The Achieve Podcast - Rich Szecsy (Big Town Concrete)

Welcome to another episode of the Achieve Podcast, the show where we highlight leaders, creators, and entrepreneurs who are building meaningful businesses, shaping their industry, and having impact. I'm Taylor Baker Baker, your host, and today we're excited to be joined by Rich Seiche, the CEO of Big Town Concrete. You can find them at bigtownconcrete.com. Now, Rich, give us the backstory on how you got into this niche space and how you got your doctorate.

Sure. Taylor Baker Baker, again, thanks for having me. It's always an honor, privilege, and pleasure to be speaking to other business leaders like yourself and the people you interview. So again, thanks for having me. So I'm in the ready-mix concrete business and have been for almost 30 years. And I like to say that our industry is one of those where everybody has great stories of how you wound up in it, but nobody ever actually directly sought it. And mine involves multiple consecutive poor choices with my education. Um, you know, some people's families are plumbers, doctors, lawyers, engineers. Mine were teachers, educators.

Okay.

And so imagine the, uh, you know, high school dinner table conversations when your dad is a professor, your mom is on her way to being a professor, um, and you have no other vision other than to be a professor. And so I wound up going all the way through school, undergrad, master's, PhD in civil engineering. My sister has her PhD and my other sister has advanced degrees as well. And so it was the family business. And when I finally finished with my PhD, my wife told me, she says, look, you can't go to law school. You have to go get a job. And a fraternity brother of mine said, hey, come into the ready-mix business. We're paying and hiring. And that's how I wound up in it. And for those people who don't know the ready-mix concrete business, we're the big trucks that go down the road, the turning drums. We are not contractors. We're material suppliers. There is no such thing as a cement truck. It's a concrete truck. They're not the same product. But on a global basis, concrete is the second most consumed product in the world.

Really?

It's not steel. It's not Coca-Cola. It's not M&M's. Concrete is the second most consumed product in the world. In fact, statistically, in the United States, there is a ready-mix concrete plant not only in every state in the country, but there is at least one in every congressional district in the entire United States.

Wow.

So, and the reason I give you those stats is, you know, nobody notices us unless you get caught behind one of our trucks in traffic, right? Nobody notices us unless you decide to move into or live next to or in a hotel next to a concrete batch plant. Mm-hmm. But I challenge anybody listening to look out the window and tell me where you don't see concrete. So anyway, so this business that I'm in, it's incredible. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is 3 things I'm certain with also when it comes to concrete, 3 things: death, taxes, and concrete consumption is in a direct linear fashion to population. Wherever people are going, Concrete consumption is growing with it. Wow. Think about that. So yeah, where you move into a community, pick one in the United States, anywhere where you see the headline, it says fastest growing community in the US.

Yeah.

You know what the number one thing they're consuming there is? And it's not gas, it's not Coca-Cola, it's not barbecue. It's concrete. Wow. Because when you start to think about it, You know, you're like, okay, that's a road, that's a school, that's a home, that's a shopping center, that's a church, that's a church, that's a hospital. Everything is concrete. So my point to that is it's an extremely interesting business because we're— we track with population, uh, we go 24 hours a day, there's always a need for it. Um, but nobody notices us, and everybody who does generally has a negative opinion because they're focused on the manufacturing side, not on the application side.

So true.

So, so again, so long way around to your very short question about background and the, and the business, um, but that's what I do for a living and have for the last 30 years. Wow.

So how big is the team, the organization now?

So currently I'm operating in Dallas-Fort Worth, which is the largest concrete consumption market in the United States.

Wow.

So Texas— again, statistics, just some. So to give you scale and scope, Texas is the largest consuming state in the country for concrete. It's more than Florida and California combined, which are the number 2 and 3 states. Quick stat. National consumption is about 1 yard. That's our unit of measure per capita. The state of Texas is 2 yards per capita. So we're double the national average on consumption. Dallas-Fort Worth, where I operate, is the largest market not only in Texas, which makes it the largest market in the United States. It's not Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami. It's Dallas-Fort Worth.

What, what makes that the case?

Okay, it's the lead-in question, right? So two things. One, of all those other cities that I listed, every one of them has at least one geographic barrier to prevent growth. It has an ocean, it has a mountain range, it has a lake, it has something— can only grow in particular directions. New York, by example, can only grow in one— up.

Yeah.

Um, Texas, and particularly Dallas-Fort Worth, we have no geographic barriers to prevent growth. We're growing in all compass point directions. The second part about that goes back to earlier statistic point— population. The Dallas Business Journal just produced its latest report on what the growth in Dallas-Fort Worth per day is. It's 340 people per day. Dallas-Fort Worth is growing by— just Dallas-Fort Worth, not the state of Texas. State of Texas is about 1,000 people per day. Dallas-Fort Worth is now 34% of that. 340 people per day times 365 times 2 yards per capita. That is— so these are staggering numbers.

Yeah.

And so, so from a business standpoint, resourcing, planning, people, risk, all of this plays in. And Taylor, this is not strategic planning for us, is not multi-year, it's generational. And yet we're making hour-by-hour decisions because we have a perishable product. This isn't like a piece of steel that it can be manufactured in Idaho, put on a truck, and shipped to Florida. I have a limited time period by which after I make this, it has to be delivered, installed, and we move on, um, which is both the double-edged sword. Now I'll bring up one other point there. On a daily basis, I can succeed I can fail. Neither one of those translates into tomorrow's choice to succeed or fail. There are no attaboys from today that feel like, hey, you did so great yesterday, you're going to do great again today. No. Hey, you really failed today, guys. Reset, readjust. Tomorrow's a new day. So it's a— we kind of adopt the Mike Tyson philosophy. Which is everybody has a great plan until you're punched in the face. Um, so you have to be incredibly nimble, you have to be incredibly durable and have thick skin. And I'll go back to the question you really did ask, which was about the team. Your team matters in a tremendous way, but not in the way most people traditionally think. If I was working at a big financial firm or something like that, I need people that are credentialed, CPAs, MBAs, these kind of things. And I know I'm making some assumptions there, but generalizations.

Mm-hmm.

Do I need people that have those qualifications, or do I need people that have talent, their ability to make decisions, take in information, make a decision, adjust and adapt and move on while at the same point in time having customers yell at you staying calm and move on. You have people in our industry that are C-suite executives that started out driving a truck. Um, they didn't come out of, you know, the things that you're like, oh, well, you're a CEO of this other thing, you obviously went to these schools or you did this thing. And we've got C-suite executives that start driving a truck. And they're running $100 million businesses, $200 million businesses, a billion-dollar business. And so that's the other part about our industry is the opportunity is pretty amazing. And when you get to technology, because I think I have a feeling this is where you'd like to migrate to. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff here, but I always will come back to one thing is you still dig a hole with a shovel. Mm-hmm. So the construction industry as a whole is a little bit of a dichotomy because we use administrative tools. We still do finance just like other companies do. We still do accounting. We still do HR. We still do a lot, what I would call, support and administrative services that are critical. Those we can see certain technologies infiltrating, replacing, augmenting. We can come back to that. The other challenge, though, is at the field level, we still dig holes with shovels. We still have to put rocks and sand in the back of something and like a mixing bowl and mix it.

Mm-hmm.

Those are mechanical processes. Oh, sure, we can get to manufacturing tolerances and these kind of things. But I want you to imagine what the tolerance is in making cupcakes in your kitchen. Okay. And how you measure things. Now, I want you to imagine taking that same cupcake and making it— and this is true scaling— making it the size of your car. But instead of in your kitchen making that over the next 10, 12 minutes, I want you to make a cupcake the size of your car in 2.5. And then, so what are your tolerances on weighing up 500 pounds of flour, 300 pounds of sugar, all of these kind of things? Oh, and by the way, you still need to frost it too in that same 2.5 minutes. My point is, what is your acceptability for risk and tolerance as the problem grows bigger?

Yeah.

Oh, and just one more added complexity there. Let's say that that cupcake doesn't taste right. Yeah, you spit it out and grab another one. When my cupcakes don't taste right, people's lives are at risk. I build bridges. I build, uh, 10-story buildings where your loved ones are getting medical treatment. Um, I build crosswalks, uh, you know, or overpasses. There's no, uh— we used to— I had an engineering professor one time I don't know if you have any engineering friends, but if they do, ask them this question. When they were in engineering school, there's a question that gets asked before every first exam in engineering school. Somebody raises their hand and they say, is there going to be partial credit? I did all the formulas right, everything else, but at the very end, 1 1, I added up wrong and it became 3 instead of 2. Is there partial credit? I had an engineering professor one time recalibrate us and he said, there's no partial credit when people are dead. You do not get partial credit on a building that, that only half fell down. And it was a very sobering moment for us to realize that everything that we do has a community consequence. And so I take that very seriously, very real in what we do. Every yard of concrete that we go out, I know is going into a community that protects public health, safety, and welfare. And I realized that, you know, these can be taglines or punchlines, you know, somewhere, but for us they're not. They're true and they're real. And so we have this responsibility that we have to understand. So, but the technology is an interesting thing because I've watched, been doing this 30 years, and again, Moore's Law tells us the computer chip doubles in speed every 18 months. Our industry has changed more in the last 10 years than I saw it in the 20 before that, and it's changed more in the last 5 than the 10 before that when it has come to technology. But it's not in the way you think. Okay, so engineering and science. Did you ever hear the phrase we're going to follow the science? Uh-huh. Most people assume, they think, they believe how the science happens. They're wrong. Science happens because you get 50 people in a room and you convince 26 of them that the color should be blue instead of red based on the data you developed at that time for the 50 people who showed up to the meeting. 6 months later, they're regularly scheduled to meet again, and this time I convinced 26 people in the room with new data that the color shouldn't be blue, it should be red. And all of a sudden, that's how science happens. When it comes to engineering and science and those things, we are governed by codes and standards, specifications. They move at a glacial rate of change. They're very slow to move and adopt changes. A lot of that had to do with the ability to move data. And show people data, generate data. Now we're generating data in Dallas this morning that somebody in New York or Florida is seeing in real time from a job site that's happening. That 10 years ago, that was impossible. Yeah, that was sorcery. So now changes are happening. Decision-making is happening so much faster because of technology. Not because technology is giving us new data, but because data moves faster.

Yeah.

So, and I realize that's a subtle distinction, but it's a powerful one.

Yeah, it is.

So anyway, so I've been talking and I know you've got other questions and I want to be careful with your time here before we run out. So I know you probably want to go in another direction, but please ask me a question.

No, I appreciate it. I mean, I come from a construction background. My dad's a general contractor, all my brothers are. I've done flat work, concrete work.

Okay, yeah, you're my customer, Taylor. Yes, you're my customer.

And so good concrete versus bad concrete, when it's too dry, when it, when it sets off too fast, wind, water, heat, like all those things affected. Like you talked about the cupcake having to hit a certain parameter. Yeah, it's like, ah, and you're, you're sometimes on a job working it till 3 3 in the morning trying to make sure you got it.

And that's the other thing, I use this phrase a lot too, which is somebody somewhere designed something with a micrometer in a laboratory. I'm kicking it in, in the, in the, in the field, I'm kicking it in with a boot. My best day is did I wear the right pair of boots and did I kick it in the right place? So that spectrum exists in the construction industry like it, it doesn't anywhere else.

Yeah. Um, in the lab, everything's square, plumb, and straight.

You got it. And we can measure things down to the tenth of a gram or tenth of a pound. I'm weighing 40,000 pounds of material in 2 and a half minutes. Oh, and I'm doing that 1,000 times a day over anywhere between 8 to 14, 16, 18 hours.

Wow. So with the amount of resources that you're consuming and redistributing, like, how do you acquire that much?

I mean, if the 2 yards per capita—

yeah, that's unreal. So, I mean, perspective for the listeners, those trucks, those big semi-trucks max out of what, 7 yards?

Uh, 7 to 10 yards depending on— yeah. Um, so we're an incredibly asset-dependent industry.

Mm-hmm.

I have plants— that's iron at the plants. I have property that it sits on. I have infrastructure there. Each truck is $250,000 to $350,000 or $400,000 per truck. And that's the truck on day one. That doesn't include the driver, right? That doesn't include the telemetry devices. And these other things that are added to that. I have loaders that are located. I have this enormous fixed cost that goes on. Here's the other thing is, Taylor, I don't, I don't know where you are in the country today, but right now in Dallas, the sun is out. Next week it's going to be raining. You know how much construction work goes on when it rains? Zero. But you know what my fixed costs are doing while it's raining? I'm still generating fixed cost.

Yeah.

So my point to that is we are an incredibly thin margin, low margin business. We are incredibly dependent upon the weather. And there's nothing funnier than watching a board member go, now tell me how you budgeted the weather. We didn't. Because if I could figure out how to budget weather, I wouldn't be in this business. I'd be in a much— I would be making a lot more money. But my point is, for a lot of people, they just put on a rain jacket, wear an umbrella that day. For us, it's 60 miles an hour to zero. Um, and last year, 2025, in our market, it rained. We, we had 12 months of rain in the first 5 months of the year. What do you think that does to your financials and your budget?

It can destroy them.

Destroys them. Destroys them. So now I want you to imagine the trickle-down effect to what that does to vendors and raw material suppliers and resources and how that impacts things. And the last thing I'll tell you is, and this is going to be a bold statement, so if any of my industry people are listening, is we don't have a brand strength.

Um, tell me more. What do you mean?

Uh, we're a commodity. Okay, now, um, that is a bold statement. A lot of people won't say that. I'll go back to the point about specification. Taylor, you, you're tangentially aware of this business, and I want you to imagine you and I are both concrete contractors, and somebody says, we want you to put in this slab, and it's 100 feet by 100 feet by 6 inches thick. Something simple. Yeah. And you say, but I'm Taylor Construction. And I say, well, I'm Rich Construction. I want this job. You say, no, Taylor, I want this job. Okay, Taylor, uh, what's your price per square foot? Oh, it's, uh, it's a dollar per square foot. Rich, what's your price? Oh, well, you know, I'm Rich's Construction Company, and you know, we've got this great reputation. We're going to go do $1.25 a square foot. More. 25% more. Which owner is going to pay that premium? Or you're like, hey, I'm Taylor Construction. We're amazing contractors. Yeah, sounds good. Rich, what's your quote? That's $0.90 a square foot. Congratulations, Rich. You've got the job.

Mm-hmm.

But you have brand reputation, right? Nah, I just beat you because I just priced it lower. That's the construction industry. Yeah, we're a low-bid environment. So where does brand strength come into play in a low-bid environment? It doesn't. Now, personal reputations do. People do. Talents and abilities do. Go back to the earlier thing I said about my people make— being such a strength. Their ability to respond to problems and how they do That's not in the brand, that's in the people. I just happen at Big Town to employ some of those people. But I also know that however talented that they are, the market is going to determine their value. I'm going to try to keep and retain them. Anyway, I know you also wanted to talk about AI a little bit, so I don't want to go down that rabbit hole a little bit.

Real quick, how big is the team? How big is the organization?

So I've got 100 people people working for me, um, right now. And so we'll do, you know, our baseline top-line revenue is, you know, we're looking probably at about, I don't know, $75 to $100 million depending on how the years go. Um, at peak years we could be over $100 million, and, you know, bad weather years we could be down at $60 million.

Gotcha. And for you, what would you say determines the growth of the business? Good years, bad years, like How do you grow?

Yeah. So in this market, I'm not a dominant player. I'm a small player. So the big players, which are also in many cases vertically integrated, they're battleships. Slow to move, slow to turn, slow in decision-making. I'm much more nimble. I can respond to customers. I don't need to speak to an analyst 3 states away who's questioning the year 7 assumption on growth being 2% or 1.5%. I can go straight to a customer, get a decision, or make a decision, and move on. And customers are responding to that more now than they ever have in the construction industry because they're seeing how difficult decision-making can be with larger companies. Yes. The other thing is, when you call our dispatch to place an order or talk to somebody, you talk to somebody. It's not a phone tree. Um, and they're in the— and they're operating in the city you're in.

That's cool.

I don't have a central dispatch in Iowa answering phone calls asking about where's my concrete in Dallas. Mhm. Yes, you can have technology support all of that, but I've got real-time people in this market answering the phone who also speak multiple languages.

Oh, that's nice. Yes, especially in the Dallas area.

So that's how I get to compete in this market. While, you know, I do enough volume that might be more than the state of Iowa, I'm competing against people who do more than the state of Arkansas and Oklahoma combined.

Wow.

Yeah.

So when it comes to your messaging and outreach, your marketing system, what's been working for you and where are you filling the gaps?

Um, it's been direct contact with the customer. I want to come see you as the leader of this company.

Oh wow.

Um, I don't care if you, you know, there's a, a friend of mine share a phrase, all customers are important.

Mm-hmm.

Some of them are more important than others.

More important.

I like that one. So my point to that is that when you have a CEO or a CFO get in a car, go physically see you on your home turf and say, what can I do to help you? That has a huge impact as opposed to I'm going to send the salesman who's going to go talk to the sales manager, who's going to talk to the VP of sales. And I'm not saying those systems can't be effective, but you asked what works for me. Yeah, that's what works for us. We just get in the car and go, I'll just come see you.

That's awesome.

You mean you're actually going to spend time to come see me? Yeah, I'll do that. You don't want to send me an email or a text or, you know, a Snapchat, TikTok of it? No. We are still a belly-to-belly, face-to-face business.

There's a lot to be said about that.

Relationships matter. Um, and I'll tell our guys all the time, for everybody that has a CRM system and they're typing in data and information and somebody somewhere is using it, good for them. For every 10 minutes that you're doing that, guess who is in front of your customer. Me. Well, you know, I couldn't come see you today because I've got to catch up on all my CRM data entry. Okay, go do that. I'm gonna go see your customer while you're there. I like that.

And then there's a lot of, a lot of value in that belly-to-belly concept. And so, yeah, the gut instinct, look in their eyes, the handshake, all that.

It, it is. And it's one of the things that when I go lecture at a university, I'll tell students that. I'll tell them, then one of the things I need you to do right now today is put down your phone. And the reason I want you to do that is I need you to practice speaking and communicating to others. I said the world is smaller on the, on the minute-by-minute basis, which means differentiation is going to be done by relationships not by pricing, not by quality, not by any of these other things. It's going to be done by relationships, and I need you to practice doing it right now.

That's good. I'm glad that you're teaching the younger generation that, because that is a needed skill.

It is. And the one thing I really impress upon them is, look to your left, look to your right. One of you is going to figure out how to do that better than the others. And now for me as a, as a company owner, you've created value.

I can see that.

And that's what I need.

Do you have an ideal client that you like to work with? Certain types of projects or certain type of—

No. What we like are our partners.

Okay.

You know, it's kind of— I can have a partner who does driveways. I can have a partner who does high-rises. It's one of those that allows us to do what I would call direct communicate. What project do you have? What can I do on that? Hey, Taylor Baker Baker Baker, I can't hit that price that you need on that. Sorry about that. It's just not going to work for either one of us. And I'd rather tell you no. And then, all right. And then what other 15, what 14 other ones do you have that we can partner on? I like that concept. Is tremendously refreshing to our our customers. Mm-hmm. Um, no, don't you want to debate and fool around a little bit and kind of go back and forth? No, that doesn't help either one of us.

Yeah, it just wastes our time.

So, and then all of a sudden, that response— my competitors don't know what to do with it because their systems aren't built to compete with that.

Gotcha. Now, Rich, you mentioned it about AI. Like, what are your thoughts with AI and automation? Like, where can you utilize it and where do you see it's—

yeah, I, I think you've got to divide it into two buckets, which is, you know, job augmentation versus job replacement.

Yes.

Okay. And so let's talk about the job replacement. I think on your administrative sides of things, administrative support, finance, accounting, HR, benefits, payroll, those type of things. I think those are the ones where you're going to see job replacement in the construction industry happen, because there are payroll systems that don't differentiate between me as a concrete company, you as a contractor, or the guy who bakes cupcakes down the street. For them, a P&L is the same. Yeah. So I think you're going to see that, that happen pretty quickly. And what's going to drive it for us is just simple cost, cost control. The, the augmentation one, at our core, we're a logistics business and a manufacturing business. So that's the more interesting one is what does AI allow us to do? But here's the complication for us more than— and I think there are probably other businesses in this category. I go back to the earlier point about engineering design specification, protecting public health, safety, and welfare. And so I'm going to dig in. I'll give you 3, 3 legs to the stool real quick. So I want you to imagine that you're a ready-mix company and so am I. You produce 900,000 yards a year. I produce 100,000 yards a year. Okay. So together collectively is a million, but you do 90% of that. Yeah, we're going to dump all of our data into an AI system that's going to optimize, correct? And we've hired this company who does this. Can I make an argument that you've subsidized your competitor? You've contributed 90% of the data into an AI system, of which I've only contributed 10%. You— and I was like, hey, how do I optimize this? Oh, well, I'll use Taylor Baker Baker's data. To come up with an optimized result so I can use that. And here's the other second question I'll follow up. I'll ask you on that. Do you think when we're both using AI Optimizer, we're paying the same rate? No. In fact, on a per unit basis, you're going to pay more than I am. And, or, and maybe you don't because you're getting a bulk discount, but your end of year expense is significantly greater than mine. But I've benefited because I've taken 90% of your data and I've used that to optimize me. Mhm. So shared data is an interesting concept.

Yeah.

Um, because I think when I— when somebody asks me about my data, I'm like, sure, um, but I'm not allowing you to use that to optimize any system that my competitors are using. That's stupid. That's like saying, hey, come in here and let me show you how my sales techniques work? That's no. Second part about that is, what happens if I use your AI system to improve a manufacturing process and it doesn't work? It goes in the truck, goes out to the field, you as a contractor consume it, you install it, and it doesn't work. It fails. Mm-hmm. Who's responsible?

You are as the owner.

But wait a second. I used your AI system to optimize my recipe, my mix design. Aren't you— shouldn't you be responsible? I made it how you told me to make it.

If there was a guarantee, I guess. But no, there's not.

Right. So now imagine me having a contract discussion with an AI provider about that concept. Well, no, no, we just, we just make recommendations. Well, when are you going to get to the point where you're going to accept responsibility or shared risk with me? Well, well, that's not what we do. Then, then what, what have you done? What system have you improved for me? Third leg. Now I'm going to get super nerdy on you. I'm a licensed professional engineer in 21 states. And so I cannot— of the other 29 that I'm not a licensed professional engineer, I can't practice engineering in those states. I'm not allowed to. I don't have a license to do. In fact, if you chose to practice engineering right now in the state you're in and go, hey, I'm an engineer, not only can you be criminally charged, but you actually could be— go to jail for that kind of thing. All right, so now I'm giving you that because what happens if your AI system comes up with something new that goes under the purview of an engineering— a licensed engineer? Did I just practice engineering without a license? Hey AI system, I have a— can you please design for me concrete that will go in this beam that will hold up this load? How strong should this concrete be? Oh, it should be 4,500 PSI, and here is the mix design recipe put together for that concrete. Did AI just practice engineering without a license? Yeah, because I can actually type in those, those prompts right now and get an answer.

I don't know how I trust those, but yeah, correct, correct, you've got it.

Yeah, my point to bringing this up is there's not a problem with AI. From a business owner standpoint, from a business leader standpoint, we manage risk. That's really what we do.

Yeah.

So my question is, with these systems, does my risk profile go up or down? Forget about the concept of, hey, did I improve my bottom line or not? That's a secondary— that's another question altogether. Does my risk profile go up or down? And now to the other question: what is that financially worth to me?

Yeah, great questions, right?

So that— so, so again, I, I don't want to dive too deep into the rabbit hole about this AI versus that AI. It's more that these concepts— and the last thing I'll leave you with is I'm at a certain age where I remember, um, the sorcery that existed when you told somebody you could take a plastic credit card, stick it into a brick wall, type numbers into the wall, and money came out, right? My point is, I have progressed through watching technology go from nothing to what we have today. We've learned lessons. Why aren't we applying some of those lessons learned to AI right now? They're moving so fast. It was kind of like, I get that, that's cool, reckless in a lot of ways, but didn't we learn something with these other, um, didn't we learn something? Oh, I don't know, between Betamax and VHS, why did one survive and one not? You know, these other kind of things, there's lessons here. We should be applying them.

So to move on and, and continue the, the conversation, I'd like, I'd like to know for you, Rich.

Yeah.

When you think about the next stages of the business, what are you most excited about?

Um, I think one of the other things is I'm gonna go back to our reluctance to change. Okay. Our reluctance to change is going to be challenged more than it ever has been because of the population and the consumption issue. Um, well, we only build this way. Okay, well, then you can't build anymore. What new things are you going to have to adopt, adjust, or challenge the conventional thinking with? Give you a great example of carbon reduction, low carbon, reduce your carbon footprint. 15 years ago, 20 years ago, that was an unheard of concept. Well, now people want that and demand that. Okay, we can't do that in the traditional way. The code standards specifications haven't kept up. So you can either choose to do it in real time or not and not get something done. So to me, that's the kind of cool part is we're going to challenge convention on everything. Because of consumption. Go back to my earlier point about the speed at which data is transferred. Mm-hmm. Well, you know, you're going to have to submit an RFI, request for information. That'll take 3 weeks to go to here. We'll have to consider it. We're going to need to see additional data. No, I'm going to call you right now. Hey, Taylor, it's Rich down in Texas. Yeah. What do you want to do? We're pouring tomorrow morning. Make a decision. That's real time. That's happening now. That to me is transformational for our business.

Yeah.

30 years ago, that was unheard of to see somebody make a decision that quickly. Taylor, I need an hour decision here. I got to go. What do you want to do? And now all of a sudden it's like, Taylor, do you want to hold up this entire project? Because I'll be happy to let the owner know that you, Taylor, I need 2 more weeks of data. Okay, well, no, no, that's not what I'm saying. Then make a decision, Taylor. Let's go. Mm-hmm. That's the other thing is I'll go back to the final point here is I'll go back to the students. I tell students I need decision makers. I don't need analysts. I need decision makers. And it's okay to make a wrong decision.

That's key. Say that again.

It's okay to make a wrong decision, but just make it once. Learn from why it was wrong and go and move on. Stop dwelling on it. The other thing I tell the students, and I would tell anybody in business, learn what failure looks like and understand how to move past it. And the one thing I tell the students is, I said, how many of you don't know how to play softball? 12 kids raise their hand. I said, next time intramurals come up and there's a softball call for intramurals, I need you all to sign up to go play softball. I don't know how to play softball, never done it before. Go do it and suck at it. See what failure looks like, experience it, understand it, and then understand how to move on to the next 12 decisions past that failure. It's kind of like you and I have experienced this. Hey, it's bid opening day. Guess who won the bid? Taylor Baker Baker. Rich, you were the second lowest bidder. You know what that makes you? Last place, man. I put 6 months into that bid and we just lost it. Well, okay, yeah, you did, but you got 12 other bids due next week. Yeah. So I need decision makers.

So, Richard, if you had to pick one constraint to focus on and solve over the next 90 days, what would it be?

Oh, no question about it. It would be on the policy and regulatory side of our business.

Okay.

It wouldn't be— it wouldn't be about business and it wouldn't be about the markets. It wouldn't be about materials. It wouldn't be about people. It would be about policy and regulatory— the regulatory environment. Right now, today, Taylor Baker Baker, it is the easiest day for me to permit a ready-mix plant. Tomorrow is harder. Right now, I have people who say they want curfews on construction. You can only do construction between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. Well, how long do you think those projects now take? Long.

Long.

How about this, Taylor Baker Baker? How about going in front of a city council who says we need more blue-collar jobs? We need more skilled labor jobs. How easy do you think it is for me to attract people to this industry and those jobs that pay tremendously well when I can tell them you can only work 12 hours a day and they want to work more than that? The regulatory and policy side of our business is the one that is the most choking, constraining, and limiting of our business. The rest of it, it's all business solutions. Unfortunately, we're governed by these other things. I put up a ready-mix plant in Fort Worth, Texas. I'm the last ready-mix plant to be permitted in Fort Worth, Texas. I would, I would go $20 bet, and now I've got witnesses with your listeners, $20 bet nobody will permit a ready-mix plant in Fort Worth in my lifetime. And I'm the last one. It took 19 separate permits. Whoa. 3 from the state, 16 from the city of Fort Worth to permit that facility. Wow. Wow. 3 years, by the way. 3 years it took to do that. That's my limiting constraint. Those are the things I would change. If you told me, hey, Rich, here's your magic wand, what would you change over the next 19 days? That would be it. Because Taylor, I told you at the beginning of this podcast, 340 people per day are moving to Dallas-Fort Worth.

That's astronomical.

In the, in the, you know, do that quick math. In the 45 minutes that you and I have been talking, that's 10 to 12 people have just moved to Fort Worth.

It's fascinating to think about the compounding effect of that.

Yes. Now you're getting it. You're getting it. And so when you say— and so now that answer I just gave you, that question, you're like, oh, I never even considered that. Yeah, that's my problem. So anyway, we can talk for a long time, but I know time is precious for you.

Oh, I appreciate you coming on and sharing. And for those who want to learn more, they want to reach out, they can go to bigtownconcrete.com, LinkedIn. Where else can they find you?

Yeah, those are the, those are the best. And I know you've got all your stuff there. And I, I'm tremendously appreciative of you having me on and, and, and letting me, you and I chat together as two business professionals. And, um, I know your podcast is a leading one out there, and again, humbled and honored to be on it. So thank you.

Thank you for coming on and sharing your story and sharing the insight. Like, Some of the stats and the facts you brought out are mind-boggling for me. Like, and I come from construction background. It's so much concrete and I didn't realize it's the second largest utilized or consumed product in the world.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, so there's an obvious question there. What's number one? Concrete's number two.

Water?

Water. You got it. It's water. Wow. Yeah. So when you're looking— so when— and I've worked overseas in several places, and I will tell you just as a last snippet here, if you ever want to see a community, a country move from fourth world to third world to second world, if you ever want to see a community move out of poverty into some type and away from that, there are two things you do. You make sure they have water and you make sure they have concrete. Um, because it doesn't matter past that if you don't have roads. And I know that's about as unsexy an answer as it can be, but it's true. You want to move a community, or you want to move a, a country out of poverty, build roads. Because if you don't have a road, you can't build a power plant, you can't build a water treatment plant, you can't do those things. How are you going to build a road? You've got to build a road out of concrete. To be durable and to survive and all those other things? Water and concrete.

That's fascinating. And your point of the road, like the engineering that goes in behind that, a good solid quality road versus potholes that you're trying to dodge around.

And what we like to say is, and don't let your roads catch orange barrel disease.

Don't let your roads catch orange barrel disease. I love that one.

Next time you're going to drive down the road and you're going to see the orange barrels, you go like, orange barrel disease, I get it.

Yeah, it's like pox, it's like it's popping up.

Wow.

Well, Rich, thank you again and sharing. And thank you to our sponsors of today's episode, Achieve a Fractional, which provides fractional executive leadership for growing businesses. And if you enjoyed today's episode, share it with a friend, with a colleague. If you're wondering about a project and who is the right person to reach out to, or the complexity of concrete and how it does matter a lot to have the right people for the nimbility of your projects, reach out to Rich and the team. Like, just give them a call and see. He'll come out.

Happy to help.

Belly to belly. So thank you very much. Thank you again, Rich. And we'll see you all on the next episode.