 What I think that is going to impact it the most is a real demand by the consumers and investors even in these big funds, sovereign wealth funds or even VC, public money and institutional money. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales, and outperform your competition. All right, everybody. Welcome to Smarter Building Materials Marketing, where we believe your online presence should be your best salesperson. I am Zach Williams, alongside my co-host, Beth Pompey-Glove, and we're talking about crypto today. We have been planning for this episode. We're so excited about it. For our listeners, Beth and I had actually been prepping with our team to talk about crypto. Then, I think it was you, Beth, right? You saw our guest post on this on LinkedIn, and I don't want to steal your thunder, but do you want to introduce our guest, Beth? Yeah. We're really excited to welcome back Tim Sims. Tim has decades of Building Materials industry experience. He's one of the leading thought leaders, specifically when it comes to prefab and modular construction. When I saw Tim, who I know goes real deep, real fast on anything that he cares about or is interested in, when I saw that he posted on LinkedIn about NFTs in the Building Materials space, I sent a screenshot to Zach, and I was like, I got our episode on lock. This is what we're going to do, and then Zach made it happen. By making it happen, I just slacked him. I was like, Tim, we're doing a podcast, and I just sent you an invite. I didn't even ask him if he was available. Tim, I know we literally talked yesterday, but... I'm glad the time you worked out. Just received a random call from an old customer, and they asked me about tokenizing their building material, not like a house or some of the other things we've seen or a piece of art, which has been in the news a lot, but an actual physical piece of building, you know, of manufactured products. That was a really interesting, exciting conversation, and I'm glad we get to talk a little bit about the subject today. Yeah, and for listeners, just a quick side note. If you don't know what crypto is, if you don't know what NFTs are, if you don't know what blockchain is, that's totally okay. We see you. We're going to put some links in the show notes to some materials and videos about that, but for today's episode, we're going to dive, I don't want to say pretty deep, but we're going to talk about things that are currently happening in reference to building materials in crypto, and then things that we see and believe are going to happen and how it's going to impact your business. Cool. Okay. So I don't know, you know, for listeners, if you haven't been following this, obviously, you know, crypto has had a huge surge. And last, I mean, I'll say two, two, three years, like since I don't know if I want to see Elon Musk made it big, but like Coinbase got really big in 2020 because people were stuck in their houses, you know? And so they're investing on Robinhood, investing on Coinbase, saw this huge run with Bitcoin, and then we saw the emergence of NFTs, which I don't know if you all remember when you first heard about NFTs, but you're like, what in the world was that? I'm going to pay money for a JPEG. How much money for a JPEG? And now we're starting to see it impact our industry. You know, like Tim, we were just talking about this before we started the show, but you can now pay for your mortgage with Bitcoin. You can now use Bitcoin as leverage for a down payment and a large portion of people, if you haven't all seen this and we'll link to this in the show notes too, a large portion of people that bought their home in Q1, sold or liquidated or used crypto in some capacity to pay for that purchase. Right. I thought it was going to be a small single digit number. And I've been following this space for a little while. And even with that, I thought it would be a smaller number. And it was in the double digits. And that was surprising to me, but it shouldn't be because it's becoming more mature and quickly. I mean, there's a coffee shop here in Cozumel called a key order is one of my favorite places. And they had a QR code on the window a couple of weeks ago that said they take Bitcoin and Ethereum. So I just use my Coinbase wallet and paid for my breakfast at the little cafe. That was really interesting. And then of course, a lot of people have seen the Super Bowl ad for with Matt Damon for crypto. And then copper.co had this huge ad campaign with Rebecca Ferguson, who was in the Dune movie. So there's just a lot more awareness, but I think with more awareness come even more issues. So I think the kick is off. Maybe, Tim, you can share with our listeners about the post that you mentioned, because I think that's actually a really good launching point. So, Tim, you were talking about, mentioned a customer of yours who reached out to you, share with the listeners what you, you know, what you're seeing, what prompted that post. Right. So I think the customer had listened to a podcast because there are a lot. There's a ton of content out there on YouTube and podcast platforms about crypto and DeFi and, and NFTs and blockchain and smart contracts and all these things. And they had been working on a plan to try and figure out how to make a digital representation in, you know, the metaverse or some, somewhere digitally of the physical products they make so that they contract basically and transfer knowledge about the chain of custody of their product from the forest by the trucking company to the mill, you know, that basically geocoded two by fours or whatever. You know, it is, it wasn't a lumber company, but let's use that as an analog. And so they could see the chain of custody from when something is, is grown and harvested or mined and all the way until it becomes a building material installed in a building so that there's this kind of immutable or this record that people can't disprove, but can be proven on the blockchain. So that was kind of what was behind the conversation. So I just posted the, it is like my second conversation about this topic by what I think a lot of folks feel is everyone's, oh, the, the building industry is so far behind and archaic and so forth. And there's all these legacy companies, you know, that aren't, aren't doing what they should to kind of move the industry forward. But these are real conversations happening right now. And so without giving too much away, I just posted that that was something that, that this, you know, big Fortune 500 company was interested in. And I think that if where there's, I don't want to say smoke and fire, but I guess where the conversations are visible and happening, you know, there's probably 20 other people thinking about it. And different brands and, you know, builders and forestry management is actually doing a lot with, with exploration in this field. So that's kind of what, what spurred it. And so then what happened was a lot of people messaged me and all of a sudden I got a bunch of followers on Twitter and LinkedIn from, from the crypto space. And it was just kind of shocking how fast the conversation escalated. Tim, for our listeners, you know, if I work at a manufacturer who's maybe not in the early adopter persona, can you help me understand what, what implications would this have if there were more manufacturers who started to look into things like this for their individual products? How is this going to impact our industry at scale? That's a thoughtful question because it really gets into, um, there's two kind of parts to the industry. There's sort of the, I guess self promotion or, you know, um, kind of, uh, gimmicky sort of things that they're cool. You know, it's kind of more like swag type things. And, and then there's the picks and shovels type approach. And then there's kind of the bigger kind of macro picture of, of, um, what this means, what I think that is going to impact it the most is a real demand by the consumers and investors, even in these big funds, sovereign wealth funds or, or, uh, even VC, um, you know, public money and institutional money, there's a big demand, uh, by their investors in the fund or in the company or public investors in the stock market for, um, you know, what are you really doing about, uh, ESG, environmental sustainability and governance in your company? And, uh, the implications are that if some companies decide to prove that they're not making a carbon bomb, um, for their, their going in these buildings with a huge footprint, uh, if they prove that through the blockchain where it can't be unproven and it's there forever, uh, then what the companies that aren't doing that, there could be some questions about where, you know, how they actually source manufacturer, um, you know, how they treat their people, you know, what their, um, you know, on shoring, off shoring plan is, there are all sorts of things like that. So it's kind of like if you're in a vacuum, it could hurt the brand. If other companies actually do make a headways in, into tokenizing and tracking their, their chain of custody and their products, um, Tim, just for listeners who maybe aren't familiar with some of these terms when you talk about chain of custody and on the blockchain, if we break that down, what that really means is, you know, if you're talking about forestry, for example, you can track where a particular tree was even harvested or forested where it was milled, how it got transported, all of that. And there's actual data on the blockchain to authenticate that. And the benefit is to, let's say even to the end, homeowner or consumer or even architecture, whoever it might be, there's a level of reassurance that like, Hey, what they're promising and their marketing is actually true. Right. And there's value there associated with that too. So I think there's that when you talk about tokenization, but I want to get back to one point, Tim, that you said, I think it's interesting you saying it was gimmicky, which is the marketing side of NFTs and tokenization, which I think is it's totally going to happen. You're already seeing it happen. It's going to be the new carpenter pencil and hat, you know, which is fine. I love carpenter pencils. That's one of my favorite things to give away on the job site. You're seeing it in like concerts and things like that, or even when someone drops a new album. And so what we're talking about here is if, let's say you're a, you know, you're a music, music artist or something like that. You've got a show or you've released an album and a part of the album, you get an NFT, an actual digital asset that accompanies companies that which could potentially increase in value or even you own a portion of the album and the success of the album, the same type of thing. You're starting to see that infiltrate other industries where let's say, I might even been a toy. I think it was like, uh, was it, what's the name of the, the little car company, like toy car company? Matchbox. A matchbox. Yeah. There was like actual NFTs associated with like matchbox toys. So you got the little car and then you got an NFT alongside of it. And so the thing is like the matchbox driving or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think you're going to see, so if you're manufacturing like, okay, this sounds a little gimmicky, but I think you're going to see influencers leverage that too. Like, Hey, I'm an influencer in the space. I'm partnering with so-and-so brand. My name is on this product. Oh, by the way, if you get the product, you get my limited edition NFT, you know, so there's like this added value benefit to the consumer. Right. So to take it one step further, kind of the digital representation of those concerts and so forth. Well, now these artists are going, okay, we're going to go into these metaverse type spaces and we're going to set up a concert venue and we're going to have this work where people that buy my token have access to see my live concert in the metaverse. So that, which of course they have to design all that and they have architects and designers do all that. So which is really interesting where you could see it come into play and where some folks are doing this. Gary V does a great job of this where he is tokenizing access. So basically for the community, if there's a, if there's a brand that's trying to form a community to have thought leadership or, or kind of a startup mentality or entrepreneurship at their organization or something like that, they could take that and be like, okay, this is a very exclusive group. This is how we're going to kind of incentivize it and make it, you know, very, a very special experience. And that I think that the difference between gimmicky and special is, is a fine line in any format because you go from being sort of maybe like not thoughtful to where you can, you can tell when you walk in somewhere, you smell the restaurant, you know, you get a feel for something that's really special. And then you also get the, the inverse of that. So I think that can be done well. And I think you're probably going to see a lot of, you know, consultants and, and other folks, you know, pop up in our space from other spaces that are going to help brands in this area. I mean, Beth, think, think about it this way. Like what if you are manufacturer and you've got different tiers of your partners? So like you're an installer partner level, you get an NFT associated with that, that authenticates your level of partnership, that gives you premier access and additional digital benefits. Like I think that is where we're going to see things go even further in our space. And Tim, I mean, is that gimmicky or is that just like, I don't think so. I think it's a response to the generation that's coming into the industry. I mean, Tim, you said at the beginning of the episode, something that we say all the time, which is the building materials industry is typically tracked at about 10 minimum, you know, maybe seven to 10 years behind other industries that have a typical more early adopter edge or a bit more cutting edge. But my immediate thought when you said that is, I wonder when we're going to have to stop saying that because we are actually seeing an increase in change and an appetite for the pace of change to increase across the industry. And I don't mean this rude, but statistically the generation that doesn't want change is aging out of our industry and the generation that doesn't just want change, but demands it requires it is moving in and millennials are kind of like, I mean, fine, like we're just in the middle, like, sure, you want to change. Great. You don't want to change. Fine. It's like a little annoying, but we'll do it. Why is nobody doing warranty registrations as NFTs in some capacity? Excellent. Yeah. I mean, like utility. I mean, it's not a modernization, but it is, it is like, um, well, think about you sell your house and to the person you sell, you're like, here's all of the NFTs associated with every registration for every product I have versus like handing over a stack of papers and you're like, good luck that like maybe you get access to something with this registration or this warranty. Instead, it's like, here's your entire digital asset that companies, this physical asset. Like that is where, I mean, it sounds funny, but like give it five years, maybe less, like that's a hundred percent going to be part of our daily life. Yeah. I mean, you could even have like CEUs tied to that, um, because I was thinking back to the old days when I was at James Hardy and we did, we had a realtor training program and they get, they would get like a $10 gift card or something for attaining the program, but that was hugely successful. You know, having that where they could easily like put all the warranty information in the binder and kind of add that new level of customer experience in a very analog form where they understood the product and so you could have that sort of thing going on. In fact, right now there is, um, there are actually crypto certified real estate agents and that's part of the realtor brand now. So, and why is that? It's because tokenization is happening with homes. I guess fractionalization of a home purchase where people can buy a share of a home instead of a $600,000 home and kind of, I guess, participate in the upside or the cash flow or, you know, whatever their metric is. Uh, and institutional investors are already, you know, playing in that game as part of their portfolio. So, uh, or you want to be part of a $30 million apartment building. Oh, yeah. Like a syndicate, a syndicate is a perfect example of us. Exactly. So syndications, you're going to see that a lot, a lot more. Tokenization is a game changer for real estate. If it's a game changer for real estate, then that has to go up stream to the building materials manufacturer. It has to go upstream, you know, through the builders to the building product manufacturers and the LBMs. So I don't think it can be ignored, but also, uh, one of the things that I always tell folks is, you know, you see on Shark Tank or something like that, where the investor will say, I'm going to put $25,000 of my own money in this just so I can get your, the founder newsletter. So I know, so I can follow you and know what's going on and be in the inner circle, you know, so you'll put 50 bucks in or something like that. Just so you kind of know what's going, you got a little skin in the game, you know, so you can kind of follow some of these things, uh, and as opposed to kind of a lot of folks aren't going to jump deep in the water, but but, um, I want to share this, this one quote is from Paul Doherty. He's a really cool guy. He's, uh, with the digit group that a Memphis architectural firm, they have some software they sold to Autodesk, um, and I'll see them advancing prefabrication next week. Well, he, I'm just a quick quote from, from his podcast. It says, this is our time. Everything is disjointed. People are looking for leadership and this leadership taking into account the human centric point of how a building goes together. Stop feeling guilty. He's talking to you like the architectural community and the builders stop feeling guilty about carbon footprint and how much we waste and all that stuff. Because guess what? We're only one half of the story. The other half of the story that I want to start wagging a finger at are the building product manufacturers and building material suppliers. They're creating the carbon bombs that we're blamed as constructors for to put into place. They say contracting is 40% of the carbon footprint. It is not, it is 20%. The other 20% are the fortune 500 companies that are giving us carbon bombs. So let's start taking a look at things like blockchain with immutable smart contracts that we can now start to take into account the materials as an internet beast, the internet of materials of the building. We know exactly what goes into the building. If you NFT those, you now have a life cycle immutable response to see the performance of every single material that goes into the building. Now as an industry, we can start to say to these fortune 500 companies given us carbon bombs for our buildings, we can say with that immutable data, you're not performing right. Shame on you. And now we get into the real conversation of moving the needle. That's the bigger picture. You have these other, you know, the other parts of kind of the promotional and the digitization of physical assets. But then it's kind of like this bigger conversation. I think that's what's going to bring an interest young people coming into the industry because they're very sensitive to ESG. And actually have improved positive of what that actually means for their house, for their car, for their laptop. And also digitization is kind of the tie of the realm to realms, physical and virtual worlds. And they're right in the middle of these young folks. And I think that will really help to interest them. Tim, you know, one of the things you hear from people that have been in the industry, they're like, oh, what's the building products industry like? And one of the first things you always say is fragmented. Oh, yeah. It's incredibly fragmented. And I think, you know, the companies and people that find ways to leverage this technology to solve that problem, all the disjointed information, communication right is are the ones that are going to lead the industry and the ones that are going to be the most successful in the short term and long term, because it's not just about being in crypto because it sounds fun and it sounds sexy. It's about solving problems that otherwise would not have been able to five, ten years ago, because you have a new tool in your tool belt. No pun intended, right? And if you look around, I mean, I think this is honestly a surprisingly important conversation because crypto does seem silly. If you're on the outside and you're not interested, you're not watching what's happening. It seems silly and it's starting to lose that. I mean, when you get mortgage companies behind it, it starts to be a bit of a different discussion because mortgage companies are anything but silly. But I think this is a really important conversation because if you look at what's happening around us, it's consolidation, it's moving away from friction. It's simplification and simply to say, like if you are a company who has no plans in the next five to ten years to make improvements in your fragmentation, to make improvements in the friction that you cause, frankly, to make improvements to all the things that Tim is saying about sustainability and transparency. And you just think you're going to be able to continue to do what you've done for the last hundred years for the next hundred years, you're going to end up in a bad spot. And we're not saying you're going to end up in a bad spot in 2023. But everything that if you look at every other industry or multiple other industries, I suppose you could find an exception, nowhere is really just allowing the status quo. And you've got to follow the demand of the consumer. And consumers are starting to ask for more consumers are going to start to look at the home buying process and be like, this is dumb. Building owners are going to look at the construction process and say, this is dumb, I'm not going to do it and someone's going to fix it. And if you haven't planned ahead, you're going to be the one you're going to end up playing catch up for a very, very long time. And it was easy to play catch up when it was digital. When we were like, now you just like, make a website, build social media. But if you didn't do that five years ago, you're feeling the pain now. But imagine how much easier that is than what we're talking about right now. That wasn't huge uplifts of infrastructure shifts, right? That's a huge point. It's a great point. I mean, Beth, it's why we've got a Slack channel all about crypto and then via just because we're like, we need to know as much about this as possible. Yeah. And how this is impacting not only decision making in the terms, you know, in terms of audiences that buy building products. But how is it impacting? Like Tim, you're talking about macro. Yeah, I mean, if there was some action to take near term and something as simple as, you know, a lot of organizations have some sort of chat internal chat now, like what you did with Slack, you know, raise awareness. And you never know what ideas will come out of that and encourage conversation around it. It's kind of like what we talked about before with modular, you know, and I know Mark Mitchell has talked about this a lot. You guys have talked about this a lot. If you're if you don't have someone in the company that's a champion for the space, kind of leading the conversation, other companies are going to do that. So if you if you do have that set up internally, even if it is very casual, but somewhat, you know, trackable, then when questions do come up from customers or investors or management that someone can jump in and at least know where to start looking for it. And I think that's a really, a really good place to start in the organizations, you know, the listeners. That's great. Tim, this has been awesome. Thank you so much again for coming to show. I feel like we could probably talk about this for a few hours. You know, it's a really interesting. Yeah, I have a lot more notes I'll have to show you guys. We'll have to have it back on deserves a part two. It's a big topic. It really is. Just deserves a part two. That's cool. Tim, for our listeners, if they want to connect with you or follow you or NFT with you, what's the best way for them to do that? We just turned NFC into a verb. It's now a verb. They want to send you some people don't know. Yeah. Well, I could give my public key. People could just drop money in my coin based wallet. No, I'm kidding. So you want to just give me money and go right, right? Well, most people reach out to me through through LinkedIn. And so you can find me there and I respond to messages on there or my email is Tim dot s e i m s Tim dot s e i m s at gmail dot com. And that's where people can find me now. So hopefully, hopefully this has been helpful and I can help spread the word as well. People follow up. That's great. Tim, man, thank you so much again for coming to show. And for listeners, if there's something interesting you're doing in relationship to crypto and your company, your organization, drop Beth and I note. We'd love to hear about it. We're looking for more subjects to talk about this with. You can send us a note at podcasts at Venvio dot com. And if you enjoyed this also go to Venvio dot com slash podcast to subscribe and get more. Until next time, I'm Zach Williams alongside that coffee glove. Thanks