Business Innovators Radio - Episode 36: Building Technology for the Modern Business with Justin Fortier

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

Construction Executives Live SeriesJoin us with Justin Fortier, Partner at Fractal Group, as we explore how modern tech is revolutionizing business operations. Discover strategies for boosting productivity, overcoming implementation challenges, and navigating entrepreneurship in the digital age. Learn from Justin’s extensive experience in web and product development as he shares insights on modernizing businesses and driving growth through innovative tech solutions for the construction industry and beyond. In The Zonehttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/in-the-zone/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/episode-36-building-technology-for-the-modern-business-with-justin-fortier

Welcome to In the Zone and Construction Executives Live, brought to you by U.S. Construction Zone, bringing you strategies for success with construction innovators and change makers, including In The Zone peer-nominated national award winners. Here's your host, Jeremy Owens. Welcome back to Construction Executives Live. I'm your host, Jeremy Owens, owner and founder of Three Generations Improvements and U.S. Construction Zone out of sunny Folsom, California. I have a fellow Folsomite near me, Eldorada Hills, tonight on the show. So I'm really looking forward to the content today. Before we dive in, I want to do highlight a couple things. I put in the comments on the LinkedIn show two posts.

One post is a post regarding some efforts that we're trying to help a friend that was affected by Hurricane Helene. And we're sending out packages of clothing and toys. So if you're feeling led and you want to join me at that effort, if you want to grab your team and have them help you do that, please take a look at that post. The address is there as well. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me. I have another friend who has family in Asheville. he spun up a website real quick and he has we have a way to directly donate to the folks in that community

that community was ravaged by by the hurricane so please consider getting involved in those two ways are super small but both of them are total dire need states right now so if you if you're feeling lead please do so if you have any questions reach out to me we are sponsored by the great team at build12, build12.com, automate your business into a revenue generating machine. I've been using build 12 all year. It's been great. So if you have any questions about Bill 12, reach out to me or contact less over there at Bill 12 and he'll give you a free demo. So today's show is titled Building Technology for the Modern Business. We're going to be joined by Justin Fortier, partner at Fractal Group, as we explore how,

modern tech is revolutionizing business operations. We're going to discover strategies for boosting productivity, overcoming implementation challenges, and navigating entrepreneurship in the digital age. We're going to learn from Justin's extensive experience in web and product development as he shares his insights on modernizing businesses and driving growth through innovative tech solutions for the construction industry and beyond. Justin Fortier is a trailblazing tech entrepreneur, big-time entrepreneur with proven track record of building and scaling successful companies. As founder of Fractal Group, a consortium focused on technology services, software startups, and angel investing. Justin has established himself as a visionary

leader in the industry. Justin's entrepreneurial journey began at FYC Labs, right here in Folsom, a boutique design agency he founded and led as CEO and CTO. And he has been named finalist for CEO of the year twice, a 40 under 40 next top business leader into 2024, mentor of the year, honorary by San Diego Business Journal. Please help me welcome Justin 48. Justin, thanks for being here. Cool. Thanks for having me.

I tell people often, wouldn't that be nice in your home if you just had that bio? It's just piped into your house. Just earn in respect. That's right. I don't think my kids would get it, but at least I'd feel better about myself. Nor would they care. Nor would they care. Exactly.

First off, I read in your bio somewhere that you're a hockey fan and you play hockey. So we got to start there. We're in Northern California. We don't have a lot of us around here. So how did you get started in hockey? And thanks for being a fan here. Yeah, of course. I grew up in South Lake Tahoe, California.

So from mountains, grew up skiing, a little bit of ice hockey up there. played a little bit of college and then just just beer league hockey rec hockey hanging out with friends yeah me it's actually been an amazing part of my entrepreneurial journey because i happen to join a team that a bunch of guys on the team were all small business owners so we can commiserate over beers after the game and give each other advice and i kind of had that uh free consulting group that would help me through my early days um when i was first learning to start my business nice right on are you are you Are you a Sharks fan or are you? Yeah, sharks fan, of course.

Yeah. Well, we'll rebuild we're going on now, but that's okay. Yeah, it'll be a little while. At least we'll have some fun players to watch, or some young fun players to watch the next few years. Yeah, totally. Tickets are cheap. Yeah, we can get into the tank now, no problem.

Yeah, so tell us a little bit about yourself and how you kind of got to this point now at the Fracton group. Yeah, so like I said, grew up in South Lake Tahoe, kind of more of a mountain, mine, camping, fishing, hiking, ice hockey type of person. Didn't really ever think entrepreneurialism was going to be my thing growing up. But it turns out if you kind of have some of that grit and that toughness from doing those type of things, it actually transitions really nicely.

I ended up going to undergrad Santa Barbara, grad school in San Diego where I started FYC Lab. So right out of grad school, I was actually 2008, not the best time to be looking for a job. Master's degree, kind of useless. So I actually joined a restaurant group, which is where I'll lead into on where we came up with a consortium idea. Restaurant group building just funny little dive bars with craft cocktails. It was novel at the time in 2008 and 2012.

Met a lot of really talented graphic designers, web developers, marketers, and just kind of created this really awesome network of people who are really out of work, but we're still trying to do creative, interesting things at the time. So you end up with this amazing talent pool and network that you could build without having to go through the corporate structure, a corporate ladder. And I left that with an amazing partner, and we started FYC Labs right out of working at the restaurant group. Right on. So obviously you have this entrepreneurial spirit.

Do you think you're born with that or you kind of said that you, you know, the kind of the grit and sandpaper that you grew up with helped kind of lead into it? But do you think you're born with it or do you think you can learn to it? Yeah, I think you can learn to it. I think it's really hard if you're going into this for the wrong reasons. I find I can't do anything else. I'll never be able to go have a nine to five job ever again in the rest of my life. I don't even think I'd make it.

I think I'd get fired in like an hour. Too much of an opinion. Too much want to do more and be innovative and push. That sort of structure inside that corporate world is a little more status quo, maintenance. So for me, I like the freedom to be able to create and do things. I like to move fast. So for me, I really can't imagine doing anything else.

For me, it's an easy choice. I think there's in some ways I'm born with it, but in some ways this journey has created that person who really just can't do anything but just want to push harder, learn faster and be innovative. Yeah, no, I can totally relate to that. What do you think are some key factors that contribute to that entrepreneurial journey and success?

A lot of times, I think, well, there's different parts of your business that need different personality types, right? So that an early startup mentality, small business, underfunded, bootstrapped, you know, pulling yourself up by, you know, your bootstraps. Those people tend to have a chip on their shoulder of some sort is what I found is they've got something that they're frustrated with and they're tired of dealing with. For us, it was, I was tired of IT culture.

IT culture was not healthy. It wasn't teaching people the right skills. And it was creating all these artificial limitations that I felt we could punch through by giving people who maybe overlooked an opportunity to learn skills. skills that they actually would exceed the status quo. So this caginess just drove me nuts. I wanted collaboration. I wanted an innovation,

not status quo, and job team for positions. So for me, there was a chip on my shoulder there. You'll hear this throughout all of our businesses. There was a chip on my shoulder about collections. I can't stand having to collect money from people and see reminders and how poor it's done today with QuickBooks. So I think there's always sort of an itch or a problem that they just need to solve. And that they have the second is they have the audacity to do.

so. They can do it, which comes from a series of confidence from having done things in life that you succeeded at, even though they were hard. So that's where that comes in. It goes, oh, I can do this. I'm not, I'm not nervous about what the outcomes will be. I know it'll be hard. It probably won't happen as fast as I want to, but I will get there. Right. Yeah, no, definitely. You'd be fired in the first week. I think you said Chip a couple times, too. That's not going to be good in the corporate world. No, I feel you there. So how do you navigate those various stages of the journey, you know, from the initial spark?

I mean, a lot of people have the ideas, right? But the process of scaling up. I mean, obviously, that's where you need someone to come alongside you because that's not just something that you go, oh, I have an idea. Let's go. Yeah, and that's where I talked about that network that was around me. And that's always been my thing is I, maybe traditional male attitude where like I like to do a thing and then hang out with those guys after and talk.

And maybe that's not just males, females will do that too. But it tends to be that traditional mindset of, hey, let's go do something difficult. And then we'll all celebrate with a pint after. And then that conversation becomes very real because you've earned the respect to the person you're sitting in front of. And then that network becomes authentic. There's too many of these contrived networks that people end up in. A lot of Slack groups end up just becoming contrived. Some of these other parts of life, just they're fake relationships.

But when you have to achieve something together, that becomes really interesting. It's so great to, I still, of course, watch. a lot of podcasts, read a lot of books to get myself knowledge, but that core group that gets you through the hard times is someone who you kind of have to have some battle scars with because they'll give you the honest truth. They're not going to sugarcoat stuff for you to keep on going, hang in there, you know, a little stupid poster on the wall. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, you need to get up earlier. You need to wake up earlier. You need to try harder. You need to, you know, your kids, it might be a couple days till, till dad gets to play, you know, basketball with you or something.

So, yeah. And they give you that peace of mind to help you get through that step because all of a sudden they see the potential that you have because they know you intimately. So it's not just me along the way. It's always been a network that I've put around myself. Yeah, that whole thing of breaking bread or having a beer with somebody, that really does cement relationships. It's true. If you can't just have the business relationship and expect it to really blossom. And yeah, that network is really cool. I'm doing so many similar things in my industry. So we have a lot of similar things going on trying to actually create a real network instead of like a social media network, right?

One where people ask you, hey, do you know somebody? And you go, yes, I do. You know, and that just changes your life. It really does. Something like this is a nice little entry point for them to say, hey, is this somewhere I want to be? Oh, okay.

And then they kind of have the opportunity to say, there's a lot of like-minded individuals over here. And that's where the co-working space up in Folsom that we work in. Come in and see me at. I don't go there because it has the best amenities. I go there because it has the best people and they have the best conversations and the best innovative ideas. Yeah.

Like-mindedness when you're getting around those people. It really is infectious, so I can't say it enough. So how does a business adopt kind of some of these tailored solutions to address their unique challenges? You know, because like I said, that's where the rubber meets the road. How do they kind of address those situations? Right. That innovative mindset needs to kick in. There's a lot of, there's a lot of opportunities for people to say, oh, it just won't work for me.

Well, let's take a big problem that. curves, which is project funding and project collections, right? That's one big problem that I'm trying to solve today with one of our applications. And they just say, well, it's just how it is. I just need to hire more bookkeepers. I just need to do more follow-ups, right? And it's just this painstaking process that we all suck it up and say, yeah, net 30 is more like net 45 with this client. Right. And oh, they get so confused when I send these invoices. So that mindset that says there has to be a better way, that's where you start looking at the tools. And you start saying, are these tools a good fit? And can I quote unquote hack the tool to solve my problem?

Maybe it doesn't have all the features you need, but can I make it work? So I use a lot of project management tools in our world. Software development, we have the agile development process and all these wonderful project management methodologies. Eventually, you end up hacking your tool to a spot that works with your process flow. And can that tool be innovative enough and move around enough? And is it intuitive enough to use that you're not fighting the tool to get to where you need to be. So it first comes with, I have to solve this problem. I know there's a better way.

And there's a huge network of programmers and solution finders out there that are going to solve this problem for you in advance that you can just keep up and write off their coattails. Or if it's not there, maybe you need a custom solution on top of that. And then there's a huge network of contractors who just building a custom home. You know, you need that. And there's a whole group of us out there that are solving these problems every day. Yeah. I mean, that kind of brings me back to that. what are some of the ways to effectively navigate the challenges of scaling a startup? Because, you know, like I said, the scaling part is where, you know, we're going to have those great ideas, but how do we make it work for us?

Yeah, right? So we just got back from Austin. We went to this big conference called Get Scalable in Austin about two or three weeks ago. Amazing conference, amazing workshop. And they were very thoughtful to tell you that there isn't some magic formula that you download. It's use a spreadsheet. Do the work. Do the manual work so that you're touching the data as it goes

so that you intuitively know your business processes. So start with that. Starts or truly understand and stop saying, well, I'm the marketing guy. I don't know tech. No, get in there. You need to learn it. You need to know it at least enough

that you can speak the language and then have the conversation. And they encouraged us to go in and do the work. We don't need AI to solve all these problems. A simple spreadsheet solves a lot of these problems and gives you, And yeah, there's an extra 15 minutes a week. But that 15 minutes a week is you getting to know your business and knowing how to scale it intuitively.

It's not just some book you read. It's something that says when I'm in this gut decision or this major decision that I need to make in a split second, I know everything about my business. And I know what's going to be right for me. So that was the first thing that we learned was keep it simple. You don't need all these amazing solutions. Then once you've got your process down, layer that on with some automation. Some tools that you know will help with the process that you can start to create that. margin because you need that margin. You need that cash flow to keep going. Just because you have an idea,

just because you have amazing talent doesn't mean squat. You need to have margin. You need to have cash flow. So keeping an eye on that was the next big piece for us is, okay, we've got the systems. Great. That's wonderful. How are we bringing in value to our customers? Now, how are we making a margin, not a revenue, margin on our businesses. That's when you start to scale because you have money in the bank. Right, right. Yeah. And there's no secret that entrepreneurs, I mean, shout out to Granite City, they're full of thinkers and dreamers, right? They're everywhere. But how important is the team around you?

Because, you know, you have that idea, and now you need the team around you to take that idea and implement it. And that's been my challenge personally is not having enough team around me to be like, hey, I have this great idea and then having someone to help me do it. Yeah. Whose book is it? Is it Eric Reese from Malcolm Guadwell? The E-Mith Mastery.

I can't remember exactly who wrote that book, but they have the three different roles. right there's the dreamer who basically is the one who's thinking outside the box they're pushing the boundaries they're bringing in the big ideas they're bringing in the investors the attention and they've got the story then the storytelling going on like hey this is going to be wonderful then you have kind of the person in the middle who i think i forget what they call it i think it was like a wizard or something where they're the ones who are kind of making all the crap happen right they're the ones who are actually figuring it out and creating the solution so think steve jobs

steve wasniak right steve was steve jose jobs out there dream and big ideas wasniaks in the garage tinkering until he gets the damn thing where you're not you're working, right? So in some cases, you have to play both or you have to play all the roles because you are a solo entrepreneur, but as you build up that team, that group of people around you, you start to find out where your weaknesses are and say, hey, I need a dreamer. I need somebody who can go out there and think big and talk big about what we're doing. Or you transition to be that person. I'm in the middle of a transition of somebody who just was always heads down, do the work, get the job done, do it myself if I have to, to now being, hey, how do I

create a vision and drive a larger company toward a future of innovative products, innovative solutions, and talk to the world about it. Is that hard to not get, because I'm control-free myself in my businesses. It's like, I always feel like, oh, crap, I can do it better. And like, I have a hard time, you know, letting go sometimes. So is that hard for you to let go? So I think there's two stages of this. And that's also part of this.

You definitely recommend to your listeners to check out the scale, get scalable, book. The first, it is a series of letting go. So the first one is having a system in place that you know if followed, things will be fine. Then you have this whole, well, I need to manage it to make sure it's all being followed. And you're sort of playing referee, you know, outside of bounds, you need to go back and redo this thing. So you play that for a while until you find somebody else who can play that role for you. Then you can trust that person who's sort of your, your operator on a day-to-day basis. Then you have the firefights. So let's say, for example, you've let go of control, you trust your team, but then something hits the fan, right?

Some project goes awry. Some clients mad. You get in the phone call, hey, I remember when I called you two years ago? And, you know, I trusted your business with this. And you had a contractor who dropped the ball, right? And so now you're back in these firefights. That is probably, that's the stage I'm in.

I've got fewer and fewer of them every week and every month. I just went on an awesome vacation up the Rogue River. I was able to detach for four days. And it was amazing. Nice. But the problem is, you come back and there's those fires that really aren't letting you get away and move to that next piece. So that's where you've got to have a whole other layer

of leadership that can take care of those fires and that you can trust and that you're paying them well enough and incentivizing them well enough to want to solve those fires. So that's where that your scalability, your CEO scalability needs to come in is getting out of the firefighting. And that I think is the hardest one because you know the consequences of that fire and you know you want to jump in. And there's an ego attached to it. The hero ego that comes in and says, I solve it and that's why you guys all respect me. that's really hard to let go. The one that I'm stuck with now at this point is happening fewer and fewer and it doesn't happen overnight.

But that's where my scalability as CEO comes in. I like the referee thing. I'll have to do that. That's kind of a nice way of still staying involved and knowing what's going on. So that's kind of probably where I'm at right now. We create cute, fun characters that do it. We have a disapproving Shiba. I don't know if you remember the Shiba Enu run.

Our whole team got in on crypto for a little bit. Yeah. This Shiba that could send you as, hey, you have a disapproving Shiba. And then there's like an angry Rottweiler if you're really messing up, right? So we have levels of that to keep it still fun and a good culture. But accountability layers are in there. And they're the referees.

And we put more automation on that accountability as well, where we do a lot of time tracking for our jobs. So if you don't track your time, you get the disapproving Shiba. You forgot to look your time. Yeah, that does kind of keep it light. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. So in your opinion, what are the most crucial topics for entrepreneurs to understand in order to achieve success, especially in today's landscape, which is changing every second? It really depends on the stage of your business. I think when you're early stage business, you really need to understand your market and your customer and you need to understand how you're going to go to market.

That's a big one because if you have customers, you'll figure out solutions, you'll do things, right? So if you can figure out how to get those customers in early, if you have, maybe you're going into a new, into a field, you can bring some customers with you from your previous gig or from your previous job. Those are huge. I was able to convert my job into a customer immediately out of starting my business. So that customer is the most important thing. Your product can be good enough in those customers who believe in you and want to support you. There are tons of them that will.

That's the first thing for your early start of your company. Then once you've got things rolling and understand, you're going to probably not eat. You're going to be, you know, you're not going to take a lot of profit. You're going to be, you know, you've got to be ready for that. Maybe you have a side gig and this is keeping you going. But then the next part is understand how to babysit a P&L. And I know that sounds horrible and it sounds boring and it's not what you got into business for. But if you can't understand your P&L, you're going to be lost.

You're going to be done. If you don't have some way of taking a look at it and going through maybe not every transaction, every ledger item and maybe you got a lot of transactions in your accounting system, but at least your categories. And you can't look at that category and say, something's wrong here. why are we spending this much on marketing? If you aren't able to want to inquire that P&L, you're going to be in a lot of trouble because it's not just going to be enough

to have your revenue going because your costs will start to catch up quickly and you could lose a customer. And if your costs aren't under control, you're out. Yeah, it's such a huge challenge for the construction industry is like that knowing your numbers and, you know, margin and markup, the whole thing is kind of a wild ride. But yeah, you really had to start, you got to know that right from the get-go, otherwise you are sunk.

You're totally right about that. And I have a process for reviewing that. And then once you've got that thing under control and you're like, look, I'm consistently hitting, you know, my target margins, you know, depending on what industry you're in, 20, 30% margins, 10% for some consultancies, right? And you can trust that margin, then hit the gas pedal. Because if you're not on your margins and you're not getting your money in and you're hitting gas pedals, stuff is going to spin out of control.

Right, right. Good point. Good point. And obviously we kind of talked about, but what's the role of leadership in this successful startup? I mean, we talked about teams, but they'll tell me a little bit about leadership. Early on, it's to be the Atlas shrug, you know, that just carry the way to the world on your shoulders. Yeah. Be that person, be strong, be positive, be authentic, and just be that strength for your team and to keep that vision forward. then you'll hit a point in which you'll become the referee that just says, I need to make sure my systems are being followed, and I'm the accountability holder.

As a CEO, I make sure my executive team knows that my job is to hold you accountable. If I'm not holding you accountable, if I'm not holding your colleague accountable, you'd be pissed at me. If I weren't holding every, you know, that layer accountable, you'd be disappointed in me and remind them that that's your job. Now, that is a difficult thing to overcome to have them trust you that the accountability doesn't mean they hate you and that, that there's they want to jump ship. It's that you're doing this because that's your responsibility. So at a certain point, you just become the accountability provider that says, I'm going to establish systems and processes that get me to where I need to go.

Then you become a visionary of moving things forward. You start to go outside of your business. You start to grow the network. You start to build the marketing. You start to build the systems further and further. And find the talent, inspire the talent to do the same level of accountability systems and processes and building. So it's sort of like having kids, you know, the early part, you're just,

you're changing diapers and you're doing all the dirty work. And then you get to detach from your kids a little bit more once they have some trust. And then you have to let them go knowing that you put what you did you could into them because you know you can be there everywhere and you don't want to be a helicopter parent. You don't want to ruin their whole life that way. So it's a very similar analogy for me and how I've approached the business. Yeah, totally. I mean, it kind of springs board right into the next question I have, which was the company culture piece.

You know, you can't, you have to have the leadership first. but, you know, the culture thing is kind of a weird topic because you can talk about it all you want, but how do you be authentic? How is it real? And like, you know, you can have a tag. You can have things written on your website, you can have core values. You can have all this crap. But until it's real to your employees, it doesn't mean anything, right? Yeah, the authenticity is the hard part, right? So authentic leadership is not easy when you yourself are feeling imposter syndromes. When you yourself don't like maybe I shouldn't be the leader of this because maybe I'm not smart enough. Maybe someone else is doing better. You're looking on social media and some friend of your business is killing it.

You start to go a little bit of phomo and jealousy and then you start to get that that lack of self-confidence. That happens. It is natural. So then you start doing weird contrived stuff. We're like, hey, let's have Thursday coffee days. We're like, we're fourth happy hour stuff that I just can't stand. Right. So what I learned, I did that. I went through my fair share of that early on because I read books about leadership is this and blah, blah, blah. And I was a little bit in that Silicon Valley culture of really fake work-life balance when really they just wanted work-life blend. So there was a lot of fake culture there.

So what I learned was I have a personality that isn't that affectionate. So when stuff's going bad and somebody's having a hard day, that's not me. And I can't be that person. So I hired people who kind of compliment me and have that skill set that can handle. that can handle the tougher days for the employees who are going through personal things. I've kind of put up a wall over the years of saying, look, I might have to fire this person tomorrow.

So I can't let that personal situation affect my decision making because I have a whole other group of people. I have many people who have companies that rely on me to make decisions that keep them employed as well. So I had to put up a wall that made myself a little more tough and a little less approachable. But I know the culture needed that. So I put someone in place who has a much more approachable personality who will talk through people with that and we'll work through that. So that's where they're being authentic to yourself. And then getting rid of all the BS that you read in books about, you know, mindful Wednesdays or mindful Mondays, all that stuff just goes for me. And they can create that for themselves and they can experiment

with that. But me, my, my relationship with my employees is the work. And that's really all there is to it. Whatever else they're doing, if they want to do some stuff together and they have their own relationships, great. But giving them a healthy relationship with their work that is I can detach from this if I want to because I'm having a bad week. somebody passed away in your family and this just becomes your escape. We've had multiple people who have had unfortunately losses over COVID and over other times that the work was the escape for them to get away from that kind of struggle. They didn't. Nobody asked about it. They said, are you okay?

We just message? Good. You need your space. You want to work? Got it. And so I don't know. That's how the culture that we've created is. It takes a lot to say I'm going to be that detached, but also say I care about you enough to put someone who will be there for you.

So there's, but don't come to me with that problem because this is going to be, this isn't our relationship. Our relationship is very professional and work oriented. Yeah. I mean, it's, how do you go about finding that, like, who you are and who, you know, do you do a lot of assessments, personality assessments and things like that? Because, you know, I, I'm, you know, obviously a lot of males can kind of relate to not always being sensitive and, you know, empathetic at times.

So kind of more driven and head down and things like that. So how do you go about finding those people to compliment you? I ran Strengths finders. Obviously, we did that. That was something we did early on. That was great. Got to know sort of like our personality strengths, figured out that sales on a one-to-one level is like my thing.

I'm not great at the broad sales level, but like one-on-one, wonderful people. So individual, this was one of my strengths. So we did a little bit of that. And then I went with people who I'd worked with in the past. I just knew them. And I knew they would work well with me. And I knew they complimented me.

So I got lucky enough. And just having that broadness. network because interviewing for that is really tough because you don't know how much of that is contrived from the beginning. I'm not, I'm not a human lie detector. I can't tell when someone's bsing me that well. So I also put this other person there because they have a great sense of when someone's amazing emotional intelligence. So I put put my COO in that position. That guy, I just happened to have worked with them. So that's, it's just one of those things where you got to spend time with people, network, and just be out there. So it's kind of that. It's, it's, it's

that we call it dark social sometimes when you're doing things in the background that aren't really like there's no direct correlation to outcome. There's just a, I know that going out here and being a part of this is going to help some way or another. It's going to help me learn about people or I might meet the right person. I might get the right introduction. Then it might give me that person that I need because this isn't something I can buy off the shelf.

These type of leaders, they don't go on indeed looking for a job. They already, they're sought after. Or head on. Correct. Yes. Yeah, so different. I mean, all right, so we've got the vision, we've got the startup going, we even have a plan in place, but the million dollar question is how do you stay sustainable? How do you grow and stay sustainable and relevant as a company, especially in your field,

I mean, you're in the tech side of things. God, it's like, how do you stay on top of everything? Right. So there's two pieces of that. Again, going back to my restaurant days, there was a term called don't turn your back on your regulars, right? These are the people who got you there. And just because there's some new innovative tech doesn't mean, see ya, we're out of here. Right, right. Those people got us through the hard times. Those are the people who give us those little referrals, little projects that when stuff's not coming in, when the big one's not coming in, or maybe some check is delayed. We've got these little projects that keep us going.

So we've always had the company started out as a website development company. We didn't do software development at the beginning. We just did websites, WordPress, Wix, stuff like that. We still have that. That is a four or five person team that's exactly the same size as it. It was five, six years ago, but that is what keeps us going in the slow cycles. And it gives us a lot of foot in the door type stuff. So to me, it's locking in a system that works.

You know their profitability, your margins on it, and you keep that regulars going. So that way, when the new innovative stuff that you're pushing, that is trendy, that will tail off. You've got those regulars to fallback. I mean, going back to my bar days and restaurant days, we have Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights. We're always popping off, right? That was always great. We'd go, we find the next DJ, blah, blah. blah, blah, right? And then all of a sudden maybe we'd miss. Maybe there's a new club in town and the place is dead.

Yeah. But our Monday through Thursday crowd kept coming in. Got the follow up follow, right? So that those regulars keep us alive. The other thing is, again, babysit that P&L. Keep an eye on your expenses. Don't be silly. Don't let things get out of control and don't think, don't get rid of those luxuries. Know where you're going to pull next. Always have a plan for when you're going to cut costs, exactly how that's going to go. So that way you're not trying to figure it out in the moment. And then you're too late. Yeah, I think the challenge that we're having right now in the construction industry is that, you know, we're in the digital aid.

We're in the technology boom, right? We're a little bit late to adopt things. Now they're everywhere and we're trying to figure out which one to use. And a lot of us are just buying up shit. We're like, yeah, I want to do that one. A software looks good. You know what I mean? And like it's just the implementation socks, obviously.

We're not good at actually taking it and going forward. But how do you not just, you know, with all the technology advances? is how do you kind of have some discernment and like, okay, what will actually work for us? Do you get the whole team involved? For us, do we get the labor force involved? Do we say, hey, well, you use this? Yeah, there's shiny object syndrome, right? Where every time you see some cool looking new thing, things can solve all your problems

and you get sold by some awesome, you know, sales guy from San Jose or something, right? It just comes in and tells you, I know all your problems. Here it is. And here's a solution. And you're like, well, dang it. It didn't work out the way we thought because we didn't realize this process needed or oh the implementation is going to take us six months because we got this new project in and this becomes stuck on the back burner right so that is the shiny new object's problem i have that

big time with my team because every you know developers inherently are innovative they want to do new things right they want to push it's like hey you got to prove that you can do it with the early stuff with prove that you can do it with a spreadsheet and if that's not working then go get yourself some software or if you found a new opportunity that says hey if i could just have this one extra step that would save my business $10,000 or whatever. And we don't need a big bloatware. The products that we've been building lately are very lightweight. Our account receivable product is simply a statement viewer with a payment rails.

That's it. We don't need to become your new accounting system. We're going to solve this specific problem very, very well for you. And we're going to make it super affordable, right? Because our goal in the long run is to build that audience and then monetize that audience in the long run. So that's another chip on my shoulder. I want to disrupt that sales-led growth strategy by all these Silicon Valley businesses or maybe not just Silicon Valley,

but all these tech businesses who are doing all this pressure sales because they're trying to sell the solution to you, even if it's a wrong fit. And you're like, come on. You're going to give us all a bad reputation. There's going to be this stigma about tech, which is exactly what you're describing is I'm running around buying everything and none of it's solving the real problem. Right. And I think, you know, for us, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, how is that going to integrate into our other processes and our business in general. Like, you know, it has to, like you said, it has to solve a problem and it has to save us money somehow.

Yep. Right. If it's just going to keep adding and piling on, then what, then what's the point of the tech in the first place? I had to call it a client, gardening client, right? Or a nursery provider, right? So they do plants and stuff. And there's this reconciliation process that their accountant, they said, hey, our accountant's complaining. It's just killing us. She's spending two hours extra per week.

And I'm like, tell her to get over it. It's okay. Like, she's got to do the work. Like, it's okay. You know, it's going to cost you this much money for me to build you this crazy implementation. Right. Maybe it's just best to go back to her and have a difficult conversation.

This is, yeah, that's just going to be part of your job. Right. Is it really going to save me money? Because the alternative to do an integration is big. So I think there's an opportunity in the space to become a construction technology consultant. I think there's some opportunities for folks who maybe like yourself who are kind of forward-thinking could find those individuals and say, hey, let this person come in and give you the right solution. Let them package up your tech stack because they get it and they can speak the language and they can run the integrations and keep your costs down. I think there's a cool little opportunity in your space right now for that.

Yeah, no, I think you're totally right because we definitely have the shiny object syndrome, but also we don't have the skills to implement effectively. So even if it could work for us, they're not providing the team enough to come around side us and say, all right, let's get you guys through this beginning phase. Because the beginning phase is obviously the hardest part, right? Like you don't know how to use it. You're using 5% of it. The other 95 could really help you.

But it's just like they're, you know, they're gone because they sold it to you already. And so that's kind of where we're at as an industry. We're just kind of like crap, you know, now we're all just kind of going on, what do we use again? I also see in the home builder and we work with some HOAs and small builders. There's this also, this tendency to just grab nephew because nephew's young and we assume that they know technology. That doesn't mean they know the business process. Yeah, maybe they know what to click and where to go. But that doesn't mean they understand the business process and what to build.

there's a little bit of a danger and just assuming the young folk can do these integrations. It's funny. I watched it too many times. Like, oh, my nephew runs this. And I meet the nephew. And nephew's like, I've never even had a job before. Like, oh, God. Just because you know how to use an iPad doesn't mean you're a technology.

So funny, but so true. I've actually heard that exact story before. Yeah. So I guess what kind of inspired you to focus on this technology implementation, you know, And now with AI, you know, coming into the fold, you know, does that change the way you strategize and move your businesses forward? So I guess it kind of goes back to what are we actually doing? So fractal group is a consortium of businesses that I really, I took it from that restaurant industry mindset was we don't have to create some umbrella company with all this, this like bureaucracy. Instead of us meet up different businesses, LLCs, and let's have this sort of agreed upon.

There's nothing legal in writing, but there's this agreed upon community. says, hey, we're going to support each other. And it's a few business owners, friends of mine, who are all part of this. And we'll give each other discounted services. We'll, we'll, use similar systems. So that way someone can transition. For example, we have one of our portfolio companies is like, hey, look, we're going to be letting go of our engineer. Do you have a place for her to come back to? I'm like, absolutely, you guys are all using the same system. She'll integrate like that. So I don't have to worry about, you know, getting someone up to speed. So there's a talent pool sharing as well in this group. So that was the main impetus of why we

created fractal group. And that came from the restaurant side where a bartender could work at one place. There was the same POS system, same menu item names, same structure. And similar enough uniforms that they could just cut from one to the other. But it wasn't this nasty corporate top down so that you didn't have entrepreneurialism at each of the individual sites, right? It still creates an entrepreneurial vibe, still creates that energy, that excitement at each these individual businesses. So that was a big inspiration for it was to be able to create a community of products because we are obsessed with solving problems. Like I said, the chip lands on the shoulder and I got to work. I got to solve it. Right. So we need to be doing that and then creating more businesses that do that.

It's not enough to just do that as an agency because I want to think more broad across industries and solving problems in a bigger way than just, hey, I just solved my client's problem. No, I want to solve this for the industry. So that's the big inspiration for the group that we created. And I'm excited about it because it's really working. Yes. So do you find compliment entry pieces of all of the, or do you actually have some that do the same or similar things? No, I definitely don't have any competitor, competitors, but they are complementary. So we stay around fintech and project funding. So again, the big ones, the account receivable platform that helps, you know,

construction companies would do great with this, with bringing their accounts receivable through this platform, help small businesses. And then we have a startup product for getting investment in. So it's all kind of getting that cash flow because that's the piece. point that really is most visceral to me. And that's around one vertical that we have is FinTech and accounting systems. The other one is my partner, whoever I'm working on this with, is cybersecurity. And that's just because he has a passion for it. He's got another, we've got another partner in the group, and we've got a vertical of three or four products

inside of cybersecurity. So we do stay in our lane, so we speak, and we do stay in tech. But I like to stay in tech small business solutions and startups. He's got more of a cybersecurity. security enterprise. So there is tons of complimentary. Like we've we've crossed sold several of our products between the businesses. That really is an exciting business model. Like what, where do you see that going? Is that going to, you know, obviously as you transition to like more of this thinker, leader, visionary person, is that going to be more of your time in developing that model? Yeah, I really enjoy building the system out for each one of these. And then I can create a system that works generally, maybe there's like an 80.

Look again back to the integrations where there's, it's not quite exactly, but we can hack it to a way that it works for each of the businesses. Right. And then integrate them and see them through. That is to me the most fulfilling part of my, my job is to go build those systems out and then have conversations with other people about that and get them excited to get them part of our group and just grow that

community, which will inevitably get more referrals because I think that's the best way to grow at this stage that we're at. Yeah, at some point we'll have mass marketing, advertising type, you know, approach. But right now, just that community and talking about how exciting this is is why I'm doing it. That's really cool. I mean, yeah, it's such a great model.

I mean, I've always been a big networker. So, you know, essentially creating that network of folks with you guys. I mean, like you said earlier, like you can't go back to a job. And once you have this spirit about you, but also once you have a network like this, you also don't need a job. You know what I mean? Because now you have like a real network of people who will support you. Something wild happens to you or your businesses. No worries. I got all of these guys right here that know who I am and are ready to say let's go. So I mean it's really it makes you kind of feel different about your career, right? The conversations are so much more interesting too. Right. We're talking about systems and philosophy not how do I not lose my job? Right. I never want to be in that mindset ever. I want to be. think. I mean, I didn't, I didn't go to school and push my brain hard to sit around and move widgets left and right, right? Just to move the job. I want to push. I want to,

I want to be challenged. Yeah, no doubt. So, and you're early on in your, your process, did you seek out a mentor? Did you have one, find one? And kind of describe us through that process, because obviously, as an entrepreneur, you're going to need one at some point. So I have, I had first a great mentor at the restaurant group, who I basically told in my through the office one day and I said, look, I want to start my own business someday. Can I just work some extra hours and shadow you and learn? And of course, like anybody who says that immediately goes, oh, absolutely. Good here. Come over here. Learn this. Learn this. Learn this. Learn this. He was a great mentor. And he taught me a lot. taught me how when we had some inheritance money come into my wife

and her family, what do we do with that? First thing I did. Don't even, we're not touching money. I'm going to talk to these mentors. That's just always been my approach is go talk to the people who I know have done this before and what did they have to say. Then I had that hockey team that I talked about where I'd have the beers after. So they were all ad hoc mentors. There was never a professional approach for like an outreach for the mentor until I got into growing enterprise sales on a SaaS product that was working on. Then I went to UC San Diego had a program called Connect.

And we had a roundtable of CEOs who were sort of more formally put together. And I was able to work with that group in a more like intentional. fashion. And then as that moves on, I moved back up here to Northern California. And we have the Granite City CEO roundtable, which you've come in and hung out with us on. And that was my group for a while. Right now, I'm actually struggling to find a new group. I feel like I've just been out there running around. I guess some of what we're doing with fractal, I've been traveling around with angel investors, which is a whole new journey for me. We have this traveling group who go to conferences together. And that's becoming a bit of a mentor group for me as well. So they're always ad hoc for me,

although I have done some more organized. I did do one professional coach. It wasn't the right fit for me. It just felt like for me it was too inauthentic. Yeah. It was too to run along. So I've always liked them more ad hoc. Yeah.

Right on. I mean, yeah, just in my journey too, I felt the same way. Like it feels better when it's authentic, but at the same time, reach out when you need it. It's such a journey. And with us, like I said, with AI and with everything that's going on around us, it's hard to stay on top of technology and what it can do for your business. So if you don't have someone that's there that can help you, especially in construction where if you put your head down, one year goes by and you're like, oh, shit, what happened?

Chat, GPT, what? You know, so like, it can be kind of wild. So what would be your advice for, you know, for our industry in like, hey, how do you kind of measure what technology will work well for you? Like, what's a good starting point? I like having friends who are tinkers. So I'm not that much of a tinker, which is funny because I'm innovative and approach to systems. I'll tinker with a spreadsheet.

I'll tinker with business systems. But I don't tinker with new tech all that often, but I have some friends who do. And then I just have lunch with them. Yeah. I mean, I understand the product. I understand what they're trying to solve. They'll tell me a few features about it. Then I'll go tinker with it for 15 minutes and I'll get what it does pretty quickly.

And I'll say, okay, this is a good fit for this particular business process. They tinker just a tinker. they hear about something new on TechCrunch and they're looking at it. So there's people who are out there who are just experimenters and they play with every tool, this, you know, signing object. I let them do that first. Then they distill down when I explain a problem that I'm having. They tend to have a solution for me or some app that does a thing.

So then I'll go investigate the app because like you said, there's too many to be to looking at. So again, that comes back to having that network, having that trusted individual who just happens to tinkle with a lot of different stuff. And then I go, oh, here's what we're doing. Like, oh, I did it with the spreadsheet first, right? I always say I would do it with a spreadsheet, so I intrinsically know that process so that I'm not just fence tossing to the tech. So I go, hey, I've been tracking projects with this spreadsheet. Is there something better?

Oh, yeah, check out work glue or check out Asana. It's a better way to do that. Oh, cool. Let me go see. Oh, that will work. Oh, and it makes life easier, you know? Right. First need to know the problem that I'm dealing with.

And can I solve it with just a little bit of elbow grease? Yeah. And so back to the spreadsheet, I mean, obviously knowing if it will, if it will pay for itself and then going back to that P&L and going like, here's proof. You know, we added more of this line, but look at what happened to this line. You know, so like, that's the hard part is like it does take some time to measure those results.

But, you know, if you don't measure them, then you're never going to know, right? Right. And that's, GPT has to sits in that bucket of like tinker with it, tinker with it, and then see if you want to invest in a lot of these. Well, and most of these apps out here that are, they're AI driven. They're just wrappers for GPT. So see if maybe just having conversations with chat, GBT solves this problem, right? Like if you don't need this fancy wrapper that costs you 100 bucks a month per user,

ends up adding 10,000 bucks to your bottom line, and there goes your margins, right? Maybe you can just work with GBT yourself first to understand the problem. And you go, okay, this is getting to a point where that extra, you know, 5% that the app adds is worth it. But that first 95% might just be solved with just chatting with GPT. Yeah, interesting, interesting. So tell me a little bit about what, what's new with FYC?

You mentioned the payments platform, but talk a little bit about, like, what's exciting you there now. So FYC Labs, the agency is growing. We're doing client work. That's our main thing.

So we've spun off the accounting platform and everything that. That sits inside of a group called fractal. Okay. And then FIC is the primary service and technology service provider there. Okay. The company is doing great. It's growing on a very healthy pace and a very healthy P&L. So again,

that's where the mind. And you're checking. We have systems for a, really simple and I don't I don't I could pull from tech I can pull from QuickBooks and I could automate it every day if I wanted to I'm definitely capable of doing that but I make our CEO copy and paste the data directly out of the quickbooks paste it in take a screenshot and share it with the team because I want him to touch those numbers at least a little bit and look at it say whoa we have an anomaly what the hell is this $5,000 expense that we had and we only had a

hundred dollar budget right I want so for me that's what's going on at FYC is is solving those problems from a system's perspective, building up our quality control. With all these amazing AI tools, it's actually been great for developers to do quality control on their code to make sure things are named logically, that stuff's commented, that the code reviews are going through AI. That's been a really fun thing for us as developers. I don't think AI is taking our job in the next five, ten years. There's a lot of logic that AI can't quite solve. There's a lot of legacy technology that needs support. But what it can do is it can accelerate our speed and, in increase the quality of our code and decrease the bugs and issues that happen out there.

So we've been really pushing on AI for that reason, a couple new tools that we've added. Yeah, but we are focused right now on growing our FinTech and SureTech business portfolio. So just building more products around moving money and solving business problems. Yeah. It's been really good for us because that's just what we've gotten really good at. Yeah, I mean, if you had a crystal ball, I mean, you kind of mentioned it with AI, not, you know, not attacking your job. right now, but, you know, obviously your industry is the one where there's a little bit more uncertainty, right? Which ones is going to retake, replace? Obviously, for me, it's not about,

I'm not scared about it taking jobs because it's going to create new ones, right? Are you kind of on that sense? I'm aware of it, and I'm making sure that we have other business models and other systems that are kind of, again, creating those checks and balances in those backstops. So I'm aware of it. I do think that it will bring down the price of developers over time and the price of developing a product. But I think that the demand of products will continue to go up. So I think there will be some, like what we would expect a product to do, a digital product to do, is going to go way up compared to what we have today. So when we expect them to be delivered faster and we expect to pay less for them.

So there's going to be more engineers, like I think it'll kind of create a homeostasis. But I do think in general, the engineering industry, the software engineering industry will take a hit. I'm not naive to think that it's going to be one of those things that survives this with no increase. I think there's always going to be plenty of legacy work. I'm, we focusing a lot on cloud migrations from, you know,

a lot of this, a lot of stuff coming still, there are still on-prem servers that need to be in the cloud and cloud that needs to be transferred from one platform to the other. So that's not going to be able to be done by AI. That's very, that's very, you know,

intricate work. So there's, we're kind of creating a, defensive pieces there. In five years, it's pretty incredible what we've done

in the last five years, right? COVID, I think, through a whole new just willingness to try new stuff and just do things differently. So it's been really interesting. And then with everything that Elon does on a daily basis, just continues to try to push

the boundaries. Robotics. I mean, I don't think you guys are, I don't think people are, robots are going to be building homes anytime soon, but that's something that could be moving in a factory now and ship them out. So it's happening. It's just, yeah, on the wall stuff, we feel pretty confident that we're not going to be replaced with a robot on the wall. But yeah, in factories, pre-fab, you know, that type of stuff is definitely the wave. And that's been going on for a long time. Machines have been building parts for a long time. But yeah, so the skill set will change. It's going to be machine,

you know, machine mechanics and repairs and dealing with all the things that go wrong because of humidity and temperature that happened to be in the room at the wrong time and somebody forgot to wear the beard guard in a silken wafer right stuff's going to go wrong and that's i think we're all going to be in here just fixing these issues so i think we'll transition i'm not so naive i think there will be there'll be an impact i think it's within the five to 10 year range um at that time i'm hoping we're all smart enough and we're all we're all getting enough information we'll pivot we'll do a thing yeah it's just funny when you say like how much more it will do for it you like you just kind of wonder what that is you know you go to website and now you're you're able

to do everything right there you know it's like you're not that's the part that i can't wrap my brain around um you know technology and what it's going to how easy it's going to make it um but also it's a little scary too like if it gets too far i wonder if there ever be a like a software engineer union that's you know that's always been reserved for different industries i wonder if I know that it's definitely happening in other industries right now. So I wonder if that'll occur. I don't think so, though. I think we're too innovative and too disposable.

Well, Justin, I really appreciate you being here. Very insightful. How do people get a hold of you if they want to kind of get in touch with you or learn more about your products and services? Yeah, so the big group is fractalgroup.io. You can check it out. There'll be links to all of our individual businesses there. Check me out on LinkedIn.

I don't know if you have an opportunity. just share the link for that later. Yeah, I'll do that. Cool. That's a great place. I do check that and I keep regular updates going on on LinkedIn very often at least two, three times a day or two, three times a week, I should say, keeping active there. And then if you really want to get a hold of me directly, it's Justin at FYClabs.com. If you have a project out there, you want to check out some of our tools. I want to just talk shop. I'm definitely in that mindset right now.

I'm just meeting people and seeing what problems are out there and how we can help solve them. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Jeremy, appreciate you. Thanks for having. Yep. Thanks again for joining us for Construction Executives Live. Another great episode. Hey, if you want to learn more about how you can donate to those relief efforts, please get in touch with me. If you ever want to get in touch with my network, as you may or may not know, I've created a service page on our website. So you'll have a way very similar to the fractal group in a way of tapping into my. personal network of people in the construction industry who are doing great things.

You know, it's been very humbling for me to not only go on this entrepreneurial journey, very similar to Justin's, but it's been the most pleasure for me is just meeting the great people and learning from them and knowing that I have a network that will support me if the shit hit the fan for me. So that's been the biggest blessing for me is having. that real robust network. I also have a group on LinkedIn, too, if you're interested in in joining a LinkedIn group. I created one for the construction industry called Construction and Remodeling Management Network.

So I have a group there if you want to join there. I've probably invited a lot of you. But just trying to bring conversations a little bit quieter conversations about remodeling and about construction. because LinkedIn sometimes can be a little bit wild. So we created that group as well. But if you ever have any needs, then want to get in touch with me,

Jeremy at us construction zone.com. Thanks a lot. We'll see you next. You've been listening to In The Zone and Construction Executives Live with Jeremy Owens. Be sure to subscribe to In the Zone and stay in the know with the best minds in the construction industry

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