Justin Neagle - Spot Migration

Technology in infiltrated all sectors of the US economy in 2023 - including the AEC space.  Not familiar with the term?  Neither was I until I met Justin Neagle.  Justin is part of the leadership team and the Chief Storyteller at Spot Migration.  Justin and the team at Spot Migration focus on the intersection of People, Process, and Technology and how that comes together for their clients.  Justin also co-hosts his own podcast, Building Scale, that helps bring resources and experts around the AEC space together.   

Transcript

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Jesse Stakes: Hey, everybody! Welcome to making sense of it all this week. My guest is Justin Nagel. He is part of the leadership team over at spot migration. Justin. Thank you so much for joining me.

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Justin Neagle: Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here, and I'm planning on bringing the energy. So don't worry about that, Jesse awesome. Then I'll lay back and I'll let you handle the load. Then today. So tell me about spot migration. Tell me what you guys do.

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Justin Neagle: Absolutely. So spot migration, we are trying. Our tenure target here has become the most trusted it inside Security company for the Aec space. We love everything that is technology and scalability. We think scalability is a huge component of what we do. And technology is just one of the arms of scalability is is how we see it

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Jesse Stakes: very cool. So I know most of my audience, including myself, is not going to know what the Aec spaces. Can you share with us what that means?

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Justin Neagle: Absolutely. So anybody that's building anything the built world is somebody some people call it. But architects, engineers, and construction. That's what the initial stand for. So when you think of, hey? A commercial buildings gotta go in, or even a home's gotta go in. Somebody's gotta design it. Somebody's gotta make sure that it's actually gonna be able to stand up. And then somebody's gotta actually do the hard work and build it we service that space that's our our bread and butter. We've found that

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people that are building things swing and hammers just relate to us, even though we're we're tech guys. Right? We're we're just tech people. But we just relate to them. We're we're very blue collar. Esk, if you can see the video here. I'm a dude that wears a backwards hat that's pretty consistent with the vibe that we have. But yeah, that's that's who we are.

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Jesse Stakes: So how did you get them to where you guys focused on that space? It's not, you know, like you said technology and blue collar industries don't necessarily marry up. But there's there's a definite need in today's world. But what motivated that

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Justin Neagle: so is a few things one we just started like looking through our client base and saying like, who who do we really love and who really loves us, like, you know? And trying to say, like, Okay, is there some commonality, and we kept seeing like man, like people that are in that space. Just really they really adore us. And it's not to say that we never had a client outside of that space like this. But like we just really resonate, I think we just kinda speak the same language. We think about the things very similarly.

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Justin Neagle: And then, you know, we dove down deep. Once we decided, hey, we need to go to a niche. We actually need to be niche because or niches, because you know, niche riches and the niches, as they say, when we decided that it was like full steam ahead, we obviously started the podcast that specifically for that as well. You know, we looked at the softwares that they use. So building those things out, it just made more sense to be able to scale for us. Because if you're trying to service everyone in in

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Justin Neagle: in the world, or even just in America, right or even just Chicago. If you're trying to service everybody, you're probably getting a more watered down version of that just because you're not a true you're not truly diving down deep into for us. It's it's the built world, right? So anybody that's building things. And I think that that's that's 1 one way that we found that it was just very important. And then

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Justin Neagle: they're just behind on technology. So there's also a open, you know, more of a blue ocean, you know, a bluer ocean. II would say that, hey, if if their technology is just behind, because realistically, they just got burnt on technology about 20 years ago. And then they all just said, We're not doing this anymore. We're we're totally just going back to swinging hammers, not thinking about it. But now they're realizing like, that's not the way to be efficient. That's it's super hard to scale

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Justin Neagle: and you know, you just need technology to effectively operate any business at this point in this day and age so when we saw that, hey? It's a blue ocean, and they like us. That was just the natural. Okay, let's let's attack this and and do it up.

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Jesse Stakes: Do do you find that there is? There's different needs? I know, you're saying like, kind of focusing on it. But do you find that there's different technological needs in in the kind of the blue collar space that there than there are in white color, white color industries.

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Justin Neagle: Yeah, so interesting. So interesting enough, when you take Ae and C, right like A and E are more technology focus, right? They just had have to have CAD drawings. They have to have more software that exist. Construction, on the other hand, hasn't necessarily had had to have a construction management software. There are plenty that do, and those that have scaled certainly understand the value of it. But like it's been a place where they've been able to get away with it like they just haven't needed it in comparison. If you took

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Justin Neagle: like a a law firm per se, if you aren't actually using technology like you're you, it's it's difficult to do your job, whereas construction. It's like I can pick up the phone and call somebody to try to get a new, a bid out. I can also, you know, swing a hammer and build a build a house, or build a building without technology per se. But again, it's it becomes this. Oh, well, if I wanna scale and I wanna actually do this

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Justin Neagle: and have much, you know larger ability, you know. Just kind of grow. My business like that has been the place that we found that the sweet spot is. Oh, yeah. Well, you just need to start adding in technology, because maybe you're using a server that's

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Justin Neagle: 10 years old. And you're it's just like crawling. And it's like, Well, yeah. But like, you're losing all these efficiencies that are just little like paper cuts. It's like death by 1,000 paper cuts. And I think that that is the difference with that industry where it's just been able to kinda hang on there because of the deliverable is so hands-on in comparison to somebody that's in a white collar situation. It's just you have to have technology like nobody operates without it.

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Jesse Stakes: Well, and I think to your point, I mean, most of that most of that industry you're you're building a, you're building your product for somebody as well. And so you gotta you have to talk to each other. You've got to be able to meet each other on common ground. And there's not many businesses in today's world

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Jesse Stakes: that that operate with a telephone and a handshake anymore. Most, most contracts, most everything is being sent remotely. They're being S. They're being signed with docusign, or they're being signed on adobe or something. If you're if you're out of that space, or if you don't know how to handle yourself within that space, you're

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Jesse Stakes: you know you're you're almost relegated to just be somebody subcontractor. You can't even go out and and chase your own contracts at this point.

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Justin Neagle: Yeah, it's it's super interesting. When you get the the general contractor to Gc. And the subcontractor. What we like to call them is trade partners, and not call them sub, because, you know, they're they're just as important part of the process. But when we think about that relationship is yeah, like they're, it's, it is the scale component. Like, can I do use more technology to interface with the clients and then interface with those trade partners as well. Right?

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Justin Neagle: So that's the way that you're able to, you know. Take that handshake, you know, deals and actually make them more fluid as well as like we think of like change orders in the industry. It's like that is just a lot of paperwork that goes back and forth. And when you remove paper and you add in technology, things get they go faster. You you eliminate the errors and things like that, and then rework, which is a huge problem

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industry because of poor communication. When you're allowed to use technology to push it through. It just makes things a lot more smooth.

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Jesse Stakes: So

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Justin Neagle: before II want to dive into all of this. But before we do, I'd love to take a step back and learn more about you. Justin. Is that fair?

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Jesse Stakes: So tell me a little bit. How did you? You know I mean to get into the technology business? Was it something that you always wanted to do? Was it something that you grew? You kind of went through school saying, this is what I want to do, or did you fall into it? What did that look like?

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Justin Neagle: So for me? I. My game plan was become super cop. So originally from Chicago. I had an uncle that was a a sheriff, a cook, county sheriff, and I it was like, I wanna help people. That's what I wanna do. So I went to school at Arizona State, got myself a criminology and criminal justice degree and I was gonna be super cop. That was the game plan.

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Justin Neagle: Little did I know in 2,010 that there weren't gonna be many job openings for that particular role. You had a recession happening from the the housing crash and everything that happening. So I moved back to Chicago, saying, Hey, I'll I'll find a job, and we'll do that. I started actually working in a law firm which is like, Hey, I'm just gonna do this until I become super cop and then II was pretty smart. I kept kinda going up the ranks at a law firm and saying like we started as a clerk. And now let's do records. And then let's

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Justin Neagle: let's do conflicts. And now let's talk about Hr, and let's do marketing and biz, dev and technology stuff. So there's always been a little bit of technology that's kind of string through my career. Even when I was at school I worked in the tech lab there for my first 2 years. So it's like it's been there. It's not been the oh, I wanna be a an engineer, a technical engineer, by any means. But it was always like, Be around technology like, just be around it

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And then, after my stint of 7 years at a law firm, I got snatched up by spot migration, which was amazing. They they saw my

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Justin Neagle: deflatedness of of trying to do marketing and biz dev at a law firm when you're not an attorney, and and that sucks just gonna be very blunt about that. But yeah, no, they they. It's it's just not the best. If you're trying to be a marketer and try to do real biz dev at a law firm when you do not have a law degree. It is a very difficult position to be in. So if anybody listening is in that I've been there.

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Justin Neagle: you know, not saying Leave your company, but like there are better opportunities when it comes to marketing and business development out there. Tech space is great. So Will and Kasha. They were friends of mine. They were looking for just help with ads. That was the original thought they're like, Hey, we'll just, you know, do this side thing. It was like, okay, great like totally. And then 2 weeks after that, they're like, Wow! You're not a dummy like we totally should hire you full on, and I was like

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Justin Neagle: great, wonderful and then about a year year and a half after that, we started doing us. I became part of the the leadership team. And it's that's history is that. And now now we're on full growth mode started a podcast. Since then, we've grown significantly since then. And life is good across the board.

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Jesse Stakes: very cool, and you can tell you're passionate about what you do. I mean it. It just bleeds through you, so I can't even I can't even believe you do like II couldn't imagine you doing something that you didn't care about.

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Justin Neagle: For me. It's all it's all about being purposeful and impactful. This is just me, and I'll tout this all day, every day forever, until I catch out in 50 plus years. Hopefully. It is all about being purpose driven. You need to actually look in and what you wanna do in life and then attack it, because that's the only way, you're gonna have the most amount of impact on the world that goes for any business. So when we think about businesses and that are

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Justin Neagle: not just looking at profit and looking at the bottom line. But you're actually trying to have a bigger impact. Those are the businesses that actually grow more because, like you have a lot more of the why figured out like, if if you hear like the how, the what, the why, if you get that, why, figured out. You just you, you energize everybody in your company, and that's the thing that's beautiful. Ii mentioned Eos entrepreneurs operating system

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Justin Neagle: that for us, you know, allowed us to really hone in that vision. And and look at 10 years down the road and say, Okay, who do we wanna be 10 years from now. Let's let's every day put a step a little bit closer to that every day, every quarter, every year, 3 year, all that and it's been amazing. It's a wild ride, you know. We went through the pandemic, which was interesting for lots of different reasons. But yeah, everything is still, you know, we're still growing.

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and we're still doing all the right things. And and we're just always super energized and excited to help out businesses.

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Jesse Stakes: Well, and I'll tell you passions infectious as well. People wanna do business with people that care about what they do. I mean they they, you know, you come across as more believable, you come across as someone who cares about

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Jesse Stakes: the the the prospect of the client that you're sitting in front of, rather than just being kind of emot, you know, kind of dead inside. And an emotionalist, I think people just don't respond to that. Well.

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Justin Neagle: I couldn't agree more. It's it's actually really funny. More recently, something that we've implemented in. So like when we we get any lead in right like, it's just like, hey, we wanna like, you know, show that we're different. When do all these things? When I get a lead in? And II create a video. And I say, Hey, I wanna, I'm so happy that you're gonna we're gonna meet. And all these things. And II go all through it. I've gotten a lot of feedback that says

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Justin Neagle: you can't possibly be this happy I'm like, no, really, I'm this is just it like you get what you get. I'm I'm sorry if it's like intimidating about the bubbliness of me. But it's totally it. I even self, you know, subconscious about this like even writing like emails. And I'm like, I use a lot of exclamation points I don't like. I don't know but that's just how I am like, I'm I'm just that person. And I remember, Kasha, 1 point said like.

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Justin Neagle: Well, are you being genuine like, are you being true to you? And I'm like, Yeah, that's just how I would say it, and she's like, well, then, keep doing it like, don't don't worry about it, cause that's just you, and if somebody's upset about it. They're probably not the best fit for us, because this is the this is the vibe. We have

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Jesse Stakes: Amen to Kasha, and I don't know. I haven't even met Kasha, but I agree with her completely. So you met. You've mentioned it a couple of times, and I'd love to talk about it right now, you guys, you guys started a podcast. I believe, what was it last year?

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Justin Neagle: Yeah. So January of 2021 or 2022. Yes, right? 2022. Yeah, so it's been a year and a half a little over a year and a half now.

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Jesse Stakes: So what's the title of it

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Justin Neagle: building scale, which is Us focusing on the Aec space. And we essentially interview awesome leaders to answer how they built scale using people processing technology. We started the podcast because we were like getting all these questions from Aec companies that we were working with that said, Hey, like, I have a process problem, or, Hey, I have like a people problem. And we didn't really have a good way to answer that like, we can handle the tech.

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Justin Neagle: the tech pillar. That's not a problem. But like, when we started getting to like, how do I like energize my tradesman? Or how do I, like, you know? Run a better safety toolbox set right, like something like that. It was like, we don't have those answers. So it was like, how about we just create a podcast get the people that know all these answers, interview them, learn a crap ton, and then just be able to kind of give that back to the industry that's been good to us. So that was the that's the thought.

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Justin Neagle: I had no idea how fulfilling it was. Gonna be like we thought, Hey, cool! This will be great marketing there'll be, you know, we'll get some street cred, that's all great and wonderful. But like now, it's like, Oh, no, this is the most fulfilling thing we do like. It's unbelievable. The stories we hear how open people are, and as well as just like getting to learn so much about the industry that we? You know we're we're in. So it's been really awesome.

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Jesse Stakes: no doubt. Well, and I you know I've I've done a show myself for 4 years, and I. And that's one of the coolest things to me, too. I didn't realize how passionate I would become about it, but it's amazing when you start to see how much people know how much they're willing to give back and how open they want to be when you give them a platform. I think it's awesome as well.

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Justin Neagle: Yeah, II just if you don't. If you're listening and you don't run a podcast start doing, it's a lot of work. I'm not gonna lie to you. There's a lot of work to it. But like it's, it gives you the opportunity to speak to people that maybe you wouldn't have that opportunity. And I think that's the thing collaboration like when we talk about, how do you go from? Good to great?

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Justin Neagle: It's about bringing others with you on the journey, and like the only way you do that is, is networking out and and getting to know more people and and hearing more stories, like my title at spot, is the chief storyteller. That's both for external. So you think about marketing and things like that, the podcast but then also internally right? So like for us internally, it's it's telling our message, turn, telling our journey, and like breaking down the vision to like the day to day stuff. So it's been

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Justin Neagle: amazing for me, because I'm a I'm the story nerd. I'm total story nerd I get too jazzed up about everybody's story. But it's super genuine. I just like I'll hear something I'm like. That's amazing, like, it's a thing that I haven't experienced. And you have. And I'm I'm just all in on it, and I'm down to talk for far too long. It it actually it probably hurts productivity. But nonetheless, I'm I'm all about it.

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Jesse Stakes: no doubt. Well, that's amazing. And it's it's really cool that you guys do it. And I think it's a you know, it's nice to be able to create a collection of resources for people that are your customers. I mean, because to your point, they're not just looking for your services. They look for services throughout their whole industry. So if you can connect them with people, then you just become that much more of a trusted resource to them.

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You know, talking about that and talking about the industries that you service

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Jesse Stakes: right now, what do you see? As you know, kind of the the immediate, the immediate need, or the immediate

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Jesse Stakes: hold that needs to be filled for most of your customers because of the last 3 years. I mean things that have. Everyone always says, Oh, Covid, did this Covid did that? Yes, it did. But you know we are moving past it. But it definitely created a demand for certain things that didn't exist before. What are you seeing right now in that? You know that commercial construction space that didn't exist prior to Covid.

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Justin Neagle: So a few few things that I it's very blaring, you know. It's just like so glaringly obvious to us is communication right? So communication has historically been an issue in the construction space like it's just not been good. And we mentioned that a little bit earlier. So like that

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Justin Neagle: only magnified when you had all these people like say, a project manager working from home right like that wasn't maybe going to the job site every time. And th these things so like there was the change management aspect that has happened in those last 3 years of saying like, if we wanna get great people, they may wanna stay home or have a hybrid schedule and things like that, and like, How do you work through that? Because if you already weren't great at communication.

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Justin Neagle: how do you then make it, you know, become any better if you remove the you know one to one person interaction. So that's that's a big thing that the industry is just kind of going through and kinda like turning through. How how does this happen? Because it's busy like people in the commercial construction space? It's busy like I know everybody's like, oh, nobody's nobody's trying to rent commercial spaces in downtown places. But like around me, I'm I'm in Phoenix or Mesa Arizona around.

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Jesse Stakes: There's probably like 5 billion dollars worth of commercial going up. So like, it's people are building stuff like, it's still happening. Same thing in Nashville. Same thing we've seen pretty much. All the South is is just completely booming to your point. Maybe I live in Florida. It's I mean, we've we've seen such an explosion of multi-family and of, you know, commercial construction.

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It's amazing. I mean, it's if you're in the construction business. And if you're not working. It's because you don't want to be.

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Justin Neagle: Yep, II would totally agree. The other big thing. And this is something that we were harping before 3 years ago, before the pandemic is cyber security. So

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Justin Neagle: Burke construction it is. They're always in the top 5 most attacked types of companies. And that's simply because there's so much money moving around like, you got a lot of different trades. You got a lot of suppliers. You got all these things so they're just easier targets also. They haven't put the time in to do like, hey, this is cyber training, like everybody does safety training, and like that that makes sense. And like, I think we've gotten to a good place, you know, across the

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Justin Neagle: cou, across the industry of saying, like, we all do safety training, we're we're very conscientious about it. It's really important, I think, that this next step here is like, well, now, you have to kind of do digital safety training like you have to make sure that your people are being smart about it, because.

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Justin Neagle: you know, margins are small in the space like it's just they're they're not huge. So like losing any dollar amount to somebody that's just, you know, being a thief effectively, is is gonna kill, kill a project, and if not, you know. Possibly, you know, kill the business, which is also problematic. And they're just being attacked at a really really high rate. I mean, all companies during the pandemic saw an uptake and cyber attacks. But like construction, it's just like.

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Justin Neagle: yeah. Yeah. And it's easier things like, just do simple cyber training like just that would help you significantly. And that's not a huge price point. That's more of like, hey? Like you just have to, you know. Do something

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Justin Neagle: keep consistent. And then, you know, just do it just like you do safety training. Just be consistent with it. And people they they get it. It's not rocket science to not click on a bad link, but you know they can be tricked. It's just what it is.

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Jesse Stakes: no doubt. I mean, I agree with you 100%, especially if you're not a person who's on a computer all the time. And if you're if you are someone who is, you know who gravitates towards more blue collar work and being outside. And that's just what you prefer to do. And then all of a sudden, you're looking at an email that looks like it came from your wife or from your co worker. And it's not really them. And if you're not trained to look at what that you know what that email address actually is, or that it's a phishing attempt, or any of that stuff. Then I agree with you completely. I mean, I'm in the banking industry. We have to look at that stuff all the time.

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Jesse Stakes: It's, you know, fraud fraud is one of the biggest expenses, the biggest line items on our budget is to protect against fraud. That being said, can you give the audience just some examples, or at least one big example of what you see is fraud in the, in, the, in the construction business or in the construction world right now from a digital perspective. Oh, yeah. So like, I said, there's a lot of suppliers, a lot of trades, right? That you're working with, as, say, you're a general contractor.

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Justin Neagle: What will happen is, is a bad actor, will effectively take a domain that is almost identical. You change a L to a capital I or you change. You know you change a S out for a Z change, change something really simple, or add an S at the end of it, something so simple that it looks just like the email. They they essentially will send you what looks exactly like the payment information. And maybe they swap out the the routing number. Or maybe it's a bill that never happened. But the problem is, it looks

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Justin Neagle: identical of what what it should look like, what you've paid multiple times over and over to that same supplier. But then you later find out that oh, actually, we sent that money overseas, or all we, you know, we kind of check to somebody that was not part of this business. That's what you see all the time. And that's simple to one there. There's email pieces like actual software that you can put in place. That will help with that.

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Justin Neagle: And then it's training and having a process. And we talk about people process technology having a true process in place that says like, just cause I've paid this person before doesn't mean I don't go through the checklist and say, Does the email line up is is the behavior in the email odd in any way? Right, you know, like E, any weirdness whatsoever? Does it feel right? Like a lot of things can just be like, well, that seems odd. But it's from the right email. So

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Justin Neagle: it should be good. Because even if they didn't have the wrong email like. And they just hacked into that other company and then started sending messages out like they could be doing it that way as well. Right? So it's like you gotta check a lot of different boxes when it comes to it, and having a true process in place, that for your say, your accounting team. It says, like, Hey, go through this every time we send money anywhere, no matter what.

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Justin Neagle: And if there's ever a time that you're getting an email from like the CEO that says you need to, you know, get a gift cards for somebody that it just seems really odd. It's like, no like this is, this is total a hoax. Don't do this. I'll always get confirmation a lot of times. Phone calls that's a big one. So like you call them. Don't let them call you cause they can spoof a number. So that's another place where

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Justin Neagle: they'll send an email. And a lot of times you have to have, you know, actual vocal, like, you know, second form of identification. So they will call you from a bad actor will call you from bad, you know, from a Spoof number and say, Hey, I just sent you this email. I just wanted to get the confirmation cause. I know you guys do it this way. And you think, Oh, that's great. You've done my job for me. I don't have to worry about calling you. Yeah, I can totally verify this. Let me shoot the money out.

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Justin Neagle: and that they're doing that. So like they're to the level, depending on the dollar amount that they're going way above and beyond than just shooting out. Hey? I'm a prince in a different you know country that wants to give you 13 million dollars right like that. That's the way of the old, even though it apparently still works, because those emails still go out regularly, which is fascinating to me. But they're they're way more advanced. And as AI has gotten better, you think about Chat. Gbt,

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Justin Neagle: the language that's in the email is also getting a lot better before it was like, Oh, this is spelled wrong. This doesn't make any sense. This is grammar like that, grammatically wrong. That's being solved just simply by automation. And AI so like, don't just trust that like this, email sounds legit. So I guess it's good.

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Jesse Stakes: Right? Well, and like, I said, being in banking. We see it all the time. We're wire fraud where people are trying to get you to send a wire to the wrong place or to your point. Once it's out of the United States. It's very difficult to get that back

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Jesse Stakes: from the, you know, from a banking, from an institutional perspective. The banking industry always tries to do a 2 part authentication when you are wiring money to make sure that we are not making a mistake on our side. But one of the things that has become a fear from the financial perspective is the fact that now you can spoof voices as well.

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Justin Neagle: So yeah.

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Jesse Stakes: I might think I'm talking to Justin on the phone. And if I'm not careful about what the phone number is, did I call him, or did he call me

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Jesse Stakes: all of those things matter, and it's only gonna like not to scare everybody from, you know, that's listening to this. But you know. if we don't take personal responsibility over the over our own funds, and how our funds are being distributed out, then nobody else is going to do it for us to your point. The best thing in the world that we can do for our staffs is, make sure that they are well trained, and that they understand all of the potential pitfalls so that they can't, you know, so that we have the, you know, the the best chance not to fall in them, because

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they're only getting more more plentiful, that th the you know, the people that are out there, the bad actors, as you say. You know those people.

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Jesse Stakes: They're doing this all day, every day. They're doing it thousands, I mean, that's they're not just touching you. They're touching thousands and thousands of businesses.

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Jesse Stakes: because if they get one hit. It's success to them. So is this something that you and your company also help prevent with your customers?

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Justin Neagle: Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's actually interesting that you mentioned the voice verification and like how that can be spooped and things like that. One of the things that we implemented in this was probably 3 or 4 years ago, anytime that we have a client that puts in a ticket right? So like, Hey, like I need to change a password. I need to do whatever it is we have our system. Our process is

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Justin Neagle: our engineers are going to call you right? So it's call that number and then you're going to have to verify via a second form of verification, which is a text message to your specific cell phone. All right. So like for us, we are going above and beyond, because a lot of times, these bad actors, what they were doing was like, Hey, I need to change my password because I can't get into my email. I'm the CEO of ABC. Construction right? And then it was like, Oh, you know, like an engineer is like, Oh, great

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Justin Neagle: crap! Let me! They gotta I gotta yeah. You're the CEO. I don't wanna be the bet I don't wanna get because I didn't help the client right? But the problem is, if a bad actor got in there and did the same thing like you don't know what they sound like you have no concept of what you know. Like they they sound like, or any of these things. So there's no way to to verify that. So then we implemented what's called Id 2020, which we then have this second part of the process where it's like, I can't help you. I like the system won't let me help you unless you give me that verification

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Justin Neagle: to save not only us right, but also for the client saying like, Hey, like there's just too much about cyber security that's on on the table that we are not gonna we're not gonna stand for. We took a big stand about being cyber security focus. It's one of our like, 3 3 big deliverables. What makes us unique is we are an It company historically. But we take cyber security to the next level. That's a thing that we've

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Justin Neagle: now have been offering for about 5 years by itself, separately and we just keep every year. It keeps upping upping upping because it keeps changing. So yeah, we we can do cyber security for a company by themselves. Or we can do all of their it in general.

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Jesse Stakes: I think you almost have to in today's world, because if you're not, because if you took a client on without

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Jesse Stakes: providing cyber security. You're setting yourself up for a negative experience with the client because of they are going to get attacked. It's almost a guarantee in today's world.

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Jesse Stakes: as you know, again, going back to banking. As far as that goes. I mean again, that's the that's the largest line item that we have in our business clients, I mean we we, when they take on Treasury services or anything else, we almost insist upon them, util utilizing cyber security, because it is.

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Jesse Stakes: If not, they're setting themselves up for failure. And it's very. It's very different when you're a business versus just a an individual person. You don't have all of the per, the government protections and the fdic protections. That an individual that an individual does. You have a lot more personal responsibility on the business side than you do on the personal side. So, that being said, I think it's great what you guys do. I think it's a tremendous service, and it's necessary

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Justin Neagle: kind of to flip to something positive. I mean, cause I know it's it shouldn't be scary, because you should. Yeah, it's just part of doing business right like, Hey, absolutely. It's it's you gotta. You gotta take care of the things that that prop you up. And that's just kind of where it is, you know. Gotta have a building. You gotta. You know, absolutely service lines. There's costs of doing business. That's effectively what it is. Exactly. If you just choose not to do it, though

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Justin Neagle: the the the tax man or the the the bad actor tax man will come like there's no question about it.

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Justin Neagle: and that's a lot more expensive than whatever your fees are. 1,000 it's unbelievable. The havoc, because, like, even if shutting down a business like. Say, if I could take you offline for a week or 2 weeks like the impact that has on a business client retention paying your people to not be actually be productive like, there's there's so much money that goes into this that people just don't think of that soft cost loss.

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Justin Neagle: That happens that it's it's UN unfathomable risk. It's reputational risk that as soon as your customers here that you've been hacked, they're afraid to do business with you, no matter what industry it is anymore, because it's such a, because it does have such a negative connotation.

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Justin Neagle: Alright. So so let's get something to more positive here

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Jesse Stakes: in the next 5 years, so I know I don't think you have a crystal ball, but what do you see? Is kind of the things that are happening within, you know, within the within, the trade sector within, you know within those things what do you see? That's come kind of on the horizon that people can look forward to.

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Justin Neagle: I think. When we think of metrics driven automation that's gonna be big some of the big companies we've talked to are already playing with this idea. And when I say that I mean, like, Hey, like, when you're bidding out a project, you get a lot more detailed into where you can like pull things down and up and around, just based on

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Justin Neagle: data that and like AI is effectively being able to help you with. As you push more of your data into one place. All of these, you know, learning language models are able to really digest it and then give you a better solution to how you bid something out. And when these companies start doing this, it's gonna like it's going to be astronomical for those companies because they're gonna get way. More projects just simply cause they know. Hey, I can be profitable at the level I want to

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Justin Neagle: on projects that maybe if I looked at it on the outside, I wouldn't think so. But once I start getting more data points, it's gonna be huge is gonna be massive for bidding as well as I think AI is is gonna like everybody jokes where it's like at a I can't build a building, and II concur right. I concur that that's that. Today is true.

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Justin Neagle: 20 robots may be maybe doing it like that might be the case which I'm I. That's not a a shot at the trades by any means. I still think humans are gonna be super crucially important to it. But I just think that like. That's how it works. Like, you just start taking data. And then, once you have the answers to it, it's a lot easier to build things off of that are just smart. Right? It's it's all about making smart decisions in business. And I think that

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Justin Neagle: data into analytics in with Ais use like that's going to be the place where you're gonna see companies that really invest in that are gonna go through the moon like, I think that that's going to be the big differentiator for those companies, that kind of stay, that small, little tiny shop in comparison to those that really really grow.

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Jesse Stakes: So again, that was my next question is, do you feel like the use of technology data and analytics? Does it allow the smaller companies to compete better with the larger companies? Or does it make the smaller companies essentially.

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Jesse Stakes: you know, a dinosaur because they can't compete as far as that technology.

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Justin Neagle: I believe that smaller companies like, because it's not like AI hasn't existed right? It's like, now, everybody talks about it because of jetty.

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Justin Neagle: This has been around like the AI is existing. I mean, the algorithm for? Yeah, it's just it's just more accessible. II feel like. And I think that that. And even with Microsoft and all the stuff that Microsoft's doing like. I think that it's just so much more accessible that it should benefit smaller companies like that's that's my belief. My belief that a smaller company that says, Hey, I need to actually start thinking about this start investing in it.

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Justin Neagle: And if you're paying for Microsoft licensing, you probably already have some of this. That's just there. You're just not utilizing using automation like power automate and things like that where it's like, Hey, when a change order comes in. I want, you know it to go to these 3 people for sign off, and then it goes back out to the job site. So then, you know, the foreman knows it. And all these things like these things can start being automated. And it's not.

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Justin Neagle: This isn't rocket science. This is just like, who does it have to go to, or has to go to accounting or has to go, the the project manager and it has to go to accounting. That's how you go back to the project manager. That back to the format that can all be automated like that process in itself can just be automated. And you're not breaking the bank to do this. It's not like you're having to buy the biggest invest, you know, construction management system or a anything like that. It's it's really like, Hey, Microsoft will just allow you to do

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Justin Neagle: this already. And they're effectively trying to take over the world. And in every piece of software imagine. Well, there's probably like.

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Justin Neagle: I would say, probably you know, thousands of little apps that they have that people just don't know about like time tracking things like that. This is already built into the license that you're already paying for.

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Jesse Stakes: Right? Well, and II think to your point, it's what I have seen, as far as technology allows, that, you know, it reminds me of the old cartoon of the dogs like you'd see this huge shadow up on the wall of this big dog walking through an alley, and then all of a sudden, it would zoom in on this cartoon of this little tiny teacup Yorkie. And it's but that's what a technology has allowed smaller businesses to do that. I've seen.

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Jesse Stakes: It allows them to project themselves to the world with a much bigger voice and a much bigger shadow than what they have to be, as far as the actual physical footprint of the company. It's it's really cool. I think I think it's tremendous, and I think if they embrace it, and if they learn to utilize it and take advantage of it, they can grow, their company leaps and bounds, revenue and profitability wise without adding all of those bodies that the larger companies already have.

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Jesse Stakes: Justin, I really enjoy. I've enjoyed our conversation, and I think that you know I think the service that you and your company provide is tremendous. If my audience members are interested in talking with you or learning more about what you do. Where can they find you?

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Justin Neagle: So spot migration.com. So that's the easy way to get in contact with company for me. I'm a linkedin a holoc, so you can find me on Linkedin, Justin Nagel, and EA glee. I'm very active. I like to talk to everybody. As I said earlier. I'm I'm a lover of stories, so even if it's not related to it, or construction love to meet with. You love to talk with you and love to just kinda keep growing as a human being

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overall.

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Justin Neagle: And if people are interested in listening to building scale, where can they find it? So every podcast platform, we are on effectively. But building scale.net, that's also the the website. So if you wanna go there you can also go to spot migration.com slash building dash scale. So like those are lots of different ways to get to the podcast but if you just type in building scale on spotify Apple Google Amazon, any of them, you'll find us by beautiful faces on it. It's hard to miss me and Will are beautiful faces, so

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Justin Neagle: very cool again. I want to thank you for joining me, and I look forward to talking to you again soon. Absolutely. Thank you so much.