Dick Zhang w/ Bluelight (Autonomous) Machines — DT 392

This episode is with Dick Seng of Blue Light Machines. Dick is CEO of Blue Light Machines, an autonomous civil construction machine started up that's already working with leading civil companies nationwide to automate rollers and articulated trucks. He's using many lessons learned from building a previous technology company serving the civil construction and mining industries to help contractors build better than ever. This was a great time, Dick is a character, you don't have to wonder what he's thinking, which I love. That makes conversations a lot more fun. So I hope you enjoy this conversation, Dick Seng, Blue Light Machines. So, what is, did you go to school? I did one year of my mechanical engineering undergraduate, so you're one year into a mechanical degree. So you've done some calculus and I basically did three other ones and then started that second year and it was the, all the 201 classes, Thermo, all the, you know, all the, I was a decent student my whole life and then that second year college, I just started failing everything. Okay. And then at the same time I got, I looked into playing around with some drones at the drone research lab and so like, I fell in love with drones, I started failing out of school. I met that, this, this lady in Pittsburgh who was in the small business incubator and all of it came together and I said, I quit and yeah, moved to Pittsburgh to do the startup. So I quit by the way and Ivy League education. So what school was this? Penn. Oh, wow. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what you know about the stereotypical Chinese upbringing, but I went home and said I'm Quinn College. Yeah. It was like the end of the world. So your parents are Chinese? Yeah. From China. China. Okay. I moved here 40 years ago. 40? Yeah. Okay. So you were born in the state? Yeah. And then grew up in New Jersey. Okay. Yeah. So what's a Chinese parent's reaction to you? Oh my god. It's like the end of the world. It's like heart attacks. I mean, to this day, my mom comes to me still and says, you could be a doctor. You could go back to school. You could be a doctor. You could be a lawyer. I'm so happy. Come on. Yeah. So hilarious. Yeah. What do they do? Very technical. Mom was a very technical biologist for pharmaceutical and dad is very technical chemist. Okay. So they're very much in the traditional, like highly trained path. Yes. Yeah. Actually, their story is China, they used to do this test. It was one test. Every high school student takes it at the year and they literally rank every single graduating high school student, you know, want to the end. And then the top like 30 or something in China in math, they would send to the US for math PhDs. The top in chemistry. They send to the US for their chemistry PhDs. Wow. The idea was like, let's go get our top folks educated. Anyways, sure. They came here to get educated. Did their PhDs? Very technical, very like very academic, very book smart. And then they never left. And I was born here and the whole life is in the US now. So when you found drones, what year was this? Twenty, twelve. So the whole commercial drone thing was still pretty early on at that point. It was very early, like military drones were getting there. Yeah, they were commercially there. This was like the early days of like, there was, you know, every few months you'd read about some startup that raised another like $100 million to do drones. Sure. Some operating system of drones, whatever of drones. And it was very early into the hype cycle for drones, you know. Okay. Yeah. So it was good timing because it was, well, you tell me, was it good timing? I was very good timing for me personally. It was enough, you know, excitement for me to leave school and send me down this path that I went down, which I'm very grateful for. But like in terms of building a drone business, it was awful. Okay. Well, you're not in the drone business anymore. Yeah. Well, that was a happy story. I'm going to tell the story, but yeah, but the awful timing, way too early, a lot of, a lot of hype rushing into something, and it's very unclear what are we doing for this industry. And, yeah. Okay. That's 2011 2012. Yeah. Because the first time I used a drone was 2015, I think, maybe 2016. You had a good? Yeah. Was it a DJI? It was a DJI. Really good? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It was like right when, it was right when the Phantom 4 came out. The Phantom 3 was still kind of janky, then they refined it with the 4, and a friend of mine who has a bunch of money, because it wasn't like anybody had them. That's right. It was still like a novelty. It was pretty expensive. Yeah. A few grand. A novelty. He had one. And it just knocked my socks off the first time I used it. In a positive way. Unbelievable. Yeah. It was incredible. It fell in love? Yes. I mean that. If people know me for taking pictures with my camera, if it weren't for my drone, I would have never gotten into taking pictures of machines, because I had to do without permission. Oh. Yes. You would just snoop a drone on your own. I would. Oh. Yes. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I couldn't get on job sites. So. Oh. And it's a legal gray area. Like I don't do it now. Yeah. I've been by the book for a long time now, but you know, when you're a kid, I was, yeah, my early 20s. No. It was not illegal. It wasn't illegal. So. And I would just post up outside the fence, fly my drone over construction operations. They don't. It's not their airspace. Yeah. He's been happening for 50 years with helicopters. Uh-huh. Yeah. Like those snoop on each other's jobs via, via choppers. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Playing. So you're not going to do anything that's not been done book. No. And I wasn't there to snoop. I was there to take cool pictures and put them on the internet. But that's how I did it. The whole, all the early days was, was with a drone because it was a, the, the, when the Mavic came out, then I was like, Oh my gosh, this is off the chart. You can, you can put it in a backpack like, you're, you're kidding. And, and then that, that was, um, I bought that and, and since then, it's just been, I've been through a lot of them at this point. Huh. It's really, it's really poetic that the drone is what got, got us both going into this. Sure. Yeah. I have, I have two very distinct memories about the early drone company and it's like drone company days. It's called identified, um, uh, the one was, I was 300 pounds. Really? Well, yeah, one of our, and I'm happy to talk about that too, but, um, one of our customers was oil and gas, West Virginia. Uh-huh. And they wanted us to Topo, uh, right away up and down a landslide, like on a mountain. I'm like, you know, I'm 20 or 21 at the time. And so I literally, it was like one of those drones that you could assemble by yourself. It had the metal tube, you know, legs. This is a 40 J.I. Yeah. And, uh, and so I strap it to my backpack and then climbed up the mountain, puking, I'm like get to the top. I'm way out of shape, right? At puking, like about to just pass out and, um, launch the drone. Um, again, pre DJI, um, launch the drone and just flew away. And, uh, anyways, that, that was a very traumatic day. You got to go back down, get the backup drone, come back up. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't the first. That's why. And, uh, um, second, uh, uh, moment in the drone business, our first contractor. This is what got me going down the construction, you know, the whole journey of the last 15 years. Yeah. Uh, it was this contractor I met through, I think our social circle and a miscarrow. It's this local superintendent. He's built it in office building. He says, Dick, like, we pay a lot of money for these planes to come take pictures of our building. Could you do it with your drone? Sure. So he can, I was like, 500 bucks a month or whatever. And John, if you're listening to this, thank you for sending me down this chapter or this whole journey. Um, but yeah, he paid me a few hundred bucks to come out and just take some pictures. And, um, a couple of months in, I sent it going around the backside with the waypoints. They had moved the crane. Drone clips, the clips, the crane falls down. You can hear all these store workers, mother, motherfucking up a storm. Uh-huh. Oh my god, that taught me about working with like working with operators and working with steel workers, but that's my second core memory with this business. Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. We could sit here for hours and talk drone stories, uh, yeah, down drones. Oh, well, I had this one time. It was, uh, I was at Granite Rock. It was at their quarry and, uh, flew the ground. Granite Rock is the same as Granite, like contracting or different, uh, different, different. But they're, right, right down the street from one another. Okay. Yeah. It's very confusing. Okay. They've intermingled, but way back like Granite Rock, I think, has contractor license 22 in the state of California. So they've been around. They've been around quite a while, um, but I, I, I clipped the high wall, and so barreled my drone into an area of the quarry that you couldn't walk. It wasn't accessible. So they, they spent, I mean, it was long enough for me to be like pretty nervous about it. Just the cost involved. Yes. But long enough with a D 11, yeah, pioneering a road, I'm sitting there, I'm like, guys, at this point, like, I'll just chalk it up. Yeah. Yeah. By new one. But so they're credit. We got it back. Oh, my God. And it was fine. You were a road within 11. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but yeah, we've been through. I mean, I just, uh, because the DJ Mavic 4 is not sold in the states. Yeah. I ordered one, sent it to a friend in Australia. I was there. Yeah. And I get up. That's right. And, uh, legal importing. Well, and then I, I, I destroy it, uh, destroy it a week into the trip. Oh, super. And I can't get it fixed super because it, I bought it in different country. Of course. Oh, what did I do? Of course. I bought another one in Australia. Here we go. Of course. Yeah. I have it in a box. I want to see it. Yeah. It's really cool. Um, what, what about, what about drones got you going? Like what, you can do a lot with them. I mean, I mean, everything, flying cameras, it was not so literal. I imagine I was 19 at the time, you know, and you just see this little whiz bang thing takes, you know, you can drop a zoom in around. Yeah, you can put a couple of dots on the screen on your laptop and they hit go, right? And then the thing just goes, you just, you know, in, in a half a second, you know, like this is, this is it. And I love it. Or it doesn't do anything for it. I want to say it's kind of like the autonomous rollers in half a second. You see it. And it's like, it's, the sparks are going or it's just not it for you. Sure. Yeah. So it was it for you. You move out to Pittsburgh to try to make a company out of it. Yeah. Um, what was the original, it was it like mapping or what were you doing with drones? Uh, I had no idea. Okay. Something. All I knew was something I'm going to make, make a dollar with drones and the, you know, we had some like, uh, uh, in the military detecting IEDs, we had some concepts there. I talked to one gas, I talked to agriculture on any industry that would listen to me. Okay. You know, I was just hammering the phones and then the, yeah, it was just, uh, this super antenna from mascara took me under his wing, taught me about the business and I see. And then, uh, I was like, oh, maybe I'll call somebody else and tell them to see if I can do two of these and then three of these and then. So at first it was just pictures and then, um, same guy said, you know, they, they take these photos from the planes and they'll stitch it and they can make 3D like contours and we, it's important for quantities and so bow and anyways, that started the whole, that whole drone company, I was about a 10 year chapter or story and that's what sent me down the journey of, um, quantities for dirt jobs and quarries. Wow. Yeah. And that became the business. That was the business. Yeah. It was quantities. It took me like two or three years to like, even to get going in that direction. Okay. So, just get going in that direction, three years, building the business, making some outstanding mistakes, very painful mistakes and then three years, which way we were coasting, there's, you know, as a nice business and then, you know, there was a line down and I sold it and stayed with the new parent company for a year. That kind of thing. Interesting. Um, I think that's one of the things I've had to really accept in business is that everything takes longer than you think it will. Sadly. Yeah. It way longer. It takes, it just takes longer. What, um, terrible mistakes. Oh my God. What terrible mistakes? Well, yeah. Pick, pick, pick, pick one. Let's start there. Let's start unraveling this terrible starter. Yeah. Um, probably the most terrible mistake, um, so it's very, it's like, it's screaming to me. The story I want to tell. I'm just thinking about how do I even enter the story? He's sitting together. Yeah. Um, I guess probably your travels, the following sentiment will, will resonate with you. It is very obvious when you work with a contractor that has experienced pain, like, oh, pain, they make decisions differently, they plan for growth differently versus like a contractor that has never experienced pain. And I would argue like, you have not been in business until you have experienced extraordinary pain. That's like a very essential part of the experience. No, it's like, but it's like, uh, it's, it's, it's like emotional abuse. It is? Yeah, it's like they've been, it's like they've been abused. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's this, it's this deep, deep, like they are a different individual. It's, cut in your heart, like, it's just such a deep, you know, I have experienced that pain. And so, yeah, and they talk about it with like a sadness and it's just, yeah, yeah, I know, I know the people you can tell them pretty quick. And, uh, and so anyways, to loop this back to your question, like, you know, for me, that pain, um, I'll try and paint you a picture, right? So we're in this second, three year chapter, we sort of got our bearings on what we want to do. I did the founder thing, the techie, techie founder thing, raised a few million bucks. I, we had our first dozen or something, two dozen customers. And then, um, uh, so you got cash in the bank is one thing. You know, there's all these like stories, articles you hear on tech crunch and all these tech places about, you know, all this hiring. For some reason, everybody thinks hiring, you know, is the, is like such a wonderful metric. Mm-hmm. I'm the opposite. We'll talk about that in a second, but. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. And so, and then to get technical for a second, we would do these subscriptions for the drone software. Maybe a $25,000 subscription, I heard this awesome sales guy and he would go get these deals where they would pay the whole thing up front. $25,000 today, and we got to earn the revenue over the next year, okay, or even he was so good, he would book these three year deals, 150 grand, you know, today, okay. So, cash is coming in today, which is spectacular. And so, is all this money on hand, okay, and all this money coming in, but on like, on a proper accrual basis, like, you know, it's not as rosy as, as the bank account shows, okay. And then, and so then we just went on this fucking hot point in my language. Go for it. Yeah. And boy, yeah. So, we went on this hiring spring. Okay. We went for 12 people to 60 some people in less than a year, half a year. And then, you know, the problem with these year long deals is, you know, if you don't have that right product market fit, you're not doing a good job for your customer, you don't get them next year. Okay. And so, this sales guy, he brings in all these enormous deals, all these enormous cash payments today, and then a year, a year and a half goes by and we start churning a majority of our business. We cannot, like, 10 percent, like, over half, three quarters of our business, okay. And so, then all these massive checks dry up. And as they're drying up, our overhead costs, spending, everything, infrastructure, we're just, like, just spending outrageous sums of money. Okay. So, we get to this point. There's a very distinct, like, turning point in the story. Obviously, the checks are not coming in. And so, you know, you got dozens of people on staff. And first time founder, first time running a business, I'm trying to think of any way out that's not the hard way out. I'm trying to think of any other way to do this. Just letting people go. Yeah. And so then, over the course of less than six months, you know, we basically whittled it down to an essential team of six, okay. That was, you know, to have to fire somebody for poor performance, that's hard. That's a hard thing to do. But then to have to let go of so many people because of my mistakes, operating and decision-making, that's like a, like, I could puke right now, telling me, sure, it's, like, so deep in my gut, you know, this pain. And so you go from, call it 60 to 6, and, you know, I was loading up credit card, loading up payroll on my own personal credit cards. We would start the 15-day pay cycle with, like, five grand of the bank. I need a couple hundred grand, like, at the end of this pay cycle. And so I would show up to these contractors with a demo, demo drone looking for an order today. Oh, I'm already here. You know, let me just walk down to accounting. Let me just go pick up the check, you know, like dozens of times, I would have to do that and pick, you know, and anyways, extraordinarily painful, yeah, mismanaging the business. It's interesting because I've been there and done that too. And I roughly gathered, yeah, I remember. So I, the first time, I just, we were cash flowing the business for the first few years, which is, it's great, but if you're growing and cash flowing, I didn't have an outside capital. No, no. Like, because when you're in your 20s, no bank is going to give you money or anything like that. So you have no credit book. No, no. No assets. No, sorry. That's right. So, so it was, you know, whatever the business was generating was, was what we were using. Yeah. And there was a time, I've told the story, but ran the company out of money. I, we had about five grand at the time. How long has it, how long has it been built with the company? It started in 2018, 18, so, seven years, okay, so three years in, halfway in, it sounds like. Yeah. This was like in the first two years. It was still pretty early on. It was just the marketing company, okay, okay. But I was putting more and more on our American Express and then I figured you could just kick the can down the road like I won't pay this month, I'll pay it next month, but that's not how American Express works. I didn't know that at the time. So I turn off the payments to American Express. I get to the airport and they say, hey, your card didn't work. I was picking up a rental car Sunday night. It's like midnight. And Indianapolis. Yeah. I'm tired. I'm in a different city. Yes. I have to go to work tomorrow. Yes. Just give me my damn car. Yes. Your card doesn't work. So I, they do it a few times. I call American Express. They're like, well, if you pay us $25,000 right now. Oh my gosh. You'll turn your card back on no problem, sir. And it's like, yikes. So I had a backup. I had a personal credit card in my bag that I forgot about. Use that to get the card and then didn't sleep that night because I was thinking, you know, not only did I need the 50 plus thousand, but I needed like 60 or 70 grand by the end of the week. So it was, it was Sunday night. By Friday, I needed about 60, 70 grand was, which was a shitload of money at the time. And it still is, but yeah, it still is, but like, that was a lot, that was a lot of money. And 20s. That's a lot of money. Well, and so I call, I call Dylan Stevens, who is an early customer at RASO. And I, I, because I didn't know what to do. So I called Dylan. I'm like, Dylan, here's, here's what happens. You're like, well, what if we paid you upfront for a year's worth of service for, you know, a small, a small discount, you know, five percent? I would have, for it, and for us, five percent. What a lovely offer. Yeah. Wow. So, so he ends up writing us, it was like about a hundred thousand dollar check. Yeah. I couldn't, but it was the most money we ever, we'd ever had by a mile. Yeah. And that was our first, like, taste of that, but the, like you said, the problem is, you're getting the money and now you're using it. And then you still have to service the contract. There's a year of life on this contract. Yeah. So, so we started to get tight and that's when we needed to borrow a little bit to keep growing. That's when we went to, to Randy, he loaned us some money. But that's when things really went off the rails. Because we, I tell people, I mean, I, I walked into a shitload of money way more money than I ever, ever should have walked into. I wasn't like really looking for it, but I was and it found me. Yes. I don't know why, I don't know why I had to learn this lesson, but you go, well, yeah, you go get a shitload of money. What do you do? You go hire a bunch of people. You got to go spend it. I need some people. Yes. Somebody to run the office. We need a nice office. Yes. I need the, the, the Friday, you know, breakfast for the team. Yes. Team meeting. Team meeting. Yes. Offsite. All this nonsense. Spend it. Spend it. And, uh, yeah, we have about 90, 95 people right now, we're at about 45. Yep. So it's been this slow and there's been some up and down in between then. But it's been like a three year period of just pain, trying to figure out what our business really is. And we're like getting to that. There's a light at the end of the tunnel, thank God, but it's just been a miserable experience. Yeah. A miserable experience. You know, the hard part and I think we're telling the same story when, when you're, there's nothing wrong with being in this chapter of like searching for what is this business, what's our essence? You know, what's our product? How do we build? How do we customer? What's our ideal? All that, right? What is this business? Yeah. Um, that is actually the joy of entrepreneurship. Yes. It's like, you know, being in this, these states of unknowns and finding your way. Okay. Yes. Okay. What's hard is when you have 50 people whose families depend on them to make a payroll. Uh-huh. And you got this big machine and you got this big team and you're trying to move around at light speed as you navigate this and answer these questions. I found that extremely, extremely difficult. Yeah. Well, and you're, and you know, like I was, I was just talking about this. People are, um, you know, like criticism, it's like dumb criticism, uh, but like you don't know what you're doing. It's like, yes. I don't know what I'm doing. First company I've ever run. Yeah. First company I've started. Um, I'm in my 20s. I still don't know how to tie my shoes. Yeah. Like I, and so that's the crazy thing about this experience too is you've got, you walk into millions of dollars. Yeah. You're in your 20s. You don't know. You don't know any. You don't know. You're head from your ass. Nothing. Yeah. And yeah, it's the, cause I, I know the shame of that, of, of that story well because you, you, you just, you feel like such an asshole. Yeah. Like because of my stupidity decisions, my ignorance consequences of your decisions. Yes. Yeah. Well, and, and, and they are your decisions. You have to own it. But it's like, I was, I wasn't, I was just dumb. Yeah. I wasn't, I wasn't intentionally making wrong decisions here. I was just, I was just an idiot. Yeah. And yeah, that by far has been the worst part of business is like all these people. Yep. Like all these people down, because of my ignorance, I could tear up like, it's so painful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, and it's just, it's such a weird dinamp. Yeah. You're, you're a male in your 20s. We're trying to figure out who you are, but then all this is happening over here. Yeah. So that's interesting. Yeah. Now, the happy bit, you figured it out and you made a viable business. That's right. You sold it. That's, yeah, that's that chapter three of three, and I can skip over a lot of the details. But, you know, you're a few people. You're looking at a whiteboard and we're going to make payroll in 12 days. And so it's just scrambling and it's just, you know, it's a core team. It's an essential team. I've never said this a little bit like, I have real love for that team. Like you're down in the trenches and, you know, just life, you're like gasping for life together. Well, and you, you know who's with you and who's not at that point? You know, actually, so yes, you know, word yes, but also if, if I was on the other side of this whole dynamic, I would have left long time ago. I, it was not logical to stay. I agree. Yeah. It was really not logical to stay. None of this looked good. And there was no outlook for it to look good, you know, over the next 24 months. The logical thing actually to protect yourself would have been to leave. I, I, well, and, and that's how I say that. Yeah. I don't, I don't. Um, I, I, I just told our team this the other day. I'm like, some of you have been here a long time. Yeah. I don't know why. Yeah. Like, I really don't, I appreciate it. Yeah. I thank God you're here. But I don't know why. I can't explain it. Because you know what it is? One opinion. Uh, um, like, money is important, right, and building a business all that is important. Um, I have never felt so strongly about this, you know, but it's been very clear to me in the last year, like, money aside, if you can just help somebody or help a group of people in this world, that is like the ultimate fulfillment of life. And, uh, you know, so like I see, you know, just in my travels, I see, I see build with, you know, helping industry. So if I had to guess, like your team just feels this fulfillment that, you know, we're out here trying to, trying to help. That's it. Yeah. Cause we can do it live. Nothing else matters. Money, you die. Like, you don't get them, you don't get to take the money with you, right? No. And like, you do, you have to fill the basic need of money. Yeah. It's, I think money is a basic need, I would say. Yeah. Um, that's how people pay their mortgage, send their kids to school, whatever it is, feed their family. Um, but there's not a lot of businesses that offer people like an opportunity to make the world better. I realize. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not that simple, but it is kind of that. Yeah. I mean, to put it, you know, make it, make it better or to help, like to put it in three words. That's, that's, that's the ultimate fulfillment of what you can do with your life. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. And just create value. Yeah. Like that, that's why I love the construction industry is because it's, it's built on creating. That's all it is. Is, is, is create. Yeah. Yeah. It's all it should be. There's a lot of nonsense now involved. And a lot of sadly, people with their sticky hands in the pot that is infrastructure dollars that don't actually build anything. Yeah. Yeah. That's how we get on that. We'll get there. Yeah. But, but yeah, I think you're right. Like it goes back to our mission. Yeah. Like I, like a lot of criticism is completely fair about us going all over the damn place. But like the one thing I, I cannot be criticized for is that we've been, and we can't, is that like we've been fixated on this since the beginning. That's right. Like that's just make it better. Yeah. That's the one thing. We're here to serve an industry. Yeah. We're here to make it better. Yeah. Period. Yeah. And we haven't quite figured it out yet. Yeah. But we've tried a bunch of stuff. Yeah. We have made an impact. That's right. That's the only game in town. Yeah. People will criticize. Anybody that criticizes here come take my job. Yeah. I will happily let you drive the ship tomorrow. Right? Like step up. Like where's the line? Right. Yeah. It doesn't, it very rarely bothers me. Yeah. I think it's kind of funny most of the time. I guess it worked out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I always talk people like if you're going to criticize, at least be clever about it. Yeah. Seriously. I'm just so dumb. Be creative. Yeah. I don't just say I don't know what I'm doing. It's like, yeah. I've said that a hundred times. It's like, you got me. Exposed. Yeah. Aaron doesn't know what he's doing. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm nuts. Yeah. So, you scratch, you claw, you build a viable business. Yes. Okay. So, this chapter three of three is scratch, claw, build a viable business, honestly, like by the end of my chapter with the business, we were doing like 20% income, like a lovely business. Wow. All measurable. You know, measurable metrics. Yeah. And the essence of the business was, we had our own software that we made in house and it was for, you know, you'd take your drone photos, you'd create topo, you'd create quantities, you could do all kind of clever things, shrink swell, and all that stuff with quantities, right? Yeah. Yeah. A lot of big dirt jobs, a lot of quarries. And then we also had a few pilots as part of the team and we had some customers that didn't want to fly the drones themselves. We have one, you know, one Vulcan was an outstanding customer. I think there's no art to this day, but it was an outstanding customer and like they had dozens, maybe 50 cores that they wanted flown in the last three days of every quarter or every month. And, you know, they needed tonnage reporting. Sure. So anyways, we found our essence. We found our essence. We sort of found like the product and we found the market fit and, you know, how do you price and how do you deliver? We did it in a way that there was a few pennies left at the end of the whole thing, for every dollar that came in. And then this would have been. Can you, before you go to kind of wrap up the chapter, just explain how it works for somebody that doesn't know. How do you get quantities with a drone in the air? But simple terms. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's just say 100 acres of dirt, doesn't matter what you're building, okay? They've got the fancy software now and so the drone basically knows it's this square area if you're looking down at the top, you know, four corners. And then it's basically fancy enough now that like you don't really need to touch anything else. And so yeah, you hit go and it takes off and then it starts at the first corner and then it does this like lawn mower pattern and it goes back and forth and it's very particular like how far these lines is very particular like how, you know, how many seconds in between each photo. Oh, very important part. So as it's flying this lawn mower pattern, it's taking photos about it probably every two seconds. And so like this 100 acre site subdivision, whatever, it'll probably take, you know, depending on your system, somewhere between 200 and 500 photos. And high quality photos, right, these CJAs are amazing now and every photo has a 3D like location attached to it and you know, some play with RTK GPS and the whole trimble world and bases, things like that. But anyways, important, important points are 100 acres square area to oversimplify a few 200 photos. Each one has 3D position. And so then you can feed this into a number of software, ours was one of them. And you basically like imagine it's actually how your eyes work. Okay. So imagine you're looking at two images and we see the same red car, we're the same manhole in the two images turns out, like if you have at minimum three of these images and you know what pixel this manhole is in all three images, you can triangulate the coordinates of this manhole on the ground. And so it's kind of like if you were to take a rover, you know, the output of this whole processing is like if you stuck your rover on the ground, like every two inches, and they call it a point cloud. And so it's very like computationally intensive, but you do this a bazillion times, you know, compare all these points across all these images and then poof after a few hours, you've got this like point cloud of what this site looks like. And you know, every inch you've got an x, y, z and color and it looks like this beautiful, like 3D rendering of the site. And so then what's, you know, so that alone is useful because the whole industry of like bases and rovers right is to get elevations of stuff on the site. But then what was really cool is if we came back next week and flew the same thing and you circled this area, call it the cut, you could actually like compare last week to this week and you could quantify how much material left this area. And so in the cut, you could quantify how much left the area, you could do the same thing in the fill, you could quantify how much came into this area. And you basically like we have contractors doing buildings off of this, it's like, you know, I moved this many yards and it's just, you know, at this price at this rate. And so here's my invoice for the moon. Well, it's arguably the most accurate way to track quantities. It's done correctly, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, if done in a disciplined way, yes, it's remarkably accurate. I mean, compared to like some guy in a truck with a little counter on their best. Oh, my God. You're lucky if you have a counter. So many times it's tickets, post it notes, you know, like, oh, my God, it's just, anyways, yeah, it's a, to understand like how much work was actually done, this, this was became the way to measure it. But it was in, in, in, once you got there, it was good timing because that's, this started to become pretty big a few years ago in the industry, yes. But even when I was still in construction in 2018, 2017, it was still, I was doing this a little bit with drone deploy and my personal drone and it would just knock people socks off. They were just like, what did you do? Yeah, yeah, just just mind-to-bend. That's why 18. Yeah, it wasn't that long ago. Six years into the identified chapter, you know, and think about, people were still mind-blowing. Sure. I think they still are. Still are, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I still, I mean, it's not uncommon now, but it's not standard practice. It's not everywhere. Far from it. Yeah. No, no, no. But yeah, it's the technologies in Crow. It's so cool. I mean, again, you see a drone fly after a second. It like pulls on your heart or it doesn't interest you. It's an idea that we could like take these photos and then let the computer crunch for a couple hours and then you got this amazing 3D rendering. It would just pull on my heart, like, this year. Sure. So freaking cool. Yeah. So yeah, that's why the whole business was built around that. So yeah, so that's the business. Were you planning to get out of it or did the opportunity present itself that was just like, well, it's just, it did not present itself. It was hard work to like, there was a distinct point where I said, okay, it's time to find a home for the business. Yeah, okay. See what I'm looking. Yeah. I see what's hard work. Why, why, why get out of it? There were two or three like big forces that came together. The first. Okay. I'd spend a decade looking at construction sites from 400 feet in the air. Yeah. It occurred to me after 10 years. Drones are important. Don't get me wrong. Quantity is important. But like, you want to really help going back to that theme of help. You want to really help the industry. You want to really move the needle. Get out of the sky. Get on the ground. Get money and move some dirt. Yeah. Help build the job. Okay. And so that was like my big core realization about the industry. And so, I want to help move some dirt. That was like a big driver. Another big driver is it was like in 2018, 2020, it was like the rise of early rise of self-driving cars. So I just nerded out about self-driving cars. That's another one of those. You see a drone fly? Tugs on your heart? Yeah. I see a car drive around. Nobody in the cab. Nobody in the driver seat. That tugs on my heart. Sure. And so that was second big force. It's like nerding out about self-driving cars. And then, I think third major force is 2020. You get this pandemic and just like operators, you know, people stopped applying and just like fell off a cliff for these contractors and so I had contractors begging me to help with autonomy. Okay. So yeah, those were probably the three big forces came together. So you got out of the drone thing because you saw another opportunity. Yeah. It's actually, so this is super interesting. I booted up an old iPad literally this week and I opened up PowerPoint on it and here from like 2019 was my pitch deck. I wanted to raise capital to do autonomy under the original drone brand of identity. Yeah. And you know, I went out to market three or four conversations, everybody said like these are two very different things. Yeah. Just capital and the capital already, like, he's just messy, like, you know, I've been there. Yeah. Just been there too. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So all those sort of happened and then that was that distinct point to, let's find home for the business. Yeah. We, that was honestly why we sold the marketing company, the original company was, yeah, that exact everybody saying it doesn't really make sense. It's too messy. Yeah. But we spent a lot of time fooling ourselves and knowing it makes perfect sense and then we realized it doesn't make, what we ask ourselves doesn't make sense. Yep. Fuck, no, it doesn't make sense. And then decision was made. Yep. Right then in there. Yep. We'll come back to it as we talk more about blue light, but a very important theme of the last few years is if you really are intellectually honest, the correct answer. Pretty obvious. Yes. And then you spend a lot of time because you don't like the answer. It's very emotional. You're very passionate. And a lot of time trying to find any other answer in business, whatever the right answer is, do it as quickly as possible as no matter how uncomfortable, as quickly as possible. I've probably reflected on that point more than anything else this year. Like reality is reality. It does not fucking matter what you think about it, how you feel about it, where you are. It just is what it is. And the sooner you work with it, the better off you'll be. But boy, have we spent a lot of time, and this is speaking very frankly. We have been overly optimistic about the construction industry in a lot of ways. And I'm still optimistic, but the speed in which the industry can get somewhere, we have to be realistic about, or else you don't have a business. Like, you need the business to survive. Yes. Like, fuck, we do have to really meet the industry where they are today, regardless of where we can go tomorrow. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. That's right. We got soul problems today. Yeah. Yeah. Which sounds, again, sounds obvious. We're going to talk a lot about this when we get into blue light, too. Yeah. Yeah. It's really sad it's talking to boys. Yeah. Okay, so you sell the company, and that in itself is a lot of work. Yeah, that was a lot of work. Yeah, it's not just, you don't just put a first-hand outside out front. That's correct. I mean, you can. Nobody's looking. Yeah. Uh-huh. Were you happy with how that wound down? It was lovely. Yeah. I mean, I didn't fly here on my golf stream, but it was enough to, you know, we made something. Basically, we were able to return capital to, like, make some dollars for our early investors, right? And then, to me, like, in my heart more importantly is, I had a number two, Zach, and, you know, as part of this whole transaction, you know, I knew I was stepping away. So he became, you know, basically the operating president, and, you know, a new buyer is basically a financial silent buyer. And so as far as, like, customers could tell, nothing changed, except Zach was now morning the ship. Yeah. Yeah. And so it just, it makes my heart very happy that even to this day, like, I'll talk to him every few months, even to this day, I mean, it's not easy, right? There's always problems, but they are still doing wonderful things that, you know, that they've been doing for the last five years, wonderful things were customer, and, yeah, he's taking some of the accounts that, you know, were small and made them medium-large and taken some of the large accounts and made them really large and- What's the company name? It's called Identified. Identified. Yeah. Identified. And it's still under identified technology. Yeah. Yeah. He just Googled Identified and drones. He should come up on Google. Sure. But you were completely out. Yeah. Well, there was a year where, like, Zach was basically doing all the work. I was still on his payroll dragon down, and I didn't really do much, but, yeah, that was 2022, I think, and then I was it. How do you go figure out how to make something autonomous? Holy. Like, where do you even. Where do you even. Where do you even start? Because I. Holy. I. it's. your background is interesting because. so we've alluded to it a little bit. I don't think the solutions for construction and this maybe. there may be some arrogance here. I don't know. Yeah. Or. I might be naive. I don't know. I don't think solutions to the construction industry can come from technology people. Agreed. I think they have to come from within the industry. Agreed. Yeah. And that can come in various forms. Agreed. But you have to really understand the industry. Agreed. And not just understand the mechanics of Earth moving. Agreed. You have to understand people. Agreed. Yeah. And understand. How people talk, like, the nuance. I think you have to understand the nuance. Yep. And there's a lot of nuance. Yep. A lot. Because it's in the real world. Yep. And I think that's what a lot of people don't appreciate as well. Some of the outside people is that there's so much nuance in this world because it's in the real world. You're dealing with different people, different places, different soil conditions, whether. Yeah. It's simple. It's moving dirt back and forth. It's really not simple. But it's very complex. It's very complex. Yes. Yeah. And so your background, I think, is essential to figuring this out. You just need a certain level of experience. Just a certain number of conversations, I think, a certain amount of time on job sites, a certain number of sites. Yep. You have to see enough. You have to have a big enough data set that you can't get. You can't get it faster. You cannot. It just takes years. You just have to visit 500 job sites. You just have to visit 500 job sites, exactly. And I didn't realize that until I'd visited 500 job sites. And then I'm like, holy shit, oh my gosh, this is crazy. How does anybody else see this? And it's like, oh, they haven't, they don't get to see all this stuff, right? So I think that's really important. You have that. You have technology software. That's great. But you go look at an autonomous car. It's kind of complicated. There's a lot there. Yeah. So how do you start to even figure that out? Do you just go get autonomous autonomy for dummies at the library? This is a. Let me just start rambling. You go for it. You guide me. Yeah, yeah. I didn't. That was a horrible question. Yeah. It's a great question. It deserves a rambling. I'm just going to ramble about some, like, very core principles at the core essence of Blue Light. I like how you put it five minutes ago. You got to meet the customer where they're at today. It does not matter what you think about tomorrow or next week or next year. And so I think, you know, when we were thinking about Blue Light, some of the very important things were. This cannot cost $150,000. Can't cost $500,000. A lot of these autonomy solutions that have been out there, like a million plus per kit. No machine included per autonomy kit, right? It's impossible. It's impossible. Yeah. Yeah. It's got to be 20, 30, 40 grand a play. And my dream, by the way, is to cut that by five over the next five years. It's got to be. And I didn't really appreciate this even until starting Blue Light and really being out there with operators. You cannot be like. you can't even require 15 minutes of training to use your stuff, okay, because operators cycle in and out like every three hours. You know, somebody who was running this roller might be doing something else this afternoon and then might be back by 4 p.m., or you send operators to different jobs. Some operators start work at a new contracting firm on Monday and they don't freaking come back from their lunch break. You know, it's just like. it's such a unique and you're alluding to it, like until you have been on 500 jobs, you don't even realize the constraints of like what you have to build inside of. Yeah. You know, if you're trying to do something good for the industry. And so, yeah, the constraints we sort of arrived at are like, this has got to be very affordable. We cannot require that you have got to ship this thing to some shop to get it installed, right? You know, nobody has patience. We can't take machines down. You know, yes, the roller is the cheapest machine on the job, but if you take the roller down, you can't make compaction on this lift, means you can't start putting the next lift, means your whole lineup of equipment is sitting there doing nothing because you're installing on the roller, right? So it's got to be like one or two hours to install. And it's got to be literally 30 seconds, like pick up, you know what? Most many. Not everybody. Okay, that was another interesting thing we learned. Not everybody has a smartphone, but many people have a smartphone. You've got to be able to pick it up and in like 15, 30 seconds, get going by yourself. It's just like such a really radical tell that to some other pretty big technology companies within the industry. I don't know if they've used their products, but yeah, I'm just, I'm like, so you talk about these other big technology companies. I mean, I don't mean to derail it, but you got me started. So I know what I look like, okay, but these fucking techy techy guys that show up to these job sites. Okay. These techy techy guys, you know, and it's just, it's so classic. Oh, construction is so dumb, construction is so ignorant, it's not good adopters of technology. No. We need to show these cavemen fire. Yeah. They don't even know about fire. It is, it is, it is exactly backwards. You techy techy or you person did not appreciate the pressures of production. And there's one story I go back to when we start talking about this. The pressures of production, imagine we're building a data center in Richmond, Virginia. It's early days of our autonomous articulated truck, the 745, okay. So we're running, basically, beta stuff, okay, we're in the hall. It's like six or seven articulated trucks. It's a 1250 up on the bench loading us, okay, Chucky is his name, the operator, okay. So Chucky's loading, they got some oversized bucket as Lisfield always does, they got some oversized freaking bucket on this Shore Boone 1250, sure, it's like two and a half scoops in this work. Oh, it's a fun machine. I've seen pictures of it. Yeah, okay. I've seen the machine. It's like two and a half scoops and this, this bet is full. And right as you like swipe to go, the thing bugs out and it stops working. And then you're sitting there for like 14s, I'm sitting there on the auto truck because I'm helping test. And the thing bugs out. So you're sitting in the truck. Yeah, as it's driving. Yeah, as it's driving, but you're not driving. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is what early days testing. Yeah. So I'm sitting in the truck, you know, freaking out, you know, I'm on the phone where everybody's on a group call and nothing's working. And it's only been like 12 seconds, okay, scrambling, nothing makes sense. So then I got to reboot the truck. After you reboot the truck in the app, you got to hit connect. This whole ordeal takes like probably less than 60 seconds. But as I'm rebooting the truck and waiting for the thing to connect, I can look back at Chucky and he is just staring laser beams at me. This fucking guy. And then in the 60 seconds that it took my truck to reboot, so the six trucks that weren't there a minute ago are now all waiting behind. Yeah. And now they're all his ass. Yeah. And now it's, it's our truck and blue light is holding up the entire job for making a lick of production. Yeah. Okay. And so I tell the story because and like we preach it inside you with our engineers, everybody inside team blue light. It's like production is like you got to keep moving. Don't ever stop moving. And like until you appreciate laser beams being stared down at you because your stuff broke because it took 60 seconds to reboot your truck, it's like you did not appreciate the pressures of production. Well, I think the technology people, they think they're the ones that are important. Correct. And they think they're the ones that are changing the world. Correct. But I again, I'm around too many people that actually build the world to think that I'm the one that does anything. Yes. Get man. Nothing. Yeah. No, I am in service of these people that actually build our world, that actually put pipe in the ground. Correct. Pave roads. Correct. Move dirt. Poor concrete. Correct. Like that is still we're human beings. We have physical needs, food, water, shelter. Yes. These are the people meeting those physical needs. That's right. Nothing in humanity happens without those physical needs. That's right. And I think they forget that. They think they think they're they're the ones that are important in the in the grand side. It's not just technology. People by the way. Oh, it's not. No, it's not. Some of these contractors that have come up real quick, you know, in the last few years, you know, you get these back office folks and you get manage money. You get plenty of that. You get leadership. You know, think that they drive the business. No, don't get it wrong. It's the folks making production on the job. That is, you know, you either make production or you support somebody who makes production. There's nothing else that matters. And so, yeah, I think it's very common for these technology people. Like, you were too ignorant to realize like the pressures of production. You didn't you didn't yourself understand it. So then of course, like when you try and make us a technology solution, it's dead on arrival. Like you had no chance. And even with we believe like a product, you know, that we build that is sort of kind of fits inside what the industry needs. It's still not obvious that that we're going to succeed because the pressures of production are just so high, I distracted you a little bit. So you're sitting one is a 745 or 7.5, but how do you get a 745 to drive itself? Ah, okay. How do you figure that out? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great question. Yeah, you can't just go on YouTube and, you know, and then go to Home Depot. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So the dirty little secret and some of our competitors will have trash talked us. Okay, do our customers. The dirty little secret is actually to make a robot drive around in a circle, not a very hard thing. You could literally go to ChatGPT today and say, Hey, I want to buy a little RC car. And then I want to send me a list of what chips do I need to buy, write me the code so that I can control it for my phone or when you use this open source software. Just tell me what to do. And so luckily, there are some like open source, widely available methodologies, widely available tools, widely available text acts and chips and all that, right? And so to say it literally, it is the exact same chip and the exact same kind of firmware that makes a drone fly is what we put in the roller. I see. Yeah. Interesting. So we did not take, we did not take a self-driving car and cram it into a roller. We took, we took basically a little drone and made the roller a big, a big drone. How does it see, is it, it's not LiDAR, I don't think yours is. No. I haven't seen that. And I will, I will, because LiDAR, I won't die on this hill. Yeah. It's expensive. Okay. And it breaks. Yeah. And it breaks. Yeah. You get two sensors. When two sensors disagree, what do you do? You had to listen to one anyway. So why even have the other sensor? If you were going to listen to one, you know, when the other one is, is disagreeing. And then you get this expensive sensor of that cost money, but then you get the complexity of more data. So then you need more, you know, compute power and then this sensor is fragile, so you need more electronics and robustness testing. Everything exponentially gets more involved if you just double the number of sensors you have from camera to camera plus LiDAR. So the, hold on, let me finish my brand, like another very important point about appreciating a job site. LiDAR, the moment it sees dust, is rendered useless. Explain LiDAR. Yeah. Explain LiDAR. Literally like a laser pointer. And then when the laser pointer beam hits something, the sensor can basically sense it. That this literal laser beam hits something. Okay. So then these LiDAR sensors, there's some nuance about how they work, but just imagine it is shooting out of bazillion thousands of spinning really fast. Some of them are spinning these lasers, some of them spin. But even the fancy ones nowadays, nothing spinning. We're just sending out a bunch of laser beams. Okay. But the problem with laser beams is they hit dust and ping back. And now you've got this big cloud of like massive in front of you. And so then if you have LiDAR onboard your system, you either do two things. One, stop the machine from a lick of dust. Sure. Okay. Or two. You ignore the LiDAR and you just keep going. Yeah. Yeah. Which is the cat's mind star system is, they've used LiDAR. But then they have, they have the other form of sensors as well on the truck. Yeah. So that's how they get around that. Multiple systems. Yeah. There's like the redundancy factor. It's actually, if I can piss a lot of engineers off by saying this, installing LiDAR is just a crutch and a cheap way to get something looking okay. But the real work, the hard work is just get vision working really well. Okay. Yeah. Vision is the superior way to get it done. Well, because I honestly, I thought LiDAR was the only way. And then I saw the Kamatsu system, which is their autonomous hollage system for mining and they don't use LiDAR. So it's like, oh, wait, you don't actually need this. These trucks are moving just fine too. Just fine. And one team says, no, we're team LiDAR. The other team says no LiDAR stupid. And the Google cars are LiDAR. They're all LiDAR. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Waymo, Waymo, Waymo. They're all LiDAR. You'll see them Phoenix. And now quite a few different. Yeah. Full and deep in Phoenix right now. They've gone all LiDAR. But then Tesla is not LiDAR. Correct. They're camera based. Correct. So you went camera based. You're just using vision. Straight vision. To understand what's in front of the machine. Correct. And around the machine. Yeah. You want to do another dirty little secret about blue light. The quote unquote AI that we use, you know, to see what's around us. Is it just a bunch of people in a call center? Like, are we the- Yes. Early days, early days. It was me and my co-founder Justin basically doing that. But the dirty little secret, the AI model, you know, AI that we use, the model is an off-the-shelf. Like if you did a one-on-one, you know, camera vision course in college, you would use this model. And so the model is actually nothing fancy. I'm skipping steps here a lot, but like- Yeah, I understand. In the world of AI, like the model is not the fancy part. What matters is they call it training data. And so real images from real job sites of real dozers is what you need to train an AI. Yes. And just the way like this technology is evolving, if you have 10 pictures of 10 different dozers and train your AI with it, and then you install that on one of our rollers, it's going to do a pretty awful job of stopping for a dozer. You only have 10 pictures. But if you have 10,000, 100,000, a million pictures, eight, 71, yellow, gray, on stone, on dirt. And all these things, yeah, dirty, clean, whatever, sunrise, sunset, midday. If you have 10,000 pictures and you train your AI with it, and then you ship that to our roller, it is amazing how good it is at seeing. But dozers. You get the images to begin with by running it manned to create that. That's how we did it like in our first link a few months ago, because you need to get the initial data set to begin with. We actually, we had the AI installed, but it only could see people and cars, because that's all the stuff we had access to. Sure. Yeah, because the data there is as robust as walking down the street, yeah, taking pictures of cars. Well, yeah, but, I mean, just the autonomous, the miles and how much time they've put into this now is insane. So you're using multiple cameras to be looking all the time, and then you're using your training and algorithm to then recognize that's a guy. And then if that's a guy, and it's in my way, I stop. That's a guy, and it's within the distance that I care about. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, if it's in my path, I stop. Interesting. Yeah. You know, and honestly, we sort of went down this, it's a super curious set of topics, AI thing, but our first customer, landmark is Sky Mike Marshall. He was one of the guys like, we got this huge job coming up endless rolling. Give me some auto rollers. I said, Mike, it's gonna take some time to like make a roller that can have the AI to stop for things. He said, dick, I don't need that. Just make the roller go by itself. And I will staff somebody to sit at the corner of the floor pads and hit stop if any of the rollers are about to do something dangerous. I see. And okay, so I'm jumping to another concept here, moving away from the air for a second. It's a very common thing in technology startups to think, I gotta do all of these things. We need all of these features. It's gotta be very feature rich. We need dozens of engineers to pull it off. Yeah. Ben there. Yeah. Actually, that's cheap thinking. The hard thinking is to be very intentional. I say internally, like when we talk about it, it's like, let's reduce the scope. Let's do less. We don't want to do a dozen features. We only want one or two features. Let's think hard. What's the one bet that we're going to make? Let's build it super quick. And then we can see where we're right on the bet or not. And if not, that's fine. Because, you know, we're doing this, you know, development, like on the matter of hours or a couple of days, not on the matter of six months or two years. And so, if the bet was wrong, that's fine. Tomorrow, we're going to pivot and try another bet. And then another bet. You know, and so, so this concept of reducing scope was really hammer hard, hammered into me. When Mike said, I don't even need the things to have eyes on them just make them roll. Interesting. So that was the first iteration was you made a little roller pen with a guy in an e-stop. Yeah. Yes. Can I word yes? Yeah. Yeah. But it was over some. Literally days later though. Days later, my co-founder Justin from that world, so basically my co-founder, JD, he got the thing rolling, the electronics of it, the robotic side of it, and then Justin comes from a background in this kind of vision, they outworld, it was like literally two days later, and he got it stopping for people walking in front of it. Okay. Okay. So pretty quick. Yeah. And these were cat rollers. Cat were capped. Cat. They were cat rollers. Did you, did you talk to Cat about this or did you just kind of go do it? Yeah. We don't ask for permission. Sure. We have a customer that needs help. Sure. And then to loop it back to that same concept, they need help today. So we do it. You have customers, you have dealers, I'm starting to go off on day and day and day. Have the OEMs even acknowledged you? We're primarily on caterpillar rollers and articulated trucks. We used to be on John Deere, articulated. That was actually our first development machine, and then it was a pretty sour, sort of unfolding between us, the contractor, Lisfeld and John Deere, and so we said, this is too messy. Let's just go to cat trucks. We had exceptional support from early cat dealers. All the forces came together. We just did it for the cat trucks. And then for like the last year, I was very open to this idea of, I'm happy to work with any OEM that wants to work with, like we're an open book. I have no secrets. You want to know our roadmap for development, I'm happy to tell you. And so, but it became very clear in the last month or two that this particular OEM is not interested in working together, fine, and in fact, they would like to compete also fine. Sure. And so we said, look, you know, for a year, I've been getting customers asking me to do it on every other brand of roller, but I have not. I've actively said no, because I'm loyal to, you know, our early customers who are cat heavy and I'm loyal to our dealers, more cat heavy. But if you would like to compete, then we need to do what protects our life, and we're going to do every other OEM on the planet. Yeah, sure. So we just announced with Dyna Pack, it was a super successful launch in Atlanta, like two weeks ago. And it was like within the week, we had a call with headquarters in Sweden and North America folks, and very positive. Very good. I don't know where it unfolds and where it eventually goes, but yeah, very positive, very eager to work together. They just, these big companies, it's not just the big OEMs, but they want it to be their idea. And it's like even real, even even, even recently, there was one, I don't want to get into like what exactly it was, but there was this guy that says, I'm going to do this for you. And it's going to be amazing. It was, it was incredible. It was really something, you know, I'll say it. So, John Moina, MTS, mobile track solutions, CJ Moina, Earth Mover Legacy Center, amazing organizations, and like that is a guy that is just built to move dirt, like his, he is, that is his purpose. God made his existence to move the earth, yeah, period, this guy. No doubt about it. No one has ever refuted that. It's just so obvious. And he just, he loves the industry, he loves caterpillar, he loves old machines. Their collection is unbelievable, incredible, I world class, world class, and it's, it's private, like he sources it all. They have full time people working on these machines, the restoration. It's just, oh museum, that's available, open to the public. Did you just post some pictures about this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unbelievable, so they said we're going to have 100 year caterpillar birthday, and we're going to have it, we're going to put up, you know, spend our money to do this and celebrate the brand. Celebrate the brand, celebrate, like, you know, this only happens every once every 100 years. I know where this goes. Oh yeah. You kind of see where I'm going here. Oh my gosh. So, I know that it was like, you would think caterpillar would be like, let's do this together. Like this is incredible. We would love to do something like this. Not only do they have, their dealers were very helpful in it. I can't say enough good things about the cat dealer network. The dealers participated, caterpillar, no, we're not going to participate. And then they did the road, the same weekend, yeah, that's right. The same weekend. We're going to, last weekend, two weekends ago or two weekends ago, we're going to have our own birthday party. Wasn't planned. That's right. But we're going to have our own. And maybe they say, well, it's a coincidence and I'm like, okay, whatever. But it's just like why, like, yeah, like, it's so frustrating, like, it's so disappointing. It's disappointing. Like for somebody like me, I have, I still love the brand. I love the machines. I love the people that work there. I love the dealers. I was a caterpillar shareholder for a very long time, like in college, I mean, it was like, I lived and died this damn brave. But then it's stuff like that that's like, why, why, yeah, I can't come on. Like, throw me up. Throw me a bone here for goodness sake. And so that goes to then, it's like, watch, you're going to go to Connexbo and have you been to Connexbo. You're going to go to Connexbo. I'm going to go to Connexbo. All the OEMs are going to be talking about how their technology is world-class, our technology is incredible. We're a technology. We're not actually an equipment manufacturer, we're, we're, we're a technology company. It's good, it's good for shareholders, it's good for the branding, the marketing. And I just don't, that's not the winning formula. Yeah. It's just not. I, somebody like you can do it so much better, so much faster, cheaper, cheaper, like better for the customer. Yeah. Why not just work together. And then the OEM thing drives me nuts too, because it's like, they all, they won't say each other's names. That's right. They just scratched me up. But it's like, they're all talking about each other. They all talk. It's very passive aggressive. And it's like, go to a job site. Correct. Go to a job site. Correct. One, and even a customer that's a die hard cat fan, I guarantee they have other stuff there from United Rentals. Correct. Or something like that. They're renting from, yeah. Like all over the place now. Yeah. It's just so silly. Like, you know, it's, uh, I have had to be very intentional about this the last year. You know, because of this, I believe it's working with dealer's thing. It's really only been the last like 10 or 10 months maybe. I catch myself and I have to catch myself and I have to be relentless about it. It doesn't really matter. You know, if OEMs want to work together, great. If OEMs don't want to work together, great. Like we have a plan both ways. And we are going to keep marching. And like our North Star is do good for operators on the job sites, actually, you know, moving material and putting in fill. And as long as we take care of that, you know, that person on that, on the job site, everything else will fall into place the way it needs to fall into place, the dust will settle the way it's supposed to. Yeah. I like what, what, what, what is starting to really piss me off and I will not fucking forget it when I'm in a, when I'm in a position to do something about this kind of stuff. Yes. I will not, I will not fucking forget it. Yes. Um, and it's not OEMs. It's everybody. Yes. That is in the way of progress. Correct. They can make more money right now. It is like I, I can feel like the anger within me right now, as I'm saying this, it is making me so fucking upset. Correct. And it's just how they're all leeches, but, but some of it is, but, but a lot of it's just like how much more money do you need? How much more like, how much is your example of like somebody getting in the way that like really like gets you fired up? It's, it's a lot of the industry current, I think it's like the establishment within the construction industry. Okay. Yeah. GCs. GCs I think are there. Big engineering firms are there. Yeah. Well law firms are there. Law firms. Yep. Um, um, any materials companies. Yep. Very guilty. Like, and it's not, it's not their fault, like their, um, it's just, so I'm big picture. I'm looking at America and I want America to be better. Yeah. We have to win. Yes. Yeah. But I travel and America is not better. Sadly. And it, it, it, it is so sad. Yeah. Exactly. And, and, and, and we still believe our hubris that were the best and it's like, go anywhere else. Anywhere. Anywhere else. Yeah. Not London and London sucks. Yeah. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and like, really reflect, like, like, like, take inventory. Yeah. Because we're not where we think we are. Yeah. And it's just like, everybody's been out for themselves for so long. That's it. They're all protecting their own interests for generations. Yes. And it's all about me. Me, me, me, me. Yeah. And it's, but it's like, well, what about the next generation? Correct. And the generation after that. Correct. Correct. And it's like, good for you. You're making a shitload of money. Congratulations. Correct. What do you go do with that money? Correct. Well, you don't know what to do with it. So you go give it to JP Morgan. Is JP Morgan or I don't even want to, you know, I don't even want to bag on JP Morgan. Any of the banks. Any. Any of the institutions. Yeah. Whatever. Are they taking that money? And are they like making the world better? No. Probably not. No. Probably not. And, and then, okay, you're going to give it to your kids. I've seen that play out a lot of times. Everyone's them. I almost always does it destroy them. Yeah. I grew up. I grew up around all these people. Yeah. Like, thank God. My, we had just enough money growing up where we had a brilliant life. Yeah. And then it just, the door slammed shut. Yep. And it was like, dude, you just saw it was possible. Yeah. You go after it. Yep. It's on you now. It's on you. And thank God. Yeah. Yeah. That's good parenting. Well, yeah. Yes. I 100%. Yeah. I give my parents so much credit for that. I don't know. It's just, it, it, it, it, it, it really upsets me. So I can, so let me ask you this. Like, so I agree with all those sentiments. You know, we started talking about big company and then that's just talking about leeches and everybody out. But I will say, yeah, if I were in their position, I'd be doing this. You do the same. And it's not because I'm too good. Yeah. This and that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm here to make a buck. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not there to criticize. That's right. I would be doing the same shit. I just want to say that. That's right. That's right. Continue. But like, it is very upsetting. You know, you go to these, these other contingency of other countries and it, in many ways, it is better. I got lots of, lots of conversations that I have, I've had with people like, oh, we should have free health care. And it's like, okay, go to any of the countries with free health care. Why don't you move there? Sure. Yes. And then you end up waiting seven months for like, you know, a check-up, right? Yeah. And they all come here. Yeah. And then you end up coming here. Exactly. Exactly. For your health fair. So anyways, it's like, it's easy. I've been, like, I had a cycle, probably about two years ago, I've got very depressed about this society. I get very depressed about like, you know, these leeches and everything. But then it's like, okay, let's do something about it. You know, you got one life. Yes. It's tying it back to helping. What can you do with your life and your time and trying to help? You may not flip the whole picture for the positive, but you can at least help a small part of the picture. Uh-huh. Yeah. So like, you know, I resonate with, you've packaged it basically and Bill, is your, is your attempt to help the industry and then we've packaged it into blue light as our attempt to help the industry. But at the day, it's the same thing. It's like, we've got to help these operators. It's basically what a boils down do. That's it. Yeah. Yes. Serve the people in the field. Yeah. That's right. Like, we are here to serve. That's right. We're here to make them look good. Yeah. We know our place. Yeah. And if the day we forget it, we're done. It's just too depressing. If you don't, if you don't like, you know, figure out how you're going to make your mark and how you're going to help. And all you do is think about it. Yeah. It's just like such a sad existence. But that's, that's the opportunity. Yeah. Like that's what gets me excited. Yeah. But, but it, it, it, it, it's, it's been, um, very demoralizing at the same time. Yeah. Like people just can't get out of their way. Yeah. And, like, I'm trying to find a good example, like just the hubris that is everybody criticizing China. Yeah. Like, go there. Yeah. Tell me it sucks. Like, I don't, I've been there. Yeah. It's pretty dang nice. Pretty incredible. Like, pretty incredible. Yeah. Yeah. And I've, I've left the country more this, this, this year than any other year. And I've found myself as I come back, I'm like, sadder and sadder. Yeah. And it's been so uncomfortable. It's very uncomfortable. It's been upsetting, like, to go from Japan to Chicago hair. Oh my God. And it's just, you picked the worst airport to come in through. It's just so sad. Yeah. Like, it bombs me. All right. Just, I was in Australia and I come back to the States. Yeah. And even just the quality of food there versus here, it's like, man, like, I would rather live here than anywhere else, but like, we should be so much better. We can be. No. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And I mean, they're going to help make that happen or die trying. Exactly. Exactly. That's it. It's a, it's a story of like American dynamism. And I never thought I'd be, I'd be like, if you asked me five years ago, if I'd feel so passionately about this, I feel very passionately about this. Something's changed. American dynamism. Yeah. Past five years. Yeah. Like, it's, it's opened this world that I'm looking, I'm seeing everywhere now. Yes. Yes. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Like, we can do great things again. Yes. And we haven't done great shit in a long time. Yeah. We have to. We have to. Yeah. Make it here. Um, all right. Let's, let's, I'll put a pin in my anger for a moment. I'll come back down and actually do my job again. Um, you're saying you're serving operators. If I'm Mr. Operator, you're taking my job. It's correct. So actually, you mentioned this early. Yeah. Why don't you ask your question? No, explain yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you made the point earlier that like you just got to be on the 500 job sites to even have a chance to do something useful for this industry. And it, uh, it occurred to me pretty early on in blue light. The most impactful thing I can do for this business is go march across the 500 job sites and then the thousand and then 5,000 and, uh, um, like I wear the boots everywhere. Yeah. Been wearing the boots for two years. I haven't taken them off. So I wear them to boardrooms. I wear them to meetings. Like, that's it. I wear them to airports and everything. So, um, I have had many like we install a roller, you know, doing a demo or whatever customer just bought the auto roller. I have had many a dozer operator come up right up to my face, 65 year old dozer operator and just motherfucking me to my face. Mother fucking Chinese guy. You took him by taking my. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I bet you heard. Oh, I got. Yeah. So I got, I got two things working against me. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then layer on top of that, I just, we just hit go on this tablet and this roller is, you know, going back and forth with nobody in the seat. Okay. It's a very powerful moment and, um, so it's, it's basically the same question or same series of questions every time. It's like, yes. For 50 years, you made your career on getting in the, in the seat of that thing and running it and operating. And it's an, out, it's an amazing career doing an amazing thing for this country, right? But let's ask the question, you know, you, Mr. Dozer operator in my face, um, of you and your buddies, how many will retire in the next five years, he says, uh, 25 and that's okay. Of you and your buddies that are retiring, the 25 of you, how many halfway decent, not even excellent halfway decent folks, do you think are going to fill the seats? And then they sit there for a second and it's like, well, shit, like maybe two, one and ten, right? Seeds we're going to fill. And so, you know, we were talking about this before starting this podcast. It's like, you have the appreciation because you're on all these jobs. Now that I've been on all these jobs, I'm starting to see it where this is this implosion that we're heading for owners, customers, they only ever demand more out of contractors. We want more, we want faster, we want a cheaper, the expectations only ever go up. But then our capacity to work and make production is only ever falling. And so at some point, these two criss-cross and its implosion on the industry, and I don't know what it looks like, but I seriously only think we're like five years away from this implosion. And I would argue it's already criss-crossed because it, it, like, the, it's not, like, the implosion, it's dramatic, but it's not dramatic to begin with, correct? Like, I feel like, yeah, yeah, it's, it's happening. It's happening. Yeah. Slow death at first. Yes. Yes. And so, and so, you know, then we, okay, so we have this, this realization, like, okay, a lot of us are actually on the older side and very close to retirement. And, you know, after we retire, it does not look like there's lots of job applicants, you know, filling the pipeline. And so that's where like, build what comes in and training, right, and taking somebody and making them a great operator. And so the theme of words I'll use is we're trying to upskill operators here, where it used to take two or three guys to run grade on a pad with a dozer, thanks to technology in the form of machine control, we can now make production with one operator, right? And so that was a big multiplying effect on making grade on a pad. In similar fashion, making compaction on lifts as you're building a site used to be a two-man job, used to need a guy in a dozer, you used to need a guy in the roller, okay? And all we're trying to do is upskill these dozer operators so that they can run the fill and make more production by themselves. And it's because it's not like there's this line of endless operators who are applying to run this roller. Okay. Roller is a great, great one to go after though, because I haven't met many people that are just fired up for 12 hours on the roller, like they're just getting work, like, "Yeah, fuck yeah, I get to run a roller for 12 more hours." I couldn't, I couldn't. It doesn't exist. Who would want to do that? I haven't met those people. Yeah, that's it. And so whatever operator that was in the roller, if you were fortunate to have a great operator in the roller, take them and do literally anything else on the job that is more impactful to production than literally sit there just doing this back and forth. Let technology help with this very menial, very repetitive, like, it's the waste of a great operator to sit there and do that, right? So taking that operator, so often I show up to these jobs, you got 10 pieces, 12 pieces of equipment, a dozer, an x-creator, right, and then you got a few trucks and a couple rollers, water truck, so often I show up. You got 12 pieces on the job and two trucks are sitting there doing nothing today. And so take them out of the roller and go make more production in the truck. And so, when I come across these operators that have this very emotional reaction, all I can do is I'll stay for two or three days and I will help run the roller, you know, paired with them. And so it's fun. It's like, you know, as you're pushing the lift across, the roller is making a compaction with you. And then as you move forward to the next row of piles, the roller moves forward to the, you know, follow you along the, along the fill. And then after three days, it come back without fail. And like, this is the greatest thing that's ever happened in the industry. And I don't ever want a roller man on my roller again, just because it just does what you want. Yeah, just bring the blue light roller with me. Yeah. It does what you want exactly. And, yeah. And so it's like, it is not this mass firing of roller operators. It's like, put them in the truck that was doing nothing or put them in the water truck or put them in anything else that was doing nothing. And that's the, that's the thing like it, it, the numbers just aren't there, like supply demand. Yes. You're not, you're not putting people out of work through this. And I think the only challenge then is the roller. So for, uh, I'll go back to, to GPS, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You used to, to make grade, you'd have to go out with a grade tracker and maybe some other poor, poor guy, you know, with a sledge and pound hubs, and you would learn a lot about making grade pounding hubs. Yeah. And that made you better blade hand by doing that work. That's right. I, I think being in a roller gives you essential and essential understanding of compaction. Yeah. And how a fill works. Yeah. And how earth moving works. Yeah. That said, that's not the only way to do it, but contractors do have to supplement that education. Okay. Super question. And you know how it happens. Uh-huh. You normally take a roller operator. If they're halfway decent, let them do the roll for some number of months or a couple of years, right? Yeah. And then then graduate into the articulated trucks. Yeah. And being in that roller is a great way, like you say, to learn how the materials flowing, learn how the dozers flowing, learn how trucks are flowing. You know what's better than sitting in a roller to learn how to drive an articulated truck? Go sit in the jump seat of the articulated truck. And so even if you don't have the extra piece of equipment and the rollers running by self because of blue light, take that extra blue light, the roller operator and let them jump seat ride with your seasoned articulated truck drivers. Sure. And that is the way more effective way to learn how to run a truck, which is, but that's in that common place in mining. Yeah. Like all the time you'll see somebody in the jump seat running. But in construction, it's very rare because they can't afford it. Yeah. They don't have somebody in the jump seat. They just need someone in the other truck. That's right. Yeah. But if you don't have another truck, this is what you do. If you have another truck, you say to the new operator, just go follow the first truck. But that discipline does need to be there. Yeah. I have to help these contractors open their eyes to like this slightly different way of thinking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How do you train your workforce? Yeah. Because that's, again, like even, yeah, making grade for pipe, like the best place to learn is in the truck. That's right. Yeah. Before you're in the hole. Yeah. And so they're, but, but it's not the only way it's just that knowledge needs to be transferred in a different way. Yeah. Which is why we do it. We do partially. Sorry. To be, it's in the details for another second. Another way to sit there and learn how the fill works. If the roller is running by itself, feel free to sit in the roller running by itself. Sure. And still watch how the fill is working around you. And so just because the thing runs by itself doesn't mean the learning opportunity is gone. Get a buggy and go sit at the corner of the fill and watch how everything's working. Get to see it from a bird's eye view. It's almost a more impactful way to learn, you know, learn how this fill is working. Right? Yeah. I'm not, I'm not surprised that operators like it. I've been, um, people are very negative about this, especially online. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I've wanted to so badly, Aaron. You know, every time, every once in a while, you, you post a video or one of our guys posts a video and there's always a guy behind the keyboard saying, oh, you're taking operators Joe. Yeah. To copy and paste, like a job posting and a blogger rating for a roller operator and paste it in that comment and say, feel free to apply. Have at it. Make sure you get the interview. Have at it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But even, I mean, these guys will say they're, um, uh, uh, my favorites when it's a remote machine. Yes. And so it's a guy running the machine and they're saying you're taking somebody's job. It's like, he's still running the machine. It's one to one. Yeah. Like, you can't even. Yeah. Can you see? I'm a little, there wasn't even leverage on operating this machine. Yeah. I'm like, yeah. Yeah. But, um, I'm not surprised because like I said, I've seen it a lot in mining. Yeah. Um, I think, so there, it's not one to one. I, I think civil construction can learn a lot from mining and I wish more civil contractors went to mind sites to see how materials really moved, um, because it's way more efficient. Not always. Yeah. We do with in general. You've seen quarries. Have you seen large, yeah, large mines in like chilly or like, uh, not international, like big gold mines in Nevada? Okay. Yeah. US, we do it. Okay. Oh, we do it. Okay. I mean, like, I see you need to go to like, like Western Australia or, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, and again, it's not fair because that's their whole business. That's right. And they do it in one place. So, you know, for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you can get really good, um, but when I go to these mines, I, I've always asked, um, what do you think about this? I love asking operators, what they think about the autonomous stuff at an autonomous site. Yeah. I've never heard anything negative. I mean, I've asked a lot of people, well, and sometimes it doesn't always work perfectly. That's right. But usually when it doesn't work, it's human error, ironically, can confirm. Yes. It's human error. That screws with it. But the sites, it's really working well at everybody likes it, especially like the excavator operators because they spot the truck and the truck, it shows exactly where they want it to go every time within a quarter inch. And then it, you know, and driving a truck, like, it's a grind. It's a huge area of exposure, especially running at night, you know, 12 hours at night. Or you're just on days, you're on nights, like that's, that is a tough role. It's putting those people into blade positions, those are positions, getting them into excavators, getting them operator positions that they would have had to wait five plus years for. And there's the wheeling. Yeah. It's the weird dynamic that is like, well, I had to do my five to ten years. Yeah. So you have to see your five to ten years. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, you know, maybe like I like that's a, it's a romantic thought like in, and I see the logic, but that's just, again, that's not reality, that's not how the world works anymore. And I don't know what to tell you about that. And that's like, that's like everything, like your dad could say that about you a hundred different ways. That's right. Like, wow, you get all your packages ordered. Yeah. I had to go to the store. That's right. And so it's just a, but, but human nature is such a big part of this. Like, you can't just approach it from, and that goes back to the whole techie thing. If you just put your techie spin on it, well, you guys just don't get it. This is actually easy. It's, that's not how it works either. It's more like you're dealing more with culture and the human element. The human element more than you are the machines. You know, it's really interesting, you know, you talk about the human element. I, so our, on our teams is got, his name is Rob. He helps with all the, like, the, you know, customer success and dealer success. And, you know, he comes from a career at Cat, actually, and, and at, at a Cat dealer, you know, running sales and rental and all that. So he comes from this world, right? And we get to meet in, and he's in a career transition. And he gets so excited about the blue light stuff. And I'm trying to understand why, and he's like, man, it's just like, you know, selling the thing is so exciting. And I told him, I said, this role, our existence, like marketing autonomy, pretty easy, selling the thing pretty easy, installing the thing pretty easy, training the thing pretty easy. The hard, really hard work in where our effort is, you know, him and I, our effort goes, is success on the job site with the tool after we leave. And it's entirely the human element. And people ask me all the time, what's the hardest part about blue light? It ain't the tech. The rollers go. Like, that's a pretty straightforward thing. The hardest part is human element. Every human comes from different experiences. They come from a different background. They got different constraints. Every job site, the way you move material is different. The pressures of your owner is different. The pressures of your superintendent is different. It's just like the human element is the hardest part. And it is, it is, it is shaping up to be like a whole industry effort to even, like, Nudge it a little bit towards this autonomy thing. It's gonna be a 10 year effort of the whole industry if we're gonna have any chance of success of helping operators Like make a little bit more production. Well, I was gonna say and that's optimistic too because GPS is still they're still figuring it out That's right. Like 20 years later 20 years later. 20 years are still like man this GPS stuff's actually pretty good. Yeah, like yeah, yeah It is pretty good It is pretty good But I do think that that horizon is Condensed because of workforce like I think it's accelerated. Yeah, yeah, I don't I don't again. I think this is forced And that's at least that's what I'm betting on and that's what I see Yeah, and that and that's where that's our business opportunity to is like listen you guys You're gonna have to do this at some point and in our category Where we're playing it's like we're gonna be the game in town. So I get it You think it's on your terms right now, but it will be correct. It's just a matter of time. It will be on our terms And the sooner you get on board the better off you'll be like everybody went like we win here together In your your playing of again, it's a similar game. Yeah, but completely different game It all goes back to upskilling the labor force and helping people operators produce more and you're doing it It sounds like they're training and you know bringing in people into the pipeline and upskilling them through teach people how to communicate Exactly. Yeah, yeah, and so all we've done is the exact same thing We're just doing it with a little bit of technology. This is yeah I and and in talking with a lot of operators I know the ones that are good are not worried. Yeah, correct because again that That's like one of the most valuable skill sets correct in the industry correct now and and it only gets more valuable from here Correct. The interesting thing too is when I was talking with I hadn't thought about this It's the company in San Francisco Tacker. Yeah, they're built built a lot of it. Yeah This was years ago. I had a conversation with them. They're like well, you know assuming this works It raises wages for operators. Yeah, that's right. And it's like oh Yeah, it does and that is something that has to happen. It's production per capita. Yes Economy is gdb output per capita. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because I and but I think wages growing for the people performing the work That has to happen. That's right Because they're pretty bad right now. Yeah, like Really bad. Yeah, actually I go around the country with these new customers I'm talking to owners. I'm talking to like VP of operations and I'll tell them right to their face like it My objective actually is over the next few years blue light operators should make more money Than non blue light operators kind of like a GPS opera a GPS. Those are operators can make more production in the field Then you know without the tool. Yeah, yeah, they're worth a few dollars extra, you know to you because they're making more production So same way if one guy's running three machines at the same time they were worth a few more dollars to you Yeah, and so it's so all like we're trying to enable these operators to make more production at the same time So then they become more valuable so then their wages can go up. Well, it's this positive cycle It's the same. It's it's the most valuable operators right now in a like a market like California Yeah, by far the most valuable operator is a GPS play hand. That's right. That's really good Yeah, and a lot of them are some of the older guys. Yeah, they've been doing it a long time adopted it learned they adopted it The tool to work and they can put it to work with their principles. That's right and boy can they finish that's right And the more you finish the more money's made or you're paid. Yeah, like the more valuable you are. Yeah It's emotion. You know it goes back to the human thing. You see a machine rolling around with nobody in the seat It's a very emotional thing and I can it is a little weird. Yeah, I can relate to that and I too would be angry if I was an operator Yeah, yeah, it's it's very rare after three days like if you give me three days with an operator It's pretty rare that they feel the same way at the end of the three days. We were in in the oil sands in Canada call and they have a a mind that's Part of its man part of its unmanned cool. It's really cool. Yeah, and they dump into the same Into the same this was interesting because I've been to other mines I was just at one not too long ago. They run autonomous and manned within the same pit Which is also very interesting But this one it's segregated so they dump into the same crusher but from different sides cool It's completely split off, huh, but we were I remember it's like middle of winter So it's cold. It's you know everything's white frozen. That's when they get their best production is because there's no Underfoot conditions. It's oily sand. Oh, so you can't build roads. Yeah And so when everything freezes it's solid. Let's haul ass and you can get out Yeah, so like January like you're putting up your best monster numbers. You are so interesting. It's yeah, it's the opposite It's so interesting. It's incredible. Yeah, so we go to this operation. We're in this like little school bus This little short bus and he's kind of showing us how the autonomous operation works And these are I mean maybe 340 ton if not 400 ultra-class trucks. Yeah, like Big trucks. They're on 400 tons of sand plus the truck itself. Yeah, um, and I remember he He took the school bus and you he'd kind of like used it to draw a line a You know, we were driving along. It's left-hand drive because it's it's a mine I was just in Australia. So I have to like yeah, backwards and plenty. So it's it's yeah You're on the left side of the road So we kind of like pealed to the right and built like a little Kind of like bubble in the hall road and then we backed into the bubble Okay, and he basically told the computer hey this is off limits this little area here But you're looking through the back window. Yeah, but you're you're you're looking through the back window and it's like Kind of dirty because it's winter, you know, you you know how that is and the you know the trucks just getting closer to us closer to us And yeah, I mean it's it's an ultra-class truck and then just you know It almost gets right up to us and then just slowly just goes right around us and as it's going around us I'm looking you can see the cab there's no one in it like Holy shit, and then it just goes right around us gets right back in the line and keeps going. I'm like That is something else man. Yeah, but you forget and we were again at a mine in Australia That was autonomous not too long a few weeks ago and and and every truck you're looking at me like oh my gosh There's no one in that thing. It's crazy, but you wouldn't know if if you if you were just standing watching the operation Yeah, no one yep, you wouldn't know. Yep. Have no idea. It's pretty incredible. I Last week I was at a job. They had Two auto trucks running around and and a link about loading them and you know I I tend to travel see these jobs and I take meetings and emails and stuff from the rental car and So I'll like look out at the hall every you know a few minutes It's just like an everyday job to autonomous 745s running or oh no 1 7 30 1 7 45 running around and it just looks like an everyday job It's like it's just like so profound. Yeah, just watch or what nobody in the cab empty cab and it just rolls by heads off to the dump Yeah, um Do you are you afraid that you're building the robot army that will take over the world? No, we Are you sure cuz they pretty sure the tech the tech in terms of like one day. I it's all pretty dumb I don't know it's all I can assure you and and I don't mean this in you know in a like you know Like looking down on our blue light stuff. It's all pretty dumb stuff It's it's not like a self-driving car. You better be better be careful what you're saying about this Yeah, they might use the word to get up set up me. Yeah No, no, no, no, you're very you're very smart No, that's right good. You know the you know, we've talked about all these job sites and how it's a living organism and it changes hour to hour It changes all to hall honestly like if you sit one of these 745s what do you think about it? Yeah, yeah, if you sit one of these 745s You know at a whatever pad, you know data center or something some division where you loaded changes all the hall a little bit, right? Where you dumped changes all the hall sure how you got there how you came back you know the sequencing of everything It's all changing all the hall and so our design philosophy from day zero was Again, it's part of reducing scope We're not going to do anything fancy about deciding where to drive All we're going to do is just copy the operator up there and we will let help them run two or three trucks at the same time Mm-hmm All we're going to do is copy that dozer up there and help them make compaction on this lift run this lift forward We just them and so it's a very like you know follow follow the leader or follow me by be too literal in the dozer roller example But like you know if the dozer is just knocked this lift down here and it's moved on all we're gonna do is just follow that and go roll that area Articulated trucks you literally we had this experience yesterday With the machine web James. I won't call out anything else about him. He was awesome All you literally do is boot up the second truck cop out boot up the first truck Open up the tablet you just drive away you drive away in that first truck and then the second truck just starts copying you and Profound and he said he had that experience kind of like ear in that short bus at that mind He was sitting in the auto truck and you know in jump seat and like auto truck just starts going and steering wheel starts going and It's in gear is doing this. It just like it is jawed to the floor to experience it But what I think what really got him is it was literally like three minutes and we're rolling and any drop site You dropped you dropped the up any blue light machine anywhere in the country really anywhere in the world But so far proven anywhere in the country drop off the machine three minutes. You're going like it has to be that simple And it says you're using standard machines. Yeah, nothing fancy installs in two hours. At least on a roller. That's crazy Yeah, I don't have that's really something. Yeah, what are the big challenges going forward? It's the human element. It is Nothing hurts my heart more. We do an install with a customer And then we leave and we have like a productivity app and so I can see all the machines on the fleet I can see who's running it manually who's running an auto or RC mode From the tablet nothing hurts my heart more than we just installed yesterday And I and I wake up and I look at it a few hours today, you know 11 a.m. And they've been in manual for four hours That is a saddest for you know for me saddest freaking thing and so But you can't just you know you cannot just call you know giving them a hard time and what's going on? Well, you know you got so we got to go we got to go back to the site I got to sit there. I got to talk to the super. I got to talk to the foreman I got to talk to some of the operators in the morning some of them at lunch and I got to figure out what's the players? What's the dynamics, you know what's preventing this sometimes? It's really dumb. Sometimes it's a you know We had a summer intern and we had nothing to do with them So I put them in the roller right but other times it's like oh, I had this you know issue You know either blue light was bugging out or you know I didn't think you could do this turned out it could and you know there was a training gap So whatever it is, but like it's that human element and every job is different And so the hard work that like not scares me not keeps me up at night But like the hard work is we're going to make it work for this contractor and this operator on this job in this fill Yeah, and it is unique machine to machine. Yep. Yeah, project to project contractor to contractor same contractor region to region Same contractor two jobs a mile away. You might be moving material completely differently Yeah, you know because of a machines down the material different We're you know different sequencing of the job. Whatever and so it is it is down to the machine like down to the job Human element sure who yeah It's I mean, that's when I would have guessed. That's not that's not surprising. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's Do you worry about does it does it keep you up at night with machines running around people? 100% and I get asked about this a lot You know the safety thing So my my wife just birthed our first child four months ago Thank you, and you know, I got a lot of advice leading up to that Oh, yeah, yeah, but one of the one of the more impact class. Yeah, everybody's got opinions when you when you you have it a kid But one one piece of advice I got that is stuck with me is You cannot not do the dangerous things with your child You have to do the dangerous and important things very carefully and with intention Okay, and so this is a very important thing what we're doing trying to help the operators You know, like make more production all the things we're talking about dynamism everything, right? so You cannot not do the important things in life You know and and to bring another analogy into this It's like you want to get a rocket ship to Mars You cannot sit in your lab and talk about it and do white boarding and build a rocket and let it sit in the lab You want to get to Mars you got to launch rocket ships and blow up rocket ships on the way to Mars Yeah, but you do it very carefully you do it with good planning you do you involve all the players like I don't know if you've ever read one of the SpaceX like launch reports They talk about they talk about how they interacted with FAA and getting planes out of the way or something goes wrong They talk about local environmentalists organizations they work with for noise for pollution for sent you know sound these things They talk about it with environmentalists like the debris cloud that ends up in the ocean that they show and literally Can quantify all their efforts to pick up the debris out of the ocean so we didn't hurt marine wildlife All these things right you got to do do the important things you do it very carefully you do it with intention Okay, and so when we show up to the you know to these sides with people it's dangerous It's like a big machines people rolling around we cannot do it But we got to do it very carefully. We got to do it with intention You got to teach the important safety things. You got to build the important safety technology fail safes and You know regarding this topic of safety If I can to our horn for a second to do it. Yeah, tooting away Blue light customers not us in some little field you know somewhere blue light customers have rolled 600 million square foot of material autonomously So it's not like some science experiment. This is work on that work. Sure. You know 600 million square foot of material has been rolled across the fleet. Yeah and It has been with zero injury It has not been with zero incident and actually you made the point earlier almost every case There's only been a few like handful of incidents, but every single incident has been some form of human error And it's the same with self-driving cars by the way because they report on collisions 99.9% of collisions is another human driver colliding with the self-driving car. Yeah, it's anyways But what's been what's been very powerful like the blue light approach is member I said do less do it quickly iterate quickly and so roller simple right and so in every decision We make do less do it quickly get the roller out there get the 10th roller out there get the 50th roller out there and Just by just by getting rollers out there with actual jobs actual fills actual operators We learn things about safety and there's like two or three incidents that come to mind where you know some kind of Operator error, but we don't go point fingers. We don't go give them a hard time. We learn a very good lesson from it Operator learns a very good lesson from it. Blue light learns a very good lesson from it and in most cases There is some kind of something we can improve in the technology to reduce and mitigate that risk for the future, right and So let me give you a very In-depth example is it take me a few minutes, but I think it's an important example So we got the cameras we talked about that roller rolls up against a person or a machine it stops and then once the person or machine gets out of the way Three seconds of clearance roller says, okay, I'm clear to go, okay There is this feature function of how do you call it if the roller rolls up against something that's stopped It displays a picture of what it sees on the tablet puts a red square around the thing that it stopped for and the text says Hey obstacle was detected, but if you want to I'll let you override it and you can swipe to override Okay, it's important because if you're rolling up against a parking lot or rolling up against the edge of pad There's great sticks there's cars are all sorts of things parked along the edge right so you need to be able to override to get past these things But it turns out that swipe We had it was the same gray color is the same swipe as every other swipe to get the thing to go And so you know if you show up in the morning get it go. It's just a swipe everything's a swipe to get it going So this operator the roller had rolled up against the butt end of a scraper pan and This operator made a mistake maybe lost focus for a second to realize what they were doing and they swiped to override So the machine had it was running autonomously. Yeah, it came up onto the straper pan. Yeah, and they're just seeing this on their iPad Yeah, it's a picture of it's literally a roller showing you this is the pan that I stopped for here's a red square around the pan that I stopped for It's very very clear what's going on. Yeah, and Made a mistake wasn't paying attention for split second did the override swipe So sends the roller colliding with the button of the you know the counterweight thing or whatever of the pan Nobody hurt machines not really even damaged. So luckily no injuries, right um But we sit down with the contractor. We sit down with the operators at first. They were so squirrely You know and like you know trying to you know concoct a story Whenever it's always the blue light so it's a technology. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it wasn't us. Yeah, which is fine And um, and we take a very you know we take a very non-emotional approach to this um and We're sitting there like team blue light thinking you know what this swipe is the same as every other swipe We're not doing any favors making this easier for our operators. What we could do Is let's make this swipe bright freaking red? Mm-hmm. And then instead of the normal swipe Let's make the swipe go backwards. So if you're not paying attention, you know It didn't do anything right you got to go backwards to intentionally override Sure And then if you do override and for like the five seconds where it's driving with the camera off Let's make the tablet scream at you cameras are off cameras are off cameras are off right and so we can do this thing You know and that way if you accidentally swiped and you didn't mean to yeah, you can always hit stop There's a you know big big old stop button on the on the tablet. Mm-hmm. And so So it's we're sitting there and contractor the autonomy lead very very positive about this You know, and we're spitballing ideas together and So then to our horn right about speed and iteration Uh Our team implements this in like maybe two days And then the update is available for the whole fleet After two days update shipped. It's ready for everybody And so now everybody got better because of something we learned from this from this one roller and in the Southeast and uh, and then it was also like You know this cover your ass sort of thing We have logs we have logs that you know remote telemetry we can see that at stop for and we see the picture that at stop for We saw the scraper that at stop for we have it in the logs that somebody swiped to override and so But it's all very matter of fact, you know, there's a basic incident report. Here's what happened And then more importantly we improved the whole thing For your operators here, but for everybody and it was done in two days and this is I think you can It's a great example. I think you can So we start to wait in the safety. Yeah And I don't know how to talk safety yet in a constructive way because I think a lot of safeties nonsense. Yep um It's like command and control Hmm, I'm gonna treat you like a child. Yep. Um, I'm just gonna let you do less things. Yep. I came up I could go fuck anything up and I have all kinds of stories about it But no, you can't do the same. Yep like It's done. It's done. Safety's done a lot of times by people in office. Yep, where it's driven by people in the office. Yep Never seen production never seen dirt. Yeah, which which are too clean. Yeah, it's not it's not practical like like it's not it It requires some some learning like it does require some um discovery. Yes, but they don't I don't know how to explain it like That's but that's we can't allow that anymore, but we're not Like and this is this is like where the industry is right now. It's All of our training is on the job. Yep, which means we don't do training I've been trained on the job a bunch. Yeah, it's trained. Yeah, here's your address and yeah Billy's the foreman. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Uh, that was my training. Yep. Still is to this day still up. Yeah, that's that's like that is the standard I would say on average, you're painting with the broad brush. That is how everything's done. Yeah, but mistakes are not tolerated. Yeah So Yeah, you like stuck between rock and a rock. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but but the solution is then to create a manual. Yeah, big constraint heavy constraints. Yeah, that overhead just added more to it You never subtract. Yes, you just add more. Yes and more. Yes, and more. Yes, and more. Yes, and more. I was I was out of mind site recently Yeah, I think I've talked about this, but it was They said well, we're a mining operation. So you know, everybody was wearing hard hats, but then we we figured well What's gonna fall on our head out here? It's a mining operation. Yes. There's no overhead hazard. Yes We don't need hard hats and now they don't enforce hard hats unless you're working around a machine or at the plant Where there's an overhead hazard it's like yeah That's so reasonable, but it's one of the only examples that I have in my memory. Yeah, maybe the only one recently of Something being removed. Yes because of rational thought it's a Not to talk politics, but to talk philosophically about a society It has been proven many times over thousands of years if you make laws that persist forever You only ever have more laws. Yes, and then you only ever have more constraint And then you only ever have less production as a society and you choke yourself to death Yeah, so but the lawyers make money. That's right until they don't that's right Yeah, and and and so it's until AI replaces them. It's already happening. Oh, yeah I only have so much sympathy. I'm sorry But but yes, but that but that's that's I think oftentimes what safety programs. Yeah, that's exactly what safety programs are It's just it's just more more more more more more more. Yeah, and I can't like I'm the new safety guy. Yeah I've got to do more. That's right. You're hired in to make more safety rules. It's a it's to be safe for existence To be more safer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I say yeah more safer as an idiot. Um It's it's a but that's just a very practical approach. Yeah, that I think is the most productive That's that's why I always chuckle in a way of like when somebody's Talking shit about SpaceX when they blow up a rocket. It's like Okay, I know my place in society One, I'm not going to talk shit about people making rocks. Yeah, get out of space That's that's number one Two like that's kind of how this process works like do they want the rocket to blow up? No But they also aren't surprised when it happens because they're They're pushing the boundaries of physics. Yes, that's what that that's where that's how you find the boundaries is you you push and push and push until Yes, there we are. Yes, but that's why But this goes into then why most companies don't innovate Correct, you're constrained choked. Yes, but but innovation. There's risk. Yes. It's hard. Yeah, it's messy Yes, everybody says they innovate. Yes, very few companies actually innovate. Yes, and I don't I understand why yes because it's hard It's really hard. There's a I think it's called innovators dilemma, but it's a very well-known phenomenon Yeah, you become you know make something great and then your company becomes big and then you stop you like stop Innovation just stops and it's just because there's too much to lose and like people give people give the big OEMs And the big like Trimble Topcon the big technology companies a hard time for stopping innovation Honestly inside the constraints. They're working with as a business like it's just very challenging I mean use one tiny little screw up and there's this massive piggy bank to go chase. No, I I right as well so I'm the asset criticizing But then I just read a book about Caterpillar not too long ago, and it's like it did give me this enormous appreciation of like Okay, well this guy, you know the executive team is running a company that's in like 150 countries Yeah, that's right. It's a billion dollars right here and yeah, and and dealing with different currencies We're reminiscing with the most countries. Yeah, different different politicians. Okay. So there's a lot here. So again like yeah Yeah, the again, I'm not I don't criticize thinking I'm better like if I were in that position Would be doing the same shape, but but yes, I so I went to Bauma the best trade show in the world for the construction industry It was fine. Yeah, that's fine. I frankly. I don't think I'll go back And I say I get to see a lot too like if I was somebody that had a family and wanted to go see machines I couldn't say enough good things about it. Perfect. Unbelievable. Yeah, unbelievable opportunity They do it better than anybody. They invite families. They have family day. It's it's extraordinary schools all all sorts of stuff I could not promote that show more. Yes But there's no reason for me to go back in three years. That's right because This show was the exact same one that was the last show. Yeah, that's right And and it's just like But but again, I don't I don't I don't I don't blame them. I just hard. Yeah, it's hard to innovate hard to actually do something And there's not incentive to you're not rewarded to go fail Just just make the next excavator. Yeah, that's if it's 4% better done You're good to go man. Yeah, yeah, which is it's just uh, but I think You can extrapolate that that's what we've been as a country Yeah, and that's where the construction industry's been like there's an argument to be made that we're not very good at building things anymore No, we're not objectively we're not objectively. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can look at the numbers and actually yes point to we're not good at building things anymore as a country And so even like You know the manufacturing stuff we want to bring back shipbuilding is one of the big things I kind of chuckle. I'm like, so we're going to go up against China's shipbuilding industry Trying to we can try to but just look at the numbers. They're really good at building ships like Every single ship in the entire world Okay, so we're going to go build ships one who's going to build them? Yeah, where are we going to build all we're going to use American steel out of what plants yeah, they're all Dying yeah, if not already dead like it's very expensive. Yeah, we're just Like we're so far from that path. Yeah, how do you get back? You got to play your small part Well, yeah, we're doing things like I heard speaking of like American Uh dynamism dynamism. Yeah Um like I was talking about nuclear. Yeah, and he was like well big nuclear doesn't work because we're not good at building big things anymore correct and it's like Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, so let's just do it on a much smaller scale small nuclear and it's like yeah, oh Yeah, oh Like fit on a tractor trailer. We'll just do it in a different way correct, which is correct That's the kind of stuff that gets me fired up. It's like oh, we can't do it that way anymore But we don't have to correct because we can do it this way correct Yeah, that's it's so cool. Yeah, I don't know why people don't think like that because it's so much more fun Like life is so much much cooler when you're like, well, what can we do? You know, I can I really was talking like developed an appreciation for this um Few years ago. We were trying to sell the townhouse Most people cannot visualize knows people can cannot visualize like a tomorrow. Yeah, cannot visualize something That's like not all right in their face and and what really hit me was We're trying to sell this townhouse and it looks fine. You know, it's emptied out and stuff And then my now wife comes in and you know, does the what they call it staging right? You know, it's Christmas times all the Christmas decorations and this that in the third. Oh my god Did the staging and then offers come in on the same day bunch them overnight way over asking And it's because you need to help people visualize and so so actually abstractly that's our hardest challenges People cannot visualize a world where like, you know, maybe a couple of ATs and rollers are running around by themselves She can't even visualize it. Don't even know to pursue it. Sure. She can't visualize it. Yeah. Yeah It's really cool what you guys are doing. I'm excited. How um I wouldn't know if you've weren't for LinkedIn. Well, I mean, I've heard of you from other now But I think I first saw your shit with LinkedIn. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Why why talk about what you're doing? Why why publish the plan so to speak? The road map. I think that's really interesting question. Um Because there's other there are others doing this. Yeah. Why publish it? They're openly. Yeah. I would say they're shadowy. Yeah. A lot of them. Yeah. I think the important The important like principle behind all of this is You cannot build in the shadows. You cannot build in your your dark corner You know, if you're going to move this whole industry like what we're observing is it's a whole industry movement Um, you know from operators to superintendents to management to ownership dealers materials, you know come everybody right and uh Um, yeah, so like in a word, I think it's awareness and like we're literally talking about staging this townhouse It's like, you know, our goal Um, I don't think it's too soon to say this, but uh, you tell me our goal is to virally infect The global fleet of equipment with autonomy That's a little too soon to cover. Yes. I think you were five years outside. I'm rolling with it But but you know, virally in fact is like a two very important words and the global fleet of equipment Okay, and so the decisions we make we don't make because we want to sell a hundred of these things the decisions We make is like we're on a path to 10,000 the attempt to 10,000 this decade. Okay, yeah, and so You know, we're not going to pull it up. We have to make you know, we have to build great stuff We got to you know, visit the jobs. It's all that But honestly, we're coming up to a point and it's not too far away We're actually awareness of all of this is going to become the limiting factor And so for us building out in the open, you know, we think we're building better stuff that way But then also it helps awareness and it's got it's got owners. It's got superintendents. It's got operators thinking about this and You know, hopefully, you know all this little awareness stuff that we're doing will help them just visualize stage the townhouse So they can they can kind of visualize a better world for themselves. I I mean, I think you're dead on with that. I think awareness is everything So like yeah, and I do beat myself up with how much money we've spent. Yeah, and what we have from a business sense However, we do have one of the more influential brands in the industry currently. Mm-hmm And we do do we do put up better numbers than like than the OEMs Just saying. Yeah, with a much more budget. Yeah, that's right. Like almost non-existent budget Rounding air yeah, but rounding air yeah, but I'm just I'm just an influencer. Yeah But I just believe so strongly in awareness. Yeah, I have to yeah and brand new and the ability to communicate and speak and write like I was saying like Those are the skills. I've spent the most time developing. Yeah, and I All of the changes in technology have only made me more resolute. Yes, in all of those things Yeah, like whole voice But think but again, thank god it happened when it did because had I come up in the chat GPT world You would not have a voice. I wouldn't have developed. I wouldn't have had to fight to go develop my voice Yeah And now that I have it I have it. Yes, I have to practice. It's a perishable skill, but I have it. Yes And that's so rare. Yeah, it's so especially not telling story. Oh my gosh, but in business. Yeah, too like yeah Yeah, it's just you know all of our investors. I tell them you know, I'm like look blue light We can promise hard work and transparency of course like two fundamentals, right? I cannot promise that there will be returns, you know who the hell knows where all this goes sure You know, but I can promise it's gonna be one hell of a ride one hell of a story and at least you've got front road tickets to watch this story Yeah Well, and and you're gonna do your best. Yeah, and I've reflected upon that too a lot is all you know if you're doing your best or not That's right And if you really are yep, that's it. Yeah You cannot control outcomes. Yeah, you cannot control other people. You can control inputs. That's it inputs. Yeah, with you. Yeah That's it. That's right. And just just surrendering to the process. That's right. It's really hard. Yes, but once you're there You're like yeah, it's it's it's it's um it's quite freeing in in in in a way You know, you use this word surrendering to the to the process and we're talking about inputs my first business Um, I was like always a little bit of a heavier set guy Only a little bit and then that first business You know, I want I want excellent results and always it we weren't even having problems But like I just riddled with anxiety because I was so worried about You know controlling the outcomes and my god It was like I went from 200 pounds to 310 pounds and maybe a year and a half really it was wild Really yeah, yeah, and uh, and that doesn't help your anxiety. I mean, no, it only cycles and makes it worse. Yeah, only makes it worse You know, how do you lose? So what are you right now? 80, 85? Okay, yeah, 25. How do you go lose? 130 plus pounds. Yeah, it's um Weighted office manager One day you could dig you look like shit, uh, and he says We lived in the office together him and I by the way. Oh good. Uh, actually, I forgot to tell this part of the story We lived in the cinder block warehouse in found grungy corner of Pittsburgh, okay, and uh Bought some plywood in two by fours and made ourselves a little corner of the of the office was the bedroom That was my bedroom at first and then I met him and he loved it so he ended up living that the office with me and um Uh, yeah, anyways, he go one day he's like he looked terrible and he says why don't I cook and then and then you buy the groceries for us Well, it's like okay, and just him cooking. I was eating dominoes like it is their best customer. Yeah, uh You know process foods and take out all that stuff and um Anyways, just eating cooked foods like a lost 30 pounds and then uh and then I got into swimming. I was to you know, we um this first company We had like a little like fitness group and then they would go run and work out together and stuff in the back We had some weights and uh, you know I ran like a half a mile with them and I was puking on the side of the road and the cashier. I'll never forget She's like she's so wonderful to me. She's like you okay and anyways um So then I picked up swimming lost 20 30 pounds and then I you know I'm coming in and out of the swim pool at LA fitness. There's cycling class going on upstairs I tried that lost 20 or 30 more pounds and then the cycling coach up there. She taught me running Lost 20 or 30 pounds And then put it all together I said we're gonna tie this all in with with a picture I saw of yours a couple weeks ago Tied all together my cycling coach. She does triathlon. Yeah, so she convinced me to do this like little short sprint triathlon in town Okay, and yeah, it was 2018 2019 and then um So I still have an eating issue. This is a good cuck cuck call it what it is. I still eat way too much You know way more than the average human should eat But at least I'm exercising a lot now and so that's fine. Yeah, yeah, it evolved into this this hobby of doing Half Iron man's has been my been my distance here for five or six years That's amazing. Yeah, and then so I still eat too much, but at least I'm exercising and have been for the most part But you know, I've been able to stabilize. Yeah, I just I couldn't A lot of people are always like how do you do how do you keep up with the schedule and the travel? Yeah, it's like well I'm healthy. Yeah, like that that's number one man. Yeah, like I if I wasn't I'm really healthy. Yeah, really fucking healthy because I've spent a lot of time and energy on Diling myself in sure. I can't afford not to be that's right like I can't not be right I can't I can't do this and not be this healthy. It doesn't confirm if you are way overweight your brain just thinks slower Yes, you are just less capable And uh, yeah, this time around like you know, like you're saying you're healthy. You're sharp. You're strong. You're fast Again, we can't guarantee outcomes, but I can guarantee you I can work fucking harder than anybody else that you're putting in front of me. Yep. Yep So at least at least success is in the possible set of outcomes. Yeah, if you're not working the hardest pretty unlikely You know that you win. No, I can and that that's exactly how I have it in my head. I'm like listen I'm not I am not the smartest guy. Yeah, I am I am not the best positioned here. Yeah, but I I What I I can do that most people can't is I to can just out consistent you that's right. I can just do the same Fucking thing you every day every week and a couple months for years and years And years and that's it like I can I know I can do that Yeah, and and I've been so but that's hard to commit yourself to because you don't see the benefits of it And I haven't really seen the benefits of it like I'm still living above somebody's garage and it just pisses me off more by the day I'm very grateful for it. Yeah, but I'm I'm I'm I'm resentful of it in other ways. Yeah In like a positive way not like a deep destructive resent but resentment but um Uh I'm I can I can dedicate myself to that path because that's just I've been around enough successful people. It's like That's what they've done. Yeah, it's a prerequisite. Yeah, so I'm just gonna run that play And I've seen that play like I've seen them get that with this play. Mm-hmm. So okay I don't I don't have that yet. Yeah, but I'm confident in this play. Yeah, because I know Yeah, it's the prerequisite. It's like maybe I don't get there but like but this is gonna give me the best chance correct It's at least successes at least in the set of possible outcomes sure sure if you have the prerequisites. Yes. Yeah Yeah, but if I don't yeah, no chance. Yeah, no, it's impossible Um Well, cool. Well, I'm I'm Uh Really glad you came down here. It's been great. Yeah, this was fun. Yeah, yeah, it's long form kind of talking It's it's a lot of fun. But it's just the way to go. Yeah, it it it it I struggle so bad when I'm on people's And and maybe it works for them. It doesn't work for me. Do When it's just question question question. Okay, we're done. Yeah, it's like what was that Yeah, I was like I didn't just get going. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we just warming up Um, but this yeah, it's almost three o'clock. So we'll Call it a day. How do people figure out what you guys are doing? Is it just blue light dot com? Uh blue light machines dot com blue light machines dot com. Yeah, we do uh for the most part We do LinkedIn and maybe a little bit of Instagram. I should do more. We will do more But uh, yeah, blue light machines dot com and then I'm I'm digseng on on LinkedIn and Instagram And so and it's uh rollers. Yeah, articulated trucks currently correct. Yeah, the holy grail just to You know, leave every you and everyone with the visual You know, you're you're building up some side eat 12 pieces again, right? Mm-hmm And it used to take 12 operators and on any given day one or two, you know, don't show up But the holy grail is 12 pieces to build a cut to fill Imagine six operators and one of them is like your autonomy form in And they got the one tablet sitting in the pickup And they got the two rollers and two or three articulated trucks And so now six operators can run 12 pieces and you could take the other half of that crew And then go spin up another crew somewhere else go chase another job, right? And uh, so that's the holy grail Um, I've and the mining equivalent of that's like It's like a guy running three to five dozers correct, which I really like yeah, yeah, yeah, it's incredible It's incredible. Yeah, yeah, they almost become like this autonomy form for the dozers And I've talked to the guys doing it again. They're like yeah, it's it's a pretty good gig Yeah, like yeah, looks like a pretty good gig. You got a microwave right here. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, seriously That's funny Well, thanks for coming and I guess we'll see you at the summit. Yeah, thanks for having me works that we're excited for November I'm happy to talk dirty You