177. AI In Construction With Jon Walker and Morgan Molitor

How's buildertrend integrating AI? John?

You know, I think the really important thing that we're trying to do is find customer problems where we can really.

Make a difference with AI and where it feels comfortable for the customers to adopt it. They're ready to adopt it.

AI really can do everything. You know, there's a big talk that we might get there someday where there's artificial general intelligence, which is basically like self learning AI that's as capable as a human. To me, it's actually like, and I'm a technologist, so I view a lot of things this way. It's a tool that enables me to work a lot more effectively and do the things that I do best. That's the approach we're taking at buildertrend is we're trying to find places where we can leverage AI in a way that you wouldn't be able to yourself to solve a deep problem that you have.

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Morgan Molitor, John Walker, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you.

Yeah, great to have you both here. Today we're going to talk about AI, which is a really interesting topic at the moment, but I think it's got a lot of layers that don't necessarily get talked about. So before we dive into that, Morgan, I'll start with you. Can you give a bit of a background on who you are and what your company does?

Yes. So, I'm Morgan Molitor. My husband Jamie and I run Construction2style, which is a design build firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We also do content creation and all that good stuff. And then we have a media company called Neon Lion Media. And alongside a few other colleagues, we host two national conferences. One's called Contractor Coalition Summit that we have two times a year. And then the other one's called Build Her Retreat focused on female contractors once a year in Costa Rica.

Costa Rica. Sounds like that'd be a fun one to get.

Two weeks. Two weeks. And we have two tickets.

Okay.

Oh, I'm in. I'm in. I'm John Walker. I'm the CTO of buildertrend. Buildertrend's the fourth company I've been the CTO at, and so I'm basically a technologist and startup founder. Prior to BuilderTrend, I did two companies that were acquired and then I took another one public that did property management software and so left that and came to buildertrend. And, you know, buildertrend's mottos were trying to change the way the world builds. And that's kind of what got me excited about what a big opportunity it is to do that. I'm also here to bring the attractiveness quotient down a little bit. You know, it's way too attractive up here.

Our microphone almost couldn't reach up where it needed to go for you. So, John, you mentioned off air about what made you transition out of your own company into build a trend. Can you just expand on that a little bit?

Yeah, well, I had been at my.

Previous company 17 years and it was time for me to move on and.

I really was looking for a market that could really be helped by technology, really move forward.

And interestingly enough, I think one thing that's really interesting about the billing industry is that from a technology perspective, and there's a lot about this in the APB reports that I've read. It's been a little bit of a.

Laggard, but it's not really a laggard.

In a lot of other areas. Like if you look at construction materials and the way we build homes, there's.

A lot of innovation happening.

And so it's interesting there's other industries.

Where they tend to be laggards, technology wise. And then all of a sudden there's.

A big jump where everyone catches up.

And I kind of saw that there.

Might be that opportunity in this industry. Buildertrend is a market leader for people who build custom homes that want to use software to do so.

And I kind of jumped at the.

Opportunity to join and help build product there.

Are you seeing the construction industry catching up from that perspective?

Yeah, I mean, I actually love. I read your reports, obviously. And so one of the statistics that.

I've quoted a bunch of times is I actually looked.

I think the first report might have been in 2020 or 2019.

And one of the questions you asked in there was how many builders use project management software of any kind? And at that time it was 48%.

Of the people, if I remember correctly.

Said, no, none, they don't use any. It actually asked, what do you use? And 48% said none. And then I looked last year and that number had gone down to 14%. And then I just looked at the latest report and it's now down, I think, at 12%. And so there's lots of examples throughout history of industries kind of jumping and catching up really fast. And I know that what we do in construction is build physical things, but all businesses are going through a digital transformation. AI is accelerating that. And I think that a lot of businesses, as that transformation happens, they're going to struggle to. Not if they don't adopt technology. And if you're in the 10% or so that aren't adopting at this point, you really are like at a competitive disadvantage against 90% of your competitors.

Yeah, I think the statistics adding to the 10% that aren't using any, there's still a portion using spreadsheets as well, but that is decreasing year on year. So, yeah, interesting data. I know. I'm going to throw to you, Morgan, because you're practically using AI in your company. Can you share some insights on how you're doing that at the moment and where you're seeing the most value?

Yeah, I think there's so many different layers to AI, and I think a lot of times people can jump into the mindset, especially in our industry, that it's there to help visualize or to see things that aren't there. Say you're building something or putting something together for a client, or there's the scarcity mindset of that it's going to take your job or someone on your team or something like that. And I love what John said and you said that like a year ago or when we last spoke together too. And that just stuck with me for like the housing industry as a whole, not just the technology, but like how, how far we have to come, which is just wild because we, there's buildings everywhere we go and it's like we are that and we should be the future and we should be utilizing. We should be there, but especially utilizing tools in our everyday life. And so to me, I'm like, it's not just about putting these spaces together by using AI. It's truly, it should be almost like your right arm and your assistant. And so I push our team constantly. I'm like, we are forward thinkers at our company and I need all of you guys looking into the latest tools, looking into the latest trends, whether it comes to your emails, whether it comes to sports spreadsheets, whether it comes to putting projects together. So from communication down to the last thing that we do or when a lead comes in, so our Lead gen automation is all done through AI. So we have about 15 touch points before anyone on our team actually speaks to someone, which has alleviated just finding that perfect fit for a client of ours and then down to when a client receives their gift as a thank you. And so it's even putting together, I think a lot of those processes and systems in place within your company. So thinking about things that you're doing every day, that's just repetitive and that you really shouldn't be doing and no one on your team should be doing.

In that lead flow. Have you noticed any pushback from your leads in terms of like the impersonality of it?

No. And we, so that was something we did about two years ago is we removed our phone number from our website. And I remember doing that and I was kind of like, oh, this is risky. And, and we've honestly never looked back from that. And if anything, especially putting ourself out there with marketing and using tools when it comes to content creation, scheduling, being on the different social media platforms. But we're, we're attracting the clients that we want. And truly the clients that we want is we want homeowners that, you know, are utilizing technology and that know how to email. And it sounds silly, but I'm sure you guys all can relate. And it's like we don't want these, you know, phone calls in the middle of the night or what have you. And it's like. So we wanted to really attract clients too that would follow our process. And then, you know, it's. They're coming through and then they have to answer a few questions and then they get funneled to a different category and you know, we can always have our pulse on it and check it to make sure, you know, if someone falls through the cracks or like, why didn't they fill this out? But yeah, there's a lot of layers then that they can go into these different funnels and then you can kind of remarket them, if you will, with newsletters and different paid ad campaigns. And you can be using AI for all that too.

I think it's really interesting. Like Morgan talks about it like she's selecting certain homeowners. And I actually think that's almost the wrong notion. I'm building a home in Hawaii. I talk about it sometimes. I'm 56, 57 actually. I'd missed a year there. I'm, I'm the average homeowner builder, you know, I'm, I'm maybe even up there for the average home builder building. And I'M like everyone else. The iPhone's been out since 2008. I expect to know the cars coming around the corner to pick me up. I expect to know the pepperonis going on my pizza at Domino's. I expect that kind of experience from every business, including my home builder. And I'm disappointed when I don't get that experience. And when I look, I talk to a lot of our customers and builders and when I look them in the eye and kind of say, like, you know that that's the expectations. Right. The people that aren't delivering that to their customers know they're kind of disappointing them. Yeah, they know that they're disappointing them. And it's not like certain types of owners, it's everyone now that generation is here.

Well, and two, the biggest thing I think we can all relate to when it's like with our clients is communication. If anyone's ever complaining about a lot of things with their builders or contractors, it's like the communication just wasn't there. So I'm always like, there's step one, start using some AI automation for communication to level up what you're not offering or what you could be offering.

Morgan, you might want to expand on this if you could. It sounds like you're using AI to qualify your leads so that you're spending your time on the leads that are more closely fit for you.

Yeah. So with the qualification process, we, you know, like, like many of us, we have minimums to our projects. Our homeowners are uneducated about what things cost. And so within that, you know, we ask them what their minimum is, what project they're doing within their home, and then if they're not sure too, if they're like, we'll use kitchen remodel, for example, and they're like, I'm not sure, then we've created resources and guides which you can really quickly use AI to create for you. And so we have a whole article on our website that shows what does a kitchen remodel cost? And it walks you through, line item by line item, how much it costs, what our project management fee is, things that unexpected costs that they might not realize. And now we're creating video content with that as well to, you know, educate them on. So instead of having someone on our team spend that time educating them when they might not turn out to be a client anyway, that totally just now skips that step to fast forward to if they're the right fit for us or not.

Yeah, I guess it's. You're talking about Content marketing. But it's been accelerated with AI. Right. Which is cool.

Yes. Creating all the content within it and then qualifying them, because then it funnels them based on their answers.

John, can you share any practical applications of AI that you're seeing?

Yeah, I mean, I think one thing I try to get across when I talk to builders is that AI is pretty approachable. It started out, I even joke about this. The names were these weird, like, ChatGPT. There's like acronyms in there. It's like, it's almost meant to be. Whoa, that's scary. Or removed. And you're seeing a change there. And ChatGPT hasn't changed its name, but, like, the latest competitor came out and actually says exactly what it does. And the tools are just getting smarter and smarter. And there's an actual example that I've shown a couple of times. And I'm building a home, as I said, in Hawaii, and I. It's a long process to build a home. And so pre all this AI stuff or very early days, I got some renderings made in my home. And I remember I paid $5,000 for a set of four or five images. And I. I thought, that's interesting. I wonder how the AI image generators would do with this. And I literally, this probably took me five minutes. I typed in the dimensions of my home. I typed in what the style was, where it was located, how many rooms it has, how many floors. A couple.

Like.

Like, it was probably five sentences. And I said, generate a rendering of this. It was much better than the rendering I just paid $5,000 for, you know, a few years earlier. And that's an example. And like, literally everyone in this room could go do that and show their owner of rendering of a home, or you could do it for specific areas of building. And the other one I've heard, which makes a lot of sense to me, and I think a lot of people know there's chatgpt out there. If you don't have it on your phone, you should get it. But you can use it to do the world's changing where instead of us creating documents, we're editors of documents. And I've talked to probably, I don't know, it's maybe half a dozen builders now who have specifically brought up the use case of doing their SOPs, their standard operating procedures, using ChatGPT and getting very technical standard operating procedures that ChatGPT knows exactly how to do as well as anything they would ever write. And I'm sure they edit them and look at them and they're the experts. But, I mean, that's like just an amazing use case. Like, I can't imagine, like, how much time you could save doing that when.

So many tools, like, work together. So then if you have ChatGPT, which I always say, get the paid version because how much it integrates with the other tools, and then it'll start all the things that you're working with. And one thing, and I. I do this with buildertrend all the time, but when I'm testing out new tools for our company, I'm asking them, what do you integrate to make my job easier? Because all these tools should be talking as well.

Yeah. I think there's a lot that's attainable and then I think whether it's buildertrend or someone else having a great partner that's going to do some of the harder work where it's really integrated deeply into your or your workflow. We're actually just about to release a feature that does homeowner updates through using AI, and so we're starting to integrate a lot of AI into what we do. We do receipt capture for that, so we can tell you all about all your expenses if you upload your receipts to our system and invoices. And so I think finding a great partner, you don't have to do it all yourself, but I'd also encourage you. There's a lot you can do. It's not so unapproachable that you have to be afraid of it.

Yeah. I like that you touched on the SOPs, John, because. And the app as well with ChatGPT, because what I've found, like, revolutionized my work day is being able to do voice, to text to the app on desktop and phone. And if you've got an SOP as a builder that you want to document, you could do that in five minutes, which might have taken you hours before. Right?

Yeah. I always saw on my phone with ChatGPT, I have it. I'm talking to my phone all the time. So my best time where I'm thinking is by myself when I'm driving in my car. And that's when all these ideas come to me. Or I'll be like, oh, I can't forget this or that. So I'm constantly taking notes and then it re. It puts everything together. You know, I can look at it later. You know, if I have a list for someone on my team, I'm talking to it, telling it that. Or I'll tell people on our team too, like utilize that on job sites. Be talking so that it's capturing this so we don't forget or miss something that costs us thousands of dollars later.

But yeah, it's a great point. My wife teases me because ChatGPT is my best friend now. I'm always talking.

I know I'm more scared of that going away than like a social media platform. Like now I need it.

We're going to dive into the technical side of things a little bit more, John, and look at the future of AI. But Morgan, do you have anything else to add in terms of some practical tools that you're using day to day?

Yeah, I would just say ChatGPT4. Obviously I use, I use descript, which is a great app for editing videos. So any videos I create, I run it in there. It immediately removes word, cuts my content, puts text overlay, export it. For every single social media platform it does the right horizontal, vertical. Yeah. And then canva has AI integration. I would say right now it's very rare that any tool you're not using hasn't started having some AI capabilities. But yeah, for looking at tangible tools. Right, that's what you're asking?

Absolutely, yeah, that's helpful.

Those are my top ones.

How's buildertrend integrating AI, John?

You know, I think the really important thing that we're trying to do is find customer problems where we can really.

Make a difference with AI and where it feels comfortable for the customers to adopt it. They're ready to adopt it. I, I think that's kind of the key. If you talk to any software vendor, they're going to say we're doing AI. And I think that's really the trick is really deeply understanding a customer's problem.

And how you can, excuse me, how you can leverage AI to help there. And AI really can't do everything. There's a big talk that we might get there someday where there's artificial general intelligence which is basically like self learning AI that's as capable as a human. That's not true yet. And there's arguments about how far away that is. Some people say 30 years, 60 years, 10 years. There's like kind of various variations I've seen by experts. We feel like it's here because Chad GPT, a lot of what we do is text and speech and definitely there's some strong capabilities there with text and speech, but it doesn't, to me it's actually like, and I'm a technologist so I view a lot of things this way. It's a tool that enables me to work A lot more effectively and do the things that I do best. And so that's the approach we're taking with at buildertrend is we're trying to find places where we can leverage AI in a way that you wouldn't be able to yourself to solve a deep problem that you have. And there's a few things that AR is really good at. Everyone's really familiar with kind of the language based capabilities in ChatGPT. But very broadly, AI is capable of building essentially neural networks or brains essentially. And kind of given large amounts of data and an outcome that you're trying to achieve, it can do a really good job of creating a very small brain that can accomplish that specific task, not any general task. And so if you think about it, there's lots of those tasks in building where you would love to have an expert that's helping you. And so like, I've talked a lot to builders who have a scheduler on their team and they're really smart and they like kind of anticipate problems. They know how schedules are going to adjust. They can like look at when a material is going to arrive and say, oh, we're going to have to change these five things. Well, wouldn't it be great if you could train an AI to do that and help you really do make a lot of those adjustments without having to have the expert and the expert really focused on the really hard schedule changes or more of the coordination and the people coordination. That's the kind of stuff AI doesn't do very well right today. It doesn't like coordinate across people and things like that. And so those are the kind of areas that we'll dig into at buildertrend and hopefully help our builders be really effective. And what that allows people to do is the small builder can compete with the huge builder that's got a, you know, the best expert in the world on scheduling, for example.

I want to come back to you in a moment about the roadmap for buildertrend, but Morgan, you mentioned something off air around. There are many builders out there that think AI is replacing them or replacing jobs. And John touched on it then in terms of like, you know, essentially replacing a scheduler, but still having someone managing that. So do you have any thoughts on that?

Well, I would just say because I think a lot of times our biggest thing in construction is like profitability, our profit margins where they need to be. And so to me I'm like utilizing your people in your team for the right things that they should be used for. We only have so much time in the day, we only have so much money, we only have so much resources. And so a lot of the times we only can have, you know, say, five people on our team. And then their. Their plate is full with things that need to be done to get the job done. But when reality, some of that can be alleviated to other things to get you caught up to speed and to get the profit margins where they need to be. And what John was just saying too, what I loved is like, finding the solution. I almost like, have fun sometimes with my chat where I'm like, I call it Stevie, by the way, you shall name your chat. So I'm like talking to Stevie and I'm like, how can I make this more efficient? Or how can I, you know, this project came in at whatever, 15% or we lost five grand here in the painting or whatever. I'm like, how can we make this up? And so it'll tell you, like, what you can do, what you can look for, how to expedite it. So I'm doing that on the construction side. I'm constantly doing that on the marketing side. Like we. I just recently did it on for some marketing sales goals where I was like, this was last year. And I put our spreadsheet in and it showed like, what our stats were per month. And I'm like, I want to make this much revenue from marketing. This is how much we spend. And I'm like, I'm looking to increase this by 30% this year. Give me a roadmap on how to get there. And it starts going. And then I just talk back. I'm like, okay, that this is a good one, you know, and you just kind of expand and you keep talking to it.

And that's cool.

But I love the challenge and solution. I'm constantly like challenging things, even when I don't necessarily need a solution. Cause I'm just curious and I'm like, help me come up with a solution for this. Sometimes it might not be what you're looking for, but other times I think it sparks these ideas that you weren't thinking about or seeing gaps that you weren't thinking about.

That's actually Morgan's really smart. That's like a whole classification problems that they call robotic task automation, which AI happens to be really good at. And there's tools now that or attainable for everyone that you're using. And so she's like actually asking the AI to help her do robotic task automation, which is.

I didn't even know it Was coming.

Yeah, There you go. So I guess I'm up here for some reason. I don't know. It's not for looks. Not for looks.

In the project example, what input were you putting into ChatGPT to ask it how you could improve the profitability on the job?

So right now, which John, maybe he's building it, every time I hear him speak, I'm always like, what is going on in that mind that he, like, will not share with the public yet. But, yeah, so we'll. We have a spreadsheet, but we have Builder Trend, and then we'll export things out, but we upload all of our receipts, all that kind of stuff. But even I, you know, right now we're dealing with something with gas. And I'm just like, okay, like this because we track everything to a job. And so I'm like, you know, and some of it sounds kind of a little bit, you know, like, I could be thinking over 50 bucks and I'm still like, no, I want to know, like, where we can get lean and mean. So I export a lot of things out of buildertrend. And then also we have some spreadsheets where I'm tracking these things because our team, too, they're all paid differently and some are paid based on what our profitability is.

So. So pretty much all the costs for a job, just upload that in a spreadsheet and then ask Chacha BT Correct. Where you could.

Yeah, and I, I mean, I put into, like, here's, you know, our three people that are running this job. Here's what their salary is. Here much. Here's how much time it's taken. Here's our receipts, like, this is where we're coming in at. And then I just start challenging it and asking it questions and.

Yeah, yeah, that's cool.

I mean, Morgan's obviously like a forward thinker and it's kind of interesting. Like, one of the other statistics I loved in the APB report was the number of builders who rely on spreadsheets. And you're not relying on them, obviously, you're using them to augment some of your work. But that number was surprisingly low to me. It was about. It was 12% a year ago, and now it's close to 10%, if I remember correctly. And it really was shocking to me because I know that there's a lot of use of spreadsheets in the industry. And the report actually asked the builders why. And some of the reasons were error.

Reduction, best practices, things like that.

That obviously going from a spreadsheet to specific software that does that. Like, builder trend is a big step forward. Leveraging some version of AI to even help you do that is another step forward. And so I'll hint a little bit at where we might go next time.

When you said, once again, when I heard you speak, but you were talking about we're already using it, you just don't realize how you're using it. So things are like John's saying, things are being utilized with what you're using. AI already has a hand in that, and it's been here for a very long time. You just aren't realizing it. So it's just really understanding that and then using it to its max capability to take it to the next level.

Yeah, I like to give real examples of that. Anyone who's used Netflix recommendations has used AI. Like, that's a real example of that. Anyone who's ever used a Netflix recommendation has used AI. So there's lots of AI that's kind of transparent to us that we'd consider very valuable and useful. And I think that's kind of the best version of it where it's solving a problem that we have in a way that's very acceptable to us and enables us to get to whatever our outcome is, a decent show on Netflix faster.

All right, John, have you got any secrets you can reveal about the roadmap at Build a Trend and how that ties to AI?

I keep saying I need one on.

One time with John because I'm like, I need this and this and this every time.

Someone's always trying to put me on the spot, you know, I gotta keep this job. I like it. I'm having fun. Well, actually, that was like a little.

Bit of a reveal that we are actually doing a. We're releasing a version now that uses some AI to help you do homeowner updates. And we've actually done a lot of.

Work there kind of around this whole experience of like, the homeowner expects a.

Real modern experience from you as a builder that like, tells them what's going.

On with their home.

And for you, it makes it a lot easier too, because you're not answering questions and calls all the time.

You can.

You basically give them real the information they want. So that's one area we're going in. I think we will look to apply it in a lot of robotic task automation.

Anything that you're doing repetitively that we.

Can help with would be great. Enables you to do the things that really make your business successful. And I think the other One is.

We would love to kind of just.

As a general framework, provide expertise in areas where you would have to have or you would have to have a very high caliber talent. And not every builder can have that. And basically help builders to be more efficient by providing expert type functionality and certain things like scheduling and estimating and things like that. And all that stuff we haven't done yet, but that's kind of where we'd love to go. We are also doing a lot of AI around data input and getting expenses into the system, being able to tell you about what you purchase, being able to help you get see which manufacturers could be really helpful for you and building. We'll probably do a lot of that around selections and how you're working with your customers. You don't want to use this product. Here's a lower cost alternative that maybe the builder doesn't even know about yet, but can source. So there's a lot of areas to go with it, I think. And the most active thing we're doing is we listen to customers a lot and spend a lot of time with them and really try to understand deeply their problems. Yeah, Morgan, she's great because she's kind of always ahead of the curve. And so I come on these podcasts to learn from her.

Usually I want know what I want integrated into builder trend. I want some psychology of homeowners. So the second we put a homeowner's name into the program, it can pull the information of like how do we need to talk to them? Or what is their like?

I'm going to, I'm going to go, I'm going to go out on a limb here because I'm a homeowner so I will address that. So I actually just started experimenting with this, but I kind of joke I'm a cto and what does CTO stand for? I always joke it's Chief Talking Officer. That's what I really do. So I kind of feel like I say the same things over and over again. I don't know if that's true, but I do. And so you can actually create in some of these AI chatbots, you can create projects where you train them to behave a certain way. And I just started training one to be John the CTO and answer things the way I do. And I'm inputting like all the stuff I've said that's kind of available publicly. And my idea is that I will speed up some of the responses I do normally, maybe presentations, I build all the time, but I'm going to start working on the homeowner 1. The homeowner John. I'm going to start working on that next. Just for you, Morgan. I'll start. I'll start a new project.

You could create your own avatars through that. By the sounds of it. The same process.

I got to tell you, it's probably only going to work for people who are building homes in Hawaii. So you might have to move out there and design out there, but funnier.

All right, we're almost done, but let's wrap it up. What's one thing you would recommend to builders that are wanting to adopt AI more in their company?

I would probably say the number one thing is like downloading an app of some sort. I do like ChatGPT4. I've tried all of them. I just like that one. So I'd say in getting to know it truly, I think the best thing you can do is like talk to it. Like you talk, not even your best friend. Like maybe it's your spouse or someone that you're super direct with and very clear with. And it sounds a little silly, but just getting to know and then start, start making a list of one, I always say, like, what questions are your clients asking you? And start inputting it in that and start to see, like, what kind of what you can funnel from that. Because I think with that, like, that's one, how you want to be found. But two, it's like that's what you're constantly repeating to homeowners is like they're asking the same questions. So just starting with that or pain points within your company, I. I know cash flow is just always a thing with us. I'm constantly just starting to talk to you about money. And it's like I have one of the funnels is what I call them, but what John was saying, and I have different categories and different names to each of them, but one's always, I'm talking about money. So I'm always putting things in there to see what. Where there's opportunities I'm lacking. But I would just say start getting your bot to know your brand because the more it understands you, the more, the better the information that it's going to be able to give you.

Yeah, I think you made a great point earlier. Or you may have not directly said it, but it's my interpretation of it. There's so much that you can do just with ChatGPT alone, like uploading spreadsheets to get information and ask it questions and have conversations with it, rather than using it for Basic use cases like reply this email or whatever it is.

And also a big thing for me, this next I say chapter in my life, but it's just like really leaning into delegating more and more and more. So I'm pushing my team constantly to be like, you know, I want this handbook, our client handbook. I want our client handbook updated. We give a client handbook for design, for build, when demo starting, just super. It's a one pager that'll just say like, you know, get your animal out of here or whatever. And so I'm like, I want three of these updated and I want you to utilize AI and come back, bring it back to me. And so a lot of things like that, think about what you can do with AI and delegate it to your team to report back to you and bring something to the table. Even here we have our team out here with us and I'm like, walk the show, like, and bring me. I need three pieces of content that we can use online, you know, so stuff like that, it's like. And then I push them. Use AI if you want, use whatever, I don't care. But like, bring something back to the table.

I can give you some content as well if you need it.

Oh, yeah?

Yes. All right, John, what's your one piece of advice for builders to get more involved with AI?

I mean, I would echo what Morgan said, which is just super attainable. And so I don't write anything over a couple sentences without using AI. Basically, I review everything and I modify it, but I don't write anything myself over a couple sentences. And so if you're doing any kind of communication, that's like where I would start. I think the really important one too is that there's going to be things you want to leverage to make your business much more successful. And I'm not on the sales team, so I can say this. Whether it's buildertrend or someone else, I think you should be using technology to enable your business in the building industry at this point. I obviously am really excited about where we're going at buildertrend, but regardless, I just want these type of businesses that are so vital to the whole country and we touch so so much of a part of everyone's lives to be enabling themselves with the technology so that they can do more of what makes kind of all the builders in this country great.

Another thing I'll add, because that just sparked my mind, what John said, but it's even one thing you could be doing is when you're walking the booth and talking to all these brands, instead of saying, how are you using AI? You could say something, you know, what kind of how are you going to make my job easier? Like, how is this product? Or what are you doing within your tools, your software, your, your products? How is this going to make my life or my homeowner's life easier? And see what, see what kind of answers you get back from that. I mean, you could say AI, but ultimately that's what you're saying is like, I needs to help answer problems. So see what kind of responses they get. And you can kind of get a feel for who the forward thinkers are out here, what they're doing and where the industry is going and how you can then use that to keep moving forward.

It's great advice. Well, John Morgan, thanks so much for coming on Professional Builder Secrets.

Thank you for having me.

For everyone listening today, either at home or here, check out Construction to style. There is a QR code up there and build a trend if you want to just go across straight to their booth there. That's nice and easy too, but tons of value. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you, thank you.