you know, it's a big piece of technology, so it takes a minute to feel like you've got it under control. But most folks, when they get in there and they're a lit, they have a little bit of technology understanding. They can ride right around and, and get the information that they need or start working in the system pretty easily.
Yeah, I mean, and not the, not to call your customers dummies, but when you can build something and like build it for dummies, right? Then it make like, make it easy for everybody and that's like when I build processes, I'm like. Make it dummy proof so anyone can, can come use this.
we have a, we have a bad, probably, probably not a nice thing, but we were just like, look, if, if my father-in-law. Who is averse.
cowboy.
If he can get in there and he can get what he needs to out of it, then we've, we've done our job.
Yeah. Right. If he's not scared of using it
Yeah.
then, check now. Okay. Something I, I actually, I also really appreciate about your story is like, you're not this, uh, you're not a typical tech bro. You've got some humility in your strategy as well. So in your finance background, when this idea came you then, and correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm like.
Totally butchering your career story here, but if I remember correctly, you then went to go work at your father-in-law's company and really understand what the accounting side of construction looks like, so that you could then build the control core product in a really smart way. Right?
Yeah, I left my very comfortable, very cush banking tech job. Um, it
Um.
it was a great job. Um, and, um, we, we knew, I knew that if I was going to JD solve his. His problems that he was having at the GC firm and with the idea that we would build technology, like I had to have, like to have full scope of understanding.
I don't know, I'm probably a bit of a control freak about that kind of stuff, is like, I've gotta make sure that I understand. I have to understand the accounting underneath it before I go out and try and build technology around it. So.
Yeah, well, I think a lot of, I think. S that makes sense. I don't, I don't think it makes you a control freak. We're probably control freaks in other ways, but I think a lot of people find a problem and then throw bandaid solutions at it. And that also leads to then things being over complicated or, or, you know, a piece of tech actually not working for its intended user.
Right. And if you don't understand that full scope and the big picture of what is it meant to achieve, then like, how could you ever hope to build a viable product? So. With that, you understood what it needed to do, you understood the whole scope of it. However, you're still in in tech and tech has. A very easy slippery slope as far as like overcomplicating stuff, you can very easily inflate the team size that you need, uh, really mess up like your MVP, and, and then you have your backlog of stuff that needs to be fixed.
And it, it could just feel super messy and like, what is the simple through line here? So how have you, and remind me again in this how long you have been working on ControlQore, and then tell us how you have tried to keep things simple.
Yeah, so ControlQore has been, we've been working on it since 2022. and it, it all started on just like napkins and pieces of paper that we would just scribble on and start writing out how it looks. Um, but we. Simplifying the technology space is, has been really a difficult thing. Um, and that's for a couple of reasons.
One, we didn't know what we didn't know. None of us had had done a, the startup thing before, and so we were just like, well, let's, we think that we try to stay as simple as possible, but we end up spending more money and usually, like when we talk about complication in tech, for me it's. Are we spending more money than we should be? And,
you also, you're a finance dude, so like you're always thinking about the money, right?
thinking about money. Um, and so β π we've successfully complicated and uncomplicated ourselves probably a hundred times over. Uh. With just like how big our development team should be and how much we should be pushing into development. But then on top of that, like when is the right time to operations, uh, get people into operations and get people started in in that space? Um, how much of the, you know, is this particular piece of the code going to add a significant amount of value? Like even though we really want it and we think it's really, really cool. Does it actually, is it marketable? Which I hate. I hate that part of things. It's just like this thing is actually super cool and it does this great thing, and we have to ask ourselves, are people. Going to like immediately get it and buy it without hesitation or without looking at it. And so I hate having to ask ourselves those types of questions because we're just like, no, if, if the whole system works well, β π π then people should just wanna buy it, but it doesn't work that way. marketing, I would say marketing is one of the best ways that you can overcomplicate spending.
Mommy. Oh boy. Oh
spend a ton of money and not know how you're
mommy.
return on it.
Yeah. If anyone can,
You
can hear the mommy. This is part of why I try to keep things simple in my life. 'cause life brings its own chaos, right? Let's get the snack situated.
π π π
β π ββ π
Okay. Now that we're back from that, uh, unscheduled break, no. It feels like if, if you told Batman, Hey, you've gotta pick like what's on your belt and what features you've got in the Batmobile, and he's like, no, but I need it all. Like why would I pick? Right. Um, but okay, so let me, let's break this down a little bit 'cause we've got a, a, a lot going on with marketing and then kind of where you're spending your money and I empathize with.
Spending more than you should. I think in the first few years of my business I dropped way more money than I should have on coaching programs on like software that I didn't need. Um, and I think a lot of that maybe was out of. Some insecurities in like my own strategic decision making and like saying, oh, I definitely need these for the business to get to a certain place and looking back on it.
And I'm like, I really wish I had that, like $20,000 that I spent on this program. Like, I, that would be nice. Like, I didn't need that. Like, that did not teach me anything. Um, so how do you really decide if it's cool and worth the money versus like, it's cool but it's not gonna do shit for you?
And this is where like I've had to really hone in my ready, fire, aim mentality is it's so easy to get wowed and wooed by, you know, the next, the next cool you know. And so I took the time, like lately really been like we adhere to a budget. As strategically, we adhere to a budget and we say, look, β π π π if this is outside of the scope of the budget, why are we even looking at it? Um, if it's, if it's outside of what we planned on in the first place, why are we even looking at it? And so if there's like justification like, yep, okay, we think that this is going to increase revenues by x. Then we should consider it seriously, but if it's outside of the budget, we're not moving. Um, we're not, we're not gonna make those decisions. And so like, that's probably the first thing that I really have honed in is just like, look, we have to stick to the budget and the plan. If you make a plan, just stick to it. Don't get wowed and wooed into some other way. Culturally, startup the startup world suffered significantly from injections of capital. That were not necessary from the VC world. The VC world, um, came in and said, if you wanna be a billion dollar company, you gotta spend, spend, spend, spend, spend. You have to get as much, you know, as much seats, seats filled, and technology and, and all these things.
β π You gotta spend a ton of freaking money Man that really shot us in the foot in the early years because we wanted to be attractive to a specific type of, a specific type of investor. And I hope I harbor a lot of chips on my shoulders because of like the mentality that that has been presented to me time and time again and how it, it's been being forced on other startups.
So that's a soapbox and I'll pro, I could probably
No man, but like that is, it's hard to forgive yourself sometimes for like the hard lessons learned. 'cause you obviously have learned from it and you're like, okay, this is how it wasn't a total fail. Like wrap it in a pretty bow, I failed forward. Yay uh. But then it's like, man, I did not have to learn it that hard though.
Like, did I need to be so aggressive about this dumb mistake? No. Uh, and like, especially when there's money attached to it. Right? But you guys, uh, I think, I, I think I heard you say that you guys don't have any investors, so you really switched your strategy then.
Yeah. You know, we, I sat there, I've probably had hundreds of, I, I have had hundreds of meetings with investors and started to realize that, we, weren't gonna convince anybody to look past. Our nonconformity, um, there's, there's just too much. just, people are just too like narrow-minded on like what a successful business is gonna look like. and so we're still, we're bootstrapped, we're having conversations with a couple of guys that we actually think that, uh, could, could be, you know, kind of break the mold of traditional VC and PE. Conversations. So, you know, we, we we're still looking for investors, but we're also just like, look, let's just build a really great business. Um, and go from there. I think that also, this is what happened in the construction industry specifically, is capital is being injected into these technologies and these technologies are not, well, are not. They might be, they might be interesting. Conceptually,
Hmm.
interesting enough to get people like talking about it, but then the delivery is falling on.
Its on its head and, and. Because, you know, they're all about scale. They're all about just get as many clients on there as possible and give them the, you know, give them, make sure you're servicing them at the bare minimum. You know, just keep churn down basically is, is the whole goal. And so I think it's been a disservice to the construction industry because it's given the construction industry a bad taste, for technology.
And so when, when we're talking about. difficulties in one of the more, trying industries, being in construction tech. of the reasons why it's so hard is we've kind of shot ourselves in the foot with how we've gone about trying to work with contractors in general is this, relationship focused industry and rapid amounts of growth is just that you should not expect at the expense of good quality relationships and good quality product.
If
Hmm. It's like, did we learn anything from our childhood? Fables of the turtle is faster than the hair, right? Uh, and throwing money at something in the efforts of just scaling, all it does is really high. And emphasize what your existing problems are like that does nothing for you to actually achieve your goals.
But it's also great to have that a level of understanding of, of your customer and really who you're working with, which is I think, something a lot of people miss, right? Like they, you don't just understand, okay, they have this problem in like in the accounting and bookkeeping side, but they have this problem in general, like of their entire business and specifically their relationship with tech.
And I think it's very easy for. And I'm gonna connect this back to marketing. It's very easy for founders to get very tunnel visioned when they're like, oh, lemme put together my like, uh, ideal client avatar and like, let's talk about their pain points. It's like, well, you're talking about their pain points in isolation of like the solution that you want to provide and not really what this person is thinking about.
All the time. Right. And then that is gonna totally screw up your marketing and your content and what you put out there and the potential of inbound leads on that front. So let me go back and really put salt in the wound on your vulnerabilities and, and failures here. Um, what has marketing your product really looked like and and where do you feel like that's gotten over Complicated and messy.
So you can spend a lot of money on things that might add value with marketing. Um. It's, it's a crap shoot. like, okay, if I bring on, and I know I, I, I really don't want to, I don't wanna ruffle feathers with, with my co-founder Caleb. 'cause I know he's, he's, he manages all that stuff. So I'm gonna be cautious here.
But, um, with marketing, it's. You, you don't get an ROI, um, with a lot of the marketing dollars that you're spending, it's really hard to calculate your ROI you know, a fractional CMO. How do I calculate the ROI on a fractional CMO? Um. Without any prior data and without anything like, that's, that's a hard thing to understand. same thing with, you know, email campaigns and phone calls and stuff like that. Those that you, you might have a little bit more ability to calculate. ROI, um. But you're just, you're spending a bunch of money trying to get your product out there in a, in a format that most contractors don't like emails and phone calls.
Man, they, you know, most of them just don't, you know, you see the, all the things. I don't, don't email me, don't call me. it's just like, Ugh. I hate that, that that's a part of the way that technology gets sold. Um, it feels. Annoying, uh, is the best way to put it. Uh. But it's also the way that it scales because you can't, you know, as a single person, you can't relationships, uh, fast enough to cover how much money you're spending on your technology build. which, so like this is, this sinking catch 22 that you are always in front of, of trying to say like, okay, forms of marketing are acceptable within my, like, how do I want to present my company? And does it have a decent ROI is it scalable? All these questions that you have to ask yourself. so I've leaned a lot more into the concepts of one relationships.
Josh Luger's a great example. Josh has, um, has put a lot of faith in ControlQore and he likes helping clients move into ControlQore.
For, just for context for our listeners really quick, Josh is a fractional CFO, uh, that works with a lot of subcontractors. So amazing. Like if we talk about referral partnerships and also just like decent human and business that you wanna talk to, uh, that, that's why Control Corps and Josh works so well is 'cause he's already doing the strategic work related to accounting in this field.
Just for context.
Totally talk to Josh if you need something. So we'll plug in. There you go, Josh. We made fun of you. Now we're helping you. Um, so the. So, you know, referrals and relationships in, in that space have been extremely helpful for ControlQore. We've had a lot of success in that, in that regard. Then, then outside of that, and I, I don't know if this is going to work, but I consume social media like TikTok, YouTube, I enjoy. Some of the construction content that comes out. That's, that's funny. That's interesting. and so I've taken up upon myself like, this is totally free. It doesn't cost us anything. But I make the dumbest videos now, uh, on my TikTok and on
I love your videos. They're so funny.
they're super stupid.
They're super cheap and janky, but I love to post them. Um, they're, they're silly. And IE. want people to see and that like it, it is a form of marketing. There is this underlying, there's this underlying, and this is the relation. LinkedIn is such a weird place because like everybody, there's this underlying social contract that like, yep, I'm producing content. And it's pretty much all of us understand like, yep, I'm producing content so that I can do, I can accomplish something else. My content is meant to drive you into, you know, buying my product or hiring me or. You know, subscribing, whatever it is. Like there's this underlying social contract of like, we're here because we want to further our own careers of some kind. Um, but my tiktoks, I'm just trying to be funny and say like, look I understand construction, I know the space really well and I can make jokes about it and. If that's, if that just gets ControlQore's name out there in a way that actually is a positive experience, rather than, oh my gosh, I got another freaking ControlQore email. You know, get that outta my inbox. It's, no, now it's, dude, that guy from ControlQore is super funny. I don't know what he does, but he's funny at least, right? Like
Yeah.
interaction with me instead of just an email or a phone call. So that's, that's my thought process of like. I want that to work out.
It's fun. It's stupid, but like, we'll see how it goes.
No. I think anytime you can do something authentic in marketing, go that route, like. There are some people that cold email marketing like that works really well for them. I've tried it. It's never really panned out all that well for me, and it costs quite a bit of money to have that software, have someone develop that campaign, execute on that campaign.
It cost a crap ton of money. And that's sometimes, that's one of my shiny objects. Like I'll, you know, I'll get, uh. A cold email or I'll see a LinkedIn post of someone that's like, oh, we cracked the code on on email marketing. And they have all these pretty graphs that I'm like, oh man. Like I think I want that.
But then going back to like, what's the plan? What's the budget like? Is this on. My goals list and I've gotten much better of like, okay, I have these goals and I want to accomplish these goals in this way. So it's not just like, oh, I wanna grow because then I could totally justify paying whatever crapton amount of money to this so-called guru who's probably just a bro, no offense to any gurus that are not bros, uh, alpha Bros.
Uh, but it's like, then I would just derail and go into this shiny object syndrome and, which is horrible. Right. Um, but I, I wanna touch on. What you said about this underlying social contract, because I roll my eyes hard when I like encounter marketing or salespeople that are like, oh, you've gotta show up and just like not have expectations, like just show up and give and I'm like, cool.
Like my natural personality is to give, but I'm not gonna, just when it's talking about my time and energy for my business like and the ROI of my time and energy against my goals, I'm not just gonna show up somewhere. And like not expect anything out of it. Like, sure, I'm not gonna expect I'll post something and get five leads, but whatever engagement I'm doing, whatever posts I'm doing should eventually lead somewhere.
And. I acknowledge that even when I see people that like, oh, your post seems to have nothing about what you're selling. I still acknowledge like the relationship building or the rapport building that you're doing with your post. Um, and so I, I just, I've again, like my annoyance with so-called gurus that I'm like, you're just.
Fluffy nonsense,
Mm-hmm.
of like, if you're gonna show up somewhere, like make it count,
Yeah.
okay. Also, I guess on that point, you're not showing up with any expectations on TikTok. You're more so just like, I've had a crappy day and accounting's kind of boring. Let's make it fun.
No. And that's, that's what I mean, even, even on TikTok and Facebook, if people still even know what that is. Um,
It's where all the Karens go to complain about the world.
My mom is still on Facebook, so,
Oh.
my, I, there's this, there's, there's still just this thing of like. You know, I enjoy creating for the sake of creating, but there's also this underlying thought process of like, if I create, I might get attention,
Mm-hmm.
you know, and whatever, whatever. Whatever that does for me, whatever attention that means, like for me, attention means potentially sales. Um, for others it's just attention feels good and so they, they create it there. And so like, yes, I do enjoy creating the tiktoks, and so if I enjoy it just for the sake of enjoying it, then my underlying intentions feel less like I
Cringey, oily, sleazy car sales mini.
exactly.
Okay.
like, you know, it's like I, I, I'm just doing, I'm doing this because it's really, really fun and I also hope that it's, that it's successful. But if you said, look, Brian, like do you, you do, you, can you create like good LinkedIn content that actually like, summarizes and analyzes the construction industry and all of its faults and flaws? I struggle with that because I don't like to write and I
Hmm.
to, and so I, and I don't like to, to. To think of myself as a thought leader, you know, or put myself in that position as, as a thought leader. And so like it always, for me, I always came across when I would do it. This isn't, it has nothing to do with anybody else that's doing it, but whenever it would come across as me, it would always just come across as like, oh yeah, Brian's just trying to push this product. He's trying to, he's trying to sound smart so that he pushes his product and I'm always like, ah, I don't like doing that. And then, but there's others like you and I feel like Josh and Megan and others who I feel like just have a better, a better ability on in that particular medium that like you guys just. Enjoy it more than I do and can do a better job at like
Oh God.
authentic.
Yeah.
like that's really it. Like you can be authentic in those me in that medium. The only way I can be authentic is making dumb videos on TikTok.
Hey, if that's what's, what's authentic to you, go for it. But I mean, hey, apparently I also had a rocky start 'cause Josh thought I was some corporate rigidy stick up my ass person. And I'm like. No, like, now granted I will like call you out on your nonsense, but I do it with a smile. Like I don't do it to make you feel bad.
I'm just like, Hey, you know, like, that doesn't make any sense. Let's try to make some sense out of this. And I mean, like there are gonna be some people that they try to make a skit and it falls totally flat, you know, like I'd argue. Hey, your skits are like, if Dave Chappelle was told to make something about the construction tech world, that's the skit.
You know, like they're genuinely funny and like you could tell that you understand your customer and your product and it doesn't feel like you're pushing it. Um, and I would say bring those back to LinkedIn. I, because I don't, I have never downloaded TikTok. I also have, so when I was talking about the Karens on Facebook, I'm not a Karen on Facebook, but like I watch my reels on Facebook.
I am like an old grandma. Uh, so I only ever saw your skits on LinkedIn, and I miss them.
Okay.
never gonna see them on TikTok.
I, the only reason I haven't put put 'em there is because I always, I worry that it's not, they're not professional enough. Like I get, I
Oh.
I get so, uh, weird about LinkedIn because I'm always just like, how am I presenting myself on LinkedIn? How's it, does it look okay?
So I probably should just throw that out the window and,
Yeah, I mean, I have seen some posts recently of people that are like, take your selfies back to Facebook. And I'm like, okay, um, are you like getting the leads from your dry, stale post? That's like, doesn't make me want to know anything about you. Uh, now granted, like I'm not gonna be posting like. Some vacation stuff on LinkedIn all the time.
There are some people that post vacation stuff, and I think that's totally fine. Like you can't take away the relationship building aspect of sales. And so I break it down to if I post something and someone seriously has a problem with it, do I want them as a customer? Or not now, that that thought process might not work for you guys.
'cause in the tech world it's a little bit more about numbers, whereas like, I'm selling people, not slaves, not human trafficking, but like, uh, it's the people aspect of virtual assistance and recruiting and stuff, right? So like. I need to like you, if I want to like put someone on from my team, on your team, like I need to have some kind of respect for you.
And if you don't like me or or respect the slightly less ca slightly casual stuff I put out there, then like, we're not gonna work well together anyway. That's, that's my perspective. I don't know. Is that, or is someone gonna yell at me to like go back to Facebook or apparently get on TikTok for it? I don't know.
I've gone off the rails now.
No, no, I think we're, we're in the, and like, I, this is why I like having conversations with you is because it just goes, like, it flows naturally into like, what the heck is bothering, what's bothering me. I feel like I can be way vulnerable, um, with
Oh yeah. When people are like, lay beat around the bush, I'm, I'm like, let's just cut to the chase. 'cause either I have no idea what you're talking about, or you're just like, you really have some deep pain around this issue and let's just get into it, you know?
Right. So this, what what's, what's fun about all that stuff is like, it's being consumed by me and then taking the technology into the contractors. And I think that we were talking about this at the beginning is my experience with contractor world is, and, and I think that I'm guilty of this too, at, at my startup is like thinking that I'm special. Um, and a contractor and they, they're running their business and like how they can overcome things. Um, they can just, they can overcomplicate things for the sake of thinking that they're special,
Mm-hmm.
something about their business is forcing them, something is so unique about their business that it forces them to all of these different workarounds or have a, you know. A very specific sets of. Technologies and processes that just really, really overcomplicate the business. So cost codes are an easy one that like can get overcomplicated really, really fast. Um, you can, you can have, you know, can have cost codes be just absolutely insanely granular. Um, that. It doesn't necessarily add a ton of value other than like just visible site on like, yep.
We can see that we're very, very granular. chart of accounts. thing where it's like I walk into, a contractor's business and as soon as I see more than a hundred chart of accounts, I know that like, Hey, we. We're complicating things probably more than we need to. I mean, I, we've, we've had some have over 300 chart of accounts.
It's insane. and as I start talking to 'em and I start understanding the why underneath it, I'm just like, yeah, you guys, you guys think that you're. In a weird way. It's not like, like in a, in a like, oh, we're so proud, we're special. I'm glad that we're different. It's more like, oh no, this is just the way we have to do it because X, y, z we're, we're special, we're unique. Um, and I was like, man, for the most part, of you are similar. You have, uh, your project contracts, you have revenue that's coming in from those projects. You have your project costs. And you have that can be made up of internal or external costs, and then you've got your overhead and go else.
If you start adding on more and more to that, like you gotta ask, why am I adding this, like additional complication to it? You should have cost codes. Your chart accounts should be, you know, decent looking but like, you don't need to overcomplicate the crap out of it, and you don't have to have massively complicated processes, uh, in the construction space to do, to run good financials. Um, I'll stop there. I kind of got on another soapbox.
I appreciate it because I, I, a few things, first off, when we think about like, oh, I'm so special I, for any parents in the room. Uh, I think of this Bluey episode, and I don't know if you're gonna track me on this muffin, like the dad maybe like, runs an orange or a red light, whatever it is in Australia.
And she's like, oh, like why did you do that? Um, and the dad's like, oh, I'm just, I'm special or something. And she's like, am I special? And the dad's like, you're the most special kid in the world. So then she goes to her cousin's house. Bluey and bingo and ignores all the rules. And it's be, she says, it's because I'm special.
I don't need to follow the rules. Right. And we, it's probably like the worst thing that a generation of parents have done is telling their kids that they are the most special. Like, you know, like your problems are not unique, like your problems are not uncommon. Uh, and that's in our personal and our professional lives.
And I, I would do that too, of like, I'd hear. Some solution and I'm like, oh, that obviously won't work for me. 'cause here's all the ways I'm unique and my business is unique and like my, my clients and my unique issues are special. And it's like, no, I'm just ignoring sound logic in my business. Um, and that solution is completely viable for, for what I do.
But I also, I wanna go back to, you mentioned something which I don't wanna brush over of the why, like why are you tracking this data? And I really like how if anyone has read traction or like the EOS system, they break this down really well. 'cause it, it is very easy to, to look at a piece of data and then say, oh, here's the story I could tell from this data.
And then convince yourself I need all of these data points. Like, I used to have like a massively big spreadsheet of like crazy data points that I thought. Oh, I need all of this to tell the story of my business and what's going on when in reality you don't like, I think traction says May 10, maybe 15 tops.
And so you say like, what's the story I want to know? And then backtrack, like reverse engineer it to figure out the data that you actually need to track. So have you done that in Control Core or with your, your clients?
Yeah, we do that in ControlQore. Um, if, if I'm not too busy, I actually do my accounting and I, um, and.
kids with no shoes.
Yeah, so like I'm tracking very, at a, at a high level, I'm keeping an eye on our overall spend for like, you know, top five, top top six areas where we're gonna be spending money. Um, for the clients it's all about, you know, getting them focused on how their, on, if their jobs are making money. Right. Is your job, is that job actually making money after all after the day is through, is the job actually making money and is it making enough money for you to justify getting the
Mm-hmm.
we don't, we don't wanna just break even on our jobs. We wanna make sure that we've got a healthy margin. Um, and so however, that. That process needs to look. It does. It can be granular, like you can go nuts with the granularity and with the cost codes, or you can keep it, you know, relatively high. As long as you're comfortable knowing that, that there's gonna be a few things. There's gonna be, we're gonna be rolling up costs into a specific bucket on the cost coding section, right? We're gonna be rolling up costs and, and stuff into a specific general ledger, so we keep it. keep it, try to keep it as simple as possible at ControlQore by just giving them a, uh, a, a place where they can quickly see. One, they can know all the data is is there because it's all in one system, two, they can immediately go see at a high level, is my job making money and be comfortable knowing that that job has a little bit more granular detail underneath it that you can go and actually investigate and look at.
But from a high level, as an owner, you can just see. Yep. That job is making money or that job is not making money. Um, and here's the reasons why, you know, on the budget, here's where we're missing it. Like, and you can start diving into the details if you want to, but just being able to provide it at a high level, a mid level and, uh, a more granular level without too much insanity on the granularity, because I don't know, as a bookkeeper or as, as somebody who, who deals in the construction space a lot, you can, you can go round and round.
It's really hard to get. A bill coded or a, um, or any, anything coded. If it's all so specific and the
Hmm.
has to be the one that looks at it every single time, it creates a huge burden for the PM and for you as the, the accountant to be like, okay, well now I gotta go chase somebody to get their coding done because I don't, I can't look at this invoice and be like, yep. cost code is, it's gonna be this cost code. I can't, I have to rely on my PM to go do that. That guy's busy. That guy's got a lot of work to do.
Yep.
that's, I guess that's what I mean when we're talking about overcomplicating, those costs.
I mean, I think my, my whole philosophy and I think what more people should embrace in business is when you're building out anything, and this would go for any industry, it's what is the simplest way for us to achieve this thing and know that we are likely going to achieve it? And then like, what do my systems need to do?
And for us to know that. So I think if you have that like. And this would go back to like, is the workaround in your tech actually working for you? Right? And like QuickBooks versus control Core, you should know what data is actually gonna tell you if your project is profitable. And then have the software, the tech, the systems, processes, what have you, that then allow you to dig deeper into the data.
If you need to, if something in that high level data is telling you something is off, you should have the ability to, for a team member, someone to dig into it. But you don't need a hundred pieces of data to start. Like that's not where your story is told. Right.
It can get un, it can get unhealthy quickly. Uh, the desire for data can get unhealthy quickly.
Yes. Right. Uh oh. Okay. Let me get, well, let's dig a little into areas where we could get a little unhealthy in our, in our decision making and in keeping things simple because you guys are unique in the fact that you have like three people that really make the decisions, right? Where you, you, then you have your brother-in-law, jd, and then you have Caleb.
So how, and you kind of like shook your head a little bit at that, so maybe I'm totally wrong, but I'm assuming that sometimes when there are big decisions, you have to really work to
I never let anybody.
everyone get out. It's what Brian said. Brian says like, I don't care. This is my kingdom to rule kneel down peasants. Uh, no, but like, how does that work?
Because there's, you know, some of our listeners are. The, the solo people, right? We're like, even if they have a team, ultimately the decision is theirs. And so it's some that, sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad. Uh, and sometimes it's awesome to have a team to shoot ideas off of. And sometimes you wish you were the only one that got to rule the kingdom, right?
So how do you guys navigate that and keep things from getting over complicated and compromises? Sorry, I'm rambling in my question here 'cause I just thought of something else. And this is like, is it gonna get political? I don't know. But like when two people disagree with something and then you find a compromise, that compromise is, is sometimes not really a win-win.
And that creates more complication, right?
Yeah. I've actually been, so I, first of all I wanna do, I wanna make sure I do right by my partner uni. He is our software,
Yeah.
CTO. And so we, we have, we actually have four, we have
Hope.
founders that are constantly. Needing to make decisions together, a lot of times we don't agree at, me and JD are the ones who are the most comfortable disagreeing with each other,
Hmm.
um, because we disagree all the time, uh,
Yeah, that's just regular Thanksgiving dinner is like, what are you guys gonna argue on?
Yeah. And we're blessed. We're, we're super lucky that JD and I have, I don't know, I don't wanna say that we're like really emotionally mature, but like, we're far enough along in our relationship that can disagree and we disagree a lot,
Hmm.
we still hang out with each other after work. Uh, our families are just really, really close.
And so I'm, I'm lucky that with JD, who I disagree with the most, um, like we both can see past the. The disagreement and work and, and still just really get along and love each other. So, but, um, being said, decision making working with other people on decisions in my opinion, a level of humility being able to see beyond your own. Um. Pride or your own, um, hubris that would, yeah, the hubris is, the word I'm looking for is I, and I'm guilty of this. I think all of us can be guilty of this, is like, Hey, this is the right way to do this thing and if we don't do it this way, then it's going to affect, you know, the future of what we're talking about and potentially, you know, hurt my pride or we don't agree with it and. When it comes time, I think that a lot of us suffer from this, this, this statement of like, Hey, I, I'm the first, you know, if I'm wrong, I'll be the first person to raise my hand. lot of, I, I hear that a lot from people like, Hey, I'm, I'm able to admit when I'm wrong. The problem is, uh, I, I just don't think that we're very good at recognizing when we're wrong or, or we are looking at it from a, an idea that there is a right and a wrong in these conversations.
A lot of times it's a lot more gray and so able to raise your hand and say, I admit that I'm wrong. You're not gonna get that opportunity very often because it's more gray than just this and wrong concept. And so instead, and, and you use the word compromise, I've been shying away from that term even though I, maybe, maybe it is what we do sometimes as we compromise, but as a group. The four of us and and sometimes others who are also involved with ControlQore are deciding what is going to be best for ControlQore. And what is going to be best for, you know, the construction company? What's going to be best for this thing? And
Hmm.
get behind what's best for the company can we e even if we don't necessarily agree on the minutia or the little things, you know, we want control core to grow.
Alright? If we all want that thing, we want ControlQore to grow, what? Like Everything else that we're talking about or how, how to make it grow, how to do all of those things. We can disagree, but it doesn't take away from our vision, like yep, we want it to grow and I'm willing to yield or, or I'm willing to stick to my guns. It, it's a hard, I don't know. I, I, I don't think I'm making a lot of sense other than just like under understanding that like, you're not gonna be presented with an, with a lot of opportunities to admit that you're wrong because
Mm.
that we deal with in business is gonna be in that gray area. Well, that thing kind of panned out and that thing, you know, kind of totally failed, but like. There were some good things that came out of it. There were some bad things that came out of this, and so it's just, it's too easy to get caught up in this idea that there's a right and a wrong for the business.
It's a lot easier, it not a lot easier. It's, it's a lot more difficult to view things at on a scale or a spectrum. Like, here's where we could end up with this particular thing and here's where we could end up on this particular thing. So I don't know. Does that make any sense?
It does. It does. And I think the core thought there is that the four of you guys are. At least trying to align on what is best for the company. And there's the trust that everyone cares about the best interest of the company. And I'm gonna kind of to, to make it relatable in like the personal thought there.
Like I, I would say, oh yeah, I'll admit when I'm wrong. If my husband calls me out on what's wrong, the pride. Whew, man. The lack of humility that I have, and I've, I've, I've started to recognize this and I, I don't think this is always applicable in the business sense because you really do have to have some back and forth, sometimes and in business, but at least in the personal sense, what I've learned is like, is my pride active?
Is, can I apologize and can I admit, okay, I had something wrong here without then. Going and explaining how he was wrong. You know, like even if he was wrong, can I apologize and have it be period, end of sentence, nothing else. And if I can't do that, then I am like not humble in the situation. Uh, but at least then there is,
funny.
The trust. Okay. I think, I think it's you and me against this issue. And like, we have the best interest of the marriage, right? And so you have to have that trust. If we're in the, we're all have the, we all have the best interest of the business and hopefully if we've done our strategic planning and our budget setting, our vision, our goals, we have some understanding of what best interest looks like.
And so we just disagree on how to get there and we can work through that. Um, is kind of what I heard in your,
that's,
in your explanation.
rant. That's exactly what I mean. And that's like, 'cause like as spouses, you can take a lot of what you learn in therapy, uh, with your spouse into like the, into the business world in my opinion.
Yeah.
but you can get, you can, it's easy to get dysregulated, you know, and feel like you are, um. operating from a defensive or not, your higher self,
Mm-hmm.
what is my higher self gonna happen? Like jd, JD and I had a disagreement two days ago. Um, relatively potential could have potentially been a heated conversation where like my pride immediately put up a wall
Mm-hmm.
um, I looked at JD and I was like, man, I'm. I'm sorry about this. Um, I can tell it's really agitating you. Let's like, let's hug it out, you
Oh, I love that. Yeah.
you know, and he is like, no, I'm sick. Get out, get away from me. Um, but I'm sorry. It's, we'll, we'll, you know, we'll, we'll figure it out from here. We don't know if it was right or if it was wrong. Uh, decisions that were made here, um, time will tell, but overall like. He, he's quick, he was quick to get back into his regulated, like, yeah, I'm,
Hmm.
I'm like, he, he was visibly upset, but now he's not visibly upset. I was able to take him and I was, I was fortunate to be in, in a higher place at the time, but not, I don't, I'm not always. But it's just one of
Yeah.
where like there's a lot of trust that like, yep, I'm not being my best self, I can rely on JD to be his best self, or Caleb or Uni. They can be their best selves in those in those moments, and I can trust them to get back into their best selves if they're not. And so there's just this, this really great relationship that we have where it's like we might be dysregulated for a minute, but we can come back and like work together and work out whatever issue that we have.
Yeah, I think that's so cool. And I, the what we're gonna, we're gonna end on the high note and I know that we have shared belief here, so it's gonna be totally okay. And this goes back to if I put this out there and a listener is like, oh, how dare you say this, I don't wanna work with you. Um, but it's so much easier.
To come to that place and let your pride drop down and extend some grace when you know the grace of God and like, oh my gosh, like, take therapy and the Bible into your business. Um, and, and, okay. I'll also say like, I have plenty of clients and business partners that I love that are not faith-based, but how much cooler is it when I get to work with someone that is like, yeah, we love Jesus.
Yeah, we do. Um, totally, totally agree. And after you have experienced, and I, so I'll, I'll, I'll jump on this bandwagon here after you have experienced true. Conversion or if after you've experienced true repentance and forgiveness and you've seen yourself as nothing more than the dust of the earth
Hmm.
you started out as and that you'll become,
Yeah.
really hard to, it's really hard to, hard. It's, it's easy to remember that. The person I across the aisle from me is just as important.
Mm-hmm.
and it's funny, so we just talked about not being special, but in a, in a completely different aspect.
Yeah.
there's a ton of specialness to every individual, uh, in the eyes of our father heaven. So, love
Yes.
appreciate you bringing it into the conversation.
Yeah, you're special, you're wonderfully made, you're loved, all the things. Um, okay, so let's wrap up. We've talked about a bunch of different stuff. We've got like, what's the why behind your data? Like are you, like, what even is the ROI of your marketing? Like how really are you, are you making decisions and keeping things simple?
And then the beautiful, like how are we not compromising but moving forward together for the best interest of the company? So if you were to give some advice to a founder. That does feel like, ugh, things feel over complicated. Like, I just dunno where to start. What, what would your one piece of advice be to them?
Avoid the pressure from the outside world. Build a good business, have a good business model, get to profitability, and, and then start talking to investors. That would be first thing.
Ugh. Yeah. Don't start with a hundred pitch decks like that just sucks.
don't waste your, don't waste your time trying to talk to investors before you've, before you have built a sustainable business model for your own freaking sanity.
Yeah. Yes. Awesome. Okay, well thank you so much for joining us.
think that the world of you and I love what you're doing. I hope that gets
to listen to like your thoughts 'cause they uplift me.
Made my morning. So appreciate you taking the time to help me out this morning.
Oh man. Thank you so much.